Quotes & Sayings About Performing Well

Hungry children are distracted children. We want to make sure nothing gets in the way of our children performing well academically, including hunger. — Arne Duncan

Whatever is going on inside your head has everything to do with how well you end up performing. — D.C. Gonzalez

My life with the Beatles had become a trap ... I always remember to thank Jesus for the end of my touring days; if I hadn't said that the Beatles were 'bigger than Jesus' and upset the very Christian Ku Klux Klan, well, Lord, I might still be up there with all the other performing fleas! God bless America. Thank you, Jesus. — John Lennon

There's something about Michael J. Fox that I loved when he did all the '80s stuff. His way of performing all the physicality, which is why it's so tragic now, but the way he used his body so much as well, I loved. — James McAvoy

Don't forget there are two sides to performing. Finding the truth, but you also have to be transparent enough for the audience to see it. How many times have you seen a performance and thought: 'Well, it seems to be meaning a great deal to you but it ain't coming across to me?' It is to be shared. — John Hurt

True leadership lies in guiding others to success. In ensuring that everyone is performing at their best, doing the work they are pledged to do and doing it well. — Bill Owens

I am bigger and stronger than ever. My Chen Taiji and health regimen has served me well all of these years, thanks to Master Ren Guang-yi. I look forward to being on stage performing, and writing more songs to connect with your hearts and spirits and the universe well into the future. — Lou Reed

Action is, in fact, the one miracle-working faculty of man, as Jesus of Nazareth, whose insights into this faculty can be compared in their originality and unprecedentedness with Socrates' insights into the possibilities of thought, must have known very well when he likened the power to forgive to the more general power of performing miracles, putting both on the same level and within the reach of man. — Hannah Arendt

This particular May morning begins with the appearance of a procession on the corner of Pancake and Rosa Luxemburg Streets. The procession is evidently religious: it consists of eight clerical personages, well known to the entire town. But instead of censers, the clerical personages are swinging brooms, which transfers the entire action from the plane of religion to the plane of revolution. These personages are now simply unproductive elements of society performing their labor duty for the benefit of the people. Instead of prayers, golden clouds of dust rise to the heavens. ("X") — Yevgeny Zamyatin

I love performing in a good straight play as well and I'm a crossover actor, I crossover from plays to musicals, musicals to plays. This is very difficult for performers. — Erica Schroeder

The worse you're performing, the more you must work mentally and emotionally. The greatest and toughest art in golf is "playing badly well." All the true greats have been masters at it. — Jack Nicklaus

I was having a conversation with one of my teammates and she asked me, "Aren't you so glad it's over? We don't have to compete anymore." I thought that was a strange comment but in that moment I realized that I was doing it for the right reasons. I wasn't looking at the Olympics to define me. I wasn't to arrive somewhere by performing well in a contest. — Kelly Clark

The torture squad was so well trained that they were performing almost perfect crimes, avoiding leaving any obvious evidence. Nothing was left to chance. They hit in predefined places. They practiced horrible methods, the aftermath of which would only manifest later. The interrogators turned the A/C all the way down — Mohamedou Ould Slahi

There are any number of models artists can use to profit off of their talent and artistry. It is not up to the state to protect them from competition. Musicians can obviously get paid for performing and having their music copied and "pirated" helps them in this respect by making them more well known, more popular. — Stephan Kinsella

Well, I would definitely give up performing ... But I would still sit down in an office and pretend to write with Dawn, even if we never produced anything, because it's just hilarious. I would miss that. — Jennifer Saunders

I love songwriting ! It's my Number One passion other than performing. Well, actually it's like wearing three different hats: songwriting, recording and performing. They're all completely different and draw on different types of skills. With recording, there are so many different phases of production, and you have to be very careful because you can polish it until it doesn't shine. — Delbert McClinton

The greatest ally you have to get things working well and the players performing as a team is the bench. Don't be afraid to use it, either for the star player or anyone else. — John Wooden

When you're doing those operation scenes, you not only have to be on top of the dialogue and the rhythm of the dialogue and what's happening dramatically, but you've got to technically get the rhythm right, so that everything is fitting with the dialogue at the right time. And you're performing the operation to the audience that's watching it. Thackery has to present it, as well. In some ways, that's the most challenging. — Clive Owen

I can skate beautifully. While performing on ice I always try to please the audience and to win as well. Being artistic is very important to get the audience on your side. As for a competition, you can't win without strong technical content. — Evgeni Plushenko

