Quotes & Sayings About Craftsman

I certainly see myself more as a craftsman than as an artist. — Orhan Pamuk

An artist is a prophet and seer, not a paint craftsman or design maker, or reporter or entertainer ... the artist has the superiorly searching perception with which that world outside of man's contamination can be penetrated and the truth drawn out from it. — Morris Graves

Capra is an old-time movie craftsman, the master of every trick in the bag, and in many ways he is more at home with the medium than any other Hollywood director. But all of his details give the impression of contrived effect. — Manny Farber

The judges of England have rarely been original thinkers or great jurists. Many have been craftsmen rather than creators. — Patrick Devlin, Baron Devlin

When a work lifts your spirits and inspires bold and noble thoughts in you, do not look for any other standard to judge by: the work is good, the product of a master craftsman. — Jean De La Bruyere

Clean code is not written by following a set of rules. You don't become a software craftsman by learning a list of heuristics. Professionalism and craftsmanship come from values that drive disciplines. — Robert C. Martin

I've said before that every craftsman searches for what's not there to practice his craft. — Rumi

Every man is the craftsman of his future, whether he hone it himself or allow fate do it. — Ogwo David Emenike

What if, as an act of worship, creating something meant healing and restoration took place instead of pain and frustration? — Michelle Dennis Evans

It occurred to him now to ask himself if this was how it happened : was it possible that the mere fact of using one's hands and investing one's attention in someone other than oneself, created a pride and tenderness that had nothing whatever to do with the response of the object of one's care - just as a craftsman's love for his handiwork is in no way diminished by the fact of it being unreciprocated? — Amitav Ghosh

There are hearts, reader, that never mend again once they are broken. Or if they do mend, they heal themselves in a crooked and lopsided way, as if sewn together by a careless craftsman. — Kate DiCamillo

But, when the work was finished, the Craftsman kept wishing that there were someone to ponder the plan of so great a work, to love its beauty, and to wonder at its vastness. — Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola

When you become a good cook, you become a good craftsman, first. You repeat and repeat and repeat until your hands know how to move without thinking about it. — Jacques Pepin

Cultures that may seem as durable as stone can break like glass, leaving all the things that held them together unattended. I believe that the craftsman, the artist, the cook, and the silversmith are peacemakers. They instill grace; they lull the world to calm. — Anthony Shadid

What is the difference between "creator" and "craftsman"? The one who creates bestows being itself, he brings something out of nothing - ex nihilo sui et subiecti, as the Latin puts it - and this, in the strict sense, is a mode of operation which belongs to the Almighty alone. The craftsman, by contrast, uses something that already exists, to which he gives form and meaning. — Pope John Paul II

I've never been much of a craftsman, in an educated way. But I think just the experience of writing makes the avenues I follow a little more efficient in some ways. At the same time, when you're young, you're a little more fearless, and there's less of an internal critic. — Dave Matthews

A man who works with his hands is a labourer. A man who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman. A man who works with his haands, his head, and his heart is an artist. — Francis Of Assisi

When I received my first paycheck from my now known day job, I spent it on a period Craftsman chair and a Frank Lloyd Wright-wannabe lamp. With my second paycheck, I bought a stereo. — Brad Pitt

Just because something isn't a lie does not mean that it isn't deceptive. A liar knows that he is a liar, but one who speaks mere portions of truth in order to deceive is a craftsman of destruction. — Criss Jami

There is no craftsman who has acquired full mastery — Ptahhotep

That's the difference between the serious artist and the craftsman
the craftsman can take material and because of his abilities do a professional job of it. The serious artist, like Proust, is like an object caught by a wave and swept to shore. He's obsessed by his material; it's like a venom working in his blood and the art is the antidote. — Truman Capote

Art begins when an observer's sensibilities engage with the understatements of a calculating craftsman. — Sara Genn

One is always seeking the touchstone that will dissolve one's deficiencies as a person and as a craftsman. And one is always bumping up against the fact that there is none except hard work, concentration, and continued application. — Paul Gallico

