Magnum Opus Quotes

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

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.

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

Take more selfies. Not because you need validation or likes or comments. but because you are here on this earth. Alive and holy and true. And yes, your beauty deserves to be seen and known, most especially by you. You are worthy of being the subject of your own art. It is okay to capture the process of your own becoming. To be your own kind and gentle and fierce witness. To learn the truth of your eyes and your skin and your bones. To choose to show what wants to be shown, to name what wishes to be named, to claim ownership of the story that is told about you by being the one to tell it.

Dear girl. YOU are the greatest art you will ever create. The masterpiece. The magnum opus. You're it. However you want to be.

Look at yourself now, miracle that you are, look at yourself and soak in the wonder, until you no longer want to look away. ~ Jeanette LeBlanc

Eternity is an artist; time is its masterpiece. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

stationery of Magnum Opus, ~ Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I took care to replace the Compendium in its correct pamphlet, and in doing so dislodged a slim pamphlet by Grastrom, one of the most eccentric authors in Solarist literature. I had read the pamphlet, which was dictated by the urge to understand what lies beyond the individual, man, and the human species. It was the abstract, acidulous work of an autodidact who had previously made a series of unusual contributions to various marginal and rarefied branches of quantum physics. In this fifteen-page booklet (his magnum opus!), Grastrom set out to demonstrate that the most abstract achievements of science, the most advanced theories and victories of mathematics represented nothing more than a stumbling, one or two-step progression from our rude, prehistoric, anthropomorphic understanding of the universe around us. He pointed out correspondences with the human body-the projections of our sense, the structure of our physical organization, and the physiological limitations of man-in the equations of the theory of relativity, the theorem of magnetic fields and the various unified field theories. Grastrom's conclusion was that there neither was, nor could be any question of 'contact' between mankind and any nonhuman civilization. This broadside against humanity made no specific mention of the living ocean, but its constant presence and scornful, victorious silence could be felt between every line, at any rate such had been my own impression. It was Gibarian who drew it to my attention, ~ Stanisław Lem

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

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

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

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

In every corpus, there is magnum opus. ~ Anyaele Sam Chiyson

About a week earlier I had finished a book (on the Hell's Angels, scheduled this fall by Random House) and I felt that I needed about a week of total degeneration to cool out my system. To this end I went down to Big Sur and Monterery and filled my body with every variety of booze and drug available to modern man. For six or seven days I ran happily amok - spending money, sitting in baths, and futilely hunting wild boar with a .44 Magnum revolver. At one point I gave my car away to a man who paid $25 for the privilege of pushing it off a 400-foot cliff.
- to Max Scherr editor, Berkley Barb 7/20/1966 ~ Hunter S. Thompson

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

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

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

It was a Magnum .32, CIA issue, gray, mean, heavy, capable of blowing a man away at thirty paces, and leaving nothing more than a red mist, a ghastly mess, and a certain amount of paperwork. ~ Terry Pratchett

Know this: I, Mercurius, have here set down a full, true and infallible account of the Great Work. But I give you fair warning that unless you seek the true philosophical gold and not the gold of the vulgar, unless you heart is fixed with unbending intent on the true Stone of the Philosophers, unless you are steadfast in your quest, abiding by God's laws in all faith and humility and eschewing all vanity, conceit, falsehood, intemperance, pride, lust and faint-heartedness, read no farther lest I prove fatal to you. For I am the watery venomous serpent who lies buried at the earth's centre; I am the fiery dragon who flies through the air. I am the one thing necessary for the whole Opus. I am the spirit of metals, the fire which does not burn, the water which does not wet the hands. If you find the way to slay me you will find the philosophical mercury of the wise, even the White Stone beloved of the Philosophers. If you find the way to raise me up again, you will find the philosophical sulphur, that is, the Red Stone and Elixir of Life. Obey me and I will be your servant; free me and I will be your friend. Enslave me and I am a dangerous enemy; command me and I will make you mad; give me life and you will die. ~ Patrick Harpur

I'm guilty of eating Magnum bars before I go to sleep at night. ~ Madonna Ciccone

There are moments in life that the white-chocolate Magnum ice cream was invented for, and this is one of them. ~ Sophie Kinsella

You're like a Boy Scout, huh?"

It's my attempt at flirting - probably only slightly less effective than Dirty Dancing's "I carried a watermelon."

He does the mouth-quirk thing again.

"Not even close."

There's a bad-boy edge in the way he says it - a heavy hint of the forbidden - that gets my heart pounding and my jaw eager to drop.

To cover my reaction, I nod vigorously.

"Right, me neither . . . Never been a - "

Too vigorously.

