Tasks Quotes - Page 31

• Art is not concerned with the meditation about what is and how it came to be. That is a task for knowledge. Knowledge is born of the desire to know, Art derives from the necessity to communicate and to announce.

  Naum Gabo

  Art, Communication, Meditation

  Naum Gabo (2000). “Gabo on Gabo: Texts and Interviews”

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Learning the art of painting is not an easy task. It takes a great deal of intelligence, keen analysis, study and practice.

  Edgar Alwin Payne

  Art, Practice, Analysis

  8 Copy quote

• The sociological imagination enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society. This is its task and its promise.

  C. Wright Mills

  Two, Imagination, Promise

  C. Wright Mills (2000). “The Sociological Imagination”, p.6, Oxford University Press

  88 Copy quote

  Show source

• Of all modern notions, the worst is this: that domesticity is dull. Inside the home, they say, is dead decorum and routine; outside is adventure and variety. But the truth is that the home is the only place of liberty, the only spot on earth where a man can alter arrangements suddenly, make an experiment or indulge in a whim. The home is not the one tame place in a world of adventure; it is the one wild place in a world of rules and set tasks.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Home, Adventure, Men

  6 Copy quote

• More and more it seems to me that the philosopher, being of necessity a man of tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, has always found himself, and had to find himself, in contradiction to his today: his enemy was ever the ideal of today. So far all these extraordinary furtherers of men whom one calls philosophers, though they themselves have rarely felt like friends of wisdom but rather like disagreeable fools and dangerous question marks, have found their task, their hard, unwanted, inescapable task, but eventually also the greatness of their task, in being the bad conscience of their time.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Philosophy, Greatness, Men

  7 Copy quote

• For the task assigned them Men aren't smart enough or sly Any rogue can blind them With a clever lie.

  Bertolt Brecht

  Clever, Smart, Lying

  Bertolt Brecht, Desmond Ivo Vesey, Eric Bentley (1964). “The Threepenny Opera”, p.75, Grove Press

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Moral virtue is ... a mean between two vices, that of excess and that of defect, and ... it is no small task to hit the mean in each case, as it is not, for example, any chance comer, but only the geometer, who can find the center of a given circle.

  Aristotle

  Mean, Two, Circles

  Aristotle (1869). “The Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle”, p.56

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• To write weekly, to write daily, to write shortly, to write for busy people catching trains in the morning or for tired people coming home in the evening, is a heartbreaking task for men who know good writing from bad. They do it, but instinctively draw out of harm's way anything precious that might be damaged by contact with the public, or anything sharp that might irritate its skin.

  Virginia Woolf

  Morning, Home, Writing

  Virginia Woolf, David Bradshaw (2009). “Selected Essays”, p.20, Oxford University Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• We know great Nature's pow'r, Mother of things, whose vast unbounded sway From the deep centre all around extends Wide to the flaming barriers of the world. We feel her power; we strive not to repress (Vainly repress'd, or to deformity) Her lawful growth: ours be the task alone To check her rude excrescencies, to prune Her wanton overgrowth, and where she strays In uncouth shapes, to lead her gently back, With prudent hand, to form and better use.

  John Armstrong

  Mother, Nature, Hands

  John Armstrong, “The Oeconomy Of Love”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• O Christmas Sun! What holy task is thine! To fold a world in the embrace of God! To spread, where'er thy golden feet have trod, The benediction of His grace divine: To hold the promise of His final plan Blazing before the eyes of human-kind, And, at thy setting, leave His love enshrined Anew in the reminded heart of man!

  Guy Wetmore Carryl

  Christmas, Eye, Heart

  5 Copy quote

• I will venture to assert, that a just translation of any ancient poet in rhyme is impossible. No human ingenuity can be equal to the task of closing every couplet with sounds homotonous, expressing at the same time the full sense, and only the full sense of his original.

  William Cowper

  Sound, Venture, Impossible

  William Cowper (1851). “The Works of William Cowper: His Life, Letters, and Poems. Now First Completed by the Introduction of Cowper's Private Correspondence”, p.379

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• But now my task is smoothly done, I can fly, or I can run Quickly to the green earth's end, Where the bow'd welkin slow doth bend, And from thence can soar as soon To the corners of the Moon.

