Performances Quotes - Page 30

• As long as that spark of passion is missing there is no human significance in the performance.

  Henry Miller

  Passion, Long, Missing

  Henry Miller, Norman Mailer (1976). “Genius and lust: a journey through the major writings of Henry Miller”, Grove Press

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• If someone should ask, "how should an Opposition function?" the best answer would be, "in the manner of a traditional mother-in-law who watches the performance of household work by a daughter-in-law and follows her about with her comments.

  R.K. Narayan

  Daughter, Mother, Law

  R. K. Narayan (1988). “A Writer's Nightmare: Selected Essays, 1958-1988”, p.88, Penguin Books India

  40 Copy quote

  Show source

• I am credited with being one of the hardest workers and perhaps I am, if thought is the equivalent of labour, for I have devoted to it almost all of my waking hours. But if work is interpreted to be a definite performance in a specified time according to a rigid rule, then I may be the worst of idlers.

  Nikola Tesla

  Inspirational, Idlers, May

  "My Inventions" by Nikola Tesla, (Ch. 1), 1919.

  55 Copy quote

  Show source

• People underestimate the importance of dilligence as a virtue. No doubt it has something to do with how supremely mundane it seems. It is defined as "the constant and earnest effort to accomplish what is undertaken."... Understood, however, as the prerequisite of great accomplishment, diligence stands as one of the most difficult challenges facing any group of people who take on tasks of risk and consequence. It sets a high, seemingly impossible, expectation for performance and human behavior.

  Atul Gawande

  People, Accomplishment, Expectations

  9 Copy quote

• Chandresh relishes reactions. Genuine reactions, not mere polite applause. He often values the reactions over the show itself. A show without an audience is nothing, after all. In the response of the audience, that is where the power of performance lives.

  Erin Morgenstern

  Reactions, Applause, Genuine

  4 Copy quote

• Though I still turn up my coat-collar in a lonely way and am always looking at myself in mirrors, they’re only habits and give no clue at all to my character, whatever that is. The most difficult performance in the world is acting naturally isn’t it? Everything else is artful.

  Angela Carter

  Lonely, Character, Mirrors

  Angela Carter (1997). “Burning your boats: the collected short stories”, Penguin Group USA

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Theater of Cruelty means a theater difficult and cruel for myself first of all. And, on the level of performance, it is not the cruelty we can exercise upon each other by hacking at each other’s bodies, carving up our personal anatomies, or, like Assyrian emperors, sending parcels of human ears, noses, or neatly detached nostrils through the mail, but the much more terrible and necessary cruelty which things can exercise against us. We are not free. And the sky can still fall on our heads. And the theater has been created to teach us that first of all.

  Antonin Artaud

  Fall, Mean, Exercise

  Antonin Artaud (1958). “The Theater and Its Double”, p.79, Grove Press

  62 Copy quote

  Show source

• Take a minute: look at your goals, look at your performance, see if your behavior matches your goals.

  Ken Blanchard

  Goal, Looks, Behavior

  72 Copy quote

• The longer I live the more I mistrust theatricality, the false glamour cast by performance, the more I know its poverty beside the truths we are salvaging from the splitting-open of our lives. -from "Transcendental Etude

  Adrienne Rich

  Poverty, Transcendental, Glamour

  11 Copy quote

• Mood evidently affects the operation of System 1: when we are uncomfortable and unhappy, we lose touch with our intuition. These findings add to the growing evidence that good mood, intuition, creativity, gullibility, and increased reliance on System 1 form a cluster. At the other pole, sadness, vigilance, suspicion, an analytic approach, and increased effort also go together. A happy mood loosens the control of System 2 over performance: when in a good mood, people become more intuitive and more creative but also less vigilant and more prone to logical errors.

  Daniel Kahneman

  Sadness, Creativity, Errors

  Daniel Kahneman (2011). “Thinking, Fast and Slow”, p.69, Macmillan

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• And in situations where a man and a woman each receive negative feedback, the woman's self-confidence and self-esteem drop to a much greater degree. The internalization of failure and the insecurity it breeds hurt future performance, so this pattern has serious long-term consequences.

