Opus Quotes & Sayings

The world I live in is composing a magnum opus to the heart-stopping, outrageously unbelievable unconditional love and acceptance of God that crushes and demolishes the vestiges of self-righteous "us and them." It's — Wendy Vanderwal-Gritter

Schubert Impromptus that Louise Bogan gave me - Opus 90 and Opus 142, Gieseking. — May Sarton

I can say that even in the midst of my most cynical comic stripping: Opus shone through with a bit of heart, anchoring the ugly proceedings with a comforting pull of emotion. — Berkeley Breathed

When you are solving a difficult problem re-ask the problem so that your solution helps you learn faster. Find a faster way to fail, recover, and try again. If the problem you are trying to solve involves creating a magnum opus, you are solving the wrong problem. — Aza Raskin

In search of Magnum opus - perhaps you were divined to be mine. — Truth Devour

Cotton Mather's publications in his own lifetime amounted to more than 400 titles, and his magnum opus, on which he labored most of his life, remains unpublished: a commentary on every verse of every book of the Bible. Anyone who leaves that kind of record behind issues an irresistible invitation to historians. — Edmund Morgan

For us the question is, has the marriage to do with well-being or with salvation? Is it a soteriological institution or a welfare institution?Is marriage, this opus contra natura a path to individuation or a way to well-being? — Adolf Guggenbuhl-Craig

What I wish is that people would look beyond the tribbles and see I've written some other books that I really would like people to notice. There's 'The Man Who Folded Himself,' there's 'The Martian Child,' which is about my son and the adoption. There's 'The War Against The Chtorr,' which is my magnum opus, my great epic story. — David Gerrold

I didn't know anything about Opus Die except from pop culture, like Dan Brown novels, which I knew wasn't really knowing anything about Opus Die. — Wes Bentley

He considered for a moment, then started to play a piece that was very familiar to Ruth, although she had no idea what it was. It was lilting and wistful, and she could have sung the melody if she had wished.
"Alright?" He raised his eyebrows inquiringly.
"Yes. Exactly."
It was effortless and perfect, and he played it through to the end, closing with the softest and most delicate chords, which hung and faded in the quiet hall like the grains of dust raining through the evening light. Ruth was touched. It was all she had wanted. He did not move until there was complete silence again, then he closed the lid without saying anything, and stood up, shoving back the chair. ... "What was that piece?"
"A Brahms waltz."
"Hasn't it got a name?" she wanted it to remember.
"Number fifteen. Opus thirty-nine."
It hadn't sounded like numbers to Ruth. — K.M. Peyton

My symphonies would have reached Opus 100 if I had but written them down ... Sometimes I am so full of music, and so overflowing with melody, that I find it simply impossible to write down anything. — Robert Schumann

Library of the Works of Ludwig von Mises". Here is an article he wrote in 1951, some two years after his magnum opus Human Action appeared, where is lays out his case in a more popular form. The money sentences are "Economic theory has demonstrated in an irrefutable way that a prosperity created by an expansionist monetary and credit policy is illusory and must end in a slump, an economic crisis. It has happened again and again in the past, and it will happen in the future, too. — Ludwig Von Mises

All our nourishment becomes ourselves; we eat ourselves into being ... For every bite we take contains in itself all our organs, all that is included in the whole man, all of which he is constituted ... We do not eat bone, blood vessels, ligaments, and seldom brain, heart, and entrails, nor fat, therefore bone does not make bone, nor brain make brain, but every bite contains all these. Bread is blood, but who sees it? It is fat, who sees it? ... for the master craftsman in the stomach is good. He can make iron out of brimstone: he is there daily and shapes the man according to his form. — Paracelsus

I'm fine. It's a lie. I am not fine. My head is a symphony of pain, a sadistic master maestro conducting an opus of excruciating, devastating perfecting. — Kiersten White

Fern showed him an organizational plan that had the name Magnum Opus, Incorporated. It was a marvelous engine for doing violence to the spirit of thousands of laws without actually running afoul of so much as a city ordinance. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

There are two styles of walls "opus reticulatum," now used by everybody and the ancient style called "opus incertum." Of these, the reticulatum looks better, but its construction makes it likely to crack ... On the other hand, in the opus incertum, the rubble lying in courses and imbricated , makes a wall which though not beautiful, is stronger. — Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

This happened not once, but twice - first with Martin Heidegger's magnum opus, Being and Time, and then with his pupil Jean-Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness. (We discuss Sartre in the next section.) — Christopher Panza

There is no need of words; believe facts.
[Lat., Non opus est verbis, credite rebus.] — Ovid

Renounce poor work.
Shun trivial work.
Entertain respectable work.
Welcome superior work.
Honor transcendent work. — Matshona Dhliwayo

If there is a thing I truly despise, it is being addressed as "dearie." When I write my magnum opus, A Treatise Upon All Poison, and come to "Cyanide," I am going to put under "Uses" the phrase "Particularly efficacious in the cure of those who call one 'Dearie. — Alan Bradley

