Unfinished Tasks Quotes

The greatest weariness comes from work not done.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.

It's the job that's never started as takes longest to finish.

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

The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.

…it has fallen to you to do a dirty job which your predecessors ought to have done before you.

This man will never finish anything. He thinks about the end before he thinks about the beginning.

I have two books that were published quite some time ago. I start to read about three sentences. I have to close it. I am so self-conscious. Who did I think I was?

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.

Any time we have projects that we haven't begun or completed, they drain energy.

People ask me what I do in my spare time, and I look at them blankly, truly believing that I don't even have spare time, and if I did, I'd probably use it for something mundane, like chipping away at the mound of laundry rising to dangerous proportions in the back room.

But I don't want to die! I have so much to do!

Soon I'll be old and I've done precious little in this world for lack of time. I am always afraid I'll become senile before I've finished what I've undertaken.

The missing links in my life's work, no less!

Many women cut back what had to be done at home by redefining what the house, the marriage and, sometimes, what the child needs. One woman described a fairly common pattern: I do my half. I do half of his half, and the rest doesn't get done.

As so often happens, the thing left undone tires you most of all, you only feel rested when it has been accomplished.

I don't like leaving work behind. I hate the idea that something might be happening on the drawing board at home that I am going to miss.

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.

Good ideas are a dime a dozen. What counts is completion. Look at your life and all the half finished projects sitting on your shelf. Commit to taking on one of these ideas and finishing what you started.

It's a bad day when you don't get the work done that you need to get done or you don't get it done to the satisfaction.

I wish I could [keep a journal]. I have a lot of journals with one page half written in. I sometimes will write myself a quick email on my Blackberry when I think of something.

When priorities are in place, one can more patiently tolerate unfinished business.

I want death to find me planting my cabbages, but careless of death, and still more of my unfinished garden.

Postponed is not abandoned.

I keep turning over new leaves, and spoiling them, as I used to spoil my copybooks; and I make so many beginnings there never will be an end. (Jo March)