Craftsmanship Quotes

“A poet should be so crafty with words that he is envied even for his pains.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“The Christian shoemaker does his duty not by putting little crosses on the shoes, but by making good shoes, because God is interested in good craftsmanship.”
― Martin Luther

“At one time I thought the most important thing was talent. I think now that — the young man or the young woman must possess or teach himself, train himself, in infinite patience, which is to try and to try and to try until it comes right. He must train himself in ruthless intolerance. That is, to throw away anything that is false no matter how much he might love that page or that paragraph. The most important thing is insight, that is ... curiosity to wonder, to mull, and to muse why it is that man does what he does. And if you have that, then I don't think the talent makes much difference, whether you've got that or not.

[Press conference, University of Virginia, May 20, 1957]”
― William Faulkner

“Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art.”
― Tom Stoppard, Artist Descending a Staircase

“Craftsmanship isn't like water in an earthen pot, to be taken out by the dipperful until it's empty. No, the more drawn out the more remains.”
― Lloyd Alexander, Taran Wanderer

“We don't value craftsmanship anymore! All we value is ruthless efficiency, and I say we deny our own humanity that way! Without appreciation for grace and beauty, there's no pleasure in creating things and no pleasure in having them! Our lives are made drearier, rather than richer! How can a person take pride in his work when skill and care are considered luxuries! We're not machines! We have a human need for craftsmanship!”
― Bill Watterson, There's Treasure Everywhere

“She has always had a secret liking for this part of the embroidery, the ‘wrong’ side, congested with knots, striations of silk and twists of thread. How much more interesting it is, with its frank display of the labour needed to attain the perfection of the finished piece.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, The Marriage Portrait

“Be a worthy worker and work will come.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“I ran across an excerpt today (in English translation) of some dialogue/narration from the modern popular writer, Paulo Coelho in his book: Aleph.(Note: bracketed text is mine.)... 'I spoke to three scholars,' [the character says 'at last.'] ...two of them said that, after death, the [sic (misprint, fault of the publisher)] just go to Paradise. The third one, though, told me to consult some verses from the Koran. [end quote]' ...I can see that he's excited. [narrator]' ...Now I have many positive things to say about Coelho: He is respectable, inspiring as a man, a truth-seeker, and an appealing writer; but one should hesitate to call him a 'literary' writer based on this quote. A 'literary' author knows that a character's excitement should be 'shown' in his or her dialogue and not in the narrator's commentary on it. Advice for Coelho: Remove the 'I can see that he's excited' sentence and show his excitement in the phrasing of his quote.(Now, in defense of Coelho, I am firmly of the opinion, having myself written plenty of prose that is flawed, that a novelist should be forgiven for slipping here and there.)Lastly, it appears that a belief in reincarnation is of great interest to Mr. Coelho ... Just think! He is a man who has achieved, (as Leonard Cohen would call it), 'a remote human possibility.' He has won lots of fame and tons of money. And yet, how his preoccupation with reincarnation—none other than an interest in being born again as somebody else—suggests that he is not happy!”
― Roman Payne

“She wasn’t a bird in a cage. A bird in a cage, when the cage is opened, can still fly away. She was a bird embroidered onto a screen — a white bird in clouds of gold stitched onto a screen of melancholy satin. The years passed; the bird’s feathers darkened, mildewed, and were eaten by moths, but the bird stayed on the screen even in death.”
― Eileen Chang, Love in a Fallen City

“Practicing your craft in expert fashion is noble, honorable, and satisfying. And I'll generally take a stand-up mercenary who takes pride in his professionalism over an artist any day.”
― Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

“The notion of carefully wrought bullshit involves, then, a certain inner
strain. Thoughtful attention to detail requires discipline and objectivity. It entails accepting standards and limitations that forbid the indulgence of impulse or whim. It is this selflessness that, in connection with bullshit, strikes us as inapposite. But in fact it is not out of the question at all. The realms of advertising and of public relations, and the nowadays closely related realm of politics, are replete with instances of bullshit so unmitigated that they can serve among the most indisputable and classic paradigms of the concept. And in these realms there are exquisitely sophisticated craftsmen who - with the help of advanced and demanding techniques of market research, of public opinion polling, of psychological testing, and so forth - dedicate themselves tirelessly to getting every word and image they produce exactly right.”
― Harry G. Frankfurt, On Bullshit

