Workmanship Quotes

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  Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort.

  John Ruskin

  Inspirational, Motivational, Inspiring

  185 Copy quote

• Make the workmanship surpass the materials.

  Ovid

  Quality, Quality In Business, Materials

  94 Copy quote

• Quality is pride of workmanship.

  W. Edwards Deming

  Pride, Quality

  98 Copy quote

• The aim of leadership should be to improve the performance of man and machine, to improve quality, to increase output, and simultaneously to bring pride of workmanship to people. Put in a negative way, the aim of leadership is not merely to find and record failures of men, but to remove the causes of failure: to help people to do a better job with less effort.

  W. Edwards Deming

  Leadership, Jobs, Pride

  43 Copy quote

• Man is not the only animal who labors; but he is the only one who improves his workmanship.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Animal, Men, Labor

  Abraham Lincoln, Roy Prentice Basler, Abraham Lincoln Association (Springfield, Ill.) (1953). “Collected works”

  23 Copy quote

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• It is the quality of our work which will please God and not the quantity.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Motivational, Work, Quality Not Quantity

  Mahatma Gandhi (1981). “Young India”

  28 Copy quote

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• Beavers build houses; but they build them in nowise differently, or better now, than they did, five thousand years ago. Ants, and honey-bees, provide food for winter; but just in the same way they did, when Solomon referred the sluggard to them as patterns of prudence. Man is not the only animal who labors; but he is the only one who improves his workmanship.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Motivational, Work, Winter

  Abraham Lincoln (2008). “The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln”, p.437, Wildside Press LLC

  20 Copy quote

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• You don't have to preach honesty to men with creative purpose. Let a human being throw the engines of his soul into the making of something, and the instinct of workmanship will take care of his honesty.

  Walter Lippmann

  Honesty, Men, Creative

  7 Copy quote

• Plants don't close from poor workmanship, but from poor management.

  W. Edwards Deming

  Poor Management, Plant, Management

  20 Copy quote

• Beauty is nature's brag, and must be shown in courts, at feasts, and high solemnities, where most may wonder at the workmanship.

  John Milton

  May, Wonder, Solemnity

  'Comus' (1637) l. 745

  23 Copy quote

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• Workers must root out the idea that by keeping the results of their labors to themselves a fortune will be assured to them. Patent fees are so much wasted money. The flying machine of the future will not be born fully fledged and capable of a flight for 1,000 miles or so. Like everything else it must be evolved gradually. The first difficulty is to get a thing that will fly at all. When this is made, a full description should be published as an aid to others. Excellence of design and workmanship will always defy competition.

  Lawrence Hargrave

  Future, Science, Ideas

  14 Copy quote

• Beautiful forms and compositions are not made by chance, nor can they ever, in any material, be made at small expense. A composition for cheapness and not excellence of workmanship is the most frequent and certain cause of the rapid decay and entire destruction of arts and manufacturers.

  Josiah Wedgwood

  Beautiful, Wisdom, Art

  34 Copy quote

• The danger lies in unconventional experiments signaling for a general license to do as they please, and pass off sloppy workmanship as creative intention.

  Helmut Gernsheim

  Photography, Lying, Creative

  7 Copy quote

• Occasionally, in times of worry, I've longed to be stylish, but on second thought I say no-just let me be myself-and express rough, yet true things with rough workmanship.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Worry, Second Thoughts, Stylish

  14 Copy quote

• The scope of art is practically boundless; it does not begin and end with the painting of pictures and the modeling of statues; where there is room for workmanship there is room for it.

  Lewis Foreman Day

  Art, Doe, Rooms

  6 Copy quote

• Hephaestus glowered up at us. “I didn’t make you, did I?” Uh,” Annabeth said, “no, sir.” Good,” the god grumbled. “Shoddy workmanship.

  Rick Riordan

  Annabeth, Said, Hephaestus

  Rick Riordan (2009). “Percy Jackson and the Battle of the Labyrinth”, p.138, Penguin UK

  16 Copy quote

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• A beautiful and chaste woman is the perfect workmanship of God, and the true glory of angels, the rare miracle of earth, and the sole wonder of the world.

  Georg Hermes

  Beautiful, Angel, Perfect

  11 Copy quote

• How fleeting are the wishes and efforts of man! how short his time! and consequently how poor will his products be, compared with those accumulated by nature during whole geological periods. Can we wonder, then, that nature's productions should be far 'truer' in character than man's productions; that they should be infinitely better adapted to the most complex conditions of life, and should plainly bear the stamp of far higher workmanship?

  Charles Darwin

  Character, Men, Effort

  Charles Darwin (2015). “The origin of species (low cost). Limited edition”, p.77, Charles Darwin

  12 Copy quote

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• I tried to like it. For me, it was like being smacked around the head by a piece of IKEA furniture: it hurts, but you've got to admire the workmanship.

  Bill Bailey

  Funny, Hurt, Humor

  "Remarkable Guide to the Orchestra". Comedy, Music, May 9, 2009.

  15 Copy quote

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• To lay hold of and receive the gospel by a true and saving faith is an act of the soul that has been made a new creature, which is the workmanship of God... Wherefore whoever receiveth the grace that is tendered in the gospel, they must be quickened by the power of God, their eyes must be opened, their understandings illuminated, their ears unstopped, their hearts circumcised, their wills also rectified, and the Son of God revealed in them.

  John Bunyan

  Heart, Eye, Son

  John Bunyan, George Offor (1862). “The Whole Works of John Bunyan: Accurately Reprinted from the Authors Own Editions ; Wth Editorial Prefaces, Notes, and Life of Bunyan”, p.350

  102 Copy quote

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• Mathematics may be compared to a mill of exquisite workmanship, which grinds you stuff of any degree of fineness; but, nevertheless, what you get out depends upon what you put in; and as the grandest mill in the world will not extract wheat-flour from peascods, so pages of formulae will not get a definite result out of loose data.

  Thomas Huxley

  Work, Data, May

  "Geological Reform". Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, Volume 25, 1869.

  16 Copy quote

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• High standards generally -- about workmanship and creation of objects, about what is owed in friendship, about the quality of art and much else -- far from being snobbish, are required to maintain decency in life.

  Joseph Epstein

  Art, Quality, High Standards

  Joseph Epstein (2003). “Snobbery: The American Version”, p.40, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  5 Copy quote

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• Mathematics may be compared to a mill of exquisite workmanship, which grinds your stuff to any degree of fineness.

  Thomas Huxley

  Math, Stuff, Degrees

  Thomas Henry Huxley, Henrietta A. Huxley (1908). “Aphorisms and reflections”

  16 Copy quote

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• There are two methods for the literary study of any book - the first being the study of its thought and emotion; the second only that of its workmanship. A student of literature should study some of the Bible from both points of view.

  Lafcadio Hearn

  Book, Views, Two

  Lafcadio Hearn (2012). “Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn”, p.114, tredition

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• Dust as we are, the immortal spirit grows Like harmony in music; there is a dark Inscrutable workmanship that reconciles Discordant elements, makes them cling together In one society.

  William Wordsworth

  Dark, Dust, Together

  'The Prelude' (1850) bk. 1, l. 340

  10 Copy quote

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