Great Work Done Quotes & Sayings

The child destined to be a writer is vulnerable to every wind that blows. Now warm, now chill, next joyous, then despairing, the essence of his nature is to escape the atmosphere about him, no matter how stable, even loving. No ties, no binding chains, save those he forges for himself. Or so he thinks. But escape can be delusion, and what he is running from is not the enclosing world and its inhabitants, but his own inadequate self that fears to meet the demands which life makes upon it. Therefore create. Act God. Fashion men and women as Prometheus fashioned them from clay, and, by doing this, work out the unconscious strife within and be reconciled. While in others, imbued with a desire to mold, to instruct, to spread a message that will inspire the reader and so change his world, though the motive may be humane and even noble
many great works have done just this
the source is the same dissatisfaction, a yearning to escape. — Daphne Du Maurier

If there is any substance in what I have said, will not the great missionary bodies of India, to whom she owes a deep debt of gratitude for what they have done and are doing, do still better and serve the spirit of Christianity better by dropping the goal of proselytising while continuing their philanthropic work? — Mahatma Gandhi

I know the truth, and I will tell you now: He was admired, loved, cheered, honored, respected. In life as well as in death. A great man, he is. A great man, he was. A great man he will be. He died that day because his body had served its purpose. His soul had done what it came to do, learned what it came to learn, and then was free to leave. And I knew, as Denny sped me toward the doctor who would fix me, that if I had already accomplished what I set out to accomplish here on earth, if I had already learned what I was meant to learn, I would have left the curb one second later than I had, and I would have been killed instantly by that car. But I was not killed. Because I was not finished. I still had work to do. — Garth Stein

Ka-Be is the Lager without the physical discomforts. So that, whoever still has some seeds of conscience, feels his conscience re-awaken; and in the long empty days, one speaks of other things than hunger and work and one begins to consider what they have made us become, how much they have taken away from us, what this life is. In this Ka-Be, an enclosure of relative peace, we have learnt that our personality is fragile, that it is much more in danger than our life; and the old wise ones, instead of warning us 'remember that you must die', would have done much better to remind us of this great danger that threatens us. If from inside the Lager, a message could have seeped out to free men, it would have been this: take care not to suffer in your own homes what is inflicted on us here. — Primo Levi

Those who emphasize animal rights have a more complicated task. They tend to urge that animals should be given rights to the extent that their capacities are akin to those of human beings. The usual emphasis here is on cognitive capacities. The line would be drawn between animals with advanced capacities, such as chimpanzees and dolphins, and those that lack such capacities. Undoubtedly a great deal of work needs to be done on this topic. But at least an emphasis on the capacity to think, and to form plans, seems to provide a foundation for appropriate line drawing by those who believe in animal rights in a strong sense. — Cass R. Sunstein

The great thing is to last and get your work done and see and hear and learn and understand; and write when there is something that you know; and not before, and not too damned much after. — Ernest Hemingway,

I'm a great believer in the hereafter, in karma, in reincarnation. It does make sense. I believe that God is not just a law-giver, but a creative artist. The greatest of all. And what characterises artists is that they want to redo their work. Maybe it didn't come off perfectly, so they want to see it done again, and improved. Reincarnation is a way for God to improve his earlier works. — Norman Mailer

I believe deeply that God does his best work in our lives during times of great heartbreak and loss, and I believe that much of that rich work is done by the hands of people who love us, who dive into the wreckage with us and show us who God is, over and over and over. There are years when the Christmas spirit is hard to come by, and it's in those seasons when I'm so thankful for Advent. Consider it a less flashy but still very beautiful way of being present to this season. Give up for a while your false and failing attempts at merriment, and thank God for thin places, and for Advent, for a season that understands longing and loneliness and long nights. Let yourself fall open to Advent, to anticipation, to the belief that what is empty will be filled, what is broken will be repaired, and what is lost can always be found, no matter how many times it's been lost. — Shauna Niequist

