Let us do or die. [ Campbell or Burns ]
Push on, - keep moving. [ Thomas Morton ]
Order, thou eye of action. [ Aaron Hill ]
Justice is truth in action. [ Joubert ]
We cannot all do all things. [ Virgil ]
How my achievements mock me!
I will go meet them. [ William Shakespeare ]
Put his shoulder to the wheel. [ Burton ]
The act of God injures no one. [ Juvenal ]
Do not do what is already done. [ Terence ]
Action is but coarsened thought. [ Amiel ]
Let us then be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate,
Still achieving, still pursuing.
Learn to labor and to wait. [ Longfellow ]
A bold onset is half the battle. [ Garibaldi ]
I profess not talking: only this.
Let each man do his best. [ Shakespeare ]
The only cure for grief is action. [ George Henry Lewes ]
Repent of a good action if you can. [ Proverb ]
Awake, arise, or be forever fall'n! [ Milton ]
To the valiant actions speak alone. [ Smollett ]
Strong reasons make strong actions. [ William Shakespeare ]
Who ever repented of a good action? [ Proverb ]
Make your best thoughts into action. [ Mme. Necker ]
All may do what has by man been done. [ Edward Young ]
There is no true action without will. [ Rousseau ]
Gentle in method, resolute in action. [ From the Latin ]
The food of hope is meditative action. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]
Action is the right outlet of emotion. [ Ward Beecher ]
Woman lives by sentiment, man by action. [ Balzac ]
A man is not good or bad for one action. [ Proverb ]
The good is but the beautiful in action. [ J. J. Rousseau ]
Action is the proper fruit of knowledge. [ Proverb ]
The ancestor of every action is a thought. [ Emerson ]
It is better to wear out than to rust out. [ Bishop Cumberland ]
Do well and right, and let the world sink. [ Herbert ]
For good or evil must in our actions meet;
Wicked is not much worse than indiscreet. [ Donne ]
Action is transitory, a step, a blow.
The motion of a muscle - this way or that. [ Wordsworth ]
Not always actions show the man; we find
Who does a kindness is not therefore kind. [ Pope ]
Of every noble action the intent
Is to give worth reward - vice punishment. [ Beaumont and Fletcher ]
Keeps mankind sweet by action; without that
The world would be a filthy settled mud. [ Crown ]
When anger rushes, unrestrained, to action. [ Savage ]
Lose no opportunity of doing a good action. [ Proverb ]
It is human actions paint the chart of time. [ Montgomery ]
To be active is the primary vocation of man. [ Goethe ]
Action, so to speak, is the genius of nature. [ Blair ]
Be great in act, as you have been in thought. [ William Shakespeare ]
There is only one proof of ability, - action. [ Marie Ebner-Eschenbach ]
Time is short; your obligations are infinite. [ Massillon ]
Pleasure and action make the hours seem short. [ William Shakespeare ]
Some place the bliss in action, some in ease.
