229 Skill Quotes

Maybe the Dalai Lama is the only person who is totally honest, and even with him, he's skillful not to hurt anybody. He's skillful.

If one is master of one thing and understands one thing well, one has at the same time, insight into and understanding of many things.

Mistakes are part of the game. It's how well you recover from them, that's the mark of a great player.

When I first came to Arsenal, I realised the back four were all university graduates in the art of defending. As for Tony Adams, I consider him to be a doctor of defence. He is simply outstanding.

I believe in the ability of focusing strongly in something, then you are able to extract even more out of it. It's been like this all my life, and it's been only a question of improving it, and learning more and more and there is almost no end. As you go through you just keep finding more and more. It's very interesting, it's fascinating.

It is an art to have so much judgment as to apparel a lie well, to give it a good dressing.

It is true that the mental aspect of kung-fu is the desired end; however, to achieve this end, technical skill must come first.

The funny thing about our act is that dad gets the worst of it, although I'm the one who apparently receives the bruises . . . the secret is in landing limp and breaking the fall with a foot or a hand. It's a knack. I started so young that landing right is second nature with me. Several times I'd have been killed if I hadn't been able to land like a cat. Imitators of our act don't last long, because they can't stand the treatment.

What I always longed to do was to be able to paint like I can draw, most artists would tell you that, they would all like to paint like they can draw.

I always urged my contemporaries to look for interest and inspiration to the development and study of drawing, but they would not listen. They thought the road to salvation lay by the way of colour.

I make the best pancakes you'll ever have! And I claim that title gladly. On Saturdays I make them for everybody.

The old-fashioned idea that the simple piling up of experiences, one on top of another, can make you an artist, is, of course, so much rubbish. If acting were just a matter of experience, then any busy harlot could make Garbo's Camille pale.

As far as I could discover, the notion that a play could succeed without any further help from the actor than a simple impersonation of his part never occurred to Tree.

The number of people who can copulate properly may be few; the number who can write well are infinitely fewer.

If the power to do hard work is not a skill, it's the best possible substitute for it.

I take computers practically apart and put them back together. I have a supercomputer I built over the years out of different computers.

If I don't practice one day, I know it; two days, the critics know it; three days, the public knows it.

Blues is easy to play, but hard to feel.

I can embarrass myself very easily on guitar. It's funny because people say to me I can play anything; I'm God on the guitar. But I could make a big list of everything I can't play... I'm grateful that people don't notice that.

Basic anatomy. That has got to be the ongoing frustration: Why can't my fingers do what I want them to do? Not being able to play what I hear in my head - that is the ultimate source of frustration.

Expression, sentiment, truth to nature, are essential: but all those are not enough. I never care to look at a picture again, if it be ill composed; and if well composed I can hardly leave off looking at it.

Notable talents are not necessarily connected with discretion.

A critic is a man who knows the way but can't drive the car.

If you're a singer you lose your voice. A baseball player loses his arm. A writer gets more knowledge, and if he's good, the older he gets, the better he writes.

There is timing in everything. Timing in strategy cannot be mastered without a great deal of practice.

The slender, swift Bruce Lee was the Fred Astaire of martial arts, and many of the fights that could be merely brutal come across as lightning-fast choreography.

The thing that makes you know that Vernon Ward is a good painter is if you look at his ducks, you can see the eyes follow you around the room.

There are two classes of poets - the poets by education and practice, these we respect; and poets by nature, these we love.

Every artist was first an amateur.

If you look at the world with parted lips and a pure heart, and will the good, won't that make a true and beautiful poem? One's heart tells one that it will; and one's heart is wrong. There is no direct road to Parnassus.

Drawing is the honesty of the art. There is no possibility of cheating. It is either good or bad.

Milton, Madam, was a genius that could cut a Colossus from a rock; but could not carve heads upon cherry-stones.

An experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often quite picturesque liar.

I'm very good at that. Understanding what other people think.