You didn't succeed. Well, what of that? There's nothing to prove, you know, and the revolution's not a question of virtue but of effectiveness. There is no heaven. There's work to be done, that's all. And you must do what you're cut out for; all the better if it comes easy to you. The best work is not the work that takes the most sacrifice. It's the work in which you can best succeed. — Jean-Paul Sartre

A great many people have come up to me and asked how I manage to get so much work done and still keep looking so dissipated. — Robert Benchley

If you look through history, all of the great work we've done in Congress has been around a table of compromise, when it comes to the most difficult problems. — Claire McCaskill

It is great to add some glamour to the food industry, like television shows have done for the food world and inspiring people to work in the industry. The flip side of that is unfortunately people think that after they get their qualifications, they get their invitation to compete on 'Top Chef.' — Curtis Stone

Schools should take part in the great work of construction and organization that will have to be done. — John Dewey

A great deal of the joy of life consists in doing perfectly, or at least to the best of one's ability, everything which one attempts to do. There is a sense of satisfaction, a pride in surveying such a work, a work which is rounded, full, exact, complete in all its parts-which the superficial man, who leaves his work in a slovenly, slipshod, half-finished condition can never know. It is this conscientious completeness which turns work into art. The smallest thing, well done, becomes artistic. — William Matthews

It's still woman's work whether it's done in a great hall or in the kitchen," I said bitterly. "I know it well enough. It's earning no money for yourself and everything for your husband and master. It's obeying him as quickly and as well as if you were a groom of the servery. It's having to tolerate anything he chooses to do, and smile as he does it. I've served Queen Katherine in these last few years. I've seen how life has been for her. I wouldn't be a princess, not even for a princess's dowry. I wouldn't even be a queen. I have seen her shamed and humiliated and insulted, and all she could do was kneel on her prie dieu, pray for a little help, and get to her feet and smile at the woman who was triumphing over her. — Philippa Gregory

There is a great deal of work that can be done between the SDLP representing the Nationalist population and the Unionist Parties, and I believe we should set down to do that. — Dick Spring

God, the one true benefactor of the world, has done a work for the world in Jesus Christ, loving it, saving it, and calling it to communion with God. As Robert Taft has put it, in the deepest sense, the one true liturgy is God's work of salvation in Jesus Christ. In the Eucharist, the Christian community joins in that work made present to it again and participates in God's love enacted, made real in the world. The church, in fact, both commits to working together in the great benefaction of God's gift of love through Christ, and is empowered to be part of it. In this way, Christian faith is renewed again and again in the Eucharist, not simply as a set of ideas to be held, but a form of life to be lived. — James W. Farwell

The better work men do is always done under stress and at great personal cost. — William Carlos Williams

Most of actor's work is done at home, in your hotel room, in the wee hours of the morning thinking and reading and feeling, walking around and listening to music. It really just because an internal exercise, whatever skills. It's great if you have to learn something new for a gig and designing a character physically is always fun but it does become an internal exercise in separating the wheat from the chaff. — Colin Farrell

I think with comedy I get very sort of critical of myself and try and do the best I can and it doesn't come as second nature. I work at those kinds of films. It doesn't mean I can't do them - I've done two now, and I have a great time doing them, but I just find myself a little bit more neurotic. — Elisha Cuthbert

It's funny, in some of the interviews I've seen that were done for the film, some people say things like, 'Oh, I was never a very big Jim Woodring fan. I've never thought his work was that great.' — Jim Woodring

Licensing can be great. You get money for work that's already done. It's not a horrible thing to me, there's just some things I don't want to soundtrack. — Hutch Harris

Automation and technology would be a great boon if it were creative, if there were more leisure, more opportunity to engage in raising a family, providing guidance to the young, all the stuff we say we need. America will work if we're all in it together. It'll work when there's a shared sense of destiny. It can be done! — Jerry Brown

I've just got into the convention circuit in the last couple of years and it's great to see all these people who are still interested in the show. It's so gratifying to hear that so many people enjoyed the work that Erin and I have done. — Gil Gerard

Let us see that we keep God before our eyes; that we walk in His ways and seek to please and glorify Him in everything, great and small. Depend upon it, God's work, done in God's way, will never lack God's supplies. — Hudson Taylor