Keep me up till five because all your stars are out, and for no other reason ... Oh dare to do it Buddy! Trust your heart. You're a deserving craftsman. It would never betray you. Good night. I'm feeling very much over-excited now, and a little dramatic, but I think I'd give almost anything on earth to see you writing a something, an anything, a poem, a tree, that was really and truly after your own heart. — J.D. Salinger

In the valleys where I was born they say it is God's sword, dropped from the heavens.'
'Don't you?' asked Flood.
Whirrun rubbed some dirt from the crosspiece with his thumb. 'I used too.'
'Now?'
'God makes things, no? God is a farmer. A craftsman. A midwife. God gives things life.' He tipped his head back and looked up at the sky. 'What would God want with a sword? — Joe Abercrombie

It is not enough for a painter to be a clever craftsman; he must love to 'caress' his canvas, too. — Pierre-Auguste Renoir

If by any chance a playwright wishes to express a political opinion or a moral opinion or a philosophy, he must be a good enough craftsman to do it with so much spice of entertainment in it that the public get the message without being aware of it. — Noel Coward

You weren't an accident. You weren't mass produced. You aren't an assembly-line product. You were deliberately planned, specifically gifted, and lovingly positioned on the earth by the Master Craftsman. — Max Lucado

Walt's face lit up. "Sadie, Ptah was more than the craftsman god, right? Didn't they call him the God of Opening?"
"Um ... Possibly."
"I thought you taught us that. Or maybe it was Carter."
"Boring bit of information? Probably Carter. — Rick Riordan

Potter is jealous of potter, and craftsman of craftsman; and the poor have a grudge against the poor, and the poet against the poet. — Hesiod

The Holy Spirit is a master craftsman in fashioning us after the likeness of Christ. He uses many different methods, many tools. Trouble is one of His tools, a precious tool. As you look at the pattern of your own life, and you see trouble staring you in the face, consider that God has sent it for a very special purpose: to expose your weakness so that you can learn to draw on the strength of Christ. — Larry Christenson

We have neglected the truth that a good farmer is a craftsman of the highest order, a kind of artist. — Wendell Berry

Of all the things I've done in life, directing a motion picture is the most beautiful. It's the most exciting and the nearest than an interpretive craftsman, such as an actor can possibly get to being a creator. — Laurence Olivier

Ive grew up in Chingford, a town on the northeast edge of London. His father was a silversmith who taught at the local college. "He's a fantastic craftsman," Ive recalled. "His Christmas gift to me would be one day of his time in his college workshop, during the Christmas break when no one else was there, helping me make whatever I dreamed up. — Walter Isaacson

It is the old experience that a rude instrument in the hand of a master craftsman will achieve more than the finest tool wielded by the uninspired journeyman. — Karl Pearson

To say that you can 'have experience,' means, for one thing, that your past plays into and affects your present, and that it defines your capacity for future experience. As a social scientist, you have to control this rather elaborate interplay, to capture what you experience and sort it out; only in this way can you hope to use it to guide and test your reflection, and in the process shape yourself as an intellectual craftsman — C. Wright Mills

Lark Barnes wasn't much older than me, yet she was married and pregnant with twins. On bed rest for the last few months, she was trapped in her updated Craftsman-style house. Thanks to Bailey, my new job involved caring for Lark during the day.
Petite with spiky dark hair, Lark needed the help too. She was all belly these days. In fact when I arrived at the house that morning, I found her stuck in bed.
"I'm beached!" she cried as I entered the bedroom.
After a little effort, I tugged her out of the bed and helped her into the bathroom. — Bijou Hunter

Yet the most pervasive error one encounters in contemporary arguments about belief in God - especially, but not exclusively, on the atheist side - is the habit of conceiving of God simply as some very large object or agency within the universe, or perhaps alongside the universe, a being among other beings, who differs from all other beings in magnitude, power, and duration, but not ontologically, and who is related to the world more or less as a craftsman is related to an artifact. — David Bentley Hart

