quotations about action
All bold, great actions that are seen too near,
Look rash and foolish to unthinking eyes;
But at a distance they at once appear
In their true grandeur
HENRY ABBEY
"The Statue"
It also takes courage to act in the face of uncertainty and risk, but you have to act if you're going to succeed. And when you act, you're going to make mistakes, but it's not the mistake that's the problem. The problem is if you don't learn from it, fix it and go on to something else.
GEORGE CASEY
"Former Army Chiefs of Staff share lessons learned with cadets", DVIDS, February 26, 2016
There is no act, however trivial, but has its train of consequences, as there is no hair so small but it casts its shadow.
SAMUEL SMILES
Character
Man is distinguished from the brute animals in proportion as thought prevails over sense: but in the healthy processes of the mind, a balance is constantly maintained between the impressions from outward objects and the inward operations of the intellect:--for if there be an overbalance in the contemplative faculty, man thereby becomes the creature of mere meditation, and loses his natural power of action.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
"Notes on Hamlet"
When I was young, I had to choose between the life of being and the life of doing. And I leapt at the latter like a trout to a fly. But each deed you do, each act, binds you to itself and to its consequences, and makes you act again and yet again. Then very seldom do you come upon a space, a time like this, between act and act, when you may stop and simply be. Or wonder who, after all, you are.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Farthest Shore
Experience is the child of Thought, and Thought is the child of Action. We cannot learn men from books.
BENJAMIN DISRAELI
Vivian Grey
Action helps thought, and thought helps action. By action thought is rendered more masculine, attains to greater breadth, and acquires a certain nobleness and dignity. Thanks to thought, action may become more definite, more precise, more fruitful.
ALFRED AUSTIN
The Bridling of Pegasus
Rest not! Life is sweeping by; go and dare before you die. Something mighty and sublime leave behind to conquer time!
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
"Haste Not--Rest Not"
Don't think, dear, do.
GEORGE BALANCHINE
"Balanchine Said", The New Yorker, January 26, 2009
A human action becomes genuinely important when it springs from the soil of a clear-sighted awareness of the temporality and the ephemerality of everything human. It is only this awareness that can breathe any greatness into an action.
VACLAV HAVEL
Disturbing the Peace
Our deeds determine us as much as we determine our deeds.
GEORGE ELIOT
Adam Bede
We never understand how fervently our actions and behaviour preach even more effectively than a sermon.
MALITA WAMALA
"Your Actions Are the Best Sermon", Kampala Observer, February 10, 2016
Action from principle, the perception and the performance of right, changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary, and does not consist wholly with anything which was. It not only divides States and churches, it divides families; ay, it divides the individual, separating the diabolical in him from the divine.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
"Resistance to Civil Government"
The native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought; And enterprises of great pitch and moment, With this regard, their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Hamlet
Pleasure and action make the hours seem short.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Othello
I don't believe that we are what we do although many thinkers argue otherwise. I believe that what we do is, very often, a poor approximation of what we are -- an imperfect manifestation of a much better totality. Even the best of us sometimes bite off, as it were, less than we can chew.
DONALD BARTHELME
"Jaws"
Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.
ANONYMOUS
In this country ... men seem to live for action as long as they can and sink into apathy when they retire.
CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS
diary, Apr. 15, 1836
Time is a factor in all action. An imperfect scheme put into action at the proper time is better than a perfect one accomplished too late.
ANDRE MAUROIS
An Art of Living
Dreamers are half-way men of thought, and men of thought are half-way men of action.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought