Quotes About Action

The 'action' began: to me it seemed all the more obscure because in those days, when I read to myself, I used often, while I turned the pages, to dream of something quite different. And to the gaps which this habit made in my knowledge of the story more were added by the fact that when it was Mamma who was reading to me aloud she left all the love-scenes out.

Uma renúncia não é sempre total desde o princípio, quando a decidimos com a nossa alma antiga e antes de que, em reação, tenha ela agido sobre nós, quer se trate da renúncia de um doente, de um monge, de um artista, de um herói.

In order to deploy the means necessary to ensure her return, I was condemned to act once more as if I were not in love with her and were not suffering from her departure, I was condemned to continue lying to her—not that I had ever been very successful with this course of action, but because I had always adopted it since I had been in love with Albertine.

La filosofia parla spesso di atti liberi e di atti necessari. Forse non ve n'è nessuno più completamente subìto da noi di quello che, in virtù di una forza ascensionale compressa durante l'azione, fa, quando il nostro pensiero è in riposo, risalire così un ricordo livellato agli altri dalla forza oppressiva della distrazione, e slanciarsi, perché a nostra insaputa esso conteneva più degli altri un fascino di cui ci accorgiamo soltanto ventiquattro ore dopo.

It is as if the minds of people of action, and smart people are people of action (on a minuscule, microscopic scale, but still action), are so consumed by attention to what will be happening in an hour's time that they commit very little to memory.

In a world thronged with monsters and with gods, we know little peace of mind. There is hardly a single action we perform in that phase which we would not give anything, in later life, to be able to annul. Whereas what we ought to regret is that we no longer possess the spontaneity which made us perform them. In later life we look at things in a more practical way, in full conformity with the rest of society, but adolescence is the only period in which we learn anything.

With your left foot you shall wipe out the footprint of your right foot.

Perhaps the solution is to have a little project every day. If there's no reason for you to get up in the morning it really doesn't matter if you are alive or dead.

Why the hell did I have them if I didn't use them? It makes no sense to wait for the right moment because it never arrives. That moment doesn't exist.

Uno de nuestros pecados cardinales son las cosas que casi hacemos, las palabras que casi decimos, el amor que casi damos. ¿Por qué esperamos hasta que es demasiado tarde?

How often in life do you get to see the right foot meet the right ass at kicking time?

Commitment leads to action. Action brings your dream closer.

Ama o sálvate: elige.

Never act without purpose and resolve, or without the means to finish the job.

He was a man who looked at what ought to be done, not to the reputation which is got by a man's acts.

Pray look upon the plants and birds, the ants, spiders, and bees, and you will see them all exerting their nature, and busy in their station. Pray, shall not a man act like a man?

All you need are these: certainty of judgment in the present moment; action for the common good in the present moment; and an attitude of gratitude in the present moment for anything that comes your way.

Have I been made for this, to lie under the blankets and keep myself warm?

Set yourself in motion, if it is in your power, and do not look about you to see if anyone will observe it; nor yet expect Plato's Republic: but be content if the smallest thing goes on well, and consider such an event to be no small matter.

Waste no time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.

You can commit injustice by doing nothing.

Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.

Tomorrow is nothing, today is too late the good lived yesterday.

A wrong-doer is often a man that has left something undone, not always he that has done something.