Quotes & Sayings About Finishing

Everyone looks like they've just stepped out of a Dante Gabriel Rossetti painting that he never got around to finishing because even he knew it was too over the top. It — Joe Queenan

Don't cease till your rivals turn to allies, failures to lessons; your liabilities to assets, pains to joy. You're able to finish the race! — Assegid Habtewold

Finishing work makes you a man, finishing difficult work makes you a hero. — Amit Kalantri

Makeup is the finishing touch, the final accessory. — Marc Jacobs

If you're going to start something-if it's worth starting-then it's worth finishing. That's what I live by. — Marshall Faulk

We never work on only one project because we never know if we will get permission for a project. So, for 'Over the River,' we started in 1992. I was just finishing 'The Umbrellas' in Japan and California, and I was also working on getting permission to wrap the Reichstag. — Christo

America has a terrible educational problem in the sense that we have too many youngsters not finishing school. A third of our kids don't finish high school, 50 percent of minorities don't finish high school. — Colin Powell

I began drawing when I was nearly 3, and after finishing the sixth grade, I left school to paint and was tutored at home. My father didn't think a formal education was necessary for a painter. — Jamie Wyeth

Like my hero Virginia Woolf, I do lack confidence. I always find that the novel I'm finishing, even if it's turned out fairly well, is not the novel I had in my mind. I think a lot of writers must negotiate this, and if they don't admit it, they're not being honest. — Michael Cunningham

The extreme proposition on which Giacometti based all his mature work was that no reality ... could ever be shared. This is why he believed it impossible for a work to be finished. This is why the content of any work is not the nature of the figure or head portrayed but the incomplete history of him staring at it. — John Berger

They make Spy Kids, they make Scream, they make A Scary Movie. This doesn't do that, so it could be a very bad marriage. I'm trying to keep this potential nightmare quiet because we're just finishing editing. — Terry Gilliam

To be a pleasant person, you would at least need to see the point of being a pleasant person, or have it explained to you at some sort of 'finishing school' where you could actually learn the laws of propriety and the skills of appearing well-adapted, easygoing and attractively trouble free. But where do you learn these things? I don't know. — Michael Leunig

The experience she gained should be invaluable to her continued growth and contribution to our team. In reality, compared to American players, she would just be finishing her college career. — Mike Thibault

He made me realize that hard work
that the act of finishing, of completing, of accomplishing a task
is joyous — Sherman Alexie

In relay racing, there comes a great disappointment when those who are supposed to receive the baton to get to the finishing line do not get it from those who are supposed to hand off the baton. — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

The anti-feminism bacllash has been set off not by women's achievement of full equality but by the increased possibility that they might win it. It is a pre-emptive strike that stops women long before they reach the finishing line. — Susan Faludi

Up until doing this movie, I hadn't really paid a huge amount of attention to those genres, but after finishing this movie, it really gave me a different sense of appreciation of the way the movies play out. — Chiaki Kuriyama

I feel like I always describe myself as a late bloomer. My first album, in my mind, was that I had a few songs I needed to take from incomplete demos to working with someone else and finishing them. — Albert Hammond Jr.

war, instead of finishing in 1945, would have ended in 1948 had the Government Code and Cypher School not been able to read the Enigma cyphers and produce the Ultra intelligence." During this period of delay, additional lives would have been lost in Europe, and Hitler would have been able to make greater use of his V-weapons, inflicting damage throughout southern England. The historian David Kahn summarizes the impact of breaking Enigma: "It saved lives. Not only Allied and Russian lives but, by shortening the war, German, Italian, and Japanese lives as well. Some people alive after World War II might not have been but for these solutions. That is the debt that the world owes to the codebreakers; that is the crowning human value of their triumphs. — Simon Singh

Tailor's work
the finishing of men's outside garments
was the "trade" learned most frequently by women in [the 1820s and 1830s],and one or more of my older sisters worked at it; I think it must have been at home, for I somehow or somewhere got the idea, while I was a small child, that the chief end of woman was to make clothing for mankind. — Lucy Larcom

When I am finishing a picture, I hold some God-made object up to it - a rock, a flower, the branch of a tree or my hand - as a final test. If the painting stands up beside a thing man cannot make, the painting is authentic. If there's a clash between the two, it's bad art. — Marc Chagall

Fortunately for me, it's my most favorite drill, and that is finishing. However, from a young age, soccer players in this country are not taught how to properly finish, and I think you see that through the professional ranks, that we don't have that killer instinct of the forwards from other countries. — Landon Donovan