Of course performing talent, that's clear. Maybe this is not so well-known among young people who are interested in music, who are talented in music, but they're trying to figure out how to go about it. — Esa-Pekka Salonen

My experiences taught me firsthand that when a person is not performing well, there are many possible reasons, some not of his own choosing. — Dallin H. Oaks

Modern tests of working memory require the individual to switch repeatedly between two demanding tasks, retaining the results of one operation while performing the other. People who do well on these tests tend to do well on tests of general intelligence. — Daniel Kahneman

Music is art, art is life, and we are who we are, and all of these aforementioned women, unless they should choose not to, will be performing well into the next many decades because they are great artists. — Lara St. John

When you see young players coming into the squad and pushing you, no matter what age you are, you have to react. You have to worry about yourself and perform as well as you can. If you end up looking around at others, wondering who's performing better, you take your eye off the ball. — Frank Lampard

Before I lost my father, I never understood the rituals surrounding funerals: the wake, the service itself, the reception afterward,the dinners prepared by well-meaning friends and delivered in plastic containers, even the popular habit of making poster boards filled with photos of the dear departed. But now I know why we do those things. It's busywork, all of it. I had so much to take care of, so many arrangements to make, so many people to inform, I didn't have a moment to be engulfed by the ocean of grief that was lapping at my heels. Instead, I waded through the shallows, performing task after task, grateful to have duties to propel me forward. — Wendy Webb

There are many ways of performing the operations successfully. I can claim, however, to be in a position to explain how not to putt. I think I know as well as anybody how not to do it. — Harry Vardon

I never dreamed that I would hear 10,000 people screaming when I stepped out onto a stage. Well, that's not entirely true. I dreamed about it but in a performing-on-the-stage-at-Staples-Center-or-Madison-Square-Garden context. But never in a I'm-in-a-movie-that-hasn't-even-come-out-yet one. — Jacqueline Emerson

We change our attitudes, our careers, our relationships. Even our age changes minute by minute. We change our politics, our moods, and our sexual preferences. We change our outlook, we change our minds, we change our sympathies. Yet when someone changes hir gender, we put hir on some television talk show. Well, here's what I think: I think we all of us do change our genders. All the time. Maybe it's not as dramatic as some tabloid headline screaming "She Was A He!" But we do, each of us, change our genders. In response to each interaction we have with a new or different person, we subtly shift the kind of man or woman, boy or girl, or whatever gender we're being at the moment. We're usually not the same kind of man or woman with our lover as we are with our boss or a parent. When we're introduced for the first time to someone we find attractive, we shift into being a different kind of man or woman than we are with our childhood friends. We all change our genders. — Kate Bornstein

If you count my childhood appearances in a few TV shows and being the son of two well-known actor parents in the U.K., plus three years of drama school, you could say that I've been pretty much surrounded by the business of acting and performing my entire life. — Linus Roache

When I see someone not performing, I am frank enough to tell the person that it's not working out. I request him or her to leave or change jobs within the group. But I see many of our senior colleagues, including my brothers, sons and nephews, empathetic towards non-performers. They don't want to face the issue. They tend to become comfortable with such people and they get protection. They tend to choose people who become personally loyal to them rather than to the company. I think it's important to be professional about such matters. Protecting a non-performer is not good for the business and also the person being protected. This is unprofessional too. The non-performer may be in the wrong job and thus not doing what he or she is best at doing. Empathy that results in protection would lead to a negative result for the employee as well. He or she might be better off in another job within the group or elsewhere. — Subhash Chandra

I have a children's theater background, so I grew up performing for child audiences; it's sort of my specialty. I know the child audience pretty well - or felt like I did because I performed for them so much. I studied a lot about the child audience, about theater. So it was naturally a place that I gravitated to. — Linda Woolverton

I don't consider myself an artist necessarily, but craftsmen or people in the arts, their spiritualism is sort of when you're writing well or performing well or doing whatever you do well, there's an element of that that's either God-given, a talent that you're not necessarily responsible for. — Al Franken

They were here today because Aaron was very weak and dying, and was about to be gathered to his fathers. Moses was not much younger than Aaron, one hundred and twenty years old, but was much stronger for his age. The high priesthood had to be transferred onto Eleazer. This was the fortieth year of their wandering, and Yahweh had promised that Aaron would not enter the Promised Land. Moses knew his own time would be soon as well, but he did not know when. Aaron had worn the vestments of his high priesthood for the sake of the ceremony they were now performing before the eyes of all of Israel below them. — Brian Godawa