I don't know anything about writing,' Colonel Scheisskopf retorted sullenly. 'Well, don't let that trouble you,' General Peckem continued with a careless flick of his wrist. 'Just pass the work I assign you along to somebody else and trust to luck. We call that delegation of responsibility. Somewhere down near the lowest level of this co-ordinated organization I run are people who do get the work done when it reaches them, and everything manages to run along smoothly without too much effort on my part. I suppose that's because I am a good executive. Nothing we do in this large department of ours is really very important, and there's never any rush. On the other hand, it is important that we let people know we do a great deal of it. Let me know if you find yourself shorthanded. I've already put in a requisition for two majors, four captains and sixteen lieutenants to give you a hand. While none of the work we do is very important, it is important that we do a great deal of it. — Anonymous

But the bequest is involved in legal disputes, and pending them the work has stopped; so that like many other great undertakings in America, even this is rather going to be done one of these days, than doing now. — Charles Dickens

Many earnest young writers with a flow of adjectives and a passion for detail have attempted to describe the quiet of a great city at night, when a few million people within it are sleeping, or ought to be. They work in the clang of a distant owl car, and the roar of an occasional "L" train, and the hollow echo of the footsteps of the late passer-by. They go elaborately into description, and are strong on the brooding hush, but the thing has never been done satisfactorily. — Edna Ferber

The doctors cannot make the ignorant think, cannot hope to bring home the sufferings of millions; only one of ourselves can someday do that ... It will need great courage but it will be done, because all things must work toward ultimate good; there is no real wastage and no destruction. — Radclyffe Hall

He was the man who rode into our valley out of the heart of the great glowing west and when his work was done, he left whence he had come--and he was Shane. — Jack Shaeffer

It is a great gift when God gives me a stirring, a feeling, a something-at-all in prayer. But work is being done whether I feel it or not. — Lauren F. Winner

I am the people the mob the crowd the mass. Do you know that all the great work of the world is done through me? — Carl Sandburg

When you don't have, or feel that you don't have, an extra moment to read philosophy, history, or science, when great literature, plays, and novels are as foreign to you as hieroglyphics, do you have any cahnce of seeing your work, career, or life in a new light? You might be doing well in the race, but it's the same race essentially down the same track with the same opponents that may prove to be less than sufficient in enabling you to get those kinds of things done that you want to have completed. — Jeff Davidson

Walt had a way of communicating that was just magical," composer Richard Sherman told me. "Simple, but magical. He would give you a challenge and say, 'I know you can do this.' He made you believe anything was possible. He made you proud to be on his team. And it really was a team effort - Walt would roll up his sleeves and go to work alongside the rest of us. "He saw potential in people who had never really done anything great. My brother Robert and I really had no track record in the music industry, but Walt heard a few of our songs and he gave us an opportunity and inspired us to keep topping ourselves. Without Walt to inspire us, I don't know where we'd be today. "Walt always wanted you to find something wonderful in yourself, to believe in it and consider it God's gift to you. God gives you the gift, and the rest is up to you. Walt taught me that what you do with that gift is your gift back to God. — Pat Williams

Great works are done when one is not calculating and thinking. — D.T. Suzuki

I come from the heart land of New Zealand. A place where men are men and there is no such thing as a latte. Where a day's work is only done one way. THE HARD WAY. Where the vehicle you drive doesn't symbolize who you are. A place where a beer is a beer and it comes only one way, ICE COLD. Yes the great land I like to call home the Waikato but yes all this beauty comes at a price obviously where men actually act like men not knob head; makeup wearing, tight jean wearing homos there will always be a shortage of real women. So just as the last generation of real men, almost every weekend we head into every bar, club, party or music festival we can in the hopes of finding a real women. Don't get me wrong, bars clubs a music fests are the best fun ever. And I drink alcohol like it's going out of fashion not that we care about fashion round here. See you in the heart land — Daniel Anderson

The thinking has to be done largely by people who are not directly productive - by people who appear to be living almost entirely on the work of others, but are, in fact, a long-term investment. Learning grew up in the cities, and in great institutions - it was the labor of the countryside that supported them. — John Wyndham

