Top 100 The Great Work Quotes
#1. The great work of Gibbon is indispensable to the student of history. The literature of Europe offers no substitute for "The
Edward Gibbon
#2. "To fashion stars out of dog dung, that is the Great Work. To take a negative experience and, by comparing it to something worse, make it feel good, is the great skill."
Alexandra David-Neel
#3. The Great Work is, before all things, the creation of man by himself, that is to say, the full and entire conquest of his faculties and his future; it is especially the perfect emancipation of his will.
Eliphas Levi
#4. I am the people the mob the crowd the mass. Do you know that all the great work of the world is done through me?
Carl Sandburg
#5. Right here and now the great work of character-building is to be done, and whoever neglects present opportunities, looking forward to a future heaven for better conditions, is pulling right away from the kingdom of heaven within himself.
Charles Fillmore
#6. The great work of art is the complete banality, and the fault with most banalities is that they are not banal enough. Banality here is not infinite in its depth and consequence, but rests on a foundation of spirituality and aesthetics.
Asger Jorn
#7. This is the great work of a man: always to take the blame for his own sins before God, and toexpect temptation to his last breath.
Anthony The Great
#8. The more you worry about being applauded by others and making money, the less you'll focus on doing the great work that will generate applause. And make you money.
Robin Sharma
#9. Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly. The hard truth is that all people love poorly. We need to forgive and be forgiven every day, every hour increasingly. That is the great work of love among the fellowship of the weak that is the human family.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
#10. Let the Saints remember that great things depend on their individual exertion, and that they are called to be co-workers with us and the Holy Spirit in accomplishing the great work of the last days
Joseph Smith Jr.
#11. The great work must inevitably be obscure, except to the very few, to those who like the author himself are initiated into the mysteries. Communication then is secondary: it is perpetuation which is important. For this only one good reader is necessary.
Henry Miller
#12. Delicious baked goods were the great work hostility equalizer, no matter how unorthodox the workplace.
Molly Harper
#13. If you look through history, all of the great work we've done in Congress has been around a table of compromise, when it comes to the most difficult problems.
Claire McCaskill
#14. The Great Work is the uniting of opposites. It may mean the uniting of
the soul with God, of the microcosm with the macrocosm, of the female
with the male, of the ego with the non-ego - or what not.
Aleister Crowley
#15. But perhaps the the great work of art has less importance in itself than in the ordeal it demands of a man and the opportunity it provides him of overcoming his phantoms and approaching a little closer to his naked reality.
Albert Camus
#16. People who do great work have a different set of criteria for declaring a job complete: whereas the typical definition of complete is "the work is done," the great work definition of complete is "a difference is made".
David Sturt
#17. We won't die secret deaths anymore. The world only spins forward. We will be citizens. The time has come. Bye now. You are fabulous creatures, each and every one. And I bless you: More Life. The Great Work Begins.
Tony Kushner
#18. The great work of social transformation begins with the first small step of stopping, calming, relaxing, reflecting and acting in a beneficial way.
Satish Kumar
#19. Somewhere there is an ancient enmity between our daily life and the great work. Help me in saying it, to understand it.
Rainer Maria Rilke
#20. The Great Work now, as we move into a new millennium, is to carry out the transition from a period of human devastation of the Earth to a period when humans would be present to the planet in a mutually beneficial manner.
Thomas Berry
#21. For our personal advancement in virtue and truth one quality is sufficient, namely, love; to advance humanity there must be two, love and intelligence; to accomplish the Great Work there must be three love, intelligence, and activity. And yet love is ever the root and the source.
Louis Claude De Saint-Martin
#22. The Complete Golden Dawn System of Magic was Israel Regardie's last book, the final token of his True Will. Through this book he bequeathed to us the means to carry on the Great Work of the Golden Dawn which, in a nutshell, is Initiation.
David Cherubim
#23. I always felt that Bette Davis was one of the great screen actresses who never really got her due - she won two Oscars, but the last was in 1938, and that was really before all the great work that she did.
Robert Osborne
#24. Schools should take part in the great work of construction and organization that will have to be done.
John Dewey
#25. The best thing for a bachelor is to get a wife who will really cooperate in the great work.
Samael Aun Weor
#26. Just looking at all the faces here reminds me of some of the great work that was done this year ... by cosmetic surgeons.
