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"However, I don't feel the world is looking over my shoulder when I am working - I never think about this at all. What I think about is trying to make my work pure, and if it is pure then it can be accessible. It is quite straight forward really."
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"Employers are at their happiest on Mondays. Employees are at their happiest on Fridays."
"Back then, work revolved around life. Today, life revolves around work."
"Love by the sweat of thy brow.Not through whispered words of hollow sound or lofty dreams ne'er substance bound that more than oft do run aground. Nay, love with mighty, blistered hands that turn the soil and carve the land. A bearer of toil and golden band. Be strong! A founder of the feast! Protective knight who slays the beast! For promises and vows aloud are naught but wispy veneer shroud like cobwebs, frail, the airy words and wooing fail. So work, my darling. Toil as proof. Thy loyal heart be drained of youth and yet beat on, incessant sound. Both feet take root within the ground, and service be thy kingly crown.Love by the sweat of thy brow."
"Your life content reduces with employment."
"A specialist's mind is a slave to his specialization."
Explore more quotes by Ian Hamilton Finlay
"What you compose with is neither here nor there, you compose with words, or you compose with stone plants and trees, or you compose with events; the Sheriff's officer, or whatever."
"I came to these mediums through having the garden, and of course, people who have designed gardens have always worked in collaboration, and never made their own inscriptions."
"But at the beginning it was clear to me that concrete poetry was peculiarly suited for using in public settings. This was my idea, but of course I never really much got the chance to do it."
"I am always a beginner. I only try to include different parts of life; the pastoral, the tragic, et cetera."
"For me concrete poetry was a particular way of using language which came out of a particular feeling, and I don't have control over whether this feeling is in me or not."
"I have often said that just as the French revolution, for instance, understood itself through antiquity, I think our time can be understood through the French revolution. It is quite a natural process to use other times to understand your own time."
"Little Sparta is a garden in the traditional sense. It is perhaps not like other modern gardens, but I think that other times would have had no difficulty with it."
"No, I don't make my work in order to challenge or confuse other people's expectations - I only do what I find natural."
"My position is that since the non-secular status of my garden is not recognised by the law; by the world of the public, then the garden can only be private. So, I closed the garden to the public."
"People have always found me challenging - I don't know why, when I am only being myself. I don't understand why they find me so annoying but they do. It is pity, but that is how it is."
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