She spoke seven languages, including Mandarin and Polish, and was finishing up her master's in Intercultural Misunderstanding, which just has to be Europe's next growth industry. — Michael Lewis

until we do what has not yet been done, what has not been done shall remain undone — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

With one hundred miles left to go in the Klondike 200 I began imagining how amazed people would be at the finished line. Entering the Klondike, my sights had been set on merely finishing. — Brian Patrick O'Donoghue

Just across from Bismarck stood Fort Lincoln where friends and relatives of Custer's dead cavalrymen still lived, and these emigrating Sioux could perceive such bitterness in the air that one Indian on the leading boat displayed a white flag. Yet, in accordance with the laws of human behavior, the farther downstream they traveled the less hostility they encountered, and when the tiny armada reached Standing Rock near the present border of South Dakota these Indians were welcomed as celebrities. Men, women and children crowded aboard the General Sherman to shake hands with Sitting Bull. Judson Elliot Walker, who was just then finishing a book on Custer's campaigns, had to stand on a chair to catch a glimpse of the medicine man and reports that he was wearing "green wire goggles." No details are provided, so green wire goggles must have been a familiar sight in those days. Sitting Bull mobbed by fans while wearing green wire goggles. It sounds like Hollywood. — Evan S. Connell

I really only have been seriously writing, finishing things and publishing things since January '91. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

He gripped the back of her neck again in that purely dominating way that made her melt. "We're finishing this when we get back." His voice was a low, raspy growl. — Katie Reus

The Keys To Happiness
1.Finishing the Grave Digger's Handbook.
2.Escaping the ire of Santa Maria.
3.Recieving two books for Christmas. — Markus Zusak

Once, after finishing a picture, I thought I would stop for awhile, take a trip, do things-the next time I thought of this, I found five years had gone by. — Willem De Kooning

Experimentalists never know when their work is finished. — Daniel H. Pink

Finishing games has been something I'm really proud of, seeing something through to the end. — Felicia Day

O thy! Thou made me infinite with infinite love.
Not by finishing, but by transforming to
infinite for infinite joy! — Debasish Mridha

It's such a hopeful, almost utopian word, that word "phase." As if any minute, "we" would suffer some sort of Joad overload, come to "our" senses, and for heaven's sake, do something about our godforsaken shoes. But the book phase never ended. The book phase would bloom and grow into a whole series of seasonal affiliations including our communist phase, our beatnik phase, our vegetarian phase, and the three-year period known as Please Don't Talk to Me. Now that we are finishing up the third decade of the book phase, we ask ourselves if we have changed. Sure, we still dress in the bruise palette of gray, black, and blue, and we still haven't gotten around to piercing our ears. But we wear lipstick now, we own high-heeled shoes. Concessions have been made. — Sarah Vowell

It's no small feat, finishing a journey," I tell her. "But no one ever mentions that once you get there, you will have to turn around and head all the way home. — Jodi Picoult

Isabella is busy," Louisa said. "She's frantically finishing preparations for the supper ball, as you know. I ought to be helping her." She fixed Mac a look. "So should you."
"I am helping her. I'm minding the children. A good husband knows when to stay out of the way of the whirling household. — Jennifer Ashley

My grandma was really sick when I was working on 'Sin Nombre' and eventually died that summer when we were finishing the film. But I was able to bring an unfinished version of the film for her to watch. — Cary Fukunaga

Finishing races is important, but racing is more important. — Dale Earnhardt

I'm always horrified whenever I finish anything. Horrified and desolate. My instinct for perfection should inhibit me from ever finishing anything; it should in fact inhibit me from ever beginning. But I become distracted and do things. My accomplishments are not the product of my applied will but a giving away of my will. I begin because I don't have the strength to think; I finish because I don't have soul enough to stop things. This book is my cowardice. — Fernando Pessoa

I played in Kent's triumphant Second XI Trophy final team last season, ironically against Hampshire 2nds at the Rose Bowl last September, finishing with 2-17 off six overs. — James Hibberd

He caught her pearl with his fingertips and worked her in tight, feverish circles until she shuddered and cried out with the exquisite pleasure. As her climax receded, he withdrew, finishing with a few hard, desperate thrusts between her thighs. As he came, she savored his low growl. — Tessa Dare

They talk about a lot of different things, but I think they definitely have the same school of thought as my husband [Games Of Thrones creator David Benioff], which is that the difference between being a writer and not being a writer is finishing. — Amanda Peet

I was never really acting. I was not taking it seriously. Acting was very much a hobby for me. It wasn't really until I was finishing college and doing it sporadically that I began to take it seriously. — Zach Galligan

