Do One Thing Well Quotes

#1. I thought of writing books myself once. I had the ideas; I even made notes. But I was a doctor, married with children. You can only do one thing well: Flaubert knew that.

Julian Barnes

#2. I'd grown accustomed to seeing myself as someone who, if fallible and unworthy, had nevertheless managed to do one thing well enough to get recognition for it.

Philip Schultz

#3. Do not try to do everything. Do one thing well.

Steve Jobs

#4. In an age of specialization people are proud to be able to do one thing well, but if that is all they know about, they are missing out on much else life has to offer.

Dennis Flanagan

#5. It's better to do one thing well than ten things poorly.

Heather Hart

#6. The problem with people is that they try to do everything but don't do one thing well. Focus more energy on the activity you excel in. Capitalize on your strengths.

Bianca Frazier

#7. Do one thing well. It's enough.

David Hieatt

#8. Well, they each seem to do one thing well enough, but fail to realize that literature depends on doing several things well at the same time.

Julian Barnes

#9. Choose one thing you care about and resolve to do it well. Whether you succeed or not, you will be the better for the effort.

William Alexander

#10. The one thing my mother instilled in me, well both my parents but specifically my mother - I come from a Muslim country where boys were more wanted than girls so she always made me feel that there is nothing that I couldn't do as well as the boys if not better.

Iman Abdulmajid

#11. You don't need to know how to do everything, just one thing well,

Frankie Love

#12. Well, then why should we do anything more than once? Should I just smoke this one cigarette? Maybe we should only have sex once, if it's the same thing. Should we just watch one sunset? Or live just one day? Because it's new every time. Each time is a different experience.

Jane Margolis

#13. I don't like gadgets for their own sake. I like gadgets that are tools. And I like simple gadgets that do one thing really well like a hammer.

Rob Corddry

#14. One thing I've been doing since I was a little kid and that's score touchdowns so if somebody needs somebody to get in the red zone and do some work, I could probably still do that pretty well.

Shaun Alexander

#15. I'm an interior designer, first and foremost. I can do one thing really well, and I'm going to stay in my little niche.

Candice Olson

#16. The real test of a musician is live performance. It's one thing to spend a long time learning how to play well in the studio, but to do it in front of people is what keeps me coming back to touring.

Neil Peart

#17. One of the benefits for me of starting late in this business is I realised that if acting was the only thing I could do, I would struggle, so I always wrote as well.

Sanjeev Bhaskar

#18. One thing hatred can do very well is to attack what it hates!

Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

#19. This is the Unix philosophy: Write programs that do one thing and do it well. Write programs to work together. Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a universal interface.

Douglas McIlroy

#20. One thing I was thinking about is that they probably get their come-uppance about the same percentage that people in real life do. Basically, stealing for all practical purposes might as well be legal in New York.

Mike Judge

#21. I mean that two of any thing is a most uncomfortable number. One may do as he pleases. Six may get along well enough. But two must always struggle for mastery. Two must always watch each other. The eyes of all the world will be on two, uncertain which of them to follow.

Susanna Clarke

#22. One of the greatest satisfactions one can ever have, comes from the knowledge that he can do some one thing superlatively well.

Hortense Odlum

#23. Always as a musician you must have one thing you do well.

Mick Jagger

#24. I just knew how to do the one thing I did, and whether I did it well or not depended on who the director was.

Jackie Cooper

#25. One thing we can do really well for our students is to help them figure out their identity.

Soledad O'Brien

#26. I'm an atheist swimming in a sea of superstition, surrounded by well-meaning, good people with whom I share a culture and similar concerns, and there's only one thing I can do. I have to laugh. Living

P.Z. Myers

#27. I knew that one movie could either kill my career or give birth to it. It's the same thing with Nelson. If you fail at Nelson [movie about nelson Mandela], you don't get to comeback and say, 'Well, I was trying. Let me do it again.' There are no re-takes.

Terrence Howard

#28. This is the age of the specialist, and years ago Rollo had settled on his career. Even as a boy, hardly capable of connected thought, he had been convinced that his speciality, the one thing he could do really well, was to inherit money.

P.G. Wodehouse

#29. Start kissing their little backsides so they'll love you again? There's only one thing that will make them stop hating you. And that's being so good at what you do that they can't ignore you. I told them you were the best. Now you damn well

Orson Scott Card

#30. Why should I have to say bye to one thing to do another? I can do lots of things at one time, and as much as I love to do films, I'd love to do ads as well!