So vigorously that my elbow slips in the flour on the counter and I almost knock myself unconscious. But Logan's not only big and brawny - he's quick. Fast enough to catch me by the arm and waist to steady me before I bash the side of my head against the butcher block.

"Are you all right, Ellie?"

He leans down, looking at me intently - a look I'll see in my dreams tonight . . . assuming I can sleep. And, wow, Logan has great eyelashes. Thick and lengthy and midnight black. I bet they're not the only part of him that's thick and lengthy.

My gaze darts down to his promised land, where his pants are just tight enough to confirm my suspicions - this bodyguard may have a service revolver in his pocket, but he's got a magnum in his pants.

Yum.

"Yeah, I'm good." I sigh. "Just . . . you know . . . tired. But I'm cool . . . totally cool."

And I shake it off, like I actually am ~ Emma Chase

I would love to play Magnum P.I. ~ Mike Epps

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

Come on, hurry up and aim your .44 Magnum at my pink flowerbed.

Oh, come on, let's not talk pistols when you know it's a bazooka. ♥ ~ Maki Murakami

So I bought a forty-four magnum, it was solid steel cast, and in the blessed name of Elvis, well I just let it blast 'til my TV lay in pieces. ~ Bruce Springsteen

So here we are, in the family planning aisle with a cart full of sports drinks and our hands full of . . . "Trojans, Ramses, Magnum . . . Jeez, these are worse than names for muscle cars," Jase observes, sliding his finger along the display.
"They do sound sorta, well, forceful." I flip over the box I'm holding to read the instructions.
Jase glances up to smile at me. "Don't worry, Sam. It's just us."
"I don't get what half these descriptions mean . . . What's a vibrating ring?"
"Sounds like the part that breaks on the washing machine. What's extra-sensitive? That sounds like how we describe George."
I'm giggling. "Okay, would that be better or worse than 'ultimate feeling' - and look - there's 'shared pleasure' condoms and 'her pleasure' condoms. But there's no 'his pleasure.'"
"I'm pretty sure that comes with the territory," Jase says dryly. "Put down those Technicolor ones. No freaking way."
"But blue's my favorite color," I say, batting my eyelashes at him.
"Put them down. The glow-in-the-dark ones too. Jesus. Why do they even make those?"
"For the visually impaired?" I ask, reshelving the boxes.
We move to the checkout line. "Enjoy the rest of your evening," the clerk calls as we leave.
"Do you think he knew?" I ask.
"You're blushing again," Jase mutters absently. "Did who know what?"
"The sales guy. Why we were buying these?"
A smile pulls at the corners of his mouth. "Of course not. I'm sure it never ~ Huntley Fitzpatrick

For as long as I've known him, Sam has been trying to out-run his demons. But he can't see the truth. His problems - they never sleep, never take a break. They'll wear him down before he can wear them out. ~ Lisa Magnum

Trojan, Durex, Lifestyles, Trojan Magnum (oh yeah, my three foot cock definitely needed those), Contempo, Vivid and Rough Rider. Seriously? There was a condom brand called Rough Rider? Why not just go with Fuck Her Hard and be done with it? I stood in the "Family Planning" aisle of the grocery store, trying to decide which condom brand was more effective. Family Planning ... give me a break. How many people came to this aisle because they were planning a family? They came to this aisle to AVOID planning a family.
Carter ~ Tara Sivec

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

Then Elizabeth came, bearing a tray of cakes and sweets, and finally Harriet, who carried with her a small sheaf of paper - her current opus, Henry VIII and the Unicorn of Doom .
"I'm not certain Frances is going to be appeased by an evil unicorn," Anne told her.
Harriet looked up with one arched brow. "She did not specify that it must be a good unicorn."
Anne grimaced. "You're going to have a battle on your hands, that's all I'm going to say on the matter."
Harriet shrugged, then said, "I'm going to begin in act two. Act one is a complete disaster. I've had to rip it completely apart."
"Because of the unicorn?"
"No," Harriet said with a grimace. "I got the order of the wives wrong. It's divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, widowed."
"How cheerful."
Harriet gave her a bit of a look, then said, "I switched one of the divorces with a beheading."
"May I give you a bit of advice?" Anne asked.
Harriet looked up.
"Don't ever let anyone hear you say that out of
context. ~ Julia Quinn

This is the great evil in wine, it first seizes the feet; it is a cunning wrestler.
[Lat., Magnum hoc vitium vino est,
Pedes captat primum; luctator dolosu est.] ~ Plautus

It used to be that people would watch TV shows because they knew the characters would stay the same. Whether it's Archie Bunker or it's Thomas Magnum you watch it because it's like, 'I'm comfortable, this is the same guy.' ~ Bryan Cranston