Quietly Sophronia added, "And the soot on my dress, sir?"
"I didn't see anything." Professor Braithwope smiled down at her, showing a small hint of fang.
Sophronia grinned back. "I'm glad we understand each other, sir."
The vampire looked out into the night. "This is the right finishing school for you, isn't it, whot?"
"Yes sir, I think it might very well be."
"A piece of advice, Miss Temminnick?"
"Sir?"
"It is a great skill to have friends in low places. They, too, have things to teach you."
"Now, sir, I thought you didn't see any soot. — Gail Carriger

Actually, I have an interest in finishing my Ph.D., but I just know I never will. — David Duchovny

(Surprisingly, the term has been around since at least 1782, when Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, wrote in a letter to her mother that her "feels" made her cry and gave her insomnia, similar to how a modern fangirl might feel after finishing the Mass Effect trilogy.) Feels — Sam Maggs

there are some things better than winning like finishing with pride — Bemy Wells

I think we were promoting New Moon just as I was finishing The Runaways, and I remember going to Comic-Con with a Minor Threat T-shirt on. I was really happy and excited to be there, but I was so defensive and crazy. — Kristen Stewart

My pictures really finish themselves. — Howard Hodgkin

Eddie did, finishing with the required They lived happily ever after, and the gunslinger nodded. No one ever does live happily ever after, but we leave the children to find that out for themselves, don't we? — Stephen King

When I am fully immersed in my work of nourishing humanity, it fills my head with all kinds of feel-good chemicals, such as endorphins, serotonin and dopamine. Problems occur during the brief intervals between the finishing of one work and the beginning of another. During these intervals, my biology starts to get filled with stress hormones cortisol and adrenalin, that worsens my OCD. That is why, I can't sit still even a day after I finish writing a book. Because if I do, my OCD begins to suffocate me inside my head. Hence, as soon as I deliver a work, I have to start working on my next scientific literature. — Abhijit Naskar

Is he well educated?"
"Yes, I think so, as far as he's gone," I answered. "Of course he will go on being educated every day of his life, same as father. He says it is all rot about 'finishing' your education. You never do. You learn more important things each day ... — Gene Stratton-Porter

Finishing food is about the tiny touches. In the last seconds you can change everything. — Mario Batali

So what is it really like? What happens when people die? Noor asks Alice Bhatti, who after finishing her shift has changed into a loose maxi and is lying down on a wheelie stretcher, her forearm covering her eyes. A half-torn poster on the wall behind the stretcher says : Bhai, your blood will bring a revolution. Someone has scrawled under it with a marker: And that revolution will bring more blood. Someone has added Insha'allah in an attempt to introduce divine intervention into the proceedings. Some more down-to-earth soul has tried to give this revolution a direction, and drawn an arrow underneath and scribbled, Bhai, the Blood Bank is in Block C. — Mohammed Hanif

I can't muster a smile. Even with the knowledge that it's dark outside and light up here, it's hard to believe that he can see us. We should be invisible. We are so alone. Mabel and I are standing side by side, but we can't even see each other. In the distance are the lights of town. People must be finishing their workdays, picking up their kids, figuring out dinner. They're talking to one another in easy voices about things of great significance and things that don't mean much. The distance between us and all of that living feels insurmountable. — Nina LaCour

I think it started with both the shows and the box set from finishing White Material. I think we were also pretty desperate to get it released. We felt pretty proud of it, and it just escalated from there. We were thinking about playing some live shows, doing the soundtracks live. It was just trying to shine a little light on this 15 years of work we've done. — Stuart A. Staples

Perfume is the indispensable complement to the personality of women, the finishing touch on a dress. — Christian Dior

We do like digital projection. We like shooting on film, finishing digitally, and projection digitally. That's what I like best. It's still a movie. It's not someone's camcorder and it got projected. That's mean, I know. — Zack Snyder

But as much as life is sometimes about knowing what you want and going after it and finishing, maybe other times it's about slowing down and shutting up and waiting. There's not always a clear beginning and obvious end. Sometimes we're in the middle . . . and it's okay to camp out there for a while. — Melissa Tagg

A.Q., Keyes remembered, stood for Asshole Quotient. Skip Wiley had a well-known theory that the quality of life declined in direct proportion to the Asshole Quotient. According to Wiley's reckoning, Miami had 134 total assholes per square mile, giving it the worst A.Q. in North America. In second place was Aspen, Colorado (101), with Malibu Beach, California, finishing third at 97. — Carl Hiaasen

Lesson: Finishing first has many different reasons. Run your race. — Erik Qualman

