Quotes About Action

I am afraid that if you want to go down into history you'll have to do something for it.

A woman's true tenderness, like the true virility of man, is expressed in action of a conquering kind.

Action is consolatory. It is the enemy of thought and the friend of flattering illusions. Only in the conduct of our action can we find the sense of mastery over the Fates.

Action is consolatory. It is the enemy of thought and the friend of flattering illusions.

That man seems to have a particular talent for being on the spot whenever there is something picturesque to be done.

I suppose I have done a certain amount of harm, since I allowed myself to be tempted into action. It seemed innocent enough, but all action is bound to be harmful. It is devilish. That is why this world is evil upon the whole. But I have done with it! I shall never lift a little finger again. At one time I thought that intelligent observation of facts was the best way of cheating the time which is allotted to us whether we want it or not; but now I, have done with observation, too.

It's only those who do nothing that make no mistakes.

Charles Gould did not open his heart to her in any set speeches. He simply went on acting and thinking in her sight. This is the true method of sincerity.

There are times when a man must act as though life were equally sweet in any company.

it occurred to me that my speech or my silence, indeed any action of mine, would be a mere futility.

The only thing that matters to us is the emotional state of the masses.  Without emotion there is no action.

If no one fought except on his own conviction, there would be no wars, he said.

Well! well! It's only those who do nothing that make no mistakes, I suppose.

As in political so in literary action a man wins friends for himself mostly by the passion of his prejudices and by the consistent narrowness of his outlook. But I have never been able to love what was not lovable or hate what was not hateful out of deference for some general principle. Whether there be any courage in making this admission I know not.

In other fields of endeavor poverty has been the spur to action. Napoleon was born in obscurity, the son of a hand-to-mouth scrivener in the backward island of Corsica. Abraham Lincoln, the boast and pride of America, the man who made this land too hot for the feet of slaves, came from a log cabin in the Ohio backwoods. So did James A. Garfield. Ulysses Grant came from a tanyard to become the world's greatest general. Thomas A. Edison commenced as a newsboy on a railway train.

that the value of an action is measured not by its success or failure, but by the motivation behind it.

All beings are the heirs of their own karma. Their happiness or unhappiness depends on their actions, not upon my wishes.

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

No deed is good that one regrets having done.

the value of an action is measured not by its success or failure, but by the motivation behind it.

the results of our actions follow us like a shadow, or, to use an ancient image, like the wheel of the oxcart following the foot of the ox.

Mind is the forerunner of all things. Speak or act with peaceful mind, happiness follows like a shadow that never leaves.4

Hearing the Dharma and sharing it with others is the fifth skillful action. Words have power, and many people have become enlightened simply by attentive listening to the teachings. Listening itself is an art.

We do not know when any seed will come to fruition. We can experience the karmic results of our actions in this lifetime, in the next life, or at any time in the future. But our present actions influence which karmic seeds have the opportunity to come to fruition.