Emperor's Soul pg 123:
Attempts to Forge the window to a better version of itself had repeatedly failed; each time, after five minutes or so, the window had reverted to its cracked, gap-sided self.
Then Shai had found a bit of colored glass rammed into one side of the frame. The window, she realized, had once been a stained glass piece, like many in the palace. It had been broken, and whatever had shattered the window had also bent the frame, producing those gaps that let in the frigid breeze.
Rather than repairing it as it had been meant to be, someone had put ordinary glass into the window and left it to crack. A stamp from Shai in the bottom right corner had stored the window, rewriting its history so that a caring master craftsman had discovered the fallen window and remade it. That seal had taken immediately. Even after ll this time, the window had seen itself as something beautiful. — Brandon Sanderson

My trade is a lonely one. I'm a craftsman, if you like. It so happens that these days singers are better paid than blacksmiths. — Jacques Brel

Why are poets so apt to choose their mates, not for any similarity of poetic endowment, but for qualities which might make the happiness of the rudest handicraftsman as well as that of the ideal craftsman of the spirit? Because, probably, at his highest elevation, the poet needs no human intercourse; but he finds it dreary to descend, and be a stranger. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

He was a greater craftsman even than Isaac, and he knew it, and so, presently, did Isaac.
There was a greatness in Isaac. One evening at supper, between one bite of sausage and another, he was able to acknowledge that it was so. "He must increase, but I must decrease," he said to himself. He did not know where the quotation came from, or that in taking it to himself he had taken a fence at which many balked or fell. He finished the sausage without having the slightest idea that he was not the same man that he had been when he embarked upon it. The next morning he smiled at Job and asked him if he would like to help him with his clock. Job went crimson to the roots of his hair and unable to speak bent to pick up a tool he had dropped under the workbench. When he reappeared he was no more able to speak than he had been before, but his face was shining like the morning sun. From that moment the two increasingly loved each other. — Elizabeth Goudge

In the business of portrait photography, one must combine the artist and the craftsman. — Louis Fabian Bachrach Jr.

If you're really a good writer and deserve that honored position, then by God, you'll write, and you'll be read, and you'll be produced somehow. It just works that way. If you're just a simple ordinary day-to-day craftsman, no different than most, then the likelihood is that you probably won't make it in writing. — Rod Serling

For the mystic what is how. For the craftsman how is what. For the artist what and how are one. — William McElcheran

I'm not "filled with my art". I ain't got no art. I've got only a kind of craftsman's skill, and make stories as I make biscuits or embroider underwear or wrap up packages. — Rose Wilder Lane

The man who uses his hands is a laborer. The man who uses his mind is a master. But the man who gives his heart to the passion is a craftsman. — Anonymous

The reverence that the object maker has for the materials, for the shape, and for the miracle of his skill transcends to God, the Master Craftsman, the Creator of all things, who uses us, our hands, as His tools to make these beautiful things. — Sam Maloof

Maybe you'll come to know that every man in every generation is refired. Does a craftsman, even in his old age, lose his hunger to make a perfect cup
thin, strong, translucent?" He held his cup to the light. " All impurities burned out and ready for a glorious flux, and for that
more fire. And then either the slag heap or, perhaps what no one in the world ever quite gives up, perfection." He drained his cup and he said loudly, "Cal, listen to me. Can you think that whatever made us
would stop trying? — John Steinbeck

All right. Your name before mine. You are the greatest sword maker, you deserve to come first."
"Have a good trip back."
"WHY WON'T YOU?"
"Because, my friend Yeste, you are very famous and very rich, and so you should be, because you make
wonderful weapons. But you must also make them for any fool who happens along. I am poor, and no
one knows me in all the world except you and Inigo, but I do not have to suffer fools."
"You are an artist," Yeste said.
"No. Not yet. A craftsman only. But I dream to be an artist. I pray that someday, if I work with enough
care, if I am very very lucky, I will make a weapon that is a work of art. Call me an artist then, and I will
answer. — William Goldman

Winning or losing an argument, receiving an acceptance or rejection, is no proof of the validity or value of personal identity. One may be wrong, mistaken, or a poor craftsman, or just ignorant - but this is no indication of the true worth of one's total human identity: past, present and future! — Sylvia Plath