Ricky Gervais
#27. It is because artists do not practise, patrons do not patronize, crowds do not assemble to reverently worship the great work of Doing Nothing, that the world has lost its philosophy and even failed to invent a new religion.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
#28. It is the great work of nature to transmute sunlight into life. So it is the great end of Christian living to transmute the light of truth into the fruits of holy living.
Adoniram Judson Gordon
#29. The longer you are in acting business, the more you cherish the times when you're working with people that do great work, and can figure out how to enjoy themselves while they're doing the great work.
Scott Bakula
#30. If you want to feel how utterly powerless you are apart from the living God, attempt especially the great work of proclaiming the unsearchable riches of Christ, and you will know, as you never knew before, what a weak, unworthy thing you are. Although
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
#31. The surrealists know that the surreal is in the real, just as the mage knows that the invisible is in the visible and the alchemist knows that the infinite is to be found in the finite - and the Great Work consists of its extraction.
Patrick Lepetit
#32. Finally, I also come in recognition of the great work that has been undertaken by the NGOs and UN agencies that have been active for many years here, especially through the local staff and international staff here in Somaliland and in Somalia at large.
Jan Egeland
#33. The Great Work - the work of ensuring a just, healthy, beautiful, and sustainably life-giving world for future generations of all species.
Thomas Berry
#34. Here is a law which is above the King and which even he must not break. This reaffirmation of a supreme law and its expression in a general charter is the great work of Magna Carta; and this alone justifies the respect in which men have held it
Winston Churchill
#35. I tremendously admire, and I think we all should, the great work done by our commander-in-chief, our president, George Bush.
Wesley Clark
#36. I think once a year it's good to look back at the history of Oscar and to embrace the great work that everybody's done this year and set it in place to the great work that's gone on before us.
Howard Shore
#37. There's no way that I could do a 9 to 5 job. There's no way. I was not cut out for that. You come in and you work for three months on the one job. They say, 'Great,' you know, and you're on to the next one - and you never even got fired. It's wonderful.
Dennis Quaid
#38. Allow the way to your great work to be guided by your service to others.
Mollie Marti
#39. Antony said to Poemen, 'Our great work is to lay the blame for our sins upon ourselves before God, and to expect to be tempted to our last breath.
Benedicta Ward
#40. I've learned several lessons over the years. First, never take yourself too seriously, or work is boring. Next, people make the difference. You can have great technology, but if it's not complemented by great people, it won't go anywhere. Finally, customers buy from people they like.
John W. Thompson
#41. I've found the 90-10 rule to be pretty true: 90 percent of what I come up with and write down is kinda 'eh,' and then somehow, someway, 10 percent of it happens to work out really great in my act.
Hasan Minhaj
#42. My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return.
Maya Angelou
#43. Animation is a great way to work. No early morning call times, no make-up chair. In live action, you're always fighting the clock; the sun is always going down too soon.
John C. Reilly
#44. Chemistry is one of these crazy things you can't teach or learn or you can't fake. You go in hoping it will work, hope that you will connect with the other actors. I was fortunate on 'Modern Family' and 'The Procession.' They are great people, very easy to like.
Jesse Tyler Ferguson
#45. Girls get Screwed. Not that kind of screwed, what I mean is, they're always on the short end of things. The way things work, how guys feel great, but make girls feel cheap for doing exactly what they beg for
Ellen Hopkins
#46. The ability to be present with every single person and engage was a great model for me of the work that a writer needs to do. Writers, living or dead, still guide me in many ways.
Sandra Cisneros
#47. I'm not saving lives. I'm singing and I should go placidly and joyously through the whole thing and work hard and not take it for granted. It's great to have this gift.
Robert Plant
#48. I am heartbroken by the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in my home state. Like so many Americans I am watching the news reports with great sadness. But it's at times like these that each of us must work together to provide lifesaving aid to those in terrible need.
Tim McGraw
#49. I need to work with great directors and actors, people who are better than me, so that I am challenged. It is like playing sports - surfing, basketball, it doesn't matter what it is, if you play with people who are better than you, then you get better too. It is the same thing with acting.
Paul Walker
#50. When you work with the same people for 10 years, they become family. Now when I see them - it might not be for nine months - but when I see them, it's great.
Molly Sims
#51. I want to be a great actor someday, and I've decided there's no use philosophizing; the only way is to work at my craft.