Boswell, when he speaks of his Life of Johnson, calls it my magnum opus, but it may more properly be called his opera, for it is truly a composition founded on a true story, in which there is a hero with a number of subordinate characters, and an alternate succession of recitative and airs of various tone and effect, all however in delightful animation. — James Boswell

Coldplay's ultimately show-stopping opus "Fix You" might never have seen the light of day had Chris given up and caved in when Guy politely asked of him one morning: "So, 'tears stream down your face, and AAAAH.' What's that all about, then? — Matt McGinn

Magnum Opus : Without me, you all,
would not be Breathing, no more.
Religious Leader Petra Cecilia Maria Hermans
Religion of Blue Circle
October 17, 2016 — Petra Hermans

I drew the last image ever of Opus at midnight while Puccini was playing and I got rather stupid. Thirty years. A bit like saying goodbye to a child - which is ironic because I was never, never sentimental about him as many of his fans were. — Berkeley Breathed

he failed to report Herod's alleged wholesale slaughter of male infants at the rumor of a "royal birth" that might upset his reign. He did not mention the very public spectacle of a slow, agonizing death of a famous condemned miracle worker and healer. Though he did find that Josephus referred to no less than twenty individuals by the name of Yeshua - the letter "J" not in existence until the fourteenth century - Ryan's investigation could turn up not even a single legitimate detail of the physical life of Christ in Josephus's entire opus. — Kenneth Atchity

Opus Dei is an efficient machine run to achieve world power. — Penny Lernoux

I always wrote little things when I was younger. My first opus was a book of poems put down in a spiral notebook at five or six, handsomely accompanied by crayon illustrations. — Nicole Krauss

Best listened to in a windowless room, better than best in an airless room - correctly speaking, a bunker sealed forever and enwrapped in tree-roots - the Eighth String Quartet of Shostakovich (Opus 110) is the living corpse of music, perfect in its horror. Call it the simultaneous asphyxiation and bleeding of melody. The soul strips itself of life in a dusty room. — William T. Vollmann

Around the time of the Terran Caesar Augustus, a Martian artist had been composing a work of art. It could have been called a poem, a musical opus, or a philosophical treatise; it was a series of emotions arranged in tragic, logical necessity. Since it could be experienced by a human only in the sense in which a man blind from birth might have a sunset explained to him, it does not matter which category it be assigned. — Robert A. Heinlein

It is most certainly a good thing that the world knows only the beautiful opus but not its origins, not the conditions of its creation; for if people knew the sources of the artist's inspiration, that knowledge would often confuse them, alarm them, and thereby destroy the effects of excellence. strange hours! strangely enervating labor! bizarrely fertile intercourse of the mind with a body! — Thomas Mann

I like the idea of being a working writer, not of saying that it's going to take me 30 years to write my magnum opus. — Stewart O'Nan

Country music was the most segregated kind of music in America, where even whites played jazz and even blacks sang in the opera. Something like country music was what lynch mobs must have enjoyed while stringing up their black victims. Country music was not necessarily lynching music, but no other music could be imagined as lynching's accompaniment. Beethoven's Ninth was the opus for Nazis, concentration camp commanders, and possibly President Truman as he contemplated atomizing Hiroshima, classical music the refined score for the high-minded extermination of brutish hordes. Country music was set to the more humble beat of the red-blooded, bloodthirsty American heartland. — Viet Thanh Nguyen

Remember that writing is translation, and the opus to be translated is yourself. — E.B. White

Sapiens adjuvabit opus astrorum quemadmodum agricola terrae naturam": A wise man assisteth the work of the stars as the husbandman helpeth the nature of the soil. — Henry David Thoreau

My fingers burn behind the keys of my typewriter, the lettering fading with every thoughtful strike. The many words I write I dare not stall; my mind perpetually alert for my magnum opus call. — A.K. Kuykendall

I think I would like to write a book on love because one cannot speak of it too much. A Small Study on Love. A Survey of Love. An Investigation of Love. A Compendium on Love. An Omnibus on Love. The Forms of Love. An Opus on Love. Portraits of Love. To Love and to Be Loved. I see a young woman striding down the street and I wonder if she is in a hurry to love. I wonder if there will ever come a day when people can exchange hearts. — Meia Geddes

I took the part in 'Mr. Holland's Opus' because no one had ever asked me to play 'a life' before. I get to age through 30 years. The idea really challenged me. — Richard Dreyfuss

Don't judge without having heard both sides. Even persons who think themselves virtuous very easily forget this elementary rule of prudence. — Josemaria Escriva

I will torture you for a human eternity, during which time you will beg me for death by an Opus 24/24, or an ax, or a thousand snakebites. I can see the future, Daniel, and I am looking forward to it, every excruciating second of your murder and dismembedment. Isn't that a wonderful English word, dis-member-ment? — James Patterson

