Quotes About Practice

Though every legal task demands this skill, it is especially important in the effort to frame public policy in a way that is properly responsive to human needs and predicaments. The question is always: How will the general rule work in practice?

You can't get better at things you never play.

The pat on the back becomes more important than the music or the skating. One part of us becomes ever more committed to earning the pat on the back, while another subversive part—that we try to ignore—kicks and screams and resists the teacher's authority. This is the part that gives us all kinds of excuses for not practicing.

Our fingers are frustratingly accurate in using the information we give them. If we imagine sloppily, we play sloppily; if we imagine clearly and precisely, that is how we play.

Children were regarded in a particular way. In the pagan period unwanted children could be exposed to the elements and left to their fate, but Christians reacted strongly against this practice, and it was eventually banned, except in the case of deformed children.

The ideal: to be able to repeat oneself like... Bach.

This was real life - no magic, only practice, commitment, and labor. This lesson, about life, about art, is one I am still learning.

The ritual of our daily lives permeate our very bodies.

Acting is the laziest of the professions. A ballet dancer must limber up two or three hours a day, working or idle. The great musicians practice three or four hours a day, willy-nilly. Opera singers must go easy on cigarettes, learn half a dozen languages. The demands on an actress consist in learning the role, interpreting to the best of her ability the intent of the author as outlined by the director. When not on stage? She sits around chewing her nails, waiting for the telephone to ring.

All artists are willing to suffer for their work. But why are so few prepared to learn to draw?

The only way you learn to write is by reading and studying the kind of thing you would like to write — and by writing.

Anything can become a spiritual practice once you are willing to approach it that way—once you let it bring you to your knees and show you what is real, including who you really are, who other people are, and how near God can be when you have lost your way.

how do we develop the courage to walk in the dark if we are never asked to practice?

Wisdom is not gained by knowing what is right. Wisdom is gained by practicing what is right, and noticing what happens when that practice succeeds and when it fails. Wise people do not have to be certain what they believe before they act. They are free to act, trusting that the practice itself will teach them what they need to know.

NOT EVERYONE is able to walk, but most people can, which makes walking one of the most easily available spiritual practices of all. All it takes is the decision to walk with some awareness, both of who you are and what you are doing. Where you are going is not as important, however counterintuitive that may seem.

On day three, I decided that a power outage would make a great spiritual practice.

clients. They're always there. You do have to worry, and look at the practice you've built. Give me a rundown on today's list." Casey could count on Brianna to boost her morale. "Two phobias, the low self-esteem, three adjustment disorders, and one panic attack.

Rituals help us change modes.

The key to magic is magic, Caerdinn had said. To be a mage, you must be a mage. There is no time for anything else, if you will come to the fullness of your power.

Although my art work was heavily informed by my design work on a formal and visual level, as regards meaning and content the two practices parted ways.

The aim of yoga is to eliminate the control that material nature exerts over the human spirit, to rediscover through introspective practice what the poet T.S. Eliot called "the still point of the turning world."

Learning from experience is a faculty almost never practiced

Although 1870 proved the corollary of the theory and practice of terror, that it deepens antagonism, stimulates resistance, and ends by lengthening war, the Germans remained wedded to it.

Of course we want to perform the poses with a focus on intelligent mechanics of body movement ... and push ourselves to the point of discomfort in order to create new results. But, at the same time, we want to be detached from insatiably perfecting that form and instead seek and create a depth of experience.