"Aim at perfection in everything, though in most things it is unattainable. However, they who aim at it, and persevere, will come much nearer to it than those whose laziness and despondency make them give it up as unattainable"
About this Quote
Perfection is dangled here less as a destination than as a disciplining fiction: a target you never hit but that straightens your posture, tightens your habits, and separates the strivers from the slackers. Chesterfield, the 18th-century statesman best known for tutoring his son in the social arts, isn’t offering a cozy self-help mantra. He’s laying out an aristocratic operating system for ambition in a world where rank is inherited but status is performed.
The line’s real craft is its double move. First, it concedes reality - “in most things it is unattainable” - which inoculates the advice against charges of naivete. Then it turns that concession into a moral sorting mechanism: if you fall short, it’s not because perfection is impossible (he already granted that), but because you lacked “persever[ance]” and succumbed to “laziness and despondency.” The subtext is punitive. It frames resignation not as a rational response to limits, but as a character flaw. That’s politically useful in a society built on hierarchy: it justifies outcomes by recoding them as virtues and vices.
Context matters. Chesterfield wrote in an age of salons, patronage, and reputations made or broken by polish. “Perfection” is as much about comportment, taste, and rhetorical control as it is about workmanship. Aim absurdly high, he argues, because the attempt forces a refinement others won’t endure. The promise isn’t transcendence; it’s edge - the competitive advantage of relentless self-editing.
The line’s real craft is its double move. First, it concedes reality - “in most things it is unattainable” - which inoculates the advice against charges of naivete. Then it turns that concession into a moral sorting mechanism: if you fall short, it’s not because perfection is impossible (he already granted that), but because you lacked “persever[ance]” and succumbed to “laziness and despondency.” The subtext is punitive. It frames resignation not as a rational response to limits, but as a character flaw. That’s politically useful in a society built on hierarchy: it justifies outcomes by recoding them as virtues and vices.
Context matters. Chesterfield wrote in an age of salons, patronage, and reputations made or broken by polish. “Perfection” is as much about comportment, taste, and rhetorical control as it is about workmanship. Aim absurdly high, he argues, because the attempt forces a refinement others won’t endure. The promise isn’t transcendence; it’s edge - the competitive advantage of relentless self-editing.
Quote Details
| Topic | Perseverance |
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