Unfinished Work Quotes

The world is so busy, too, that it cannot afford to study any man's unfinished work; for the end may prove it a failure, and the world needs masterpieces. ~ Mary Antin

A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the "why" for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any "how". ~ Viktor E. Frankl

The nation was founded and "dedicated," to use Lincoln's language in the "Gettysburg Address," to equality as a "self-evident truth." But this very principle of equality, as Lincoln also noted, was a "proposition." To make it a reality remained "the unfinished work" of Americans. ~ Ronald Takaki

A person taking stock in middle age is like an artist or composer looking at an unfinished work; but whereas the composer and the painter can erase some of their past efforts, we cannot. We are stuck with what we have lived through. The trick is to finish it with a sense of design and a flourish rather than to patch up the holes or merely to add new patches to it. ~ Harry S. Broudy

Every human being is a work in progress that is slowly but inexorably moving toward perfection. We are each an unfinished work of art both waiting and striving to be completed. God deals with each of us separately because humanity is a fine art of skilled penmanship where every single dot is equally important for the entire picture. ~ Elif Shafak

The self is also a creation, the principal work of your life, the crafting of which makes everyone an artist. This unfinished work of becoming ends only when you do, if then, and the consequences live on. We make ourselves and in so doing are the gods of the small universe of self and the large world of repercussions. ~ Rebecca Solnit

Another year is ending, but something is pending ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

In the wind that may travel
as far as you have gone, I send this message: Out here,
in a place you will not forget, a simple man
has been moved to curse the rising sun and to question
God's unfinished work. ~ Judith Ortiz Cofer

I never want projects to be finished; I have always believed in unfinished work. I got that from Schubert, you know, the 'Unfinished Symphony.' ~ Yoko Ono

There's always a piece of unfinished work left,' said Mrs. Lynde, with tears in her eyes. 'But I supposed there's always some one to finish it. ~ L.M. Montgomery

You can boil your life down to a single suitcase, if you desperately have to. Ask yourself what you really need, and it won't be what you imagine - you will easily toss aside unfinished work, and bills, and your daily calendar to make room for the pair of flannel pajamas you wear when it rains; and the stone your child gave you that is shaped like a heart; and the battered paperback you revisit every April because it was what you were reading the first time you fell in love. It turns out that what's important is not everything that you've accumulated all these years, but those few things you can carry with you. ~ Jodi Picoult

The self is ... a creation, the principal work of your life, the crafting of which makes everyone an artist. This unfinished work of becoming ends only when you do, if then, and the consequences live on. ~ Rebecca Solnit

You'll forget it all: the cruel power of your superiors, the thoughtless things you wish you'd never said, the stupidities, the unfinished work, the lack of consideration, the betrayals, the injustices, the indifference, those who've blamed you, those who will blame you, your financial troubles, the rush of time, the endless waits, the things and people forever beyond your reach, your loneliness, your shame, your defeats, your wretchedness, your pain, and the catastrophes - all those catastrophes - in just a few minutes you'll forget them all. The prospect comforts you. Patiently you wait. ~ Orhan Pamuk

Don't talk about writing. Write. Don't show unfinished work to anyone. Don't show finished work to non-writers. Get your opinions, not from friends and family, but by sending your work out to editors. An endless stream of rejection slips means you need to learn more. So learn more. ~ Holly Lisle

Living for your purpose warrants eternal blessings ~ Sunday Adelaja

The relationship changes as you learn more about people, and the work sort of takes on its own life. I enjoy this very much. ~ Bjork

Was it home, the mercury-lit street? Was he returning like the elephant to his graveyard, to lie down and soon become ivory in whose bulk slept, latent, exquisite shapes of chessmen, backscratchers, hollow open-work Chinese spheres nested one inside the other? ~ Thomas Pynchon

When you finish work, practically everybody in that place is going to watch a movie at night anyway. They're tired. They have dinner. They go up to their room. They're watching TV. ~ Wes Anderson

There is nothing stronger than the American labor movement. United, we cannot and we will not be turned aside. We'll work for it, sisters and brothers. We'll stand for it. Together. Each of us. To bring out the best in America. To bring out the best in ourselves, and each other. ~ Richard Trumka

The Men at Work thing is always there, it's always going to be there. It's not something I consciously think that much about anymore. The thing that stays with you is the songs, which is a good thing for me, because the songs are the things that stand the test of time. ~ Colin Hay

One speaker in Church directs, "You can't do everything. Don't run faster than you have strength". The next says, "Push yourself. You can always do more." One person advises, "Don't worry about what you can't do" at the same time someone else says, "You can do anything you put your mind to." In one hymn we sing, "I need thee every hour," and in another we sing, "We will work out our salvation". In this world of mixed messages, I never can seem to escape the nagging though, "If only I were better organized or if only I tried harder." Satan tempted Christ with the word if. He often comes to me with the words if only. ~ Brad Wilcox