My pitching philosophy is simple; you gotta keep the ball off the fat part of the bat.

Donner: Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art.

My theory of hitting was just to watch the ball as it came in and hit it. [2]

For a good poet's made, as well as born.

If you rest, you rust.

Efficiency of a practically flawless kind may be reached naturally in the struggle for bread. But there is something beyond - a higher point, a subtle and unmistakable touch of love and pride beyond mere skill; almost an inspiration which gives to all work that finish which is almost art - which is art.

Bad handwriting is a sign of imperfect education.

Good humour may be said to be one of the very best articles of dress one can wear in society.

'God created whammy bars for people who don't know how to solo.' -Interview with 'Masters of Metal and Hard Rock' magazine

Painting is not very difficult when you don't know how; but when you know, oh! then, it's another matter.

A man must serve his time to every trade Save censure-critics are ready-made.

Every good poet includes a critic; the reverse will not hold.

We know that he has, more than any other man, the gift of compressing the largest amount of words into the smallest amount of thought.

Nature, not content with denying to Mr - the faculty of thought, has endowed him with the faculty of writing.

What an excellent horse do they lose, for want of address and boldness to manage him! ... I could manage this horse better than others do.

I don't need luck! I've got.. (Good Eats theme starts playing)

on Iron Chef America: The biggest surprise to me was how fierce the competition was. I mean these guys are some of the best cooks on the planet but that's so easy to forget when you see them on television. They were dead serious and amazing to watch. I wasn't (nor am I now) worthy.

Repetition is the mother of skill. (might be someone else who wrote it).

He was the best driver who ever lived.

I decided to pick out the greatest hitter to watch and study, and Jackson was good enough for me.

That Shakespeare wanted Art.

You know, I can beat all those guys.

His chess technique is nearly a miracle. In their youth, only a few players could handle the endgame so precisely. Only two such players are known to me, Smyslov and Capablanca.

The old-fashioned punching speed bag teaches you to hit straight and square; if you don't hit it straight the bag will not return directly to you. Besides learning footwork, you can hit the bag upward too. Another important function is that after the delivery of the punch, the bag will return instantaneously and this will teach you to be alert and to recover quickly. The bag should not be hit in a rhythmic motion but instead in a broken rhythm. Actually fight the bag as if it is your opponent.

I wouldn't have put a dime on anyone to beat Bruce Lee in a real confrontation. Bruce Lee was the best street fighter I ever saw, even to this very day, and not just pound for pound - but against anyone in a real fight.

The power that Lee was capable of instantly generating was absolutely frightening to his fellow martial artists, especially his sparring partners, and his speed was equally intimidating. We timed him with an electric timer once, and Bruce's quickest movements were around five hundredths of a second, his slowest were around eight hundredths. This was punching from a relaxed position with his hands down at his sides from a distance between 18-24 inches. Not only was he amazingly quick, but he could read you too. He could pick up on small subtle things that you were getting ready to do and then he'd just shut you down.

I never stood in front of another human who was as quick as him. He not only had the quickness but he had the inner confidence to muster the conviction to do so. I've seen others who had the speed but lack conviction or vice versa. He was like Ali, he had both. I stood before both of these men, so I know.

The main difficulty in using either lazo or bolas is to ride so well as to be able at full speed, and while suddenly turning about, to whirl them so steadily round the head, as to take aim: on foot any person would soon learn the art. One day, as I was amusing myself by galloping and whirling the balls round my head, by accident the free one struck a bush, and its revolving motion being thus destroyed, it immediately fell to the ground, and, like magic, caught one hind leg of my horse; the other ball was then jerked out of my hand, and the horse fairly secured. Luckily he was an old practised animal, and knew what it meant; otherwise he would probably have kicked till he had thrown himself down. The Gauchos roared with laughter; they cried out that they had seen every sort of animal caught, but had never before seen a man caught by himself.

