Quotes About Action

If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude. Don't complain. —Maya Angelou, author and poet Have

Basta abandonar todo o passado, confiar o futura à providência e dirigir a ação presente para a piedade e a justiça.

What we do now echoes in eternity.

Don't go on discussing what a good person should be. Just be one.

Do not act as if you had ten thousand years to throw away. Death stands at your elbow. Be good for something while you live and it is in your power.

Stop wandering about! You aren't likely to read your own notebooks, or ancient histories, or the anthologies you've collected to enjoy in your old age. Get busy with life's purpose, toss aside empty hopes, get active in your own rescue-if you care for yourself at all-and do it while you can.

A wrongdoer is often a man who has left something undone, not always one who has done something.

Remember how long you've been putting this off, how many extensions the gods gave you, and you didn't use them. At some point you have to recognize what world it is that you belong to; what power rules it and from what source you spring; that there is a limit to the time assigned to you, and if you don't use it to free yourself it will be gone and will never return.

In your actions, don't procrastinate. In your conversations, don't confuse. In your thoughts, don't wander. In your soul, don't be passive or aggressive. In your life, don't be all about business.

You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.

Whatever time you choose is the right time. Not late, not early.

Objective judgment, now, at this very moment. Unselfish action, now, at this very moment. Willing acceptance—now, at this very moment—of all external events. That's all you need.

The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way. 21.

Stop talking about what the good man is like, and just be one.

No more roundabout discussions of what makes a good man. Be one!

At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself, I have to go to work - as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I'm going to do what I was born for - the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?

Everything fades so quickly, turns into legend, and soon oblivion covers it. And those are the ones who shone. The rest—"unknown, unasked-for" a minute after death. What is "eternal" fame? Emptiness. Then what should we work for? Only this: proper understanding; unselfish action; truthful speech. A resolve to accept whatever happens as necessary and familiar, flowing like water from that same source and spring.

Let no act be done without a purpose, nor otherwise than according to the perfect principles of art.

Stop drifting. You're not going to re-read your Brief Comments, your Deeds of the Ancient Greeks and Romans, the commonplace books you saved for your old age. Sprint for the finish. Write off your hopes, and if your well-being matters to you, be your own savior while you can.

Remember how long you have been putting off these things, and how often you have received an opportunity from the gods, and yet do not use it.

Remember how long thou hast already put off these things, and how

Attend to the matter before you, whether it is an opinion or an act or a word. You suffer this justly: for you choose rather to become good tomorrow than to be good today.

And you can also commit injustice by doing nothing.

Do not waste the remainder of thy life in thoughts about others, when thou dost not refer thy thoughts to some object of common utility.