The secret of life is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of the day for the rest of your life. And the most important thing is, it must be something you cannot possibly do.
Interpretation
Life's meaning comes from dedicating yourself to a significant but challenging task.
Henry Moore's quote emphasizes the idea that fulfillment in life stems from committing oneself to a purpose or task that is deeply meaningful and requires total devotion. The challenge lies in selecting a goal that is difficult, if not impossible, as this creates a journey of continuous growth and engagement throughout one's life, rather than simply aiming for achievable outcomes.
In practice
This quote can serve as inspiration in a graduation speech to encourage students to pursue their passions.
Recently I have been working in the country, where, carving in the open air, I find sculpture more natural than in a London studio, but it needs bigger dimensions. A large piece of stone or wood placed almost anywhere at random in a field, orchard, or garden, immediately looks right and inspiring.
I find in all the artists that I admire most a disturbing element, a distortion, giving evidence of a struggle . . . . In great art, this conflict is hidden, it is unresolved. All that is bursting with energy is disturbing - not perfect.
Between beauty of expression and power of expression there is a difference of function. The first aims at pleasing the senses, the second has a spiritual vitality which for me is more moving and goes deeper than the senses.
A work can have in it a pent-up energy, an intense life of its own, independent of the subject it may represent.
I have always liked drawing, when you draw you see things more intensely.
All art is an abstraction to some degree.
All in all you're just another brick in the wall
In theory we understand people, but in practice we can't put up with them, I thought, deal with them for the most part reluctantly and always treat them from our point of view. We should observe and treat people not from our point of view but from all angles, I thought, associate with them in such a way that we can say we associate with them so to speak in a completely unbiased way, which however isn't possible, since we actually are always biased against everybody.
I discovered later, and I'm still discovering right up to this moment, that is it only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. By this-worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life's duties, problems, successes and failures. In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world. That, I think, is faith.
Peace is not simply the absence of warfare.
In reality, we haven't escaped the gravity of life at all. We are still beholden to ecological laws, the same as any other life-form.
And the more she could imagine this island, the less she liked the real world. The more she could imagine the people, the less she liked any real people.
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