There is a lot of incredible talent out there, however, talent alone is not enough. Being a great singer does not matter, if you are not singing great songs. Having great songs will not be obvious to record executives if they are not professionally produced. Consistently performing those songs extremely well is essential. — Wendy Starland

The Dandy is the highest form of existence attainable by the human form. His life is exclusively dedicated to dressing exquisitely, parading about the fashionable boroughs of splendid cities and and holding forth at his club, where he dispenses witticism as readily as the vulgaroisie utters its banal platitudes. The only species of 'work' this singular Chap might engage in would consist of discussing buttonhole stitching with his tailor and performing his ablutions until the morning has been well aired enough for him to step into it. — Gustav Temple And Vic Darkwood

I think every athlete will tell you no matter what sport you're in, when you train so hard and when you care so much about doing what you do, there's a little bit of nerves that come with that. But nerves that won't prevent you form performing, nerves that, hopefully, allow you to be that much more motivated and inspired to do well. — Sidney Crosby

Indeed, four men like them, four men devoted to each other from their money to their lives, four men always supporting each other, never retreating, performing singly or together the resolutions they had made in common; four arms threatening the four points of the compass or all turning to a single point, must inevitably, be it surreptitiously, be it openly, be it by mines, by entrenchments, by guile, or by force, open a way to the end they wanted to reach, however well defended or far off it might be. — Alexandre Dumas

Consider that the simplest social interactions between two people requires performing an astonishing array of tasks: interpreting what the other person is saying; reading body language and facial expressions; smoothly taking turns talking and listening; responding to what the other person said; assessing whether you're being understood; determining whether you're well received, and, if not, figuring out how to improve or remove yourself from the situation. Think of what it takes to juggle all this at once! And that's just a one-to-one conversation. Now imagine the multitasking required in a group setting like a dinner party.
(p237) — Susan Cain

Marijuana, for me in particular, releases my creative juices. It doesn't work well for performing, but for creating nothing works better. — Steve "Lips" Kudlow

A high-performing digital mind can think logically, but outside of the box as well. — Pearl Zhu

I explain to athletes, you're supposed to be a well-oiled machine. You're supposed to be in better shape than the people watching you. You're supposed to be an unbelievable specimen of a human being. You have to treat your body different while you're performing. — John Salley

You perform as well as you believe yourself capable of performing. You are as effective as you believe yourself to be in whatever you do. You can never be better or different on the outside than you believe yourself to be on the inside. — Brian Tracy

Well, I'm not one of those people who needs the limelight. If I'm performing, that's what I'm doing. If I'm not, I don't long for it. I don't need the approval of an audience, or applause. — Patti Smith

'The image of you putting a condom on a banana to teach me about gay sex is forever ingrained in my head.'
'Well, a good father teaches his son about the facts of life.'
'You didn't have to put the banana in your mouth,' I reminded him.
He grinned without looking up. 'Bet that kept you from performing fellatio for quite a while.'
'Longer than you'll know.' — T.J. Klune

There's only, I think, in life, three things that I do pretty well: Performing, I still can field ground balls, and I make nice kids. — Billy Crystal

Dimple could see, flush from the endorphins of a great performance, why actors and performers got addicted to this kind of thing. It had always seemed unfathomable to her, choosing a career where all you did was put yourself out in front of hundreds or thousands of people and risked rejection in real time. But if they felt even half of what she was feeling now when it went well... — Sandhya Menon

Why are women so fearful? The answer to that question lies at the root of The Cinderella Complex. (...) Many women achieve a certain amount of success in their careers and professions and still remain inwardly insecure. In fact (...), it's remarkable how many women these days retain a hidden core of self doubt while performing on the outside as if they were towers of confidence. (...)
Lack of confidence seems to follow us from childhood (...) No matter how fiercely we try to live like adults - flexible, powerful and free - that girl-child hangs on (...). The effects of such insecurity are widespread, and they result in a disturbing social phenomenon: women in general tend to function well below the level of their native abilities. For reasons that are both cultural and psychological - a system that doesn't really expect a great deal from us, in combination with our own personal fears of standing up and facing the world - women are keeping themselves down. — Colette Dowling

Writing is a kind of performing art, and I can't sit down to write unless I'm dressed. I don't mean dressed in a suit, but dressed well and comfortably and I have to be shaved and bathed. — Peter O'Toole