There's been this steady metamorphosis from just surviving to being a craftsman and, ultimately, the hope is to be an artist in what you do.? — R.A. Dickey

Andre always seemed bent on asserting his individuality and independence, while I tried to submerge my individuality and accepted the loss of some personal freedoms. Andre was Joe Frazier to my Muhammad Ali, although the personalities were kind of flipped around because Andre was the showman and I was the craftsman. Wherever you lived, we were your neighbors: I was the nice, quiet kid next door on one side, and Andre was the rebellious teenager on the other. — Pete Sampras

An artist is waiting for the audience to understand the work. A craftsman is working to understand the audience. — Mo Willems

My father was a very good craftsman. He made furniture, he made silverware and he had an incredible gift in terms of how you can make something yourself. — Jonathan Ive

Potter is potter's enemy, and craftsman is craftsman's rival; tramp is jealous of tramp, and singer of singer. — Hesiod

[N]othing about a book is so unmistakable and so irreplaceable as the stamp of the cultured mind. I don't care what the story is about or what may be the momentary craze for books that appear to have been hammered out by the village blacksmith in a state of intoxication; the minute you get the easy touch of the real craftsman with centuries of civilisation behind him, you get literature. — Dorothy L. Sayers

A man with battered hands is shown to be a craftsman only when he puts them to work. — Miguel Syjuco

I've said you can actually see this fusion in skilled mechanics and machinists of a certain sort, and you can see it in the work they do. To say that they are not artists is to misunderstand the nature of art. They have patience, care and attentiveness to what they're doing, but more than this - there's a kind of inner peace of mind that isn't contrived but results from a kind of harmony with the work in which there's no leader and no follower. The material and the craftsman's thoughts change together in a progression of smooth, even changes until his mind is at rest at the exact instant the material is right. — Robert M. Pirsig

Irrespective of what type of work you do, the craftsman mindset is crucial for building a career you love. Before — Cal Newport

Part of being a filmmaker is also being a craftsman. — Lilly Wachowski

If man is not to do more harm than good in his efforts to improve the social order, he will have to learn that in this, as in all other fields where essential complexity of an organized kind prevails, he cannot acquire the full knowledge which would make mastery of the events possible. He will therefore have to use what knowledge he can achieve, not to shape the results as the craftsman shapes his handiwork, but rather to cultivate a growth by providing the appropriate environment, in the manner in which the gardener does this for his plants. — Friedrich Hayek

We are almost always the craftsman of our own unhappiness. — Andre Maurois

I consider myself more a craftsman than an artist. — Roman Polanski

If a craftsman wants to do good work, he must first sharpen his tools. — Confucius

Gold is for the mistress -- silver for the maid --
Copper for the craftsman cunning at his trade."
"Good!" said the Baron, sitting in his hall,
"But Iron -- Cold Iron -- is master of them all. — Rudyard Kipling

To the documentary director the appearance of things and people is only superficial. It is the meaning behind the thing and the significance underlying the person that occupy his attention ... Documentary approach to cinema differs from that of story-film not in its disregard for craftsman-ship, but in the purpose to which that craftsmanship is put. Documentary is a trade just as carpentry or pot-making. The pot-maker makes pots, and the documentarian documentaries. — Paul Rotha

A painter may be looking at the world in a way which is very different from everyone else. If he's a craftsman, he can get other people to see the world through his eyes, and so he enlarges our vision, perception, and there's great value in that. — Edward De Bono

Doesn't it follow that a ship's captain or ruler won't seek and order what is advantageous to himself, but what is advantageous to a sailor? He reluctantly agreed. So, then, Thrasymachus, no one in any position of rule, insofar as he is a ruler, seeks or orders what is advantageous to himself, but what is advantageous to his subjects; the ones of whom he is himself the craftsman. It is to his subjects and what is advantageous and proper to them that he looks, and everything he says and does he says and does for them. — Plato

I'm not a craftsman of graphics or art or film. I'm more of an idea generator and manufacturer. — Mike Mills

