Serious Work Quotes

• Without great solitude no serious work is possible.

  Pablo Picasso

  Loneliness, Being Alone, Creativity

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• My work is a game, a very serious game.

  M. C. Escher

  Art, Work, Games

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• I must continue to follow the path I take now. If I do nothing, if I study nothing, if I cease searching, then, woe is me, I am lost. That is how I look at it — keep going, keep going come what may. But what is your final goal, you may ask. That goal will become clearer, will emerge slowly but surely, much as the rough draught turns into a sketch, and the sketch into a painting through the serious work done on it, through the elaboration of the original vague idea and through the consolidation of the first fleeting and passing thought.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Woe Is Me, Ideas, Goal

  Letter to Theo van Gogh from Cuesmes, www.webexhibits.org. July 1880.

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• Bowmen bend their bows when they wish to shoot: unbrace them when the shooting is over. Were they kept always strung they would break and fail the archer in time of need. So it is with men. If they give themselves constantly to serious work, and never indulge awhile in pastime or sport, they lose their senses and become mad.

  Herodotus

  Sports, Archer, Men

  Herodotus (2017). “The Histories of Herodotus”, p.133, Aegitas

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• In my serious work I am striving for the essence of things and for goals which are possibly unobtainable. On the other hand, everything humorous has great attraction for me, and a childish streak leads me into all kinds of frivolous endeavour.

  Philippe Halsman

  Humorous, Hands, Essence

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• One thing I did not want to change, even if we got serious, work had to be enjoyable on a daily basis. We all had to come to work on the balls of our feet and go up the stairs two at a time.

  Yvon Chouinard

  Two, Feet, Balls

  Yvon Chouinard (2016). “Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman--Including 10 More Years of Business Unusual”, p.69, Penguin

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• To live exhilaratingly in and for the moment is deadly serious work, fun of the most exhausting sort

  Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

  Fun, Anarchy, Moments

  Barbara Grizzuti Harrison (1980). “Off Center: Essays”

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• That kind of friendship doesn't just materialize at the end of the rainbow one morning in a soft-focus Hollywood haze. For it to last this long, and at such close quarters, some serious work had gone into it. Ask any ice-skater or ballet dancer or show jumper, anyone who lives by beautiful moving things: nothing takes as much work as effortlessness.

  Tana French

  Beautiful, Morning, Moving

  5 Copy quote

• Often a purple patch or two is tacked on to a serious work of high promise, to give an effect of colour.

  Horace

  Two, Purple, Giving

  "Ars Poetica (The Art of Poetry)". Poem by Horace (line 14), circa 18 BC.

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• Let me roughly divide books into those which compete with the movies and those with which the movies cannot compete. They are the books that can elevate or instruct. If they are fine works of fiction, they can deepen your appreciation of human life. If they are serious works of nonfiction, they can inform or enlighten you.

  Mortimer Adler

  Appreciation, Book, Nonfiction

  4 Copy quote

• I really wanted to do some serious work. I really wanted to be a part of dramatic films. I wanted to show this talent, whatever that means, that I could be a dramatic actress as well. But the truth is, a) I don't know if I can, and b) I love doing comedy, and I felt almost a little embarrassed that I succumbed to the pressure. Vanity is really what it is. I feel really grateful that I am in comedy, and I love doing it.

  Anna Faris

  Grateful, Mean, Vanity

  Interview with Scott Tobias, film.avclub.com. April 7, 2009.

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• Filmmaking and television series are team sports. Look for the best team for you. Plan, budget your time, money and spirit. You need all three to get serious work done. Never say no because something scares you. Never say yes because you're flattered. Stay open, but stay proud. It never gets easy. Get over that part. Get on with it.

  Karen Walton

  Sports, Team, Scare

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

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• Serious work gets done ... in congenial surroundings, which tend to make you laugh.

  Ian McDiarmid

  Laughing, Done, Surroundings

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• The fact that I am interrupting serious work to answer these questions proves that I am so stupid that I should be penalized severely. I will be. Don't worry.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Stupid, Worry, Answers

  Ernest Hemingway (2015). “Ernest Hemingway: The Last Interview: and Other Conversations”, p.24, Melville House

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• The dynamic principle of fantasy is play, a characteristic also of the child, and as such it appears inconsistent with the principle of serious work. But without this playing with fantasy no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable. It is therefore short-sighted to treat fantasy, on account of its risky or unacceptable nature, as a thing of little worth.

  Carl Jung

  Children, Play, Imagination

  Carl Jung (2016). “Psychological Types”, p.88, Routledge

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• The philosopher is not an apologist; apologetic concern, as Karl Barth (the one living theologian of unquestionable genius) has rightly insisted, is the death of serious theologizing, and I would add, equally of serious work in the philosophy of religion.

  Donald M. MacKinnon

  Philosophy, Add, Genius

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• My father didn't think being an artist was a respectable or worthy goal for a man. He hoped I would see my way to more serious work and would find myself turning towards medicine, law, or business.

  Richard Diebenkorn

  Father, Men, Thinking

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• I am one of the writers who wish to create serious works of literature which dissociate themselves from those novels which are mere reflections of the vast consumer cultures of Tokyo and the subcultures of the world at large.

  Kenzaburo Oe

  Reflection, Wish, Culture

  57 Copy quote

• Self-publishing in comics is core to the whole artform. There is no scarlet letter in comics as there still is, to some degree, in prose. As no publisher for a long time would publish serious work in comics, the only way a lot of it came out was because of self-publishing. Many of the greatest works of the medium are self-published.

  Kieron Gillen

  Self, Long, Serious

  7 Copy quote

• All who think cannot but see there is a sanction like that of religion which binds us in partnership in the serious work of the world.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Thinking, Liberty, Serious

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• Any kind of creative activity is likely to be stressful. The more anxiety, the more you feel that you are headed in the right direction. Easiness, relaxation, comfort - these are not conditions that usually accompany serious work.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Creative, Anxiety, Relaxation

  "Joyce Carol Oates Interviews Herself". www.washingtonpost.com. September 13, 2013.

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• Suffering is too strong a word, but writing is serious work. I pull the stuff up from me - it's not as if it's a pleasure.

  Colm Toibin

  Strong, Writing, Suffering

  "Colm Tóibín, novelist - portrait of the artist". Interview with Laura Barnett, www.theguardian.com. February 19, 2013.

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• Brenda [Carlin] went into therapy and I soon joined her. First we put the drugs behind us, then we began serious work on our relationship. And, in time, we got well together.She just drove through a hotel lobby. Now, that's bottoming out.

  George Carlin

  Hotel Lobby, Drug, Together

  Source: reprints.longform.org

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• Doodling serves as a means of keeping the hand or fingers limber, so that they are always ready for serious work.

  Charles E. Burchfield

  Art, Mean, Hands

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• I see no difference between my pictures that people consider amusing and the rest. To me, it's all serious work - they're just a reaction to what I see. I don't leave this apartment in the morning and say to myself 'Today I'm going to be funny and tomorrow I'm going to be sad.'

  Elliott Erwitt

  Photography, Morning, Differences

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