“The pursuit of beauty. The word is hard to articulate. As soon as you open your moth, it flies off, like a bird of paradise. Beauty can not be caught, but we are obliged to reach for it. Beauty is not neutral; pursuing it is a political act. Building is a grand act, a gesture toward peace, the opposite of destruction.”
― Renzo Piano, Atlantis: A Journey in Search of Beauty

“The true painter must be able, before an infinite panorama, to limit himself to reproducing a single ant.”
― Salvador Dalí

“Great prose replenishes the language it’s written in...”
― Garth Risk Hallberg

“Art is not always beautiful. But the struggle to create Art is always beautiful.”
― Avijeet Das

“She opened the satchel.
And honestly, fate couldn't have provided a better prize at the end of a scavenger hunt.
She pulled out a beautiful, sparkling crown.
Her large green eyes grew even larger. Despite the hour and lack of sunlight, its jewels still managed to shimmer and twinkle in a magical, expensive way. Rapunzel might not have had much experience with royal gems or any kind of precious stone, but it was very clear that these were those. The thing was straight out of a fairy tale, what a princess would be wearing when she was turned back from a swan. The giant diamonds were even shaped like swans' eggs. Under each was a round pink ruby, and threading between them was a strand of perfectly round pearls.
She turned it over in her hands, tracing the tiny, intricately wound gold wire that held it all together.
And there, in a small flat patch of smooth metal, was the artist's mark-- and a multi-rayed sun symbol.
The same one on her bracelet clasp.
The same one that she constantly painted and dreamed of. The one that meant life and happiness and energy in the personal vocabulary of Rapunzel's soul.”
― Liz Braswell, What Once Was Mine

“Oftentimes, our hands are more creative than our minds.”
― John Joclebs Bassey, Night of a Thousand Thoughts

“Many a blue-collar father's dream is that his son never has to sweat or break his back on the job. His son can avoid the daily grind he endured. It was a well-intentioned hope for an easier future. What those fathers did not imagine was that their sons would lose all of those skills that generations of fathers found perfunctory. Those fathers did not imagine their sons would find emptiness and no sense of accomplishment in their comfortable, air-conditioned offices. There is no satisfaction in ten percent close ratios, contract evaluations, or supply chain management that compares to a newly-painted home, an assembled engine, or a finished cabinet.”
― Ryan Landry, Masculinity Amidst Madness

“How different everything is for the craftsman who transforms a part of the world with his own hands, who can see his work as emanating from his being and can step back at the end of a day or lifetime and point to an object — whether a square of canvas, a chair or a clay jug — and see it as a stable repository of his skills and an accurate record of his years..”
― Alain de Botton, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work

“It was summer, so the sun appeared in the bottom left-hand corner of the big window at quarter past six.
Ish.
It was hard to tell exactly until the sun rose just a little bit more, enough to send his beams through the holes carefully bored through a piece of wood, above which the hours were marked off in beautifully painted flourishes. This simple timepiece hung from the ceiling off a stick hammered sturdily in, because a string would have let it spin and therefore fail its task of tracking the sun.
The wind chimes, however, assembled from more bits of wood, and pieces of metal, and shaped and dried bits of pottery, were free to swing and tinkle as they pleased. These were surrounded by celestial bric-a-brac that also dangled from the ceiling and spun with abandon when the breeze found them: paper-mâché stars, comets of hoarded glass shards and mirror, a very carefully re-created (and golden) replica of the constellation Orion, a quilted and embroidered cloth model of the sun, and several paintings on rectangular panels hung such that they faced straight down. So that the viewer, in bed, might look up at them and pretend they were windows or friends, depending on whether the subject was landscapes or faces.”
― Liz Braswell, What Once Was Mine

