Great Work Quotes

Saying, have a great work-out is like saying, I hope you pull something.

Many great works of art have only form, the sculpture of the thing. Color as used to signify realization by men like Titian and Rembrandt, gives greater life and tactile experience to the work.

There’s a real question as to what beauty is and why it’s important to us. Many pseudo-philosophers try to answer these questions and tell us they’re not really answerable. I draw on art and literature, and music in particular, because music is a wonderful example of something that’s in this world but not of this world. Great works of music speak to us from another realm even though they speak to us in ordinary physical sounds.

Heaven is weary of the luxury of China. I shall remain in the wilderness of the north. I shall return to simplicity and moderations once again. As for the clothes I wear and the food I eat, I shall have the same as cowherds and grooms and I shall treat my soldiers as brothers. In a hundred battles I have been at the forefront and within seven years I have performed a great work, for in six directions of space all things are subject to one ruler.

If it is the mark of the artist to love art before everything, to renounce everything for its sake, to think all the sweet human things of life well lost if only he may attain something, do some good, great work, then I was never an artist.

It's much harder, much more work to be your own artist, and it's hard for me to just want to do one thing. I love doing my own music, but I really have to get into a groove with it, which has been difficult over the last few years because I've had so much great work coming in.

If you have a great work in your head, nothing else thrives near it; all other thoughts are repelled, and the pleasure of life itself is for the time lost.

If I were a medical doctor, I would probably be a dermatologist, because they have great work-life balance. Not because I'm passionate about people's skin. They have great hours. I have friends who are dermatologists, and they tell me it's great.

When I look at great works of art or listen to inspired music, I sense intimate portraits of the specific times in which they were created.

I have to say, doing theater, that's what you're trained to do. Doing film, when I first started doing it, felt like something else entirely. It felt like the difference between, I don't know, waiting tables and painting a great work of art. It's night and day. I didn't feel like it was even acting.

I think all the knowledge and all the travels that I've done, I'm going to do a lot of great work in the future.

all great people are humble because great people have great work and are humbled by the largeness of their dreams.

"To fashion stars out of dog dung, that is the Great Work. To take a negative experience and, by comparing it to something worse, make it feel good, is the great skill."

To do good work a man should no doubt be industrious. To do great work he must certainly be idle a well.

I think it's always hard for people to get their head around the fact that populist, commercial films can also actually be great works of art.

The Holy Spirit is a great worker, not a 'trade unionist.' He is a great worker, and He works in us, always. He does this work of explaining the mystery of Jesus, and of giving us this sense of Christ.

Ministers of God's choosing are engaged in a great work. They are warring not merely against men, but Satan and his angels.

Feeling creative produces great work in approximately the same way that "feeling like a doctor" makes you a gifted thoracic surgeon.

Whenever GOD determines to do a great work, HE first sets HIS people to pray.

Enthusiasm is that secret and harmonious spirit which hovers over the production of genius, throwing the reader of a book, or the spectator of a statue, into the very ideal presence whence these works have really originated. A great work always leaves us in a state of musing.

Doing is very good, but that comes from thinking. Little manifestations of energy through the muscles are called work. But where there is no thought, there will be no work. Fill the brain, therefore, with high thoughts, highest ideals, place them day and night before you, and out of that will come great work.

Fill the brain with high thoughts, highest ideals, place them day and night before you, and out of that will come great work.

I'm not against digital photography. It's great for newspapers. And there are photographers doing great work digitally. When they use Photoshop as a darkroom tool, that's fine, too. But at this point of my life, after so many years, I don't really want to change, and I still love film.

Political correctness sometimes does great work when it helps equalize the playing field when it comes to language, but it does a great disservice when it tries to silence a person of color.

The contradictory, consuming, contested relationship between detail and whole, event an eventuality, breathes fire and wisdom in every great work of art.

My childhood was epitomized by my parents who were uneducated but had a doctorate in love. My dad pressed coats and through my mom and dad I learned about love, family and respecting people. They never went to high school but they had within them every element that makes a great American. They had pride and a great work ethic and they knew how to do things the right way.

What is truth? What is falsehood? Whatever gives wings to men, whatever produces great works and great souls and lifts up a man's height above the earth - that's true. Whatever clips off man's wings - that's false.

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.

Nothing is work unless you'd rather be doing something else.

Art is not an investment. Art is something you buy because you are financially solvent enough to give yourself a pleasure of living with great works rather than having to just see them in museums. People who are buying art at the top of the market as an investment are foolish.

If I am practicing spiritual poverty, which says that I own nothing, then the problems aren't mine and neither are the energy and compassion pouring through my heart to try to solve them. I am just a link in the process. If I don't take anything personally, then I can do great work without flagging. The Dalai Lama once said, 'Try with all your might - to work very, very hard - to make the world a better place, and if all your efforts are to no avail . . . no hard feelings!'

The secret of joy in work is contained in one word - excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.

The need to be a great artist makes it hard to be an artist. The need to produce a great work of art makes it hard to produce any art at all.

The need to be a great artist makes it hard to be an artist.  The need to produce a great work of art makes it hard to produce any art at all. . .  Fear is what blocks an artist.  The fear of not being good enough.  The fear of not finishing.  The fear of failure and of success.  The fear of beginning at all.

My theatrical background was in the great work of the South African playwright Athol Fugard.

I believe that photography can create great works of art, but hitherto it has been extraordinarily bourgeois and babbling. (1908)

Great work is the result of seeking out tension, not avoiding it.

Work hard at work worth doing.

The more you worry about being applauded by others and making money, the less you'll focus on doing the great work that will generate applause. And make you money.

God has created me to do him some definite service; He has committed some work to me which he has not committed to another. I have my mission; I never may know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. I have a part in a great work; I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for naught. I shall do good, I shall do His work; I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place, while not intending it, if I do but keep His commandments and serve Him in my calling.

Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.

Few of the great works of ancient Greek literature are easy reading.

It has been said that no great work in literature or in science was ever wrought by a man who did not love solitude. We may lay it down as an elemental principle of religion, that no large growth in holiness was ever gained by one who did not take time to be often long alone with God.

Don't wish it were easier, wish you were better.

Finally, I also come in recognition of the great work that has been undertaken by the NGOs and UN agencies that have been active for many years here, especially through the local staff and international staff here in Somaliland and in Somalia at large.

Every great work makes the human face more admirable and richer, and this is its whole secret.

The harder I work the more I live.

Keep alive within you and bring under wise control that courage which makes you long to undertake great works, which others might consider it folly to attempt.

Realism and Naturalism rely mostly on the eye of the flesh. Abstract, conceptual and surrealistic art rely mostly on the eye of the mind. Great works of art rely on the eye of contemplation, the eye of the spirit.

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.