Finished Quotes - Page 31

• Do you remember that in classical times when Cicero had finished speaking, the people said, "How well he spoke" but when Demosthenes had finished speaking, they said, "Let us march.

  Demosthenes

  People, March, Remember

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• The book is finished by the reader. A good novel should invite the reader in and let the reader participate in the creative experience and bring their own life experiences to it, interpret with their own individual life experiences. Every reader gets something different from a book and every reader, in a sense, completes it in a different way.

  Alan Lightman

  Book, Creative, Way

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• We are on the right track to the 21st century. We are on the right track, but our work is not finished. What should we do? First, let us consider how to proceed. I say the question is no longer, "Who's to blame?" but "What to do?"

  William J. Clinton

  Track, Firsts, Blame

  Clinton, William J. (1997). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton, 1995”, p.1410, Best Books on

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• I was a Teletype operator in the army, so that's where I learned to type. One day, I went downstairs to see if I could still type - I hadn't done it for four or five years after the war. So I typed out a page and I showed it to my wife and she said, "Where did you get this?" I said I wrote it. "You wrote this?" It was something very funny. I went and wrote another page, another couple of pages, and by the time I was finished I had 13 little short stories, humorous short stories.

  Carl Reiner

  Couple, War, Humorous

  "Carl Reiner on writing a children's book, tweeting, and joking around with Mel Brooks". Interview with Katherine Brodsky, tv.avclub.com. June 23, 2015.

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• I'd rather take a beating sometimes than get in that gym every morning. Anyone who gets up that early and says he likes it is a goddamned liar. The only good thing about it is that when I'm finished, I look at myself in the mirror and say, "Jack, you've done it again!

  Jack LaLanne

  Morning, Liars, Mirrors

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• Western civilization presents one of the most difficult tasks for historical analysis, because it is not yet finished, because we are a part of it and lack perspective, and because it presents considerable variation from our pattern of historical change.

  Carroll Quigley

  Civilization, Perspective, Historical

  Carroll Quigley (1979). “The evolution of civilizations: an introduction to historical analysis”, Liberty Fund Inc.

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• Freely the subject makes himself what he is, never in this life is the making finished, always it is in process, always it is a precarious achievement that can slip and fall and shatter.

  Bernard Lonergan

  Fall, Achievement, Life Is

  Bernard J. F. Lonergan, Frederick E. Crowe, Robert M. Doran, Lonergan Research Institute (1993). “Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan: Collection”, p.220, University of Toronto Press

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• I consider my painting finished when my eyes goes to a particular spot on the canvas. But if I put the picture away about thirty feet on the wall and the movements keep returning to me and the eye seems to be responding to something living, then it is finished.

  William Baziotes

  Wall, Eye, Feet

  "Abstract Expressionism, Creators and Critics". Book by Clifford Ross, 1990.

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• If art could be absolutely verified as to importance in, say, the way gold can be judged for purity and weight, then it would of course be finished as mythic activity. Free of doubt, controversy, and the inexplicable fluctuation of reputation, art-making would bear the same relationship to creativity as cake mix does to baking.

  Harold Town

  Art, Creativity, Cake

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• There are people who can't stand the pain. What happens is they begin to develop some kind of technique to keep out of that hole. Once they do that, they're finished. They never go any further. They're done.

  Milton Resnick

  Pain, People, Technique

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• Modern anthropology ... opposes the utilitarian assumption that the primitive chants as he sows seed because he believes that otherwise it will not grow, the assumption that his economic goal is primary, and his other activities are instrumental to it. The planting and the cultivating are no less important than the finished product. Life is not conceived as a linear progression directed to, and justified by, the achievement of a series of goals; it is a cycle in which ends cannot be isolated, one which cannot be dissected into a series of ends and means.

  John Carroll

  Believe, Mean, Goal

  John Carroll (2010). “Break-Out from the Crystal Palace: The Anarcho-Psychological Critique: Stirner, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky”, p.121, Taylor & Francis

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• I finished by saying that it struck me that all the ethical systems I was discussing were after the fact. That is, that people act as they are disposed to, but they like to feel afterwards that they were right and so they invent systems that approve of their dispositions.

  Alexei Panshin

  People, Facts, Ethical

  Alexei Panshin (1982). “Rite of passage”, Pocket

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• I never reread a text until I have finished the first draft. Otherwise it's too discouraging.

  Gore Vidal

  Firsts, Discouraging

  Gore Vidal, Richard Peabody, Lucinda Ebersole (2005). “Conversations with Gore Vidal”, p.54, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• It was announced that President Obama and his wife, when they're finished in Washington, are moving to New York City. The guy just can't get enough gridlock.

  David Letterman

  New York, Moving, Cities

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• When the Second World War finished, I was 23 and already I had seen enough horror to last me a lifetime. I'd seen dreadful, dreadful things, without saying a word. Seeing horror depicted on film doesn't affect me much.

  Christopher Lee

  Inspirational, War, World

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• When I finished the juniors I felt, perhaps for about a year and a half, that everything was going to be the same and that I would be able to go out there and win any match. But it wasn't the case. I struggled. It took me time to adjust and to realise it was not going to happen like it did in the juniors. It was three years between the junior ranks and reaching the Australian Open, and even then, having reached the final against Hingis, I wasn't really realising what it would take to go higher.

  Amelie Mauresmo

  Sports, Winning, Years

  Interview with Stephen Bierley, www.theguardian.com. May 23, 2004.

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• I literally finished 7th Heaven, went up to Toronto, and started SAW. So, it was definitely a little mind change.

  Beverley Mitchell

  Heaven, Mind, Toronto

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• When the picture was finished, they took me into the sound room and then I screamed more for about five minutes just steady screaming, and then they'd cut that in and add it.

  Fay Wray

  Cutting, Rooms, Sound

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• The Buccaneers was an Edith Wharton novel, and she never finished it, and a screenwriter adapted it for television.

  James Frain

  Television, Buccaneers, Novel

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• I love to talk to children about making mistakes. Its important that I tell them about how I dont get it right the first time. We live in such a perfectionist society, and they see so many finished products and polished performances.

  Patricia MacLachlan

  Children, Mistake, Important

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• Whatever we think out, whatever we take in hand to do, should be perfectly and finally finished, that the world, if it must alter, will only have to spoil it; we have then nothing to do but unite the severed, to recollect and restore the dismembered.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Thinking, Hands, Decision

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• While a man is stringing a harp, he tries the strings, not for music, but for construction. When it is finished it shall be played for melodies. God is fashioning the human heart for future joy. He only sounds a string here and there to see how far His work has progressed.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Future, Heart, Men

  Henry Ward Beecher (1858). “Life Thoughts”, p.44

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• It has long been my boast that I can read or eat anything. But unfortunately, although I eat like a Hoover, I read so slowly that I am always on the smart book three years after everyone else has finished.

  Katharine Whitehorn

  Smart, Book, Reading

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• I had seen a herd of Buffalo, one hundred and twenty-nine of them, come out of the morning mist under a copper sky, one by one, as if the dark and massive, iron-like animals with the mighty horizontally swung horns were not approaching, but were being created before my eyes and sent out as they were finished.

  Isak Dinesen

  Morning, Eye, Dark

  Isak Dinesen (1938). “Out of Africa”

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• This is what art is all about. It is weaving fabric from the feathers you have plucked from your own breast. But no one must ever see the process - only the finished bolt of goods. They must never suspect that that crimson thread running through the pattern is blood.

  Katherine Paterson

  Running, Art, Blood

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