Poetry is not a branch of analytical philosophy. It is a primal, holistic kind of human communication. A poet needs innocence as much as knowledge, emotion as much as intelligence, vulnerability as much as rigor. A poet can become too smart for his or her own good and forget the childlike pleasures of sound and story, sense, and sensuality that poetry should provide. The challenge for a writer is to master the medium of poetry without losing that inner innocence.

I can type like the wind, and believe me, the wind types really fast!

In regione caecorum rex est luscus.

'Every composer should be able to play his own compositions at the piano.'

Je n'admets pas qu'une femme puisse dessiner comme ca.

With skill she vibrates her eternal tongue, Forever most divinely in the wrong.

Just try and keep up with those feet of his sometime! Try and look graceful while thinking where your right hand should be, and how your head should be held, and which foot you end the next eight bars on, and whether you're near enough to the steps to leap up six of them backward without looking. Not to mention those Astaire rhythms. Did you ever count the different tempos he can think up in three minutes?

But when you're in a picture with Astaire, you've got rocks in your head if you do much dancing. He's so quick-footed and so light that it's impossible not to look like a hay-digger compared with him.

Mr Dyson is absolutely unusual in his ability and accomplishments. I can say without reservation that he is the best I have ever had or observed.

This feat of Tell, the archer, will be told While yonder mountains stand upon their base. By heaven! The apple's cleft right through the core.

He coude songes make, and wel endite.

And yet he had a thomb of gold parde.

Whether you love or loath George W. Bush, you can not deny that he has learned how to read a teleprompter.

The best horseman of his age.

'I can see the problem right away, DON'T SUCK. Cease the sucking immediately. If you decide not to suck, you'll be totally shredding all these major solos and all the chicks will be checking you out and all the guys will be hella jealous of your whammy bar.'

If you can do a part and not have the acting show.

I just never doubted it [success as a professional Jazz singer], man. I could tell I was hip. It was just those other kids who didn't know, OK?

I learned to spin and to sew; in sewing and spinning I fear no woman in Rouen.

That would have made Quintilian stare and gasp.

What I always wanted to be was a magician... My real upbringing when I was a teenager was doing magic shows, all over the state, with my father and brothers. Doing magic, you not only have to be able to do a trick, you have to have a little story line to go with it. And writing is essentially a trick.

'95 percent of all software developers believe they are in the top 5 percent, when it comes to knowledge and skills.'

If I could envy any man for successful ill nature I should envy Lord Byron for his skill in satirical nomenclature.

Service is no mushroom growth. It presupposes the will first and then experience.

The thing about Michael is he's hands down one of the most professional, most talented performers I have ever worked with. All the brouhaha aside, when it comes down to it you can have 60 choreographed dancers up there and you know which one Michael is.

'Who's that motherfucker? He can't play shit!'

Knowing the Way of the long sword means we can wield with two fingers the sword that we usually carry. If we know the path of the sword well, we can wield it easily. If you try to wield the long sword quickly you will mistake the Way. To wield the long sword well you must wield it calmly. If you try to wield it quickly, like a folding fan or a short sword, you will err by using 'short sword chopping'. You cannot cut a man with a long sword using this method.

You can know how to win through strategy with the long sword, but it cannot be clearly explained in writing. You must practise diligently in order to understand how to win.

Some other schools have a liking for extra-long swords. From the point of view of my strategy these must be seen as weak schools. This is because they do not appreciate the principle of cutting the enemy by any means. Their preference is for the extra-long sword and, relying on the virtue of its length, they think to defeat the enemy from a distance. In this world it is said, 'One inch gives the hand advantage', but these are the idle words of one who does not know strategy. It shows the inferior strategy of a weak sprit that men should be dependant on the length of their sword, fighting from a distance without the benefit of strategy.

Really skilful people never get out of time, and are always deliberate, and never appear busy. From this example, the principle can be seen.

Apprenticeship suits the novice poet - academic study the novice philosopher.