In the early nineteenth century, the doctrine of self-sufficiency came to apply to families as well as individuals ... The familybecame a special protected place, the repository of tender, pure, and generous feelings (embodied by the mother) and a bulwark and bastion against the raw, competitive, aggressive, and selfish world of commerce (embodied by the father) ... In performing this protective task, the good family was to be as self-sufficient as the good man. — Kenneth Keniston

It's fun when you're winning and performing well, but it's also hard because now you get older, you got responsibilities. — Rau'Shee Warren

Selling, in particular, can be a challenge; many investors are tempted to become more optimistic when a security is performing well. This temptation must be resisted; tax considerations aside, when a security reaches full valuation, there is no longer a reason to own it. — Seth Klarman

I had a stammer through adolescence. Any fun I'd had performing in school plays disappeared and only came back at 18, when the stammer started to go. Then I thought: 'Well, perhaps I can show off now.' — Charles Dance

Regarding The Music Man, Jay Nordlinger wrote: The Music Man (for which Willson also wrote the lyrics) is an astonishing creation. It came in a spurt of brilliance. It is shot through with originality, verve, and-why not go all the way?-genius. People love it, can't get enough of it, can't stop performing it-and they are not wrong. For closing in on a half- century now, The Music Man has been performed continually, in every American city, town, and village, and in other parts of the world as well, not excluding Peking. — Meredith Willson

But it is not time constraints alone that produce such fragmented and discontinuous language. When a television show is in process, it is very nearly impermissible to say, "Let me think about that" or "I don't know" or "What do you mean when you say ... ?" or "From what sources does your information come?" This type of discourse not only slows down the tempo of the show but creates the impression of uncertainty or lack of finish. It tends to reveal people in the act of thinking, which is as disconcerting and boring on television as it is on a Las Vegas stage. Thinking does not play well on television, a fact that television directors discovered long ago. There is not much to see in it. It is, in a phrase, not a performing art. But television demands a performing art. — Neil Postman

With a live performance, you feel nervous because there's a sense it could do well or badly based on how well you are performing, whereas the only variable with a film premiere is technical, which invariably you have very little control over, whether the sound is good, whether the acoustics of the room are good. — Richard Ayoade

He was a priest now, pagan, half-naked in the night, performing obscure rites of interment. Or he was the lead player in his own novel, or in one of those new arcade games William loved, compelled to repeat some totemic motion until he got it right. Only once did he feel, as he had on New Year's Eve, that someone was standing among the trees, watching. Well, let him watch, damn it. Something was being enacted here, as if it had been this deeper mission calling Mercer home all along. And now that he'd completed it, maybe he would be allowed to advance through to the next level, to a world where no one got shot. — Garth Risk Hallberg

I would like to do things like I did in Tanzania, going somewhere and exploring a theme and investigating as well as performing for those people. — Drummond Money-Coutts

I have never stopped performing live.I've been blessed with the talent to sing and play the piano so I can fit into a lot of different configurations and venues. I play public and private performances and it has served me well. And I've been fortunate to work in Europe and Asia as well as The US. So for those who have not attended my shows, it doesn't mean I'm not performing. — Oleta Adams

Your assets are your employees. Invest more on those performing well. Let the non performers go. — Manoj Arora

Boys must find ways to compete and see themselves as performing well. If they do not, if society does not provide them with these opportunities, they'll compete against society itself, abusing their community and themselves. — Michael Gurian

The cost of performing well in bad times can be relative underperformance in good times. — Seth Klarman

No matter what corruption he's taught about the virtue of selflessness, sex is the most profoundly selfish of all acts, an act which he cannot perform for any motive but his own enjoyment - just try to think of performing it in a spirit of selfless charity?-an act which is not possible in self-abasement, only in self-exaltation, only in the confidence of being desired and being worthy of desire. It is an act that forces him to stand naked in spirit, as well as in body, and to accept his real ego as his standard of value. — Ayn Rand

Scientists used to do an experiment whereby a dog's repeated reward for performing a task was unaccountably replaced by punishment. The dog, knowing it would be penalized for doing well or doing badly, would become melancholic and inactive. This and other unforeseeable results were funded by taxing up to sixty percent of people's earnings. People became strangely melancholic and inactive
— Steve Aylett

If you want to know why your people are not performing well, step up to the mirror and take a peek. — Ken Blanchard