By living, thinking, even dreaming the story in one continuous process, ideas came faster and faster. Sometimes the typewriter keys would fly so fast that I wondered if my fingers could keep up with them. And at the finish of the story I often had to take a few days off as my fingertips were too sore to begin work on the next book. ~ Walter B. Gibson

Now in creative thought common sense is a bad master. Its sole criterion for judgement is that the new ideas shall look like the old ones. In other words it can only work by suppressing originality. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

Compared to dancing, films seemed to me to be the work of lay bums. There was no physical pain; it was enough to say and imagine what was in the script. It was very easy for me. ~ Victoria Abril

I was never afraid to go back to Pittsburgh and work in the steel mills. ~ David Tepper

A writer's work is the product of laziness. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

The fiction I tend to like is nothing like my own work. I like the kind of writing that shows me things I don't know about, and what I don't know about is the everyday, normal world. ~ Jim Woodring

Dream sets us on fire.
Dream gives us direction.
Dream betters our potential.
Dream helps us prioritize.
Dream adds value to our work and
life.
Dream colors our future. ~ Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

The dichotomy is delicious. Inside the fantasy genre, I try to present women who need to solve real problems like having no voice in community, or no right to work; no access to capital to start a business. No reinforcement for talent. ~ Stella Atrium

Worrying was like sitting in a rocking chair - all that work and no progress. ~ DiAnn Mills

The journey homewards. Coming home. That's what it's all about. The journey to the coming of the Kingdom. That's probably the chief difference between the Christian and the secular artist
the purpose of the work, be it story or music or painting, is to further the coming of the kingdom, to make us aware of our status as children of God, and to turn our feet toward home. ~ Madeleine L'Engle

Playwrights are the most gregarious writers - to get our work done, we need actors, directors, set designers. ~ Katori Hall

A sign of a hard worker is one who works without complaint. God favors those who toil while others play. ~ Sarah Price

The pressure to perform is relentless in today's workplace - regardless of where you work. We are all being asked to do more with less. I think what we could borrow from the culture of Silicon Valley is "eat your own dog food ." That is an expression used by tech types to mean using what you make or sell. ~ Willow Bay

The world is like a ride in an amusement park, and when you choose to go on it you think it's real because that's how powerful our minds are. The ride goes up and down, around and around, it has thrills and chills, and it's very brightly colored, and it's very loud, and it's fun for a while. Many people have been on the ride a long time, and they begin to wonder, "Hey, is this real, or is this just a ride?" And other people have remembered, and they come back to us and say, "Hey, don't worry; don't be afraid, ever, because this is just a ride." And we … kill those people. "Shut him up! I've got a lot invested in this ride, shut him up! Look at my furrows of worry, look at my big bank account, and my family. This has to be real." It's just a ride. But we always kill the good guys who try and tell us that, you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok … But it doesn't matter, because it's just a ride. And we can change it any time we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings of money. Just a simple choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love instead see all of us as one. Here's what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride. Take all that money we spend on weapons and defenses each year and instead spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would pay for many times over, not one human being exclude ~ Bill Hicks

It's vital to be growing through your life rather than going through your life. The object is not to change other people or situations; it's to do the inner work they stimulate. ~ Wally Amos

You think this man is the enemy? Huh? This is a worker! Any union keeps this man out ain't a union, it's a goddam club! They got you fightin' white against colored, native against foreign, hollow against hollow, when you know there ain't but two sides in this world - them that work and them that don't. You work, they don't. That's all you need to know about the enemy. ~ - Joe Kenehan, Matewan (John Sayles, 1987)

My willingness to explore and work freely is not without risk, and at times, I find myself caught in a bind ... Knowing I can fix whatever goes wrong allows me to paint, not without thought, but without hesitation. ~ Brian Johnson

Work is a form of nervousness. ~ Robert Benchley

It's fair to say that black folks operate under a cloud of invisibility - this too is part of the work, is indeed central to [my photographs] ... This invisibility - this erasure out of the complex history of our life and time - is the greatest source of my longing. ~ Carrie Mae Weems

It makes you observe small details; even if it's just a kid playing with his dad, if you watch them closely, you can use that in your work. It helps you fully understand people better. ~ Diogo Morgado

Writers and readers are still trying to work out unresolved problems between men and women, and that is why millions of women around the world are hooked on romantic fiction. So am I. ~ Charlotte Lamb

