Quotes About Action

It all comes to this: if you take care not to be a man of action, if you seek peace in solitude, you will find that life's vicissitudes fall upon you from within and it is upon that stage you must prove yourself a hero or a fool.

Yet nothing would seem to dull a deft an noble intellect more swiftly, more surely than the sharp and bitter stimulant of erudition, and clearly the adolescent's melancholic and ever so conscientious thoroughness is shallow when compared with the profound resolve of the mature master to deny knowledge, disavow it, put it behind him, head high, lest it should in the slightest maim, discourage, or debase the will, action, feeling, and even passion.

Und das tat er oder glaubte es zun tun, oder glaubte es auch selber nicht recht, oder, noch bedenklicher, es fing an, ihm gleichgültiger zu werden, ob er es tat oder nicht. (Der Zauberberg)

N-are nici un fel de sens ca asasinul s? supravieÈ›uiasc? victimei. Ei sunt È™i vor r?mâne p?rtaÈ™i la o taina care-i leag? È™i-i va lega pe vecie, aÈ™a cum dou? fiinÈ›e nu o fac decât într-o alt? împrejurare unic? È™i asem?n?toare, una supunându-se, cealalt? acÈ›ionând. Destinele lor sunt de nedesp?rÈ›it.

A purely mental life may be destructive if it leads us to substitute thought for life and ideas for actions. The activity proper to man is purely mental because man is not just a disembodied mind. Our destiny is to live out what we think, because unless we live what we know, we do not even know it. It is only by making our knowledge part of ourselves, through action, that we enter into the reality that is signified by our concepts.

It is true that we are called to create a better world. But we are first of all called to a more immediate and exalted task: that of creating our own lives.

There is in all visible things an invisible fecundity, a dimmed light, a meek namelessness, a hidden wholeness. This mysterious Unity and Integrity is Wisdom, the Mother of all, Natura Naturans. There is in all things an inexhaustible sweetness and purity, a silence that is a fountain of action and of joy. It rises up in wordless gentleness and flows out to me from the unseen roots of all created being...

I don't even need to know precisely what I am doing, except that I am acting for the love of God.

There must be a time of day when the man who makes plans forgets his plans, and acts as if he had no plans at all.

Our destiny is to live out what we think, because unless we live what we know, we do not even know it. It is only by making our knowledge part of ourselves, through action, that we enter into the reality that is signified by our concepts.

For it seems to me that the first responsibility of a man of faith is to make his faith really part of his own life, not by rationalizing it but by living it.

If you don't want the effect, do something to remove the causes. There is no use loving the cause and fearing the effect and being surprised when the effect inevitably follows the cause.

It is easy to stand still and leave no trace, but it is hard to walk without touching the ground. (p. 53)

We are not responsible for more than our own action, but for this we should take complete responsibility. Then the results will follow of themselves, in a manner we may not always be able to foresee. We do not always have to foresee every possibility.

All of a sudden, something began to stir within me, something began to push me, to prompt me. It was a movement that spoke like a voice. "What are you waiting for?" it said. "Why are you sitting here? Why do you still hesitate? You know what you ought to do? Why don't you do it?

But someone will say: "If we once recognize that we are all equally wrong, all political action will instantly be paralyzed. We can only act when we assume that we are in the right." On the contrary, I believe the basis for valid political action can only be the recognition that the true solution to our problems is not accessible to any one isolated party or nation but that all must arrive at it by working together.

They seem too technical, and I need not literature but the living God. Sitivit anima mea. The strong living God. I burn with the desire for His peace, His stability, His silence, the power and wisdom of His direct action, liberation from my own heaviness. I carry myself around like a ton weight.

Most of the people I know who are having trouble finding their life work are somewhat passive in style. They wait for something good to happen to them rather than make strong positive moves.

You're chicken, she told herself, snapping her seat belt. This is America, you live in it, you let it happen. Let it unfurl.

Pointsman is finding it much easier to of late to slip into a l'etat c'est moi frame of mind--who else is doing anything?

When you reach a point in your life where you understand who is fucking who --beg pardon, Lord-- who's taking it and who's not, that's when you're obliged to choose how much you'll go along with. If you are not devoting every breath of every day waking and sleeping to destroying those who slaughter the innocent as easy as signing a check, then how innocent are you willing to call yourself? It must be negotiated with the day, from those absolute terms

When women are stressed they move towards interaction and do what she called  "tend and befriend."  Males on the other hand, moved towards action (fight) or inaction (flight).

Nothing is easier than to get peaceful people to renounce violence, even when they provide no concrete ways to prevent violence from others.

Have we reached the ultimate stage of absurdity where some people are held responsible for things that happened before they were born, while other people are not held responsible for what they themselves are doing today?