Quotes on Great Work

If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michaelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, 'Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.

Great work comes from great joy. Leave the angst for the movies; do art - that is fun.

To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.

Great work requires great and persistent effort for a long time. ... Character has to be established through a thousand stumbles.

Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our own spontaneous expression with good humored inflexibility whether the whole cry of voices is on the other side.

"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."

There’s a real question as to what beauty is and why it’s important to us. Many pseudo-philosophers try to answer these questions and tell us they’re not really answerable. I draw on art and literature, and music in particular, because music is a wonderful example of something that’s in this world but not of this world. Great works of music speak to us from another realm even though they speak to us in ordinary physical sounds.

It's rare to find a consistently creative or insightful person who is also an angry person. They can't occupy the same space, and if your anger moves in, generosity and creativity often move out. It's difficult to use revenge or animus to fuel great work.

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.

Real success is finding your lifework in the work that you love.

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.

Religion must be used in furthering great works of justice and reform. It must be used to establish right relations between different groups of men, and thus to make a reality of brotherhood. It must be used to abolish poverty, the breeding ground of all misery and crime, by distributing equably among men the abundance of the soil. And it must be used to get rid of war and to establish enduring peace. Here is the supreme test of the effectiveness of religion.

Success in business requires training and discipline and hard work. But if you're not frightened by these things, the opportunities are just as great today as they ever were.

No great work can be achieved by humbug. It is through love, a passion for truth, and tremendous energy, that all undertakings are accomplished.

...our enjoyment of the great works of literature depends more upon the depth of our sympathy than upon our understanding.

To find joy in work is to discover the fountain of youth.

Great works are done when one is not calculating and thinking.

The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle.

Opportunities are usually disguised as hard work, so most people don't recognize them.

Leave your ego at the door every morning, and just do some truly great work. Few things will make you feel better than a job brilliantly done.

Seek the lofty by reading, hearing and seeing great work at some moment every day.