Action

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Action is the tendency towards making a concerted effort to accomplish a goal.

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  • Fate quello che noi diciamo e non quello che noi facciamo.
    • Translation: Do as we say, not as we do.
    • Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron, or Ten Days' Entertainment (c, 1350 [1820 reprint]), Third Day, Seventh Story, p. 207.
  • We cannot think first and act afterwards. From the moment of birth we are immersed in action and can only fitfully guide it by taking thought.

[edit] Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895).

  • Existence was given us for action, rather than indolent and aimless contemplation; our worth is determined by the good deeds we do, rather than by the fine emotions we feel. They greatly mistake, who suppose that God cares for no other pursuit than devotion.
  • It is well to think well; it is divine to act well.
  • Man, being essentially active, must find in activity his joy, as well as his beauty and glory; and labor, like every thing else that is good, is its own reward.
  • Tempests may shake our dwellings and dissipate our commerce,
    but they scourge before them the lazy elements, which
    otherwise would stagnate into pestilence.
    Be thy best thoughts to work divine addressed;
    Do something, — do it soon — with all thy might;
    An angel's wing would droop if long at rest,
    And God Himself inactive were no longer blessed.
  • When I read the life of such a man as Paul, how I blush to think how sickly and dwarfed Christianity is at the present time, and how many hundreds there are who never think of working for the Son of God and honoring Christ.
  • I have lived to know that the secret of happiness is never to allow your energies to stagnate.
  • I have never heard any thing about the resolutions of the disciples, but a great deal about the Acts of the Apostles.
  • The life of man is made up of action and endurance; and life is fruitful in the ratio in which it is laid out in noble action or in patient perseverance.
  • Look around you, and you will behold the universe full of active powers. Action is, so to speak, the genius of nature. By motion and exertion, the system of being is preserved in vigor. By its different parts always acting in subordination one to another, the perfection of the whole is carried on. The heavenly bodies perpetually revolve. Day and night incessantly repeat their appointed course. Continual operations are going on in the earth and in the waters. Nothing stands still. All is alive and stirring throughout the universe. In the midst of this animated and busy scene, is man alone to remain idle in his place? Belongs it to him to be the sole inactive and slothful being in the creation, when in so many various ways he might improve his own nature; might advance the glory of the God who made him; and contribute his part in the general good?
  • Activity in the kingdom of God augments the power of spiritual life, and deepens the consciousness of religious realities.
  • The history of the Church of Christ from the days of the Apostles has been a history of spiritual movements.
  • It is much easier to settle a point than to act on it.
  • Unselfish and noble acts are the most radiant epochs in the biography of souls.
  • Haste thee on from grace to glory,
    Armed by faith and winged by prayer,
    Heaven's eternal day's before thee;
    God's own hand shall guide thee there.
  • I do not say the mind gets informed by action, — bodily action; but it does get earnestness and strength by it, and that nameless something that gives a man the mastership of his faculties.
  • The essential elements of giving are power and love — activity and affection — and the consciousness of the race testifies that in the high and appropriate exercise of these is a blessedness greater than any other.
  • All mental discipline and symmetrical growth are from activity of the mind under the yoke of the will or personal power.
  • Napoleon was the most effective man in modern times — some will say of all times. The secret of his character was, that while his plans were more vast, more various, and, of course, more difficult than those of other men, he had the talent at the same time, to fill them up with perfect promptness and precision, in every particular of execution.
  • Time is short, your obligations are infinite. Are your houses regulated, your children instructed, the afflicted relieved, the poor visited, the work of piety accomplished?
  • Let us remember that Elijah's God was with him only while he was occupied in noble and effectual services. When thus engaged, he exulted in the conscious majesty of a life which had upon it the stamp and signature of Divine power.
  • It is no use for one to stand in the shade and complain that the sun does not shine upon him. He must come out resolutely on the hot and dusty field where all are compelled to antagonize with stubborn difficulties, and pertinaciously strive until he conquers, if he would deserve to be crowned.
  • What is done is done; has already blended itself with the boundless, ever living, ever working universe, and will also work there for good or evil, openly or secretly, throughout all time.
  • Consider and act with reference to the true ends of existence. This world is but the vestibule of an immortal life. Every action of our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity.
  • Accuse not Nature, she hath done her part; do thou but thine.

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