Quotes About Action

For in general mortals have a great power of being astonished at the presence of an effect toward which they have done everything, and at the absence of an effect toward which they had done nothing but desire it.

I fear that in this thing many rich people deceive themselves. They go on accumulating the means but never using them; making bricks, but never building.

But something she yearned for by which her life might be filled with action at once rational and ardent; and since the time was gone by for guiding visions and spiritual directors, since prayer heightened yearning but not instruction, what lamp was there but knowledge? Surely learned men kept-the only oil; and who more learned than Mr. Casaubon? Thus

1st Gent. Where lies the power, there let the blame lie too. 2d Gent. Nay, power is relative; you cannot fright The coming pest with border fortresses, Or catch your carp with subtle argument. All force is twain in one: cause is not cause Unless effect be there; and action's self Must needs contain a passive. So command Exists but with obedience

Might, could, would—they are contemptible auxiliaries

That is a way of speaking--it is not acted upon, it is not real, said Gwendolen, bitterly. You admire Miss Lapidoth because you think her blameless, perfect. And you know you would despise a woman who had done something you thought very wrong. That would depend entirely upon her own view of what she had done, said Deronda.

I have serious things to do now. I have a living to give away.

Bulstrode, after a moment's hesitation, took his hat from the floor and slowly rose

She did not want to deck herself with knowledge—to wear it loose from the nerves and blood that fed her action

She would have been obliged to allow, if any one had said it to her, that what she submitted to could not take the shape of duty, but was submission to a yoke drawn on her by an action she was ashamed of, and worn with a strength of selfish motives that left no weight for duty to carry.

I think we have no right to come forward and urge wider changes for good, until we have tried to alter the evils which lie under our own hands.

it is one thing to like defiance, and another thing to like its consequences.

No great deed is done by falterers who ask for certainty.

What should I do—how should I act now, this very day . . . What she would resolve to do that day did not yet seem quite clear, but something that she could achieve stirred her as with an approaching murmur which would soon gather distinctness.

Perbuatan-perbuatan kita menentukan siapa diri kita sebesar sebagaimana kita menentukan perbuatan-perbuatan kita.

When chemistry has told me that nitric acid thrown in a person's face will cause great agony; when physics has told me that throwing a person out of a window will tend to cause broken bones or death; when economics has told me that promising to keep a person in old age will make him idle and improvident, then, and not till then, can ethics step in and forbid me to commit those actions.

You do what you can--can't do much more than that.

The shortest answer is doing.

George's stories remind us that we are not victims of circumstance—we have the power to react. Our actions will always determine the outcome. That makes all the difference.

In a system where authority is of the utmost importance, the debt-payment principle is given much heavier weight than the positive-action principle.

To nurture children, one must have absolute and regular empathy with them. • To act morally toward people needing help to survive, one must have absolute and regular empathy with them. • Nurturance may require making sacrifices to care for children. • Moral action may require making sacrifices to help truly needy people. If

You might think that the world exists independently of how we understand it. You would be mistaken. Our understanding of the world is part of the world—a physical part of the world. Our conceptual framings exist in physical neural circuitry in our brains, largely below the level of conscious awareness, and they define and limit how we understand the world, and so they affect our actions in the world.

In Nurturant Parent morality, the teenage girl is "in trouble," she needs help and deserves empathy (moral-action Category 2—helping).

In the X-Men the women are so strong and sexy! We really kick some male butt!