Quotes About Action

The rarer action is in virtue than in vengeance.

What a piece of work is a man! How noble is reason! how infinite in faculty! in form, in 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 neither, though, by your smiling, you seem to say so.

Art thou afeard To be the same in thine own act and valour As thou art in desire? Wouldst thou have that Which thou esteem'st the ornament of life, And live a coward in thine own esteem, Letting 'I dare not' wait upon 'I would,' Like the poor cat i' the adage?

Heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty, but seeming so, for my peculiar end: for when my outward action doth demonstrate the native act and figure of my heart in compliment extern, 'tis not long after but I will wear my heart upon my sleeve for daws to peck at: I am not what I am.

Better once than never, for never too late.

Não tenho dormido. Entre a ação de um ato terrível e o primeiro gesto, todo esse intervalo é como um fantasma ou um sonho odioso: O Génio e os instrumentos mortais estão nessa altura reunidos; e a condição do homem, equiparável a um pequeno reino, sofre então a natureza de uma insurreição.

Tush! Fear not, my lord, we will not stand to prate; Talkers are no good doers: be assured We come to use our hands and not our tongues.

I am not yet of Percy's mind, the Hotspur of the North; he that kills me some six or seven dozen of Scots as a breakfast, washes his hands, and says to his wife, 'Fie upon this quiet life! I want work.

O that a man might know The end of this day's business ere it come! But it sufficeth that the day will end And then the end is known.

Ill deeds is doubled with an evil word.

Tis too much proved—that with devotion's visage And pious action we do sugar o'er The devil himself.

What you do Still betters what is done. When you speak, sweet. I'ld have you do it ever: when you sing, I'ld have you buy and sell so, so give alms, Pray so; and, for the ordering your affairs, To sing them too: when you do dance, I wish you A wave o' the sea, that you might ever do Nothing but that; move still, still so, And own no other function: each your doing, So singular in each particular, Crowns what you are doing in the present deed, That all your acts are queens.

There is Throats to be cut, and Works to be done.

The villany you teach me I shall execute; and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.

Ah, kill me with your weapon, not with words.

Suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o'er-step not the modesty of nature;

Mere prattle without practice

Action is eloquence.

Coward dogs most spend their mouths when what they seem to threaten runs far before them.

Time, thou anticipat'st my dread exploits. The flighty purpose never is o'ertook Unless the deed go with it. From this moment The very firstlings of my heart shall be The firstlings of my hand. And even now, To crown my thoughts with acts, be it thought and done

Hot blood begets hot thoughts, And hot thoughts beget Hot deeds, And hot deeds is love.

To bed, to bed! There's a knocking at the gate. Come, come, come, come, give me your hand. What's done cannot be undone. To bed, to bed, to bed!

Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor: suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o'er-step not the modesty of nature: for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.

When our actions do not, our fears do make us traitors