PERFECT Dalai Lama

The Dalai Lama, when asked what surprised him most about humanity, answered "Man ... because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived." Amen.

PERFECT Sense 2

I firmly believe that all human beings have access to extraordinary energies and powers. Judging from accounts of mystical experience, heightened creativity, or exceptional performance by athletes and artists, we harbor a greater life than we know.
Jean Houston

PERFECT Way of the World

As if we needed another reminder of the endless search for youth, especially among women: from the 1700 play The Way of the World, by William Congreve:

"I article, that you continue to like your own face, as long as I shall, and while it passes current with me, that you endeavor not to new-coin it. To which end, together with all the vizards for the day, I prohibit all masks for the night, made of oiled-skins, and I know not what - hogs' bones, hares' gall, pig-water, and the marrow of a roasted cat."

PERFECT Bricktop

“Greatness,” she said, “comes from a person knowing who he is, being satisfied with nothing but the best, and still behaving like a warm and gracious human being.”
Bricktop

(who also, at the age of 51, took an oath of celibacy, saying "Lord, never let me be a foolish old woman." Take that, Madonna).

PERFECT John Ronald Reuel

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

J. R. R. Tolkien

PERFECT Hans

I like the details of costume a lot. The costume is a very important thing. It speaks before you do. You know what you're looking at. You get a reference and it gives context.
Harrison Ford

PERFECT Rebirth

Most beings spring from other individuals; but there is a certain kind which reproduces itself. The Assyrians call it the Phoenix. It does not live on fruit or flowers, but on frankincense and odoriferous gums. When it has lived five hundred years, it builds itself a nest in the branches of an oak, or on the top of a palm tree. In this it collects cinnamon, and spikenard, and myrrh, and of these materials builds a pile on which it deposits itself, and dying, breathes out its last breath amidst odors. From the body of the parent bird a young Phoenix issues forth, destined to live a life as long as its predecessor. When this has grown up and gathered sufficient strength, it lifts its nest from the tree (its own cradle and its parent’s sepulcher), and carries it to the city of Heliopolis in Egypt, and deposits it in the temple of the Sun.
Ovid

PERFECT Line

There isn't a particle of you that I don't know, remember and want.

Private Lives
by Noel Coward