  John Milton

  Running, Moon, Done

  1634 Comus, A Mask, l.1011-16.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The buddha-dharma does not invite us to dabble in abstract notions. Rather, the task it presents us with is to attend to what we actually experience, right in this moment. You don't have to look "over there." You don't have to figure anything out. You don't have to acquire anything. And you don't have to run off to Tibet, or Japan, or anywhere else. You wake up right here. In fact, you can only wake up right here. So you don't have to do the long search, the frantic chase, the painful quest. You're already right where you need to be.

  Steve Hagen

  Running, Buddhism, Japan

  9 Copy quote

• The best instruction is that which uses the least words sufficient for the task.

  Maria Montessori

  Use, Instruction, Sufficient

  "The Discovery of the Child" by Maria Montessori, Ch. 7, 1948.

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• The task of youth is not only its own salvation but the salvation of those against whom it rebels, but in that case there must be something vital to rebel against and if the elderly stiffly refuse to put up a vigorous front of their own, it leaves the entire situation in a mist.

  Jane Addams

  Elderly, Rebel, Youth

  Jane Addams (1930). “The second twenty years at Hull-House, September 1909 to September 1929, with a record of a growing world consciousness”

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Physics is to be regarded not so much as the study of something a priori given, but rather as the development of methods of ordering and surveying human experience. In this respect our task must be to account for such experience in a manner independent of individual subjective judgement and therefore objective in the sense that it can be unambiguously communicated in ordinary human language.

  Niels Bohr

  Independent, Judgement, Development

  Niels Bohr, Leon Rosenfeld (1999). “Collected works”

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• In their work, designers often become expert with the device they are designing. Users are often expert at the task they are trying to perform with the device. [...] Professional designers are usually aware of the pitfalls. But most design is not done by professional designers, it is done by engineers, programmers, and managers.

  Donald A. Norman

  Design, Trying, Pitfalls

  "The Design of Everyday Things". Book by Don Norman, ch. 6, 1988.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• The time for the kingdom may be far off, but the task is plain: to retain our share in God in spite of peril and contempt. There is a war to wage against the vulgar, the glorification of the absurd, a war that is incessant, universal. Loyal to the presence of the ultimate in the common, we may be able to make it clear that man is more than man, that in doing the finite he may perceive the infinite .

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  War, Men, Loyal

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1997). “Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays”, p.11, Macmillan

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The chief difference between me and others is that I have plenty of time not only because I am without a multitude of responsibilities and without daily tasks, which demand attention: But also because I am basically without ambition. Neither the present nor the future has claims on me.

  Eric Hoffer

  Ambition, Responsibility, Daily Tasks

  "Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook" by Tom Bethell in Harper's Magazine, July 2005.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I have done all that I came into this world to do. I have worked task work, and have the rest of the day to myself.

  Charles Lamb

  Done, World, This World

  Charles Lamb (1869). “The Essays of Elia and Eliana”, p.202

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Today our approaches to children are fragmented and partial. Those who care for well children know little of children who are sick. The deep knowledge that comes from the intensive attempt to cure is separated from the knowledge of those whose main task is to teach.

  Margaret Mead

  Children, Sick, Who Cares

  Margaret Mead (1964). “Continuities in Cultural Evolution”, p.321, Transaction Publishers

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Poverty is part of the natural condition and that is bad enough. But my task is to prevent the aggravation of this condition.

  Pope Francis

  Aggravation, Poverty, Enough

  4 Copy quote

• Give yourself an impossible task and solve it - then you've got a really good story.

  Carl Reiner

  Giving, Stories, Impossible

  "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.

  23 Copy quote

  Show source

• Under extremely difficult circumstances (Iraq) pursues the inherently complicated task of rebuilding the country. Yet Iraq continues, courageously, to reach for the promise of a democratic, federal and pluralistic state, where generations of oppressed Iraqis will regain their dignity, freedom and the right to join the civilized and progressive nations of the world.

  Jalal Talabani

  Country, Iraq, Promise

  "Keep U.S., British forces in Iraq, says Talabani". The Toronto Star, September 23, 2006.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The task of universal pragmatics is to identify and reconstruct universal conditions of possible mutual understanding.

  Jurgen Habermas

  Understanding, Mutual, Universal

  "On the Pragmatics of Communication". Book by Jürgen Habermas, 1998.

  48 Copy quote

  Show source