Explore Quotes on Action

Nothing seems at first sight less important than the outward form of human actions, yet there is nothing upon which men set more store: they grow used to everything except to living in a society which has not their own manners.

If it is surely the means to the highest end we know, can any work be humble or disgusting? Will it not rather be elevating as a ladder, the means by which we are translated?

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see.

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.

Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.

It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?

The conscious process is reflected in the imagination; the unconscious process is expressed as karma, the generation of actions divorced from thinking and alienated from feeling.

Because the writer must be a participant in the scene, while he's writing it — or at least taping it, or even sketching it. Or all three. Probably the closest analogy to the ideal would be a film director/producer who writes his own scripts, does his own camera work and somehow manages to film himself in action, as the protagonist or at least a main character.

We've been taught to believe that actions speak louder than words. But I think words speak pretty loud all of our lives; we carry these words in our head.

Sooner or later something had to give. But President Bush, faced with the unprecedented affront of 9-11, could not wait to take action. So he had to do what we were capable of doing, and he did it brilliantly.

When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep.

The return we reap from generous actions is not always evident.

Think about all the great leaders. Think about Obama. Think about Clinton. Think about Nelson Mandela. Think about all the people that we know who are very successful in business, in politics and religion. What are they? They tell purposeful stories. They move people to action by aiming at the heart.

I do not know anyone who has got to the top without hard work. That is the recipe. It will not always get you to the top, but should get you pretty near.

There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up a pen to write.

Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do, but how much love we put in the action that we do.

So many worlds, so much to do, so little done, such things to be.

I must lose myself in action, lest I wither in despair.

Habits are the daughters of action, but then they nurse their mother, and produce daughters after her image, but far more beautiful and prosperous.

Things present themselves to you, and it's how you choose to deal with them that reveals who you are. We all say a lot of things, don't we, about who we are and how we think. But in the end it's your actions, how you respond to circumstance that reveals your character.