Could a benevolent designer, a craftsman who is mindful of harmony and joy, pleased by plenty and safety, tolerate such an abysmal existence for its most precious expressions of creation? — John Zande

The artist who is not also a craftsman is no good; but, alas, most of our artists are nothing else. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

A craftsman pulled a reed from the reedbed,
cut holes in it, and called it a human being.
Since then, it's been wailing a tender agony
of parting, never mentioning the skill
that gave it life as a flute — Rumi

Smell the aroma of beautiful food, then
go to the latrine and sniff. "What happened to you?" Your dung will answer,
"My beauty was a lure, a trick to get inside you."
Every matter particle does the same
enchantment. Try to see the beginning and end at once. Would you willingly wear manacles
just because they're made of gold? Admire the genius of an artist, but also watch what
happens to him or her in old age, how the expert craftsman's craft diminishes. — Rumi

Where you find quality, you will find a craftsman, not a quality-control expert. — Robert Breault

Whereas the craftsman mindset focuses on what you can offer the world, the passion mindset focuses instead on what the world can offer you. This mindset is how most people approach their working lives. — Anonymous

Our exertions generally find no enduring physical correlatives. We are diluted in gigantic intangible collective projects, which leave us wondering what we did last year and, more profoundly, where we have gone and quite what we have amounted to ...
How different everything is for the craftsman who ... can step back at the end of a day or lifetime and point to an object
whether a square of canvas, a chair or a clay jug
and see it as a stable repository of his skills and an accurate record of his years, and hence feel collected together in one place, rather than strung out across projects which long ago evaporated into nothing one could hold or see. — Alain De Botton

There are two men inside the artist, the poet and the craftsman. One is born a poet. One becomes a craftsman. — Emile Zola

The streets are full of admirable craftsmen, but so few practical dreamers. — Man Ray

The craftsman and the artist say, "Here, I made this." The workingman is asked to follow instructions. — Seth Godin

Every once in a bestseller list, you come across a truly exceptional craftsman, a wordsmith so adept at cutting, shaping, and honing strings of words that you find yourself holding your breath while those words pass from page to eye to brain. You know the feeling: you inhale, hold it, then slowly let it out, like one about to take down a bull moose with a Winchester .30-06. You force your mind to the task, scope out the area, take penetrating aim, and ... read.
But instead of dropping the quarry, you find you've become the hunted, the target. The projectile has somehow boomeranged and with its heat-sensing abilities (you have raised a sweat) darts straight towards you. Duck! And turn the page lest it drill between your eyes. — Chila Woychik

I am not an artist. I am a craftsman. — Fritz Lang

The beauty of a finely worked object points to the beauty of the craftsmanship. The beauty of the craftsmanship points to the beauty of the name which was the source of the craftsmanship. The beauty of the name of the craftsman's art points to the beauty of the craftsman's attributes manifested in that art. — Said Nursi

Unlike other reformers, Luther rarely claimed divine inspiration for his ideas. It is interesting too that he uses the word Kunst - art - for it suggests that the insight, like the skill of a craftsman or artist, opened up a whole new ability to accomplish things in a different way. — Lyndal Roper

Your secret was not the craftsman's delight in process,
which doesn't distinguish work from pleasure
your way was not to exalt nor avoid
the Adamic legacy, you simply made it irrelevant:
everything faded, thinned to nothing, beside
the light which bathed and warmed, the Presence
your being had opened to. Where it shone,
there life was, and abundantly; it touched
your dullest task, and the task was easy. — Denise Levertov

Back then he'd hammered out rags as rough as the planks that made up that schoolhouse stage. Over the years he's taken a saw and rasp to those tunes and smoothed them at the edges, sanded them slowly over time with finer and finer grit paper, and applied a polish to them. The songs are comfortable now. People can take their shoes off to dance without fear of a spike in the foot; they can lie back on that smooth and waxed wood to take a nap in the afternoon or make love all night long. Oliver sees himself as a carpenter, a craftsman putting notes and melodies together, fitting them when they will, stepping back to rest and reconsider when they won't. — Richard J. Alley