Those call it pleasure, and contentment these. [ Pope ]
Dexterity lends an air of ease to every action. [ G. Crabb ]
The word is free, action dumb, obedience blind. [ Friedrich Schiller ]
Be slow in considering, but resolute in action. [ Bias ]
It is a bad action that success cannot justify. [ Proverb ]
Man punishes the action, but God the intention. [ Proverb ]
One mad action is not enough to prove a man mad. [ Proverb ]
It is the will that makes the action good or ill. [ Robert Herrick ]
It is praiseworthy even to attempt a great action. [ La Rochefoucauld ]
A great mind is a good sailor, as a great heart is. [ Emerson ]
It is well to think well: it is divine to act well. [ Horace Mann ]
The thing done avails, and not what is said about it. [ Emerson ]
When we cannot act as we wish, we must act as we can. [ Terrence ]
Living requires but little life; doing requires much. [ Joubert ]
The life of action is nobler than the life of thought. [ Dinah Muloch Craik ]
God put in man thought; society, action; Nature, revery. [ Victor Hugo ]
Nothing is more terrible than to see ignorance in action. [ Goethe ]
Truth reaches her full action by degrees, and not at once. [ Draper ]
All the praise of inward virtue consists in outward action. [ Proverb ]
The manly part is to do with might and main what you can do. [ Emerson ]
Never do an act of which you doubt the justice or propriety. [ Latin ]
Our actions are our own; their consequences belong to Heaven. [ Francis ]
Men do less than they ought unless they do all that they can. [ Carlyle ]
What the Puritans gave the world was not thought, but action. [ Wendell Phillips ]
It is not the action, but the intention, that is good or bad. [ Proverb ]
Doing good is the only certainly happy action of a man's life. [ Sir P. Sidney ]
A stirring dwarf we do allowance give before a sleeping giant. [ William Shakespeare ]
The Lord is a God of knowledge, and by Him actions are weighed. [ I Samuel ii. 3 ]
All power appears only in transition. Permanent power is stuff. [ Novalis ]
Our acts make or mar us, - we are the children of our own deeds. [ Victor Hugo ]
Grace is the proper relation of the acting person to the action. [ Winckelmann ]
Every great book is an action, and every great action is a book. [ Luther ]
The flighty purpose never is o'ertook unless the deed go with it. [ William Shakespeare ]
Only the actions of the just smell sweet and blossom in the dust. [ James Shirley ]
Talk that does not end in action is better suppressed altogether. [ Carlyle ]
Who sweeps a room, as for Thy laws, makes that and the action fine. [ George Herbert ]
Action can be understood and again represented by the spirit alone. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
Action is happiness here; and without action there can be no heaven. [ Voss ]
No single action creates, however it may exhibit, a man's character. [ Jeremy Taylor ]
The best way to keep good acts in memory is to refresh them with new. [ Cato ]
Our actions must clothe us with an immortality loathsome or glorious. [ Colton ]
The dreamer is a madman quiescent, the madman is a dreamer in action. [ F. H. Hedge ]
The virtuous action, done for virtue's sake alone, is truly laudable. [ Marguerite de Valois ]
Business and action strengthen the brain, but too much study weakens it. [ Proverb ]
Activity is the presence of function. Character is the record of function. [ Greenough ]
How much easier do we find it to commend a good action than to imitate it. [ Anon ]
The end of man is an action and not a thought, though it were the noblest. [ Carlyle ]
Speak out in acts; the time for words has passed, and deeds alone suffice. [ Whittier ]
The only true method of action in this world is to be in it, but not of it. [ Madame Swetchine ]
The conscious utterance of thought, by speech or action, to any end, is art. [ Emerson ]
Our actions are like the terminations of verses, which we rhyme as we please. [ Rochefoucauld ]
Action is the parent of results; dormancy, the brooding mother of discontent. [ Miss Mulock ]
Remember that in all miseries lamenting becomes fools, and action, wise folk. [ Sir P. Sidney ]
Every action is measured by the depth of the sentiment from which it proceeds. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
Active natures are rarely melancholy. Activity and melancholy are incompatible. [ Bovee ]
Contemplation is necessary to generate an object, but action must propagate it. [ Feltham ]
As wit is too hard for power in council, so power is too hard for wit in action. [ Wycherley ]
By woe the soul to daring action steals; by woe in plaintless patience it excels. [ Savage ]
Perseverance is the continuance in any design, state, opinion, or course of action. [ C. Buck ]
Action is eloquence, and the eyes of the ignorant are more learned than their ears. [ William Shakespeare ]