It is easy to believe that life is long and one's gifts are vast
easy at the beginning, that is. But the limits of life grow more evident; it becomes clear that great work can be done rarely, if at all. — Alfred Adler

Magnus deeply disliked people who were early to business meetings. It was just as bad as being late, since it put everyone out, and even worse, people who were early always acted terribly superior about their bad timekeeping skills. They acted as though it were morally more righteous to get up early than to stay up late, even if you got the same amount of work done in the exact same amount of time. Magnus found it to be one of the great injustices of life. — Cassandra Clare

The successful man has enthusiasm. Good work is never done in cold blood; heat is needed for forge anything. Every great achievement is the story of a flaming heart. — Harry S. Truman

The information age has off-loaded a great deal of the work previously done by people we could call information specialists onto all of the rest of us. We are doing the jobs of ten different people while still trying to keep up with our lives, our children and parents, our friends, our careers, our hobbies, and our favorite TV shows. It's no wonder that sometimes one memory gets confounded with another, leading us to show up in the right place but on the wrong day, or to forget something as simple as where we last put our glasses or the remote. — Daniel J. Levitin

The principal, the only, thing a man makes, is his condition of fate. Though commonly he does not know it, nor put up a sign to this effect, "My own destiny made and mended here." (Not yours.) He is a master workman in the business. He works twenty-four hours a day at it, and gets it done. Whatever else he neglects or botches, no man was ever known to neglect this work. A great many pretend to make shoes chiefly, and would scout the idea that they make the hard times which they experience. — Henry David Thoreau

As far as I'm concerned, Miss Kenton, my vocation will not be fulfilled until I have done all I can to see his lordship through the great tasks he has set himself. The day his lordship's work is complete, the day he is able to rest on his laurels, content in the knowledge that he has done all anyone could ever reasonably ask of him, only on that day, Miss Kenton, will I be able to call myself, as you put it, a well-contented man. — Kazuo Ishiguro

The American learns about the law by participating in the making of it. He teaches himself about the forms of government by governing. He watches the great work of society being done every day before his eyes and, in a sense, by his hand.
In the United States, all of education is directed toward politics. In Europe, its principal purpose is to prepare people for private life. Citizens take part in public affairs too seldom to prepare them for it in advance. — Alexis De Tocqueville

The work done, she lowered him back into place with what, in his final thought, seemed great gentleness. And then he was done. — Nicholas Nicastro

The Standard of Truth has been erected; no unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing; persecutions may rage, mobs may combine, armies may assemble, calumny may defame, but the truth of God will go forth boldly, nobly, and independent, till it has penetrated every continent, visited every clime, swept every country, and sounded in every ear, till the purposes of God shall be accomplished, and the Great Jehovah shall say the work is done. — Joseph Smith Jr.

The novelty and excitement of my new ideas have passed but my need to keep writing the story is still great. I imagine it similar to how an archaeologist must feel when his tool first strikes an ancient set of bones. Exhilaration comes first, having found something rare, but that is short lived. The real work still needs to be done. — Matt Wilven

Painting is almost like a religious experience, which should go on and on. Age just gives you the freedom to do some things you've never done before. Great work can come at any stage of your life. — Will Barnet

You may have done 20 great shows in a row and come to one, and it doesn't work. You never presume anything. — Bob Newhart

I've done a lot of drama, and as a lifestyle, going to work and laughing every day is just great. It's great for your mental health, and it's great for setting up a nice year. — Rose McIver

I see, therefore, the rentier aspect of capitalism as a transitional phase which will disappear when it has done its work. And with the disappearance of its rentier aspect much else in it besides will suffer a sea-change. It will be, moreover, a great advantage of the order of events which I am advocating, that the euthanasia of the rentier, of the functionless investor, will be nothing sudden, merely a gradual but prolonged continuance of what we have seen recently in Great Britain, and will need no revolution. — John Maynard Keynes