An actor is no more than an assortment of odds and ends which barely add upp to a whole man. An actor is an interpreter of other men's words, often a soul which wishes to to reveal itself to the world but dare not, a craftsman, a bag of tricks, a vanity bag, a cool observer of mankind, a child, and at his best a kind of unfrocked priest who for an hour or two, can call on heacen and hell to mesmerise a group of innocents. — Alec Guinness

Its like a hypnotist put everyone from Seattle into a collective trance. You are getting sleepy, when you wake up you will want to live only in a Craftsman house, the year won't matter to you, all that will matter is that the walls will be thick, the windows tiny, the rooms dark, the ceilings low, and it will be poorly situated on the lot. — Maria Semple

The effect of the post-Enlightenment project for human society is that all human activity is absorbed into labor. It becomes an unending cycle of production for the sake of consumption. The modern concept of "built-in obsolescence" makes this clear. The cycle of production and consumption has to be kept going, and the work of the artist or craftsman who aims to create something enduring becomes marginal to the economic order. — Lesslie Newbigin

Gordon Nelson is not only my friend, he's my mentor. He is a master craftsman with unique experience, and an approach to creativity that we can all learn from. For any hairdresser looking for enlightenment, look no further than a man who worked at the original Vidal Sassoon Salon, and who continues to strive for innovation in the industry. — Nick Arrojo

I'll call this output-centric approach to work the craftsman mindset. My — Cal Newport

One of the things he liked about playwriting as to any other kind of writing is that a playwright is a w-r-i-g-h-t, not a w-r-i-t-e; in other words, that a playwright is more of a craftsman than an artist of the big novel. — Simon McBurney

We've dug our holes and hallowed caves Put goblin foes in shallow graves This day our work is just begun In the mines where silver rivers run
Beneath the stone the metal gleams Torches shine on silver streams Beyond the eyes of he spying sun In the mines where silver rivers run
The hammers chime on Mithral pure As dwarven mines in days of yore A craftsman's work is never done In the mines where silver rivers run
To dwarven gods we sing or praise Put another orc in a shallow grave We know our work has just began In the mines where silver rivers run — R.A. Salvatore

[Soetsu Yanagi's] main criticism of individual craftsmen and modern artists is that they are overproud of their individualism. I think I am right in saying Yanagi's belief was that the good artist of craftsman has no personal pride because in his soul he knows that any prowess he shows is evidence of that Other Power. Therefore what Yanagi says is 'Take heed of the humble; be what you are by birthright; there is no room for arrogance'. — Bernard Leach

For, in truth, an image is only dead matter shaped by the craftsman's hand. But we have no sensible image of sensible matter, but an image that is perceived by the mind alone: God, who alone is truly God. — Clement Of Alexandria

Nietzsche was a Greek born two thousand years too late. His dreams were thoroughly Hellenic; his whole manner of thinking was Hellenic; his peculiar errors were Hellenic no less. But his Hellenism, I need not add, was anything but the pale neo-Platonism that has run like a thread through the thinking of the Western world since the days of the Christian Fathers. From Plato, to be sure, he got what all of us must get, but his real forefather was Heraclitus. It is in Heraclitus that one finds the germ of his primary view of the universe - a view, to wit, that sees it, not as moral phenomenon, but as mere aesthetic representation. The God that Nietzsche imagined, in the end, was not far from the God that such an artist as Joseph Conrad imagines - a supreme craftsman, ever experimenting, ever coming closer to an ideal balancing of lines and forces, — Friedrich Nietzsche

The skills of the modern artist are the opposite of those of the craftsman: instead of acquiring techniques for producing classes of objects, the artist today perfects the means suited to his particular work. — Harold Rosenberg

Stradivarius, in particular, was the most amazing craftsman and one of the great artists and scientists that ever lived because he figured out something with the sound and the science of acoustics that we still don't understand it completely. — Joshua Bell

Learn to respect a craftsman's talent, to realize that a task done well seems easy but is terribly difficult. — David Morrell

Das Werk lobt den Meister. (German: The work proves the craftsman.) — Madeleine L'Engle