  Sheryl Sandberg

  Hurt, Self Esteem, Self Confidence

  Sheryl Sandberg (2014). “Lean In for Graduates”, p.39, Knopf

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Those who believe they have pleased God by the quality of their devotion and moral goodness naturally feel that they and their group deserve deference and power over others. The God of Jesus and the prophets, however, saves completely by grace. He cannot be manipulated by religious and moral performance--he can only be reached through repentance, through the giving up of power. If we are saved by sheer grace we can only become grateful, willing servants of God and of everyone around us.

  Timothy Keller

  Religious, Jesus, Giving Up

  Timothy Keller (2008). “The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism”, p.74, Penguin

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• Coaxing drunken Shadowhunters into making fools of themselves was a favorite occupation among the Downworlders, and this performance had been a tremendous success.

  Cassandra Clare

  Occupation, Fool, Shadowhunters

  Cassandra Clare, Sarah Rees Brennan (2013). “The Midnight Heir”, p.8, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Everything depends upon execution; having just a vision is no solution.

  Stephen Sondheim

  Inspirational, Vision, Execution

  33 Copy quote

• If anything is worth trying at all, it's worth trying at least 10 times.

  Art Linkletter

  Inspirational, Trying, Ifs

  19 Copy quote

• Kind are her answers, But her performance keeps no day; Breaks time, as dancers. From their own Music when they stray.

  Thomas Campion

  Dance, Answers, Kind

  'The Third Book of Airs' (1617) no. 7

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is difficult to see the great dance effects as they happen, to see them accurately, catch them fast in memory. It is even more difficult to verbalize them for critical discussion. The particular essence of a performance, its human sweep of articulate rhythm in space and in time has no specific terminology to describe it by.

  Martha Graham

  Dance, Memories, Essence

  4 Copy quote

• The dance, just as the performance of the actor, is kinesthetic art, art of the muscle sense. The awareness of tension and relaxation within his own body, the sense of balance that distinguishes the proud stability of the vertical from the risky adventures of thrusting and falling--these are the tools of the dancer.

  Rudolf Arnheim

  Dance, Art, Fall

  Rudolf Arnheim (1966). “Toward a Psychology of Art: Collected Essays”, p.261, Univ of California Press

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• So many dancers rely on some sort of magic happening on the stage. They never, for various reasons, work full out in rehearsal. That's very uncreative. They don't discover the kinds of things that add up to a remarkable performance.

  Benjamin Harkarvy

  Dance, Ballet, Magic

  7 Copy quote

• The most extraordinary thing about a really good teacher is that he or she transcends accepted educational methods. Such methods are designed to help average teachers approximate the performance of good teachers.

  Margaret Mead

  Education, Teacher, Teaching

  Margaret Mead, Rhoda Bubendey Métraux (1979). “Margaret Mead, some personal views”, Angus & Robertson

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Of government, at least in democratic states, it may be said briefly that it is an agency engaged wholesale, and as a matter of solemn duty, in the performance of acts which all self-respecting individuals refrain from as a matter of common decency.

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, Agency, Government

  7 Copy quote

• Performance of one's duties should be independent of public opinion.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Freedom, Independent, Democracy

  Mahatma Gandhi, Mohandas Gandhi, Homer A. Jack (2005). “The Wit and Wisdom of Gandhi”, p.55, Courier Corporation

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The effective executive knows that it is easier to raise the performance of one leader than it is to raise the performance of a whole mass. She therefore makes sure she puts into the leadership position, into the standard-setting, the performance-making position the person who has the strength to do the outstanding pacesetting job. This always requires focus on the one strength of a person and dismissal of weaknesses as irrelevant unless they hamper the full deployment of the available strength.

  Peter Drucker

  Leadership, Jobs, Focus

  4 Copy quote

• The most beautiful sight this earth affords is a man or woman so filled with love that duty is only a name, and its performance the natural outflow and expression of the love which has become the central principle of their life.

  J. G. Holland

  Life, Beautiful, Men

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers" by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, (p. 394), 1895.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Great men,
  Till they have gained their ends, are giants in
  Their promises, but, those obtained, weak pigmies
  In their performance. And it is a maxim
  Allowed among them, so they may deceive,
  They may swear anything; for the queen of love,
  As they hold constantly, does never punish,
  But smile, at lovers' perjuries.

  Philip Massinger

  Life, Queens, Men

  Philip Massinger (1848). “The Dramatic Works of Massinger and Ford. With an introduction, by Hartley Coleridge”, p.175

  4 Copy quote

  Show source