I played an artist in a comedy called 'Rooster.' It was a zany film by Glen Larson, a friend who produced several successful television series including 'Magnum PI.' ~ LeRoy Neiman

Magnum photographers were meant to go out as a crusade ... to places like famine and war and ... I went out and went round the corner to the local supermarket because this to me is the front line. ~ Martin Parr

No one can make you feel anything. Emotions are whatever you choose to feel. It might be an instantaneous decision - to choose to be happy or sad or offended or hurt - but it's still a decision. ~ Lisa Magnum

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

Oh, God. The Sixties are coming back. Well I've got a 12-gauge double-barreled duck gun chambered for three-inch Magnum shells. And - speaking strictly for this retired hippie and former pinko beatnik - if the Sixties head my way, they won't get past the porch steps. They will be history. Which, for chrissakes, is what they're supposed to be. ~ P. J. O'Rourke

When I was fourteen, I thought a lot about killing myself - it's a hobby today, but at age fourteen it was a vocation. On a September morning, just after school started, I'd gotten Diane's .44 Magnum and held it, babylike, in my lap for hours. What an indulgence it would be, to just blow off my head, all my mean spirits disappearing with a gun blast, like blowing a seedy dandelion apart. But I thought about Diane, and her coming home to my small torso and a red wall, and I couldn't do it. It's probably why I was so hateful to her, she kept me from what I wanted the most. ~ Gillian Flynn

Trojan is giving away Magnum large condoms (do you think they were named after a large wooden animal inside which thousands of little men were hiding, ready to jump out and ruin your life?) ~ A.A. Gill

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

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

Even illegal weapons have lost their panache. Zip guns and shanks were at least homemade. Where is the craft in a grade-schooler firing a magnum? What is the world coming to? It's not even bad to be a communist anymore! ~ John Waters

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

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

1. "...All the complicated things in life can be settled over a cup of coffee. A person will tell more of their private life after one good cup of coffee, than after a magnum of Champagne or a quarter of port.." ((page 79)).

2. "..Care for the needy,comfort the distressed, befriend the rejected.." ((Simon's Testimony..page 464..))

3."..The man Jesus said that was wrong and offered the sick the courage to become well, the weak the ability to grow a strong spirit, and nonbelievers the chance to believe.." ((Simon's Testimony..page 461)) ~ Steve Berry

If all of your friends are morons is it a
felony, a misdemeanor or an act of God if
you blow their fucking heads off with a
thirty-eight magnum? ~ Bret Easton Ellis

One of the worst incidents of that era caused no complaints at all: this was a sort of good-natured firepower demonstration, which occured one Sunday morning about three-thirty. For reasons that were never made clear, I blew out my back windows with five blasts of a 12 gauge shotgun, followed moments later by six rounds from a .44 Magnum. It was a prolonged outburst of heavy firing, drunken laughter, and crashing glass. Yet the neighbors reacted with total silence. For a while I assumed that some freakish wind pocket had absorbed all the noise and carried it out to sea, but after my eviction I learned otherwise. Every one of the shots had been duly recorded on the gossip log. Another tenant in the building told me the landlord was convinced, by all the tales he'd heard, that the interior of my apartment was reduced to rubble by orgies, brawls, fires, and wanton shooting. He had even heard stories about motorcycles being driven in and out the front door. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

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

And why did men insist on buying the largest size? Didn't they understand the concept of sizes? Did they think buying a magnum sized condom was going to fool me into thinking their Toyota Camery was an aircraft carrier? ~ Penny Reid

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

Grandma pulled a .44 magnum out of her purse. Everybody duck, and I'll shoot out his tires. ~ Janet Evanovich

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

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

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

A man has to know his limitations. ~ Harry Callahan

It's amazing that schools still offer courses in musical composition. What a useless thing to spend money on -- to take a course in college to learn how to be a modern composer! No matter how good the course is, when you get out, what the fuck will you do for a living? (The easiest thing to do is become a composition teacher yourself, spreading 'the disease' to the next generation.)

One of the things that determines the curriculum in music schools is: which of the current fashions in modern music gets the most grant money from the mysterious benefactors in Foundation-Land. For a while there, unless you were doing serial music (in which the pitches have numbers, the dynamics have numbers, the vertical densities have numbers, etc) -- if it didn't have a pedigree like that, it wasn't a good piece of music. Critics and academicians stood by, waiting to tell you what a piece of shit your opus was if your numbers didn't add up. (Forget what it sounded like, or whether it moved anybody, or what it was about. The most important thing was the numbers. ~ Frank Zappa

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