The true scholar grudges every opportunity of action passed by, as a loss of power. [ Emerson ]
The happiness of love is in action; its test is what one is willing to do for others. [ Lew Wallace ]
The entire world shall be populous with that action which saves one soul from despair. [ Omar Khayam ]
Reason is not the only interpreter of life. The fountain of action is in the feelings. [ Henry T. Tuckerman ]
Representative government is justice organised, reason in living action, and morality armed. [ Royer Collard ]
However brilliant an action, it should not be esteemed great unless the result of a great motive. [ La Rochefoucauld ]
The mingled incentives which lead to action are often too subtle and lie too deep for us to analyze. [ Lavater ]
True courage scorns to vent her prowess in a storm of words; and to the valiant, action alone speaks. [ Tobias Smollett ]
Women, like men, must be educated with a view to action, or their studies cannot be called education. [ Harriet Martineau ]
The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident. [ Lamb ]
Necessity of action takes away the fear of the act, and makes bold resolution the favorite of fortune. [ F. Quarles ]
Nature fashions no creature without implanting in it the strength needful for its action and duration. [ Carlyle ]
No action will be considered as blameless unless the will was so; for by the will the act was dictated. [ Seneca ]
Every generous action loves the public view, yet no theatre for virtue is equal to a consciousness of it. [ Cicero ]
Let the motive be in the deed, and not in the event. Be not one whose motive for action is the hope of reward. [ Krishna ]
He is incapable of a truly good action who knows not the pleasure in contemplating the good actions of others. [ Lavater ]
It is not necessary for all men to be great in action. The greatest and sublimest power is often simple patience. [ Horace Bushnell ]
Every man feels instinctively that all the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action. [ Lowell ]
Prudence is the virtue of the senses. It is the science of appearances. It is the outmost action of the inward life. [ Emerson ]
Enthusiasm gives life to what is invisible, and interest to what has no immediate action on our comfort in this world. [ Mme. de Staël ]
When thou receivest praise, take it indifferently, and return it to God, the giver of the gift, or blesser of the action. [ Jeremy Taylor ]
Liberty is quite as much a moral as a political growth, - the result of free individual action, energy, and independence. [ Samuel Smiles ]
There are few who have at once thought and capacity for action. Thought expands, but lames; action animates, but narrows. [ Goethe ]
Sow a thought, reap an action; sow an action, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character, reap a destiny. [ Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People ]
Talent, lying in the understanding, is often inherited; genius, being the action of reason and imagination, rarely or never. [ Coleridge ]
The greatness of action includes immoral as well as moral greatness - Cortes and Napoleon, as well as Luther and Washington. [ Whipple ]
Vigor is contagious; and whatever makes us either think or feel strongly adds to our power and enlarges our field of action. [ Emerson ]
Suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature. [ William Shakespeare, Hamlet ]
Pride, in some particular disguise or other - often a secret to be proud himself - is the most ordinary spring of action among men. [ Steele ]
The propriety of thoughts and words, which are the hidden beauties of a play, are but confusedly judged in the vehemence of action. [ Dryden ]
The mother forms the first rudiments of the infant mind, and instills into the infant bosom the first principles of virtuous action. [ J. Iredell ]
The angels may have wider spheres of action, may have nobler forms of duty; but right with them and with us is one and the same thing. [ Chapin ]
In strictness of language there is a difference between knowledge and wisdom; wisdom always supposing action and action directed by it. [ Paley ]
Only when the voice of duty is silent, or when it has already spoken, may we allowably think of the consequences of a particular action. [ Hare ]
God is glorified, not by our groans, but our thanksgivings; and all good thought and good action claim a natural alliance with good cheer. [ Whipple ]
Human action is a seed of circumstances scattered in the dark land of the future and hopefully left to the powers that rule human destiny. [ Friedrich Schiller ]
It is manifest that all government of action is to be gotten by knowledge, and knowledge best, by gathering many knowledges, which is reading. [ Sir P. Sidney ]
Things will always right themselves in time, if only those who know what they want to do, and can do, persevere unremittingly in work and action. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
