Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Quotes

Industriousness and conscientiousness are often at odds, because industriousness wants to pick the still sour fruit from the tree,while conscientiousness lets it hang there too long, until it falls and bruises.

A painting can't be everything. You have to stop, at some point. It has to be finished, if you want anyone to see it. Some people just continue to work on things, forever. I don't know which is better.

Measure not the work until the day's out and the labor done.

I always had a very strong sense of responsibility, so the minute I started to work in fashion, I was always tremendously serious-too much sometimes. Of course, you can make a lot of mistakes in this job-I still do-but you need to limit them as much as possible. When you're responsible for such a huge company, you cannot play too much. In the beginning, I was working 20 hours per day and I was going crazy. I learned that I needed to delegate and to trust the people around me, but there is still not one element that I don't see or edit or discuss with my people.

You can only do the best you can in the minute that you're doing it.

Write as well as you can and finish what you start.

It distresses us to return work which is not perfect.

I never feel like I conquered the day and did everything I possibly should have, could have, would have.

One must stop conducting research before one has finished. Otherwise, one will never stop and never finish.

I have a feeling the writers who find screenwriting difficult are usually just not lazy enough for the job. They don't know how to stop before the task is done. I've always had a knack for leaving things unfinished, which makes screenwriting easier for me than most.

I really like to work a lot. It makes time go by fast.

For it is fixed principle with me, that whatever is done should be done well.

Discipline is the foundation upon which all success is built. Lack of discipline inevitably leads to failure.

Without a deadline, baby, I wouldn't do nothing.

I've learned that you can't have everything and do everything at the same time.

I come to the office each morning and stay for long hours doing what has to be done to the best of my ability. And when you've done the best you can, you can't do any better.

So many people are good at starts and not so good at finishing.

When you finish a thing you ought to be able to say to yourself: 'There, I am willing to stand for that piece of work. It is not pretty well done; it is done as well as I can do it; done to a complete finish. I will stand for that. I am willing to be judged by it.'

Ask her to wait a moment - I am almost done.

I am credited with being one of the hardest workers and perhaps I am, if thought is the equivalent of labour, for I have devoted to it almost all of my waking hours. But if work is interpreted to be a definite performance in a specified time according to a rigid rule, then I may be the worst of idlers.

The devil finds work for idle hands.

I'm glad I did it, partly because it was worth it, but mostly because I shall never have to do it again.

When I am idle and shiftless, my affairs become confused; when I work, I get results ... not great results, but enough to encourage me.

I don't need time. What I need is a deadline!