“I prefer thought to action, an idea to a transaction, contemplation to activity.”

Je préfère la pensée à l'action, une idée à une affaire, la contemplation au mouvement.
Louis Lambert (1832), as translated by Clara Bell

Original

Je préfère la pensée à l'action, une idée à une affaire, la contemplation au mouvement.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I prefer thought to action, an idea to a transaction, contemplation to activity." by Honoré de Balzac?
Honoré de Balzac photo
Honoré de Balzac 157
French writer 1799–1850

Related quotes

Henri-Frédéric Amiel photo

“Action limits us; whereas in the state of contemplation we are endlessly expansive. Will localizes us; thought universalizes us.”

Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1821–1881) Swiss philosopher and poet

8 March 1868
The will localizes us, thought universalizes us. My soul wavers between two, four, six general and contradictory conceptions, for it obeys all the great instincts of human nature, and aspires to the absolute, which can only be realized by a succession of contraries.
As translated in The Private Journal of Henri Frédéric Amiel (1935), p. 238
Journal Intime (1882), Journal entries
Context: Action limits us; whereas in the state of contemplation we are endlessly expansive. Will localizes us; thought universalizes us. My soul wavers between half a dozen antagonistic general conceptions, because it is responsive to all the great instincts of human nature, and its aspiration is to the absolute, which is only to be reached through a succession of contraries. It has taken me a great deal of time to understand myself, and I frequently find myself beginning over again the study of the oft-solved problem, so difficult is it for us to maintain any fixed point within us. I love everything, and detest one thing only — the hopeless imprisonment of my being within a single arbitrary form, even were it chosen by myself. Liberty for the inner man is then the strongest of my passions — perhaps my only passion. Is such a passion lawful? It has been my habit to think so, but intermittently, by fits and starts. I am not perfectly sure of it.

Leonid Feodorov photo

“All exchange stimulates productive activity, whether exchange by gift, gambling, barter, or money transaction.”

Aaron C. Brown (1956) American financial analyst

Source: The Poker Face of Wall Street (2006), Chapter 5, Pokernomics, p. 127

Emil M. Cioran photo
Edward Hall Alderson photo

“An active imagination may find a bad tendency arising out of every transaction between imperfect morals.”

Edward Hall Alderson (1787–1857) Lawyer and jurist

Brownlow v. Egerton (1854), 23 L. J. Rep. Part 5 (N. S.), Ch. 365.

Johann Gottlieb Fichte photo

“A striking feature of financial service activities during the past few decades is that the financial transactions essential to the operation of the 'real' economy has become increasingly dwarfed by speculative activity.”

Peter Dicken (1938) British geographer

Source: Global Shift (2003) (Fourth Edition), Chapter 13, The Financial Services Industries, p. 469

Ronald H. Coase photo

“Transaction costs were used in the one case to show that if they are not included in the analysis, the firm has no purpose, while in the other I showed, as I thought, that if transaction costs were not introduced into the analysis, for the range of problems considered, the law had no purpose.”

Ronald H. Coase (1988). "The Nature of the Firm: Influence." Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 4 (No. 1, Spring): 33—47. p. 34; as cited in Eggertsson (1990; xiii)
1960s-1980s

Gustavo Gutiérrez photo

Related topics