There are actresses who've had expensive work done and look great, so I'm not holier-than-thou about it. But it wouldn't be for me, perhaps because I've already been in hospital and wouldn't want to volunteer myself for it again. — Celia Imrie

When it's all said and done, I'm very, very glad to work in this business, but that's exactly what it is. It's a business, and I get to do the fun half of it. I get paid to pretend. I get to play really great characters. And, we have such a wonderful writer. She just knows people so intricately, and it's so fun to be able to act out her words. — Angie Harmon

It's a creative enterprise, just like art, just like painting, music. Creating something can be done in different categories, so to do it in film is just another expression, which is great. Because it translates so well because so many people see the work, if you're lucky. — Robert Redford

The renewal of our natures is a work of great importance. It is not to be done in a day. We have not only a new house to build up, but an old one to pull down. — George Whitefield

An artist of understanding and experience can show more of his great power and art in small things roughly and rudely done, than many another in a great work. A man may often draw something with his pen on a half sheet of paper in one day ... and it shall be fuller of art and better than another's great work whereon he hath spent a whole year's careful labor. — Albrecht Durer

My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return. — Maya Angelou

Bear in mind, now, that most of this work was done by men who had no intention whatever, when they enlisted, of making war to end slavery. Slavery was killed by the act of war itself. It was the one human institution on all the earth which could not possibly be defended by force of arms, because that force, once called into play, was bound to destroy it. The Union armies which ended slavery were led by men like Grant and Sherman, who had profound sympathies with the South and who had never in their lives shown the slightest sympathies with the abolitionists. But they were also men who believed in the one great, fearful fact about modern war
that when you get into it, the guiding rule is that you have to win it. — Bruce Catton

By putting "God" and "work" in the same title - in, so to speak, the same breath - Mr. Keeble challenges the modern orthodoxy, which has done its best to keep those terms separate. The great dissociation of which T. S. Eliot and others have spoken has made it likely that people will exclude from their forms of worship any reference to their economic life or the quality of their work, and that they will exclude from their work any sense of religious obligation. By bringing those two words back into their old association, and by the honor he gives to people who conscientiously kept them associated, Mr. Keeble restores to practical viability the idea of good work. He brings again into view the possibility of religion practicable in work, and work compatible with worship and wholly meant. Wendell Berry Lanes Landing Farm Port Royal, Kentucky — Brian Keeble

Day after day, O lord of my life, shall I stand before thee face to face. With folded hands, O lord of all worlds, shall I stand before thee face to face.
Under thy great sky in solitude and silence, with humble heart shall I stand before thee face to face.
In this laborious world of thine, tumultuous with toil and with struggle, among hurrying crowds shall I stand before thee face to face.
And when my work shall be done in this world, O King of kings, alone and speechless shall I stand before thee face to face. — Rabindranath Tagore

The Bible considers our relationship more important than our accomplishment. God will get His work done! He does not demand that we accomplish great things; He demands that we strive for excellence in our relationships.33 — Joey Bonifacio

When Arnold Schwarzenegger goes to his reward - how's that? That's a crack, but I treat Governor Schwarzenegger well in my book. He's done such great work in California; we'll forgive him one personal habit. Everybody should have one not-totally-CO2-friendly habit they can be forgiven for. So we'll forgive him that one. — Jay Inslee

I think once a year it's good to look back at the history of Oscar and to embrace the great work that everybody's done this year and set it in place to the great work that's gone on before us. — Howard Shore

I was proud to work with the great Gershwin, and I would have done it for nothing, which I did. — Howard Dietz

I think daycare is great for people who have to work two jobs. My problem is with people who are dropping kids off at daycare because they want to go out and spend the day golfing or getting their nails done. You know what I mean? That's not why they invented daycare. — Denis Leary

I'm helped by a gentle notion from Buddhist psychology, that there are "near enemies" to every great virtue - reactions that come from a place of care in us, and which feel right and good, but which subtly take us down an ineffectual path. Sorrow is a near enemy to compassion and to love. It is borne of sensitivity and feels like empathy. But it can paralyze and turn us back inside with a sense that we can't possibly make a difference. The wise Buddhist anthropologist and teacher Roshi Joan Halifax calls this a "pathological empathy" of our age. In the face of magnitudes of pain in the world that come to us in pictures immediate and raw, many of us care too much and see no evident place for our care to go. But compassion goes about finding the work that can be done. Love can't help but stay present — Krista Tippett