How can we learn to know ourselves? Never by reflection, but only through action. Essay to do thy duty, and thou knowest at once what is in thee. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
Wise sayings are not only for ornament, but for action and business, having a point or edge, whereby knots in business are pierced and discovered. [ Bacon ]
If a man has a right to be proud of anything, it is of a good action done as it ought to be, without any base interest lurking at the bottom of it. [ Sterne ]
The impulse to perform a worthy action often springs from our best nature, but is afterwards tainted by the spur of selfishness or sinister interest. [ Emile Souvestre ]
Beauty is the mark God sets on virtue. Every natural action is graceful. Every heroic act is also decent, and causes the place and the bystanders to shine. [ Emerson ]
Lie not, neither to thyself, nor man, nor God. Let mouth and heart be one; beat and speak together, and make both felt in action. It is for cowards to lie. [ George Herbert ]
The essence of true nobility is neglect of self. Let the thought of self pass in, and the beauty of a great action is gone, like the bloom from a soiled flower. [ Froude ]
How sweet it would be to live in society if the countenance always reflected the disposition, if decency were virtue, and if our maxims were our rules of action. [ J. J. Rousseau ]
That man is an ill husband of his honour that entereth into any action, the failing wherein may disgrace him more than the carrying of it through can honour him. [ Bacon ]
Few of the many wise apothegms which have been uttered, from the time of the seven sages of Greece to that of poor Richard, have prevented a single foolish action. [ Macaulay ]
Though with their high wrongs I am struck to the quick, yet, with my nobler reason, against my fury do I take part; the rarer action is in virtue than in vengeance. [ William Shakespeare ]
No villainy or flagitious action was ever yet committed but, upon a due inquiry into the cause of it, it will be found that a lie was first or last the principal engine to effect it. [ South ]
Does the man live who has not felt this spur to action, in a more or less generous spirit? Emulation lives so near to envy that it is sometimes difficult to establish the boundary-lines. [ Henry Giles ]
We protract the career of time by employment, we lengthen the duration of our lives by wise thoughts and useful actions. Life to him who wishes not to have lived in vain is thought and action. [ Zimmermann ]
It is difficult for the mind to span the career of nobody; the sphere of action opened to this wonderful person so enlarges every day that the limited faculties of anybody are too weak to compass it. [ Dickens ]
We unconsciously imitate what pleases us, and insensibly approximate to the characters we most admire. In this way, a generous habit of thought and of action carries with it an incalculable influence. [ Bovee ]
All the means of action, the shapeless masses - the materials - lie everywhere about us. What we need is the celestial fire to change the flint into transparent crystal, bright and clear. That fire is genius! [ Longfellow ]
It is harder to avoid censure than to gain applause; for this may be done by one great or wise action in an age. Rut to escape censure a man must pass his whole life without saying or doing one ill or foolish thing. [ Hume ]
The desire of posthumous fame and the dread of posthumous reproach and execration are feelings from the influence of which scarcely any man is perfectly free, and which in many men are powerful and constant motives of action. [ Macaulay ]
Biographies of great, but especially of good men are most instructive and useful as helps, guides, and incentives to others. Some of the best are almost equivalent to gospels, - teaching high living, high thinking, and energetic action, for their own and the world's good. [ Samuel Smiles ]
There is no action so slight, nor so mean, but it may be done to a great purpose, and ennobled therefore; nor is any purpose so great but that slight actions may help it, and may be so done as to help it much, most especially that chief of all purposes, the pleasing of God. [ Ruskin ]
The silent power of books is a great power in the world; and there is a joy in reading them which those alone can know who read them with desire and enthusiasm. Silent, passive, and noiseless though they be, they may yet set in action countless multitudes, and change the order of nations. [ Henry Giles ]
Occasion or Opportunity? The occasion is that which determines our conduct, and amounts to a degree of necessity; the opportunity is that which invites to action. We do things as the occasion requires, or as the opportunity offers. We may have occasion to write a letter without having the opportunity. [ Pure English, Hackett And Girvin, 1884 ]
