quotations about action
Action is character.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
Notes for The Last Tycoon
Let us do or die.
JOHN FLETCHER
The Island Princess
An action is the perfection and publication of thought.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Nature
When nothing hampers action, the soul has fewer reasons for action.
ROMAIN ROLLAND
Jean-Christophe
The man of action is not the headstrong fool who rushes into danger with no thought for himself, but the man who puts into practice the things he knows.
CESARE PAVESE
This Business of Living, Sep. 19, 1938
So many of man's actions appear to have no immediate consequence but, concealed, do their work until finally all catches up and forms a complex web of cause and effect.
TOBSHA LEARNER
The Witch of Cologne
Potential is the good of life -- action the secret key.
D. WILLIAMS
"Action", The National Magazine, Dec. 1854
Action without a name, a "who" attached to it, is meaningless.
HANNAH ARENDT
The Human Condition
The views of men can only be known, or guessed at, by their words or actions.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
letter to Patrick Henry, Jan. 15, 1799
Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Willing is not enough, we must do.
BRUCE LEE
Jeet Kune Do: Bruce Lee's Commentaries on the Martial Way
The bridge of life is built on the scaffold of action, but rests finally on the piers of results.
LEWIS F. KORNS
Thoughts
The only things you control are your actions. You decided to get down about something. That means you can also decide to do something that cheers you up.
DARIUS FOROUX
"7 Ways to Instantly Feel 10X Better", Huffington Post, March 1, 2016
We become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
Action is eloquence.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Coriolanus
Our deeds are like children that are born to us; they live and act apart from our own will. Nay, children may be strangled, but deeds never: they have an indestructible life both in and out of our consciousness.
GEORGE ELIOT
Romola
It is quite impossible to understand the character of a person from one action, however striking that action may be.
ARTHUR HELPS
Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd
A man often imagines that he acts, when he is acted upon.
FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Moral Maxims
It is so easy to do a dirty thing with self-satisfaction when it consists in abstaining from action.
LORD ACTON
letter to Mary Gladstone, June 1, 1880
If one wants to be active, one must not be afraid of going wrong, one must not be afraid of making mistakes now and then. Many people think that they will become good just by doing no harm -- but that's a lie.... That way lies stagnation, mediocrity.
VINCENT VAN GOGH
letter to Theo van Gogh, Oct. 1884
Action is a business of risk; the real question is the magnitude of that risk.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Estimates of Some Englishmen and Scotchmen