The emphasis on original, individual work in the past years has done a great deal to produce a crop of eccentric fakes and has carried art away from the stream of tradition. Tradition is our heritage of knowledge and experience. We can't get along without it. — John French Sloan

I'm a huge fan of 'Kung Fu Panda.' I honestly think that Jack Black's voice work in 'Kung Fu Panda' is the best voice work that's ever been done. He's so funny, and it's such an endearing character. It really is great. — John Requa

Like the character Moliere who discovered to his astonishment that he had been speaking prose all his life, I discovered to my astonishment that I had been immersed in philosophical problems all my life. And I had been drawn into the same problems as great philosophers by the same felt need to make sense of the world...The chief difference between me and them, of course, was that whereas they had something to offer by way of solutions to the problems, I had failed even to formulate very rich or sophistocated versions of the problems, let alone work my way through to defensible solutions for them. In consequence I fell on their work like a starving man on food, and it has done a geat deal to nourish and sustain me ever since. — Bryan Magee

Most Web activities do not generate jobs and revenue at the rate of past technological breakthroughs. When Ford and General Motors were growing in the early part of the twentieth century, they created millions of jobs and helped build Detroit into a top-tier U.S. city. Today, Facebook creates a lot of voyeuristic pleasure, but the company doesn't employ many people and hasn't done much for Palo Alto; a lot of the "work" is performed more or less automatically by the software and the servers. You could say that the real work is done by its users, in their spare time and as a form of leisure. Web 2.0 is not filling government coffers or supporting many families, even though it's been great for users, programmers, and some information technology specialists. Everyone on the Web has heard of Twitter, but as of Fall 2010, only about three hundred people work there. — Tyler Cowen

Take the sum of human achievement in action, in science, in art, in literature subtract the work of the men above forty, and while we should miss great treasures, even priceless treasures, we would practically be where we are today ... The effective, moving, vitalizing work of the world is done between the ages of twenty-five and forty. — William Osler

Great difficulties are felt at first and these cannot be overcome except by starting from experiments .. and then be conceiving certain hypotheses ... But even so, very much hard work remains to be done and one needs not only great perspicacity but often a degree of good fortune. — Christiaan Huygens

The first 50 years of the cinema were absolutely great years. Original minds were at work establishing the ways to tell a story. And what is happening now is a copying, a pastiche-ing of what was done by great men. — V.S. Naipaul

... the distance is commonly very great between actual performances and speculative possibility. It is natural to suppose, that as much as has been done to-day may be done to-morrow; but on the morrow some difficulty emerges or some external impediment obstructs. Indolence, interruption, business, and pleasure; all take their turns of retardation; and every long work is lengthened by a thousand causes that can, and ten thousand that cannot, be recounted. Perhaps no extensive and multifarious performance was ever effected within the term originally fixed in the undertaker's mind. He that runs against Time, has an antagonist not subject to casualties.
From Samuel Johnson's Lives of the Poets series, published in 3 volumes between 1779 and 1781, on Alexander Pope — Samuel Johnson

You start out with big dreams and I mean, big dreams artistically. You want to work with the greatest living directors, make a great movie. I wanted to make a great love story, I wanted to make a great epic and then you realize that the truth of it is that it's so hard to make a great film. It's hard to get a great role. Those big expectations change to realism pretty quickly. But what's never changed is my desire to work with great directors and to find projects that push me out of my comfort zone and keep me alive. I still don't think I've done my best work — Nicole Kidman

It is a great delusion to suppose that flesh-meat of any kind is essential to health. Considerably more than three parts of the work in the world is done by men who never taste anything but vegetable, farinaceous food, and that of the simplest kind. There are more strength-producing properties in wholemeal flour, peas, beans, lentils, oatmeal, roots, and other vegetables of the same class, than there are beef or mutton, poultry or fish, or animal food of any description whatever. — Catherine Booth