Style! style, why, all writers will tell you that it is the very thing which can least of all be changed. A man's style is nearly as much a part of him as his physiognomy, his figure, the throbbing of his pulse, - in short, as any part of his being which is at least subjected to the action of the will. [ Fenelon ]
It is curious for one who studies the action and reaction of national literature on each other, to see the humor of Swift and Sterne and Fielding, after filtering through Richter, reappear in Carlyle with a tinge of Germanism that makes it novel, alien, or even displeasing, as the case may be, to the English mind. [ Lowell ]
Thought is the seed of action; but action is as much its second form as thought is its first. It rises in thought, to the end that it may be uttered and acted. The more profound the thought, the more burdensome. Always in proportion to the depth of its sense does it knock importunately at the gates of the soul, to be spoken, to be done. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
There are so many things to lower a man's top-sails - he is such a dependent creature - he is to pay such court to his stomach, his food, his sleep, his exercise - that, in truth, a hero is an idle word. Man seems formed to be a hero in suffering, not a hero in action. Men err in nothing more than in the estimate which they make of human labor. [ Cecil ]
The clear conception, outrunning the deductions of logic, the high purpose, the dauntless spirit, speaking on the tongue, beaming from the eye, informing every feature, and urging the whole man onward, right onward, to his object - this is eloquence, or rather it is something greater and higher than all eloquence - it is action, noble, sublime, godlike action. [ Webster ]
Lavater told Goethe that, on a certain occasion when he held the velvet bag in the church as collector of the offerings, he tried to observe only the hands; and he satisfied himself that in every individual the shape of the hand and of the fingers, the action and sentiment in dropping the gift into the bag, were distinctly different and individually characteristic. [ Mrs. Jameson ]
There is still a real magic in the action and reaction of minds on one another. The casual deliration of a few becomes, by this mysterious reverberation, the frenzy of many; men lose the use, not only of their understandings, but of their bodily senses; while the most obdurate unbelieving hearts melt like the rest in the furnace where all are cast as victims and as fuel. [ Carlyle ]
We frequently fall into error and folly, not because the true principles of action are not known, but because for a time they are not remembered; he may, therefore, justly be numbered among the benefactors of mankind who contracts the great rules of life into short sentences that may early be impressed on the memory, and taught by frequent recollection to occur habitually to the mind. [ Johnson ]
The repose necessary to all beauty is repose, not of inanition, nor of luxury, nor of irresolution, but the repose of magnificent energy and being; in action, the calmness of trust and determination; in rest, the consciousness of duty accomplished and of victory won; and this repose and this felicity can take place as well in the midst of trial and tempest, as beside the waters of comfort. [ Ruskin ]
We acquire the love of people who, being in our proximity, are presumed to know us; and we receive reputation or celebrity, from such as are not personally acquainted with us. Merit secures to us the regard of our honest neighbors, and good fortune that of the public. Esteem is the harvest of a whole life spent in usefulness; but reputation is often bestowed upon a chance action, and depends most on success. [ G. A. Sala ]
Rare almost as great poets, rarer, perhaps, than veritable saints and martyrs, are consummate men of business. A man, to be excellent in this way, requires a great knowledge of character, with that exquisite tact which feels unerringly the right moment when to act. A discreet rapidity must pervade all the movements of his thought and action. He must be singularly free from vanity, and is generally found to be an enthusiast who has the art to conceal his enthusiasm. [ Helps ]
I have very often lamented and hinted my sorrow, in several speculations, that the art of painting is made so little use of to the improvement of manners. When we consider that it places the action of the person represented in the most agreeable aspect imaginable, - that it does not only express the passion or concern as it sits upon him who is drawn, but has under those features the height of the painter's imagination, - what strong images of virtue and humanity might we not expect would be instilled into the mind from the labors of the pencil! [ Steele ]