action - action 3 - action 4

If you can fill the unforgiving
minute with sixty seconds
worth of distance run,
yours is the earth and
everything that's in it.

Rudyard Kipling

    

Virtue is not to be considered in the light of mere innocence,
or abstaining from harm; but as the exertion of our faculties
in doing good.

Joseph Butler

   

One hour of life, crowded to the full with glorious action, and filled
with noble risks, is worth whole years of those mean observances of
paltry decorum, in which men steal through existence, like sluggish
waters through a marsh, without either honour or observation.

Sir Walter Scott

   
   

I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed,
that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race,
where the immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.

John Milton
  

It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that
human history is shaped.  Each time a person stands up for
an ideal or strikes out against injustice, he or she sends forth
a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million
different centers of energy and daring those ripples build
a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls
of oppression and resistance.

Robert F. Kennedy

  

Too many times we stand aside
And let the waters slip away
'Til what we put off for tomorrow
Has now become today
So don't you sit upon the shoreline
And say you're satisfied
Choose to chance the rapids
And dare to dance the tide. . . .
And there's bound to be rough waters
And I know I'll take some falls
But with the good Lord as my captain
I can make it through them all

Victoria Shaw, Garth Brooks
   
 

Parents impose their own limited concepts on their children, often ignoring
their temperaments, special needs, and abilities.  Your parents and teachers
may have mistakenly ignored your strengths or may not have encouraged you
to develop them.  You can discover your basic capacities by experimenting
with things that you always wanted to do.  Don't be discouraged by notions
that seem "silly" or "foolish" or "not you."  Do it!  Who knows what will happen?

Ari Kiev
   

The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible,
but they have never found these dangers
sufficient reason for remaining ashore.

Vincent van Gogh

 

 

Few are they who have never had a chance to achieve happiness--
and fewer those who have taken that chance.

Andre Maurois
 

If one is forever cautious,
can one remain a human being?

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

If you're never scared or embarrassed or hurt, it means you never take any chances.

Julia Sorel
 

Accept that all of us can be hurt, that all of us can--and surely will
at times--fail.  Other vulnerabilities, like being embarrassed or risking love,
can be terrifying, too. I think we should follow a simple rule:
if we can take the worst, take the risk.

Joyce Brothers

   
   
Risk! Risk anything! . . . Do the hardest thing on earth for you.
Act for yourself.  Face the truth.

Katherine Mansfield
 

We can do no great things;
only small things with great love.

Mother
Teresa
     

I've been very blessed in life because I've never been afraid to take action. Often it turns out poorly or painfully and I have to deal with consequences, but I would much prefer to deal with those than to sit around doing nothing. Passivity has been around forever, but it seems to have become much more predominant in a culture in which we expect to be entertained and informed by the mass media and actors and athletes, fed by restaurants and an ever-increasing amount of ready-to-serve, microwaveable meals, served by the people who run stores and want our return business. We're fortunate to live in the United States, one of the few countries in the world where taking a risk is valued, but if we're going to get anything out of life, we have to be among those who take the risks, not those who watch others do so. I can truly say that the positive aspects of who I am have come about because I've been willing to take risks and be hurt, while those negative parts of me are still there because I'm afraid to face them, and I'd rather be passive than act to change them.

I meet many people who seem to be unwilling or unable to take action, no matter how unpleasant their current situation.  They're completely dissatisfied with the way things are, yet they're unwilling to do anything to change their situations.  Most of them are unwilling to risk their "security," for their incomes are more important to them than their quality of life.  Yet we hear over and over again that if we're truly to get what we want out of life, we have to take action.  We have to do something, and we can't do it halfway--we must take the risk.

It's somewhat ironic that many people who refuse to act are forced into positions in which they must act, either by layoffs, the death or departure of a spouse, or other changes.  Usually, these people get by quite well, and many of them actually thrive, for they're finally in a position in which they have to depend upon themselves, in which they have to act, to be assertive in getting what they want out of life.  They have to act, and they have to act today--it's a position most people don't want to find themselves in, but in which many people find themselves--find out who they are and what they're capable of.

Longfellow said it well:  "Act, act in the living present."  Right now is all we have, isn't it?  And we can't sit around waiting for life to happen to us--I learned long ago that that is not the way things work.  Actions give us results to work with, and actions.

tdw
    

   

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Conditions are never just right.  People who delay action
until all factors are favorable do nothing.

William Feather
   

There are risks and costs to a program of action.  But they are far less
than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.

John F. Kennedy

   
 

To know what has to be done, then do it,
comprises the whole philosophy of practical life.

Sir William Osler
 
The person who will not execute his or her resolutions when they are
fresh upon him or her can have no hope from them afterwards;
they will be dissipated, lost and perish in the hurry and scurry of the world,
or sunk in the slough of indolence.

Marie Edgeworth
    

The wise person does at once
what the fool does finally.

Baltasar Gracian

Action is the antidote to despair.

Joan Baez

Everything comes to those
who hustle while they wait.

Thomas Alva Edison

There is only one proof
of ability:  action.

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

When you're frightened don't sit still, keep on doing something.  The act of doing will give you back your courage.

Grace Ogot
 

It will never rain roses:  when we want
to have more roses we must plant more trees.

George Eliot

   
Life begets life.  Energy creates energy.
It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich.

Sarah Bernhardt

 

Life was not given for indolent contemplation and study of self,
nor for brooding over emotions of piety:
Actions and actions only determine the worth.

Immanuel Fichte

 

  
I shall pass through this world but once.  If therefore
there can be any kindness I can show, or any good thing
I can do, let me do it now; let me not defer or neglect it.

Etienne de Grellet

 

Speak little; do much.  Well done is better than well said.

Benjamin Franklin

  

In the performance of a good action, we not only benefit ourselves,
but we confer a blessing upon others.

Philip Sydney

 

No one knows what they
can do until they try.

While we stop to think,
we often miss our opportunity.

Publilius Syrus
 
Forget about likes and dislikes.  They are of no consequence.
Just do what must be done.  This may not be happiness, but it is greatness.

George Bernard Shaw

   
  

We have to understand that the world can only be grasped
by action, not by contemplation.  The hand is more important
than the eye. . . .  The hand is the cutting edge of the mind.

Jacob Bronowski

 

If our conscience tells us that we ought to perform a particular act,
it is our moral duty to perform it.

Frederick Copleston

 

It is in our power to stretch out our arms and, by doing
good in our actions, to seize life and set it in our soul.

Origen

   

People judge you by your actions, not your intentions.
You may have a heart of gold, but so has a hard-boiled egg.

Good Reading
 
  

We are responsible for what we are, and we wish ourselves to be,
we have the power to make ourselves.
If what we are now has been the result of our past actions,
it certainly follows that whatever we wish to be in future can be produced
by our present actions; so we have to know how to act.

Swami Vivekananda

    
  

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