Here Tchaikovsky was, writing to one brother about the composition of his famous Violin Concerto in D major, Opus 35: "It goes without saying that I would have been able to do nothing without him. He plays it marvellously. When he caresses me with his hand, when he lies with his head inclined on my breast, and I run my hand through his hair and secretly kiss it . . . passion rages within me with such unimaginable strength. . . ." Sparrow — Madeleine Thien

Upon the publication of Goethe's epic drama, the Faustian legend had reached an almost unapproachable zenith. Although many failed to appreciate, or indeed, to understand this magnum opus in its entirety, from this point onward his drama was the rule by which all other Faust adaptations were measured. Goethe had eclipsed the earlier legends and became the undisputed authority on the subject of Faust in the eyes of the new Romantic generation. To deviate from his path would be nothing short of blasphemy. — E.A. Bucchianeri

I'm fascinated by power, especially veiled power. Shadow power. The National Security Agency. The National Reconnaissance Office. Opus Dei. The idea that everything happens for reasons we're not quite seeing. — Dan Brown

I ignore Hallmark Holidays. And this comes from a guy who has sold a million Opus greeting cards. — Berkeley Breathed

Needless to say, the song ["Hallelujah"] was now a climax in every show [of the 2009 Leonard Cohen tour], received like holy scripture. It belonged in a category with seeing Bob Dylan sing "Like a Rolling Stone" or watching Bruce Springsteen perform "Born to Run" - it was an event that people simply wanted to witness, to say they had seen. It took on a power that had to do with the song's history first, its feeling second, and its details hardly at all. Every performance carried with it a sense of where this song had been, who had sung it,where and how every listener had first encountered it; it had reached a place where it was something to be experienced, rather than listened to. — Alan Light

Thursday, you mean everything to me. Not just because you're cute, smart, funny and have a devastatingly good figure and boobs to die for, but that you do right for right's sake - it's what you are and what you do. Even if I never get my magnum opus published, I will still die secure in the knowledge that my time on this planet was well-spent - giving support, love and security to someone who actually makes a difference. — Jasper Fforde

Martin Buber as described for basic virtues cultivated by the Hasidim to overcome the separation of the sacred and secular. . . . St. Benedict spoke of them as truly seeking God, zeal for a humble way of life, zeal for obedience, and zeal for the opus of God. Buber catalogues them as kavana (single-mindedness), shiflut (humility), avada (service), and hitlahavut (fire of ecstasy). 129 — M. Basil Pennington

I've just been writing stuff down as it comes to me. I haven't thought, 'Let me write some major opus here.' — Harvey Pekar

At a tender age, I commandeered half a quire of foolscap from my father's desk and sat down to write a book ... I had observed onprinted fly leaves the words "By the author of, etc." ... So under the title of my prospective work I wrote: By the author of "Les Miserables," "The Woman in White," "Dombey and Son," "Tom Brown's Schooldays" and "Our Life in the Highlands," the last-named being an opus of good Queen Victoria. I had not read all these works but they existed on our bookshelves, and I hoped to produce something worthy of comparison. — Rheta Childe Dorr

For God, who is in heaven, is in man. Where else can heaven be, if not in man? As we need it, it must be within us. Therefore it knows our prayer even before we have uttered it, for it is closer to our hearts than to our words.
- Opus paramirum, I:ix — Paracelsus

Write the masterpiece that has not been written.
Sing the masterpiece that has not been sung.
Paint the masterpiece that has not been painted.
Create the masterpiece that has not been created. — Matshona Dhliwayo

stationery of Magnum Opus, — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Facilis descensus Averno:
Noctes atque dies patet atri ianua Ditis;
Sed revocare gradium superasque evadere ad auras,
Hoc opus, hic labor est.
(The gates of Hell are open night and day;
Smooth the descent, and easy is the way:
But to return, and view the cheerful skies,
In this task and mighty labor lies.) — Virgil

J. R. R. Tolkien, the near-universally-hailed father of modern epic fantasy, crafted his magnum opus The Lord of the Rings to explore the forces of creation as he saw them: God and country, race and class, journeying to war and returning home. I've heard it said that he was trying to create some kind of original British mythology using the structure of other cultures' myths, and maybe that was true. I don't know. What I see, when I read his work, is a man trying desperately to dream.
Dreaming is impossible without myths. If we don't have enough myths of our own, we'll latch onto those of others - even if those myths make us believe terrible or false things about ourselves. Tolkien understood this, I think because it's human nature. Call it the superego, call it common sense, call it pragmatism, call it learned helplessness, but the mind craves boundaries. Depending on the myths we believe in, those boundaries can be magnificently vast, or crushingly tight. — N.K. Jemisin

You're born. You live. You go on some diets. You die. — Opus Communications

Det ille veniam facile, cui venia est opus - the one who needs pardon should readily grant it — Seneca.