Fiction, like sculpture or painting, begins with a rough
sketch. One gets down the characters and their behavior any
way one can, knowing the sentences will have to be revised,knowing the characters' actions may change. It makes no difference
how clumsy the sketch is - sketches are not supposed
to be polished and elegant. All that matters is that, going over
and over the sketch as if one had all eternity for finishing one's
story, one improves now this sentence, now that, noticing
what changes the new sentences urge, and in the process one
gets the characters and their behavior clearer in one's head,
gradually discovering deeper and deeper implications of the
characters' problems and hopes. — John Gardner

Last night. I couldn't put that book down. I was awake till four this morning finishing it. I didn't know reading could be like that, I had no idea. — Jill Mansell

The indolence I love is not that of a lazy fellow who sits with his arms across in total inaction, and thinks no more than he acts, but that of a child which is incessantly in motion doing nothing, and that of a dotard who wanders from his subject. I love to amuse myself with trifles, by beginning a hundred things and never finishing one of them, by going or coming as I take either into my head, by changing my project at every instant, by following a fly through all its windings, in wishing to overturn a rock to see what is under it, by undertaking with ardor the work of ten years, and abandoning it without regret at the end of ten minutes; finally, in musing from morning until night without order or coherence, and in following in everything the caprice of a moment. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

We are watching the beginnings of the defiant self-assertion of a new generation of Americans, a generation who are looking forward to finishing their education with no jobs, no future, but still saddled with enormous and unforgivable debt. — David Graeber

I don't attend an actual school but I'm still following through with high school. I do work with a tutor for about six hours a day. It's hard core but definitely worth it, and it's my main focus now - finishing up high school before I release my new album and apply to college. — Jojo

I often wonder, if there were no deadlines, would anything ever get ended? — Judith Weir

One always has to spoil a picture a little bit, in order to finish it. — Eugene Delacroix

You've sort of made up for it tonight,' said Harry. 'Getting the sword. Finishing off the Horcux. Saving my life.'
'That makes me sound a lot cooler than I was,' Ron mumbled.
'Stuff like that always sounds cooler than it really was,' said Harry. 'I've been trying to tell you that for years.'
Simultaneously they walked forwards and hugged, Harry gripping the still sopping back of Ron's jacket. — J.K. Rowling

Homework strongly indicates that the teachers are not doing their jobs well enough during the school day. It's not like they'll let you bring your home stuff to school and work on it there. You can't say, 'I didn't finish sleeping at home, so I have to work on finishing my sleep here. — Jim Benton

Our lack of focus is our primary problem and the source of many of our difficulties, like procrastination, trouble setting priorities, trouble dealing with time, trouble finishing projects, perfectionism, and the inevitable demoralization. — Douglas A. Puryear

So we make stories of our own, in fevered and envious imitation of our Maker, hoping that we'll tell, by chance, what God left untold. And finishing our tale, come to understand why we were born. — Clive Barker

Cairn Stone
This is the rock he lifted
to lay upon a cairn
in a high place.
This rock, warmed by the near sun,
felt right, somehow, in his hand.
He decided to carry it down
to his mother, who lay in bed,
recovering.
It is so easy to please
a mother. Just to think of her
for a moment, from a high place,
and to carry that thought to her
in the form of a stone. — Claudia Putnam

But there is nothing that makes its way more directly to the Soul than Beauty, which immediately diffuses a secret satisfaction and complacency through the imagination, and gives a finishing to any thing that is Great or Uncommon. — Joseph Addison

The canvas you are working on modifies the previous ones in an unending, baffling chain which never seems to finish. What sympathy is demanded of the viewer? He is asked to 'see' the future links. — Philip Guston

Finishing is what you have to do. If you don't finish, nothing is worth a damn — Ernest Hemingway,

I've never regretted saying no to anything, or finishing something. When I'm in the middle of doing something I love, I can have a better idea, and I'll go, "Oh God, I can't finish this." Maybe I've got some sort of disorder. — Ricky Gervais

An assortment of soldiers and servants hurried about, finishing their duties for the day, or beginning their duties for the night, or possibly just looking busy to avoid being given additional duties. — Jonathan Renshaw

He worried that he was destined to be a hobbyist, a dreamer incapable of finishing anything. The fact that the college seemed to encourage this kind of "experimentation" made him doubt its motives as an institution of higher learning. — Noah Hawley