I'd never really done comedy before 'Community,' so getting to work day in and day out with all these great people, directors, writers, and actors, I feel like I've learned a lot. — Gillian Jacobs

'Obvious Child,' the short, had a nice life online and a great festival run, but the short and the feature still stand apart from everything else I've done. I play a woman who you might meet in life. My other work is much more heightened. — Jenny Slate

That's one of the things I love about being a songwriter first, last and always, because whether I do it or not, if someone does a great job on it, my work is done. — Carole King

Because [writers] Dan Weiss and David Benioff have done such a great job in adapting them, that's what we work with. It serves no purpose to anybody for actors to come onto a set with a well-thumbed copy of the source material and start querying why this or that line has been left out of the script. It's probably been left out for a good reason. — Charles Dance

People who do great work have a different set of criteria for declaring a job complete: whereas the typical definition of complete is "the work is done," the great work definition of complete is "a difference is made". — David Sturt

I love how the men stand around cooking the barbie while the women have done all the work beforehand doing the marinade and making the salads and then everybody says, 'what a great barbie' to the guy cooking. A barbecue is just the ultimate blokes' pastime, isn't it? — Curtis Stone

Therefore, to you, and to the fifty governors, I have a request. Please, do not send me politicians. We do not have the time to do the things that must be done through that process. I need people who do real things in the real world. I need people who do not want to live in Washington. I need people who will not try to work the system. I need people who will come here at great personal sacrifice to do an important job, and then return home to their normal lives. I want engineers who know how things are built. I want physicians who know how to make sick people well. I want cops who know what it means when your civil rights are violated by a criminal. I want farmers who grow real food on real farms. I want people who know what it's like to have dirty hands, and pay a mortgage bill, and raise kids, and worry about the future. I want people who know they're working for you and not themselves. That's what I want. That's what I need. I think that's what a lot of you want, too. — Tom Clancy

We read to experience the mediocre and the outright rotten; such experience helps us to recognize those things when they begin to creep into our own work, and to steer clear of them. We also read in order to measure ourselves against the good and the great, to get a sense of all that can be done. And we read in order to experience different styles. — Stephen King

Miyata was fluent and intelligent. Nothing was beyond his curiosity. He seemed to be above the confusion of life, as if he had been commissioned to spend his own in undisturbed judgement of the world about him, protected always by a mandate from the gods. They spoke briefly of Korea and then of the past war with the United States. Miyata had been in Japan for its entire duration and must have been deeply affected, but when he talked about it, it was without bitterness. Wars were not of his doing. He considered them almost poetically, as if they were seasons, the cruel winters of man, even though almost all the work he had done in the 1930s and early 1940s had been lost when his house was burned in the great incendiary raid of 1944. He described the night vividly, the endless hours, the bombers thundering low over the storms of fire. — James Salter

I have found, for example, that if I have to write upon sum rather difficult topic, the best plan is to think about it with very great intensity-the greatest intensity of which I am capable-for a few hours or days, and at the end of that time give orders, so to speak (to my subconscious mind) that the work is to proceed underground. After some months I return consciously to the topic and find that the work has been done. — Bertrand Russell

The great constructive energies of the child ... have hitherto been concealed beneath an accumulation of ideas concerning motherhood. We used to say it was the mother who formed the child; for it is she who teaches him to walk, talk, and so on. But none of this is really done by the mother. It is an achievement of the child. What the mother brings forth is the baby, but it is the baby who produces the man. Should the mother die, the baby still grows up and completes his work of making the man. — Maria Montessori

Who am I? I am your constant companion. I am your greatest helper or heaviest burden. I will push you onward or drag you down to failure. I am completely at your command. Half the things you do you might just as well turn over to me and I will be able to do them quickly and correctly. I am easily managed - you must merely be firm with me. Show me exactly how you want something done and after a few lessons I will do it automatically. I am the servant of all great individuals and, alas, of all failures, as well. Those who are great, I have made great. Those who are failures, I have made failures. I am not a machine, though I work with all the precision of a machine plus the intelligence of a human. You may run me for a profit or run me for ruin - it makes no difference to me. Take me, train me, be firm with me, and I will place the world at your feet. Be easy with me and I will destroy you. Who am I? — Sean Covey