I think the main thing you measure your success by is what you do in comparison to your opposition. If you're in an industry where you're the leader, then you're performing very well. — Gerry Harvey

I just said, 'Well, the real people performing miracles every day are librarians,' and we all laughed ourselves off our chairs. — Nancy Pearl

Nowadays, people resort to all kinds of activities in order to calm themselves after a stressful event: performing yoga poses in a sauna, leaping off bridges while tied to a bungee, killing imaginary zombies with imaginary weapons, and so forth. But in Miss Penelope Lumley's day, it was universally understood that there is nothing like a nice cup of tea to settle one's nerves in the aftermath of an adventure- a practice many would find well worth reviving. — Maryrose Wood

I love performing outside because it's as if the heavens are open and the elements become part of the stage show as well - you know, the wind and the rain and the thunder. It's almost as if there's a sense of invocation in performance. — Florence Welch

I find that when I am gossiping about my friends, as well as my enemies, I am deeply conscious of performing a social duty. But when I hear they are gossiping about me, I am rightfully filled with righteous indignation. — Max Gluckman

'Star Trek' is a 'Wagon Train' concept - built around characters who travel to worlds 'similar' to our own, and meet the action-adventure-drama which become our stories. Their transportation is the cruiser 'S.S. Yorktown,' performing a well-defined and long-range Exploration-Science-Security mission which helps create our format. — Gene Roddenberry

Your best shot at happiness, self-worth and personal satisfaction - the things that constitute real success - is not in earning as much as you can but in performing as well as you can something that you consider worthwhile. — William Raspberry

If you knew the satisfaction of performing a duty, as well as the gratitude to God which the missionary must always feel in being chosen for so noble and sacred a calling, you would feel no hesitation in embracing it. — David Livingstone

If you have a native monetization system where the atomic unit of content is the ad unit, that scales down all the way to a small screen experience. That's why Twitter is performing so well on mobile. — Fred Wilson

I find performing very difficult. It's difficult to be a good actor. I get very nervous, even though it sounds disingenuous, because you could legitimately go, 'Well, why do it?' — Richard Ayoade

Being able to improvise is the basis for creating all characters and situations, for everything to do with performing, really. And it's good therapy as well. — Chris Kattan

Endeavour to play easy pieces well and with elegance; that is better than to play difficult pieces badly. — Robert Schumann

Now actions vary according to the manner of their performance. Take, for example, that which we are now doing, drinking, singing and talking these actions are not in themselves either good or evil, but they turn out in this or that way according to the mode of performing them; and when well done they are good, and when wrongly done they are evil; and in like manner not every love, but only that which has a noble purpose, is noble and worthy of praise. — Plato

Powerpoint presentations are a kind of theater, a kind of augmented stand-up. Too often it's a boring and tedious genre, and audiences are subjected to the bad as well as the good. — David Byrne

Hera also slept well that night as she had brilliantly engineered the coup of her life.Her wayward husband had returned late that evening & announced that he was too tired to make love.He had had a most entangling day,he said, performing his kingly duties.She then told him to have a good night's rest as she had an important job for him to perform in the morning.It was a job demanded by Chaos & Eros who were responsible for the beginning of things, she said. — Nicholas Chong

Teamwork may just be hard in certain lines of work. Under conditions of extreme complexity, we inevitably rely on a division of tasks and expertise - in the operating room, for example, there is the surgeon, the surgical assistant, the scrub nurse, the circulating nurse, the anesthesiologist, and so on. They can each be technical masters at what they do. That's what we train them to be, and that alone can take years. But the evidence suggests we need them to see their job not just as performing their isolated set of tasks well but also as helping the group get the best possible results. This requires finding a way to ensure that the group lets nothing fall between the cracks and also adapts as a team to whatever problems might arise. — Atul Gawande

If, therefore, there is any one superior in virtue and in the power of performing the best actions, him we ought to follow and obey, but he must have the capacity for action as well as virtue. — Aristotle.

Having to be somewhere at a specific time and performing according to others' expectations can put pressure on them and create a paralysis of will. Because many people with AS are highly intelligent, they may have a hard time with teachers that are not up to par in their eyes, and bosses that don't run things as well as they could. If they don't quit because of any of the above, the know-it-all nature of an intelligent Aspie has been known to upset a few bosses here and there, causing termination of employment. As a result, many have gone through a series of jobs and have had unsatisfactory experiences which get more discouraging as the years pass. — Rudy Simone