No artifact is a work of art if it does not help to humanize us. Without art ... our world would have remained a jungle. ~ Bernard Berenson

Nevertheless we are free individuals, and this freedom condemns us to make choices throughout our lives. There are no eternal values or norms we can adhere to, which makes our choices even more significant. Because we are totally responsible for everything we do. Sartre emphasized that man must never disclaim the responsibility for his actions. Nor can we avoid the responsibility of making our own choices on the grounds that we "must" go to work, or we "must" live up to certain middle-class expectations regarding how we should live. Those who thus slip into the anonymous masses will never be other than members of the impersonal flock, having fled from themselves into self-deception. On the other hand our freedom obliges us to make something of ourselves, to live "authentically" or "truly". ~ Jostein Gaarder

Be proud of yourself for the effort, especially the parts that no one else saw. ~ Andrena Sawyer

Over the years I always did some water colors, and I did a series of pictures of drawings. I always did it during a period of time that was slow in the photo business, but in essence it was always frustrating because I'd get started, and then it would be time to get back to work and I wouldn't get anywhere with the painting. ~ Sante D'Orazio

Faith to me is a form of self-expression, like a work of art, a manifestation of freedom, not a tool for mindless conformity. ~ Sahar El-Nadi

Step by step, you make your way forward. That's why practices such as daily writing exercises or keeping a daily blog can be so helpful. You see yourself do the work, which shows you that you can do the work. Progress is reassuring and inspiring; panic and then despair set in when you find yourself getting nothing done day after day. One of the painful ironies of work life is that the anxiety of procrastination often makes people even less likely to buckle down in the future. ~ Gretchen Rubin

My experiences of men has neither disposed me to think worse of them nor be indisposed to serve them: nor, in spite of failures which I lament, of errors which I now see and acknowledge, or the present aspect of affairs, do I despair of the future. The truth is this: The march of Providence is so slow and our desires so impatient; the work of progress so immense and our means of aiding it so feeble; the life of humanity is so long, that of the individual so brief, that we often see only the ebb of the advancing wave and are thus discouraged. It is history that teaches us to hope. ~ Robert E.Lee

I have noted that those who desire to do the most good often work the greatest harm. ~ H. Rider Haggard

As far as being satisfied, I just don't think you should work towards being satisfied. If everybody were satisfied, we'd never get anything done. ~ Jason Isbell

Leadership is the ability to get individuals to work together for the common good and the best possible results while at the same time letting them know they did it themselves. ~ John Wooden

I believe that poets have to be inside their poems somewhere, or the poem won't work. ~ Joy Harjo

Earning happiness means doing good and working, not speculating and being lazy. Laziness may look inviting, but only work gives you true satisfaction. ~ Anne Frank

It seems that the more we learn about our work, the easier and the more interesting it becomes to us. Tasks that used to be tedious now make sense, and we see how they're related to other elements of our jobs. Plus, they're easier to take care of now, so they don't bother us nearly as much when we need to do them. When we know more about our work and its ramifications, we can see the connections between what we do and the effects that those things have on other people. ~ Tom Walsh

But everywhere dark shapes were already melting into the night, seeking asylum in the undergrowth and the jungle. Those not caught in the first haul headed for the mountains, stealing canoes and boats to make their way upstream; they were unarmed, almost naked, but determined to return to the way of life of their ancestors, somewhere the whites would not be able reach them. As they passed the outlying plantations, they spread the news amongst their own people, and ten, twenty, more men would abandon their work, deserting the fields of indigo and clover, to swell the numbers of the runaways. And in parties of one hundred, two hundred at a time, followed by their wives carrying children, they moved off into the interior, through thickets and crags, in search of a place they could build a palisade. As they fled they scattered mullein seeds in the streams and rivulets, so that fish would be poisoned and infect the water with their miasma as they putrefied. Beyond this torrent, beyond that mountain clothed in waterfalls, Africa would begin again; they would go back to forgotten tongues, to the rites of circumcision, to the worship of the earlier gods, who had preceded the recent gods of Christianity. The undergrowth closed behind men who were retracing the course of history, to regain an age when Creation had been ruled by the fertile Venus, with her huge breasts and her ample belly, who was worshipped in deep caves where a hand was haltingly tracing its first configurations of th ~ Alejo Carpentier

We live not to ourselves, our work is life. ~ Philip James Bailey

As you grow older, you become faced with the problem of what to with your time ~ Sunday Adelaja

You're getting to be a big boy; and while I'm gone, you'll be the man of the family. I want you to act like one. You take care of Mama and Little Arliss. You look after the work and don't wait around for your mama to point out what needs to be done. Think you can do that? ~ Fred Gipson