“The wooden doors on the restrooms were art nouveau too: the hinges with nymphs, the hasps and mountings, as big as about six of those particleboard slabs that pass for doors. As if they'd been built for men of gigantic stature. In fact it was like the entire train station had been built for some race now long extinct. If any of those Titans actually turned up here, the local riffraff would no doubt turn tail and head for the hills and I myself wouldn't be far behind. But those consummate carpenters from the other end of the century left behind no holes in their work.”
― Jáchym Topol, Výlet k nádražní hale

“We were made in days when even men were true creatures, and so we, the work of their hands, were true too. We, the begotten of ancient days, derive all the value in us from the fact that our makers wrought at us with zeal, with piety, with integrity, with faith – not to win fortunes or to glut a market, but to do nobly an honest thing and create for the honor of the Arts and God. - from the story The Nürnberg Stove”
― Louise De La Ramee (Ouida)., Dog of Flanders and Other Stories

“She scowled. He was a good dog. He had excellent bones and even if she had used too much wire and gotten it a bit muddled around the toes and one of the bones of the tail, she'd think that a decent person would stop and admire the craftsmanship before they screamed and ran away.”
― T. Kingfisher, Nettle & Bone

“We grow in holiness in the honing of our specific vocation. We can't be holy in the abstract. Instead we become a holy blacksmith or a holy mother or a holy physician or a holy systems analyst. We seek God in and through our particular vocation and place in life.

Each kind of work is therefore its own kind of craft that must be developed over time, both for our own sanctification and for the good of the community. As we seek to do our work well and hone our craft, we are developed and honed in our work. Our task is not to somehow inject God into our work but to join God in the work he is already doing in and through our vocational lives. Therefore, holiness itself is something like a craft—not an abstract state to which we ascend but an earthy wisdom and love that is part and parcel of how we spend our day.”
― Tish Harrison Warren, Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life

“Oculus[2,3,8,12,8,6] = [14,2,10,7,5] = [12,2,3,17]
= [14,12,13] = [1,15] = 14, Box Model For Paisbox Molecular Portal [phirand, ring, circlet, diadem, itemizer, abstracter]
Attributes= pi= Modulation, phi= Abstraction, HP[health], MP[mana]
Elements= Hexagonal Sphere= HP, MP;
Mana Prism= pi, phi
Finally,

POAMULET[3,2,1,13,8,12,5,7]= "The (Oculus) Is Injected Into (Paisbox) To Create The Amulet”
― Jonathan Roy Mckinney Gero EagleO2

“He [John Summerson] wrote that Georgian buildings, in particular, did not rely on an 'irrecoverable sense of craftsmanship for the pleasure they give. Personally I find great enhancement in reconstructed classical architecture. I like the new, sharp-cut masonry of Peckwater quadrangle at Christ Church, and wish that much more of Oxford's scrofulous architecture could be "touched for the King's evil" in the same way'. 59

...

Part of his objection to their restoration rested on the fact that although the fabric could be rebuilt their furnishings were irreplaceable: 'You can re-build the structure of a building of the Wren type without losing much - expect in the way of sentiment. But once you start faking craftsmanship - Grinling Gibbons screens and wrought iron rails - you are doing a poor service to art and a positive disservice to archaeology'. 61

61. RIBA SUJ 10/3 Typescript 'Answering You' BBC Home Service 25 Jan. 1941 - 'Ariel in Wartime'.”
― Geoffrey Tyack, The Georgian Group Journal Volume XXXI 2023

“Unspun wool stands for the cosmic gas from which stars and galaxies are formed.”
― Jessica Hemmings, Cultural Threads: Transnational Textiles Today

“A quipu depends on the interaction of breath and thread, hand and voice. To write with breath is to see the body and the cosmos in a continuous reciprocal exchange.”
― Jessica Hemmings, Cultural Threads: Transnational Textiles Today

“There is a precise moment which everyone who has ever drawn or sewn or sculpted a thing will recognize, and that is the moment at which it becomes the thing it was meant to be. For hours, one’s work may look only like lines upon a page; for days, like a pile of fabric; for months, a misshapen rock. And then, one day, when one holds it up to the light and takes a single step back – there it is! The myriad pieces come together into a coherent whole.”
― C.E. McGill, Our Hideous Progeny