Sometimes I feel like just to get all my own work done would be great. You always feel like you're behind, and they're six other things that you wish you could get to but you can't. — Neil Burger

As a leadership coach, one of the questions I always ask myself is, "Does this leader lead in a way that is compatible with humans?" or some version of that. People are designed to function with energy and use their gifts and talents to work toward fruitful outcomes. They do that from the moment they wake up in the morning until they lie down at night. From making the coffee to making computers, people have what it takes to get it done, if the right ingredients are present and the wrong ones are not. The leader's job is to lead in ways such that people can do what they are best at doing: using their gifts and their brains to get great results. — Henry Cloud

The great prophetic work of the modern world is Goethe's Faust, so little appreciated among the Anglo-Saxons. Mephistopheles offers Faust unlimited knowledge and unlimited power in exchange for his soul. Modern man has accepted that bargain ...
I believe in what the Germans term Ehrfurcht: reverence for things one cannot understand. Faust's error was an aspiration to understand, and therefore master, things which, by God or by nature, are set beyond the human compass. He could only achieve this at the cost of making the achievement pointless. Once again, it is exactly what modern man has done. — Robert Aickman

I've done a lot of movies, and you really never know. You do a movie and you think that it's great, and then you see it and it doesn't work. — Benicio Del Toro

In my suffrage work, I learned beyond question that the news coming through the great press agencies was colored and distorted; and if this has been done on one subject, it has doubtless been done on others. A good many women, I think, learned a wholesome distrust of press reports during the suffrage struggle. — Alice Stone Blackwell

Work dominates life in Eden-Olympia, and drives out everything else. The dream of a leisure society was the great twentieth-century delusion. Work is the new leisure. Talented and ambitious people work harder than they have ever done, and for longer hours. They find their only fulfillment through work. The men and women running successful companies need to focus their energies on the task in front of them, and for every minute of the day. The last thing they want is recreation. — J.G. Ballard

The meanest authors have at least this similarity with the great author of heaven and earth, that they usually say after a completed day of work: And behold, what he had done was good. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

When a nation has just emerged from the throes of a great civil warfare, where section was arrayed against section, class against class, two things are to be done: First, the work of reconstruction is to be effected; Secondly, a willingness for the proper acceptance of the issue's decision is to be created. — Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar II

Do you know, it seems to me that a great deal of nonsense is talked about the dignity of work. Work is a drug that dull people take to avoid the pangs of unmitigated boredom. It has been adorned with fine phrases, because it is a necessity to most men, and men always gild the pill they're obliged to swallow. Work is a sedative. It keeps people quiet and contented. It makes them good material for their leaders. I think the greatest imposture of Christian times is the sanctification of labour. You see, the early Christians were slaves, and it was necessary to show them that their obligatory toil was noble and virtuous. But when all is said and done, a man works to earn his bread and to keep his wife and children; it is a painful necessity, but there is nothing heroic in it. If people choose to put a higher value on the means than on the end, I can only pass with a shrug of the shoulders, and regret the paucity of their intelligence. — W. Somerset Maugham

Sarah Brown is a sweetie to work with. She's a good actress. She's gutsy and she comes in and she knows her lines. She's just terrific. Sometimes I forget how young she is, because she truly walked right in and took the territory and was able to hold her own with people who've been here for so many years. To be able to pull that off [for someone who had never been on a show], I really give the woman a lot of credit. She's done great. — Jacklyn Zeman

And if you have great writing, it's really easy, but if it's not so great and you have to work a little harder, I could tell where the work needed to be done but comedy is just fun. — Matt LeBlanc

There's one thing better than having a great actor, and that's having a great actor who's never done this kind of role before and is hungry to do it. They're testing themselves every day. They want to get out of their trailer and get to work. — Sam Mendes