Unfinished Quotes

• God left the world unfinished for man to work his skill upon. He left the electricity still in the cloud, the oil still in the earth. How often we look upon God as our last and feeblest resource! We go to Him because we have nowhere else to go. And then we learn that the storms of life have driven us, not upon the rocks, but into the desired haven.

  George MacDonald

  Adversity, Men, Clouds

  61 Copy quote

• Existence is a series of footnotes to a vast, obscure, unfinished masterpiece.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Inspirational, Funny, Life

  Pale Fire "Commentary" (1962)

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• Can anything be sadder than work left unfinished? Yes, work never begun.

  Christina Rossetti

  Inspirational, Work, Women

  Christina Georgina Rossetti, Maria Keaton (2004). “Prose Works of Christina Rossetti”, Thoemmes Pr

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• I don't like to leave anything unfinished on my desk before I travel.

  Vijay Mallya

  Desks

  7 Copy quote

• Life... is not simply a series of exciting new ventures. The future is not always a whole new ball game. There tends to be unfinished business. One trails all sorts of things around with one, things that simply won't be got rid of.

  Anita Brookner

  Unfinished Business, New Ventures, Games

  Anita Brookner (1989). “Lewis Percy”

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• In this one book are the two most interesting personalities in the whole world--God and yourself. The Bible is the story of God and man, a love story in which you and I must write our own ending, our unfinished autobiography of the creature and the Creator.

  Fulton Oursler

  Bible, Book, Writing

  9 Copy quote

• In hell there is no other punishment than to begin over and over again the tasks left unfinished in your lifetime.

  Andre Gide

  Punishment, Tasks, Hell

  10 Copy quote

• The immense popularity of American movies abroad demonstrates that Europe is the unfinished negative of which America is the proof

  Mary McCarthy

  Europe, America, Negative

  "America the Beautiful: The Humanist in the Bathtub" (1947)

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• There's nothing that makes you so aware of the improvisation of human existence as a song unfinished. Or an old address book.

  Carson McCullers

  Song, Book, Addresses

  Carson McCullers (1998). “Collected Stories of Carson McCullers”, p.162, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• If you must begin then go all the way, because if you begin and quit, the unfinished business you have left behind begins to haunt you all the time.

  Chogyam Trungpa

  Unfinished Business, Way, Quitting

  Chogyam Trungpa (2002). “The Myth of Freedom and the Way of Meditation”, p.187, Shambhala Publications

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• I have a lot of novels that I haven't finished. I usually get 150 pages in and I realize it's not going anywhere. I don't publish everything I write. I must have six unfinished novels at least.

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Writing, Pages, Six

  8 Copy quote

• For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin -- real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.

  James Patterson

  Inspirational, Life, Inspiring

  James Patterson (2004). “Sam's letters to Jennifer”

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• Justice has its anger, my lord Bishop, and the wrath of justice is an element of progress. Whatever else may be said of it, the French Revolution was the greatest step forward by mankind since the coming of Christ. It was unfinished, I agree, but still it was sublime. It released the untapped springs of society; it softened hearts, appeased, tranquilized, enlightened, and set flowing through the world the tides of civilization. It was good. The French Revolution was the anointing of humanity.

  Victor Hugo

  Spring, Heart, Civilization

  Victor Hugo (1980). “Les misérables”, Viking Pr

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• A proper autobiography is a death-bed confession. A true man finds so much work to do that he has no time to contemplate his yesterdays; for to-day and to-morrow are here, with their impatient tasks. The world is so busy, too, that it cannot afford to study any man's unfinished work; for the end may prove it a failure, and the world needs masterpieces.

  Mary Antin

  Men, Unfinished Work, Yesterday

  Mary Antin (2013). “The Promised Land”, p.12, Courier Corporation

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• Books, like lives, are always unfinished even when they end, for to write is to struggle with contingency, to impose a certain false order upon the endless, and endlessly frustrating, nature of thought.

  Mark Kingwell

  Struggle, Book, Writing

  Mark Kingwell (2000). “The World We Want: Restoring Citizenship in a Fractured Age”, p.22, Rowman & Littlefield

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• God left the world unfinished for man to work his skill upon. He left the electricity still in the cloud, the oil still in the earth.

  George MacDonald

  Men, Clouds, Unfinished Work

  57 Copy quote

• I am ready to sacrifice everything in completing the unfinished agenda of our noble jihad...until there is no bloodshed in Afghanistan and Islam becomes a way of life for our people.

  Mohammed Omar

  Sacrifice, People, Islam

  26 Copy quote

• A sketch has charm because of its truth - not because it is unfinished.

  Charles Webster Hawthorne

  Drawing, Charm

  Richard Mühlberger, Charles Webster Hawthorne (1999). “Charles Webster Hawthorne”, University of Washington Press

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• Life should be an unfinished business.

  Colin Fletcher

  Unfinished Business, Should

  Colin Fletcher (1997). “River: One Man's Journey Down the Colorado, Source to Sea”, Knopf

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• Nothing is more burdensome than an unfinished task.

  Jim Rohn

  Procrastination, Tasks

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• I agree that we should work and prolong the functions of life as far as we can, and hope that Death may find me planting my cabbages, but indifferent to him and still more to the unfinished state of my garden.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Death, Work, Garden

  Michel de Montaigne (1946). “The essays”

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• I wondered why I was so startled by the encounter when there was something that seemed utterly inevitable about the moment. Not in any grand, destined sense; just in the quiet, stubborn way that unfinished business has of imposing its will on the unwilling.

  Emily Giffin

  Unfinished Business, Encounters, Stubborn

  Emily Giffin (2010). “Something Borrowed: A Novel”, p.335, Macmillan

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• I'm a mess of unfinished thoughts.

  John Mayer

  Mess

  27 Copy quote

• I want to do the right thing, but often I don't know just what the right thing is. Every day I know I have come short of what I would like to have done. Yet as the years pass and I see the very world itself, with its oceans and mountains and plains, as something unfinished, a peculiar little satisfaction hunts out the corners of my heart. Sunsets and evening shadows find me regretful at task's undone, but sleep and the dawn and the air of the morning touch me with freshening hopes. Strange things blow in through my window on the wings of the night wind and I don't worry about my destiny.

  Carl Sandburg

  Hope, Morning, Ocean

  75 Copy quote

• It takes an earthquake to remind us that we walk on the crust of an unfinished planet.

  Charles Kuralt

  Earthquakes, Planets, Walks

  8 Copy quote