Tena Desae

#31. The thing about writing is not to talk, but to do it; no matter how bad or even mediocre it is, the process and production is the thing, not the sitting and theorizing about how one should write ideally, or how well one could write if one really wanted to or had the time.

Sylvia Plath

#32. A well-known mathematician once told me that the great thing about liking both math and sex was that he could do either one while thinking about the other.

Steven Landsburg

#33. It's a terrible thing, I think, in life to wait until you're ready. I have this feeling now that actually no one is ever ready to do anything. There is almost no such thing as ready. There is only now. And you may as well do it now. Generally speaking, now is as good a time as any.

Hugh Laurie

#34. But tending machinery was one thing; defining what we were trying to do and why we were doing it, and developing ways to measure how well the job was done - this was something else again.

Elliot Richardson

#35. A lot of people ask me to produce or direct, but I don't think I'm qualified. It's hard enough for a person to do just one thing well in their life. I don't want to do too much.

Gong Li

#36. No,' said Gould, with an unusual and convincing gravity; 'I do not believe that being perfectly good in all respects would make a man merry.'
'Well,' said Michael quietly, 'will you tell me one thing? Which of us has ever tried it?

G.K. Chesterton

#37. Well,' said Tiffany, 'there's too much to be done and not enough people to do it.' The smile that the kelda gave her was a strange one. The little woman said, 'Do ye let them try? Ye mustn't be afraid to ask for help. Pride is a good thing, my girl, but it will kill you in time.

Terry Pratchett

#38. How do you achieve success? Well, for one thing, you don't define it before you achieve it.

Robert Breault

#39. When writing isn't going well-then the bad thing about being a writer is that I also have the freedom and flexibility to do something badly, and no one else can fix it for me.

Margaret Haddix

#40. Of course I am," Wax said. "This is my second marriage. I'm an old hand at the practice by now." Wayne grinned. "Oh, is that how it works? 'Cuz in my experience, marryin' is the one thing people seem to get worse at the more they do it. Well, that and bein' alive.

Brandon Sanderson

#41. As a precocious teen I dreamed of being Graham Greene. Well, as it turned out, I never wrote a great novel, sadly, and I never converted to Catholicism, happily, but I did do one thing he did. That is, in middle age I moved to a seaside town and got into a right barney with the local powers-that-be.

Julie Burchill

#42. The one thing I've observed over the years is the best way to get an actor to not want to play a certain role is to offer it to them. That makes them say, "Well, maybe it's not that good. These guys don't want me to do this ... "

Wes Anderson

#43. FROM a six-year-old:
Told by a well-meaning friend, 'Alex, do you know what the one thing is that the more you give, the more you get back? It's love, Alex.'
To which Alex asked, 'What about pain?

Susan Hamilton

#44. Her family... Love and involvement brought joy, but as well could become a hideously heavy millstone slung about one's neck. And the worst was that she felt useless because there was not a mortal thing she could do to help resolve their problems.

Rosamunde Pilcher

#45. Instead of pursuing many-sided mediocrity and calling it "well-roundedness," a definite person determines the one best thing to do and then does it.

Peter Thiel

#46. Sometimes, in order to follow one's heart, one must do the wrong thing. Now, I'm not absolving anyone of their actions; you have to be responsible for your actions, sick or well, you have to be, you just have to be. All of us are accountable.

Craig Ferguson

#47. He'd tried to tell Aimi to do something once, and that hadn't gone well at all. One thing he did know: when a woman got an idea into her head, there was no changing it.

Phillip W. Simpson

#48. In this world the one thing supremely worth having is the opportunity to do well and worthily a piece of work of vital consequence to the welfare of mankind.

Theodore Roosevelt

#49. Well, I had done nudity in one other thing, but nudity for an actress is a very particular thing. It has to do with the material, and making sure it's not gratuitous, that it's done in a way that's shot beautifully, and it's for a reason. And I'd never played a lesbian before.

Laura Prepon

#50. I will say, the one thing Mexico does well is punish prisoners. They do. They're good at that.

Tucker Carlson

#51. Some people can do one thing magnificently, like Michelangelo, and others make things like semiconductors or build 747 airplanes
that type of work requires legions of people. In order to do things well, that can't be done by one person, you must find extraordinary people.

