Quotes
Quotes to inspire and reflect
The most active lives have so much routine as to preclude progress almost equally with the most inactive.
8
Renunciation and activity both liberate, / but to work is better than to renounce.
11
From the moment of birth we are immersed in action, and can only fitfully guide it by taking thought.
12
The quality of a life is determined by its activities.
5
Lust and force are the source of all our actions; lust causes voluntary actions, force involuntary ones.
10
We cannot withdraw our cards from the game. Were we as silent and as mute as stones, our very passivity would be an act.
21
Act only on that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.
15
Action [is] the great business of mankind, and the whole matter about which all laws are conversant.
10
A life of action and danger moderates the dread of death. It not only gives us fortitude to bear pain, but teaches us at every step the precarious tenure on which we hold our present being.
7
In our era, the road to holiness necessarily passes through the world of action.
18
The materials of action are variable, but the use we make of them should be constant.
10
Can it be that action is active resignation? Something is trying to develop; it moves ever so slightly, and there comes your man of action and bashes in the hothouse windows.
28
People who know how to act are never preachers.
5
No matter how much faculty of idle seeing a man has, the step from knowing to doing is rarely taken.
5
Begin and proceed on a settled and not-to-be- shaken conviction that but little is permitted to any man to do or to know, and if he complies with the first grand laws, he shall do well.
8
One starts an action / Simply because one must do something.
6
A man’s most open actions have a secret side to them.
6
In action, be primitive; in foresight, a strategist.
10
There can be no acting or doing of any kind, till it be recognized that there is a thing to be done; the thing once recognized, doing in a thousand shapes becomes possible.
7
Once turn to practice, error and truth will no longer consort together.
5
He that has done nothing has known nothing.
8
Think’st thou existence doth depend on time? / It doth; but actions are our epochs.
9
Unreal is action without discipline, charity without sympathy, ritual without devotion.
11
It’s all right to hesitate if you then go ahead.
23
Action should culminate in wisdom.
10
Only the action that is moved by love for the good at hand has the hope of being responsible and generous.
16
Accursed greed for gold, / To what dost thou not drive the heart of man?
13
How could there be any question of acquiring or possessing, when the one thing needful for a man is to become—to be at last, and to die in the fullness of his being.
9
With the catching end the pleasures of the chase.
4
The collector walks with blinders on; he sees nothing but the prize. In fact, the acquisitive instinct is incompatible with true appreciation of beauty.
11
I glory / More in the cunning purchase of my wealth / Than in the glad possession.
9
It is easy to get everything you want, provided you first learn to do without the things you can not get.
7
Hand, n. A singular instrument worn at the end of a human arm and commonly thrust into somebody’s pocket.
4
Seek not proud riches, but such as thou mayest get justly, use soberly, distribute cheerfully, and leave contentedly.
7
There is a scarcity of friendship, but not of friends.
8
Chance acquaintances are sometimes the most memorable, for brief friendships have such definite starting and stopping points that they take on a quality of art, of a whole thing, which cannot be broken or spoiled.
11
Down the stairs and up Fifth Avenue. Hippety- hop, I’m a Bunny!
12
How casually and unobservedly we make all our most valued acquaintances.
6
A man dies still if he has done nothing, as one who has done much.
13
Students who don’t want to get anywhere are sure to get somewhere.
24
The house praises the carpenter.
6
If you tell [count] every step, you will make a long journey of it.
9
Even doubtful accusations leave a stain behind them.
7
Accusing is proving, where Malice and Force sit judges.
8
No one is laughable who laughs at himself.
7
Life is full of infinite absurdities, which, strangely enough, do not even need to appear plausible, since they are true.
12
The more absurd life is, the more insupportable death is.
19
Man’s “progress” is but a gradual discovery that his questions have no meaning.
9