Al Pacino
#52. Indeed, the real question is not, "Why greatness?" but "What work makes you feel compelled to try to create greatness?" If you have to ask the question, "Why should we try to make it great? Isn't success enough?" then you're probably engaged in the wrong line of work.
James C. Collins
#53. I think it's a shame when you come across young actors and musicians who haven't had the time to learn their craft. It doesn't matter if it's acting or music; you really have to learn how to do it from the bottom up because unless you have a great work ethic ... fame is a terrible thing to have.
Denis Leary
#54. Dancers are a great breed of people. And they really want to dance so you don't have to beg them to work. However, dancers sometimes build walls around themselves because they are presenting themselves all the time: dancing is very much a confession.
Suzanne Farrell
#55. Hemingway is great in that alone of living writers he has saturated his work with the memory of physical pleasure, with sunshine and salt water, with food, wine and making love and the remorse which is the shadow of that sun.
Cyril Connolly
#56. I think all the knowledge and all the travels that I've done, I'm going to do a lot of great work in the future.
Chris Tucker
#57. I'm currently between assignments and was looking for a change. I heard there was work in Nashville and it seemed like a good place to start over. So here I am stuck in the freezing cold with a ... serial killer. Has the making for a great horror movie, huh? (Leta)
Sherrilyn Kenyon
#58. As far as One Direction goes, and Mindless Behavior and all the other bands, I'm all for it, and if there's ever an opportunity to work with them, that'd be great.
Nick Jonas
#59. It's not easy working with your husband, I'll be straight up about that. But when we work together, we always get great product. It's not easy in the process and as we go along it gets easier, but yeah, it gets a little sticky.
Jada Pinkett Smith
#60. Great companies in the way they work, start with great leaders.
Steve Ballmer
#61. Work as we know it now is a very recent historical development. It didn't exist before the great agricultural revolutions that made intensive farming possible about twelve thousand years ago.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
#62. For 25 years, it has been my privilege to represent the city of San Francisco and the great state of California; to work to strengthen our vibrant middle class; to secure opportunity and equality.
Nancy Pelosi
#63. He was the man who rode into our valley out of the heart of the great glowing west and when his work was done, he left whence he had come--and he was Shane.
Jack Shaeffer
#64. I'm a great admirer of Primo Levi's work. It's always mind-boggling, the idea of how much pain people can endure and still come back from the edge with a sense of humor, with this tremendous animal desire we have to get on with life.
Allan Gurganus
#65. God's great love and purposes for us are all worked out in messes in our kitchens and backyards, in storms and sins, blue skies, the daily work and dreams of our common lives. God works with us as we are and not as we should be or think we should be.
Eugene H. Peterson
#66. Pitbull is great with brands. Endorsements with hip-hop artists work because hip-hop artists typically set the most trends ... It's every brand's goal to be seen in the mainstream, and hip-hop music has become mainstream music.
Adam Kluger
#67. Everyone at 'CSI' has been so great to work with, and so great in terms of scheduling. There's a real feeling of family on that set ... I've grown to have so much respect for the cast and crew - they're been together so many years and still care about the show and each other.
Elisabeth Shue
#68. All sciences are connected; they lend each other material aid as parts of one great whole, each doing its own work, not for itself alone, but for the other parts; as the eye guides the body and the foot sustains it and leads it from place to place.
Roger Bacon
#69. The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it's dead for you.
Oscar Wilde
#70. We have great power to affect the attitudes and behavior of the people around us, at work and at home. We have the power to set a tone of honor, to create an energy around ourselves that says, 'I respect myself. I respect you. Let's respect each other.'
Marianne Williamson
#71. Coaching isn't a great mystery. It's Just hard work, determination, and inspiration at the right moment.
Robert Zuppke
#72. The Gita is not an aphoristic work, it is a great religious poem.
Mahatma Gandhi
#73. I left school and couldn't find acting work, so I started going to clubs where you could do stand-up. I've always improvised, and stand-up was this great release. All of a sudden, it was just me and the audience.
Robin Williams
#74. The great thing about having spent all this time on film sets is that I've been able to watch directors and how they work. I now know that this is what I want to do as well: to tell stories visually. But it's definitely my vision that I want to put across, nobody else's.
Catherine McCormack
#75. A crucial factor when achieving great success in the real estate industry, or any industry for that matter, is teamwork. Unity is a place of power.
Michelle Moore
#76. As great a picture can be made as one's mental capacity-no greater. Art cannot be taught; it must be self-inspiration, though the imagination may be fired and the ambition and work directed by the advice and example of others.