Steve Jobs

#52. One of the greatest of human follies is that we think we know ourselves so well, that we know how we would act under any conditions, that we would under any circumstance 'do the right thing.' Well, as many have discovered, you don't really know what you'll do in the dark till the lights go out.

James Carlos Blake

#53. I had been to Jeddah on my previous trip, so I knew it well enough. There was only one thing to recommend it: say, you wanted to commit suicide and couldn't quite find the courage, two days in Jeddah would do the trick.

Terry Hayes

#54. I thought Rounders was a comic movie in its way. First time I directed a movie, I wanted to do a comedy. I don't like things that are superficially one thing or another, mainly. My favorite comedies are really smart, too, and have a lot of levels to them as well.

Edward Norton

#55. Comedians have a tendency to have a limited range, they tend to do one thing and do it very well, but it's limited.

Woody Allen

#56. I think one thing I do pretty well is not taking myself too seriously.

Linus Torvalds

#57. Disability is a matter of perception. If you can do just one thing well, you're needed by someone.

Martina Navratilova

#58. Thousands of people have talent. I might as well congratulate you for having eyes in your head. The one and only thing that counts is: Do you have staying power?

Noel Coward

#59. Well, for one thing, the culture we have does not make people feel good about themselves. We're teaching the wrong things. And you have to be strong enough to say if the culture doesn't work, don't buy it. Create your own. Most people can't do it.

Mitch Albom

#60. Do one thing but do it well

Sunday Adelaja

#61. I try to do one thing at a time to utilise my time well.

Gwyneth Paltrow

#62. Some of us will do our jobs well and some will not, but we will be judged by only one thing-the result.

Vince Lombardi

#63. I want to do one thing and do it well.

Jan Koum

#64. But I do know one thing: I am damn well going to find out.

Usborne Publishing Ltd

#65. How do you explain the bond between man and wife? Well, for one thing, it's private. What people do in their own marriage is their own business.

Robin Gibb

#66. You need to get one thing done well, or else you don't have permission to do anything else.

Larry Page

#67. I didn't know who to
believe
but
one thing I do
know: when a man is
living
many claim relationships
that are hardly
so
and after he dies, well,
then it's everybody's
party.

Charles Bukowski

#68. The irony is that the best thing we can do is, well one option, is to quit job we don't like. You don't always have to quit, and quite frankly, option two is to try to help others solve the problem that you are struggling with.

Simon Sinek

#69. She dreamed that night of chickweed, which was a strange thing to dream about. Chickweed is a low, weedy little plant, not very distinguished. No one writes poetry comparing their lovers to chickweed (or if they do, the poems are rarely well received).

T. Kingfisher

#70. Personal branding is one thing that you just can't do well on your own. You are too close to it,

Gina Bianchini

#71. Follow the voice of your heart, even if it leads you off the path of timid souls. Do not become hard and embittered, even if life tortures you at times. There is only one thing that counts: to live one's life well and happily ...

Wilhelm Reich

#72. I think the superstar thing is completely arbitrary. It's all about who had a movie that did well one weekend. Then, if you have a movie that doesn't do well the next weekend, then, all of the sudden, you've fallen from whatever. So it doesn't really mean anything for me.

Channing Tatum

#73. Well, no need to brood on what tomorrow may bring. For one thing, tomorrow will be certain to bring worse than today, for many days to come. And there is nothing more that I can do to help it. The board is set, and the pieces are moving. One

J.R.R. Tolkien

#74. Do what nature now requires. Set thyself in motion, if it is in thy power, and do not look about thee to see if any one will observe it; nor yet expect Plato's Republic: but be content if the smallest thing goes on well, and consider such an event to be no small matter.

Marcus Aurelius

#75. It is a thing forever changing, this of Hero-worship: different in each age, difficult to do well in any age. Indeed, the heart of the whole business of the age, one may say, is to do it well.

Thomas Carlyle

#76. You don't want to continue to do one thing and only one thing. You want to keep challenging yourself and if you do well at it, great, if you fall on your face, you tried. Like, she's really terrible at comedy! Who knew? But if you didn't try and put yourself out there you'd never know.