Since the tragedy of Marina's death, her parents have heard from strangers around the globe surprised to find themselves writing to share the impact of "meeting" Marina through her words: Jewish teenagers visiting a series of concentration camps while on "The March of the Living" and finding specific comfort and renewed purpose in her writings; college peers living more mindfully; musicians writing songs inspired by her; older readers making midlife recalibrations and career changes, whether they are returning to school or shifting to a nonprofit or finishing that manuscript; people simply rediscovering a sense of hope. These new life paths all build from Marina's own sense that it's never too late to change, that we must take action, that we are indeed "in this together. — Marina Keegan

When I'm out on a long run," she continued, "the only thing in life that matters is finishing the run. For once, my brain isn't going blehblehbleh all the time. Everything quiets down, and the only thing going on is pure flow. It's jus time and the movement and the motion.That's what love
just being a barbarian, running through the woods. — Christopher McDougall

I wanted to design the house around my body and my needs, instead of following the pattern that I'd fallen into in my big house: picking paint colors and finishing the woodwork with some future owner and salability in mind. This was going to be my house. — Dee Williams

This is the problem with dealing with someone who is actually a good listener. They don't jump in on your sentences, saving you from actually finishing them, or talk over you, allowing what you do manage to get out to be lost or altered in transit. Instead, they wait, so you have to keep going. — Sarah Dessen

O my Bergson, you are a magician, and your book is a marvel, a real wonder in the history of philosophy ... In finishing it I found ... such a flavor of persistent euphony, as of a rich river that never foamed or ran thin, but steadily and firmly proceeded with its banks full to the brim. — William James

The only thing worse than finishing second is to be lying on the desert alone with your back broken. Either way, nobody ever finds out about you. — Henry Russell Sanders

I've done that quite often, but I've got to be quite honest ... as much as you would want to only do one at a time, sometimes projects overlap and there's nothing you can do. Sometimes you to have begin writing a new project just as you're finishing off another. — Trevor Rabin

We're going to take out seven countries in 5 years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran — Wesley Clark

I started a novel back in high school. It wasn't very good. It was the opposite of good. The writing itself wasn't too bad, and the characters were interesting. But the story was a mess, and it was full of fantasy cliches. Dwarf with an axe. Barbarian warrior. I don't ever think I'd bother finishing that. It's just not worth my time. — Patrick Rothfuss

Just as we were finishing 'Paul's Boutique' we got our own places, and I was going out to clubs a lot less. I got a bit more introverted and spent a lot more time on my own reading. I would just go down to the esoteric bookstore and wander around. — Adam Yauch

To write it down was to put the finishing touch on any event, see what it was, what it meant, what it stood for. To put anything into words was like pouring melted wax on top of cold glasses of jelly, to harden there and preserve and keep what was underneath like new. — Ardyth Kennelly

I love 'Sunday in the Park with George.' I saw that when I was just, just starting theater school, and I remember singing 'Finishing the Hat' or at least reading the lyrics to 'Finishing the Hat' and other songs from 'Sunday in the Park with George' to my mom to try to explain why I wanted to be an artist. — Stephen Colbert

If I had to pick one form of acting, it would be live theater. That's where I started; that's where I became a man, I think I'm still finishing up that job. — Nick Offerman

It's not how much you do, it's how often you do it. It simply doesn't matter if you make some monumental effort at any given time. You have it in your to give that extra little bit. You know that you could add that finishing touch. You know you can take that extra step. — Vince Poscente

I've never had time to read. But no one ever kept me from finishing a novel I loved. — Daniel Pennac

At least, you two have decent manners," says Effie as we're finishing the main course. "The pair last year ate everything with their hands like a couple of savages. It completely upset my digestion."
... My mother taught Prim and me to eat properly, so yes, I can handle a fork and knife. But I hate Effie Trinket's comment so much I make a point of eating the rest of my meal with my fingers. Then I wipe my hands on the tablecloth. This makes her purse her lips tightly together. — Suzanne Collins

Usually after finishing a novel, I have a head full of bad ideas for the next one. — Charles McCarry

The captain called for her in her suite as she was finishing her morning cup of spiced milk. He declined to sit while she drank. When he blinked at her dress and hid a brief smirk, Kestrel knew that she wouldn't like wherever they were going. When he didn't suggest that she change into something that wouldn't be so easily sullied, she knew that she didn't like him. — Marie Rutkoski

It was 1988, and I was just finishing a D.Phil at Oxford University on the topic of 'Nietzsche and German Idealism.' — Matthew Stewart

A hat is an expression of a woman's soul. It is something that she wears on her head, but it belongs to her heart. It is the keynote of her personality, the finishing touch that makes her look beautiful, smart, and sure of herself. — Lilly Dache

We are not even close to finishing the basic dream of what the PC can be. — Bill Gates