Edward Weston
#77. God grant that this is the work of the Communists. You are witnessing the beginning of a great new epoch in German history. This fire is the beginning.
Adolf Hitler
#78. I have found that great people do have in common ... an immense belief in themselves and in their mission. They also have gerat determination as well as an ability to work hard. At the crucial moment of decision, they draw on their accumulated wisdom. Above all, they have integrity.
Yousuf Karsh
#79. Beside every great success are the seeds of enormous failure. In every failure, there's the opportunity seeds of great success. They're not miles apart. So if they're that close together, and if you're really working, you're always gonna have that likelihood that something's not going to work.
Peter Guber
#80. Age is a terrible avenger. The lessons of life you give so much to work with, but by the time you've got all this great wisdom, you don't get to be young anymore.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
#81. Really in all my years on Tour, in the U.S. Open I probably played great golf in two of them, out of maybe 20, so it's a lot of work.
Fred Couples
#82. Men hate passion, any great passion. Henry Cameron made a mistake: he loved his work. That was why he fought. That was why he lost.
Ayn Rand
#83. Sondheim is my god; I love the man. I learned a great deal about writing from his work, his lyrics, and his structure.
Richard LaGravenese
#85. It is already a great thing if the main ideas and general outline of a work come without any racking of brains, as the result of that supernatural and inexplicable force we call inspiration.
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
#86. I wanted to be a part of the first 'Twilight' movie, and unfortunately, it didn't work out so great. So when they came back and were like, 'Do you want to come in for a part for the second movie,' I was like, 'Absolutely.'
Jamie Campbell Bower
#87. The great Tao is universal like a flood ... All creatures depend on it, and it denies nothing to anyone. It does its work, but it makes no claims for itself. It clothes and feeds all, but it does not lord it over them.
Lao-Tzu
#88. That is the way I have always worked. I draw a plan and work out every detail on the plan before starting to build. For otherwise one will waste a great deal of time in makeshifts as the work goes on and the finished article will not have coherence. It
Henry Ford
#89. I treat the photograph as a work of great complexity in which you can find drama. Add to that a careful composition of landscapes, live photography, the right music and interviews with people, and it becomes a style.
Ken Burns
#90. ...use design as a secret disguise to infiltrate whatever world you want to go into. If you do that over and over again, and then translate that interest and curiosity into the work that you're doing, you'll do great.
Michael Bierut
#91. I'll probably stick to comedy for the time being. I mean, a great piece of work is a great piece of work, and I'm up for good work anytime. But I do love comedy!
Jenna Elfman
#92. I believe that with great wealth comes great responsibility, a responsibility to give back to society and a responsibility to see that those resources are put to work in the best possible way to help those most in need.
Bill Gates
#93. I did work at Christie's for a couple of weeks, getting ready for 'The Devil Wears Prada,' getting people coffee and doing whatever they needed around the office. It was amazing. I got to see some wonderful art, and everybody was really nice. It was great.
Anne Hathaway
#94. Talking with other artists is an incredible process. You engage with the work very differently ... a nd different relationships between different works start to emerge. To tap into that energy-to tap into that moment-is great for me as an exercise.
Shahzia Sikander
#95. I had a great time on News Radio, I got to make tons of money in relative obscurity and learn a lot about the TV biz and work on my standup act constantly. It was a dream gig.
Joe Rogan
#96. It is the Level-headed Man, the Calm Man, of Good Judgement and cool nerves, of Great sympathy and love, who does good work and so does good to himself.
Swami Vivekananda
#97. Love is a great force in private life; it is indeed the greatest of all things; but love in public affairs does not work.
E. M. Forster
#98. Space and silence weigh equally upon the heart. A sudden love, a great work, a decisive act, a thought which transfigures, all these at certain moments bring the same unbearable anxiety, linked with an irresistible charm.
Albert Camus
#99. Honestly, we'd probably be great parents. But it's a human being, and unless you think you have excellent skills and have a drive or yearning in you to do that, the amount of work that that is and responsibility - I wouldn't want to screw them up! We love our animals.
Ellen DeGeneres
#100. 'Macbeth' is one of the best operas ever, and doing it was a great experience. I added some things to the opera based from my experience on the movie - such as some of the special effects and bits of film - to make it new and interesting. It was a very good work and a very good experience.
Dario Argento
