202 Quotes Tagged: action

It is well said, then, that it is by doing just acts that the just man is produced, and by doing temperate acts the temperate man; without doing these no one would have even a prospect of becoming good.

If you wait for the mango fruits to fall, you'd be wasting your time while others are learning how to climb the tree

Epic art is founded on action, and the model of a society in which action could play out in greatest freedom was that of the heroic Greek period; so said Hegel, and he demonstrated it with The Iliad: even though Agamemnon was the prime king, other kings and princes chose freely to join him and, like Achilles, they were free to withdraw from the battle. Similarly the people joined with their princes of their own free will; there was no law that could force them; behavior was determined only by personal motives, the sense of honor, respect, humility before a more powerful figure, fascination with a hero's courage, and so on. The freedom to participate in the struggle and the freedom to desert it guaranteed every man his independence. In this way did action retain a personal quality and thus its poetic form.

Against this archaic world, the cradle of the epic, Hegel contrasts the society of his own period: organized into the state, equipped with a constitution, laws, a justice system, an omnipotent administration, ministries, a police force, and so on. The society imposes its moral principles on the individual, whose behavior is thus determined by far more anonymous wishes coming from the outside than by his own personality. And it is in such a world that the novel was born.

The more you think of what is right, the more you tend to make every action in your mind right. The more you think of the goal you have in view, the more life and power you will call into action in working for that goal. The more you think of your ambition, the more power you will give to those faculties that can make your ambitions come true. The more you think of harmony, of health, of success, of happiness, of things that are desirable, of things that are beautiful, of things that have true worth, the more the mind will tend to build all those things in yourself, provided, of course, that all such thinking is subjective.

Of two sisters
one is always the watcher,
one the dancer.

There is no reality except in action. Man is nothing else than his plan; he exists only to the extent that he fulfills himself; he is therefore nothing else than the ensemble of his acts, nothing else than his life.

I had no time to hate, because
The grave would hinder me,
And life was not so ample I
Could finish enmity.

Nor had I time to love ; but since
Some industry must be,
The little toil of love, I thought,
Was large enough for me.

Dreams don't work unless you take action. The surest way to make your dreams come true is to live them.

Act the way you'd like to be and soon you'll be the way you'd like to act.

When you pray, move your feet.

If God created the universe, there was a time when he commenced to create. Back of that commencement there must have been an eternity. In that eternity what was this God doing? He certainly did not think. There was nothing to think about. He did not remember. Nothing had ever happened. What did he do? Can you imagine anything more absurd than an infinite intelligence in infinite nothing wasting an eternity?

To only have conceived,
Planned your great works, apart from progress,
Surpasses little works achieved!

You are not just for the right or left, but for what is right over the wrong.

"Common man does not speculate about the great problems. With regard to them he relies upon other people's authority, he behaves as "every decent fellow must behave,'' he is like a sheep in the herd. It is precisely this intellectual inertia that characterizes a man as a common man. Yet the common man does choose. He chooses to adopt traditional patterns or patterns adopted by other people because he is convinced that this procedure is best fitted to achieve his own welfare. And he is ready to change his ideology and consequently his mode of action whenever he becomes convinced that this would better serve his own interests.

To act or grow creatively we must begin from where we are, but we cannot begin at all if we are not “all here” without reservation or regret. Lacking self-acceptance, we are always at odds with our point of departure, always doubting the ground on which we stand, always so divided against ourselves that we cannot act with sincerity.