Quotes on Important Things

I didn’t want a completely passive viewer. Art means too much to me. To be able to articulate something visually is really an important thing. I wanted to make work where the viewer wouldn’t walk away; he would giggle nervously, get pulled into history, into fiction, into something totally demeaning and possibly very beautiful

Being Adam Parrish was a complicated thing, a wonder of muscles and organs, synapses and nerves. He was a miracle of moving parts, a study in survival. The most important thing to Adam Parrish, though, had always been free will, the ability to be his own master. This was the important thing. It had always been the important thing. This was what it was to be Adam.

The secret principle of martial arts is not vanquishing the attacker, but resolving to avoid an encounter before its occurrence. To become an object of an attack is an indication that there was an opening in one's guard, and the important thing is to be on guard at all times.

The most important things must be said simply, for they are spoiled by bombast; whereas trivial things must be described grandly, for they are supported only by aptness of expression, tone and manner.

...the most important things we need to manage can't be measured.

Our scientific age demands that we provide definitions, measurements, and statistics in order to be taken seriously. Yet most of the important things in life cannot be precisely defined or measured. Can we define or measure love, beauty, friendship, or decency, for example?

But in the new (math) approach, the important thing is to understand what you're doing, rather than to get the right answer.

As parents, the most important thing we can do _x000D_ is read to our children early and often. Reading _x000D_ is the path to success in school and life. When _x000D_ children learn to love books, they learn to love _x000D_ learning.

The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.

Art is a guarantee of sanity. That is the most important thing I have_x000D_ said.

The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn't said.

It is very difficult to get people to focus on the most important things when you're in boom times.

To make your unknown known - that's the important thing.

I think it's so foolish for people to want to be happy. Happy is so momentary--you're happy for an instant and then you start thinking again. Interest is the most important thing in life; happiness is temporary, but interest is continuous.

The important thing is not so much that every child should be taught, as that every child should be given the wish to learn.

The important thing was to love rather than to be loved.

The one important thing I have learned over the years is the difference between taking one's work seriously and taking one's self seriously. The first is imperative and the second is disastrous.

Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers. In the perfect stranger we perceive man himself; the image of a God is not disguised by resemblances to an uncle or doubts of wisdom of a mustache.

Perhaps this is the most important thing for me to take back from beach-living: simply the memory that each cycle of the tide is valid; each cycle of the wave is valid; each cycle of a relationship is valid.

The important thing is to learn a lesson every time you lose.

The important thing in writing is the capacity to astonish. Not shock - shock is a worn-out word - but astonish.