Lucy Liu

#77. Jade, you're doing the exact same thing you did after the pool that night. Don't you know how to do this?"
"Do what?"
"Give a person a hug."
"I'm not much of a hugger."
"Well, you need one, so don't just stand there. Put your damn arms around me.

Allie Everhart

#78. One thing we do really well on Archer and one thing I've always tried to do in my comedy and my writing and my podcast is to never speak down to my audience.

Aisha Tyler

#79. It's important to get well-rounded right off the bat. A lot of experienced dancers can get pigeonholed into one thing. I've been hired for a lot of different gigs simply because I can do a lot of different things with different levels of dancers. And it's sad to me that some dancers don't do more.

Mandy Moore

#80. If you've managed to do one good thing,
the ocean doesn't care.
But when Newton's apple
fell toward the earth,
the earth, ever so slightly, fell
toward the apple as well.

Ellen Bass

#81. The fact that there is no such thing as a perfect anti-sepsis does not mean that one might as well do brain surgery in a sewer.

Robert Solow

#82. You can't really go into TV thinking, 'Maybe I can make a few bucks doing this thing I'm only kind of interested in to support my one true love, which is prose fiction.' I think you have to love what you're doing to do it well.

Lynn Coady

#83. If it's one thing we do really well as a company, it's that we take big change slowly and deliberately and bring the community along with us.

Kevin Systrom

#84. One thing we do well within evangelicalism is in thinking of Jesus as our friend. But He is also our King.

Stephen Nichols

#85. What do people fear most about death? I asked the reb.
"Fear?" he thought for a moment. 'Well, for one thing, what happens next? Where do we go? Is it what we imagined?"
That's big.
"Yes. But there's something else."
What else?
He leaned forward.
"Being forgotten," he whispered.

Mitch Albom

#86. One thing concerns me a little, nick has a girlfriend, right? Well, how do you think she'll feel about all of this? He probed. He had this look on his face that he always had when I'm doing something a little bit naughty. You know, something you can get away with, but it's still a bit dodgy.

Jessica Thompson

#87. The Neurosciences do not exist exclusively to understand man's nature. They also serve a social function, such as in the treatment of the cerebral diseases or when helping us to have a more pleasant and constructive life. It is a thing that one could explore well.

Rodolfo Llinas

#88. I saw at once the way to appeal to him.. 'Well, of course you know.' I said, 'in really smart circles one has to offer heroin and cocaine to people. It's only a passing fashion, of course, but while it's on, one's really out of it if one doesn't do the right thing.

Aleister Crowley

#89. The people of the United States are one of the people I most admire in the world. The only thing I don't understand is why a country that manages to do so well cannot do better in choosing its president.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

#90. Hollywood is the kind of place that takes what you do well in one thing and manufactures it so the joy can be taken out of it.

Josh Gad

#91. Too often the educational value of doing well what is done, however little, is overlooked. One thing well done prepares the mind to do the next thing better. Not how much, but how well, should be the motto. One problem thoroughly understood is of more value than a score poorly mastered.

Booker T. Washington

#92. One thing that's happened to me is I've been around a long time and I've played a lot of villains and so forth. I think it had to do with, well one thing is that I looked younger than I was for a long time. Now I think I'm suddenly starting to play people's father.

Christopher Walken

#93. We found many difficulties to combat, for it is not an easy thing to go into France and learn to talk French well; but at the same time, if a man sets to work in good earnest, he can do it. I have scratched the word "can't" out of my vocabulary long since, and I have not got it in my French one.

John Taylor

#94. Being involved in the well-being and advancement of one's own community is a most natural thing to do.

Clarence Clemons

#95. I knew I could live no other way, that the one thing I wanted was to act and do it well.

Juliette Lewis

#96. By 'happiness' I do not mean worldly success or outside approval, though it would be priggish to deny that both these things are most agreeable. I mean the inner consciousness, the inner conviction that one is doing well the thing that one is best fitted to do by nature.

Edith Sitwell

#97. 'Frank's really different from everything I've done. Maybe the one thing that's the same, and the thing that I tend to do, is that I think I can create an intimacy with the characters, like a sense of presence with the people in the film, and that's what I tried to do in 'Room' as well.

Lenny Abrahamson

#98. Do not be discouraged because you cannot learn all at once; learn one thing
at a time, learn it well, and treasure it up, then learn another truth and
treasure that up, and in a few years you will have a great store of useful
knowledge ...

Wilford Woodruff