Quotes About Action

One learns by doing the thing; for though you think you know it, you have no certainty until you try.

No one knows what he can do until he tries.

The only menace is inertia.

It is our business to go as we are impelled.

One of the reasons why so few of us ever act, instead of react, is because we are continually stifling our deepest impulses.

Impulse without reason is not enough, and reason without impulse is a poor makeshift.

Ideas pull the trigger, but instinct loads the gun.

Good instincts usually tell you what to do long before your head has figured it out.

No one is more liable to make mistakes than the man who acts only on reflection.

The thinker philosophizes as the lover loves. Even were the consequences not only useless but harmful, he must obey his impulse.

None of us can estimate what we do when we do it from instinct.

Shall you complain who feed the world? Who clothe the world? Who house the world? Shall you complain who are the world, Of what the world may do? As from this hour You use your power, The world must follow you!

Far more has been accomplished for the welfare and progress of mankind by preventing bad actions than by doing good ones.

Well, I don't know as I want a lawyer to tell me what I cannot do. I hire him to tell me how to do what I want to do.

Tomorrow is often the busiest day of the year.

The lazy are always wanting to do something.

Every man of action has a strong dose of egotism, pride, hardness and cunning. But all those things will be forgiven him, indeed, they will be regarded as high qualities, if he can make them the means to achieve great ends.

The effect of liberty on individuals is that they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations.

Life is action and passion; therefore, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of the time, at peril of being judged not to have lived.

I expect to pass through this world but once. Any good therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.

It is in the compelling zest of high adventure and of victory, and in creative action, that man finds his supreme joy.

Do not waste time bothering whether you "love" your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him.

Cursed Mammon be, when he with treasures To restless action spurs our fate!

What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And, yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not me: no, nor woman neidier, though by your smiling, you seem to say so.