Quotes about act

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“Use your enemy's weaknesses to your advantage. On the other hand, if your enemy is too strong, retreat and act again on the day you conquer it.”

“Great acts are made up of small deeds.”

“Quality is not an act, it is a habit.”

“We can naturally say with reasonable certainty that the greater events we are told are fact... However, the histories, causes, propaganda and acts related to these and other events are exactly what self-serving rulers of religious and political power systems creatively recorded.”

“Good people do not need law to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.”

“I never got a Oscar. I never had an acting lesson. Life was my only training.”

“One must indeed be ignorant of the methods of genius to suppose that it allows itself to be cramped by forms. Forms are for mediocrity, and it is fortunate that mediocrity can act only according to routine. Ability takes its flight unhindered.”

“The true meaning of kindness reveals itself to us whenever we do a very kind act.”

“All portions of this confederacy should act in harmony and with careful deliberation. The Democrats cry John Brown invasion. We are guiltless of it, but our denial does not satisfy them. Nothing will satisfy them but disinfecting the atmosphere entirely of all opposition to slavery. They have not demanded of us to yield the guards of liberty in our state constitutions, but it will naturally come to that after a while. If we give up to them, we cannot refuse even their utmost request. If slavery is right, it ought to be extended; if not, it ought to be restricted, there is no middle ground. Wrong as we think it, we can afford to let it alone where it of necessity now exists; but we cannot afford to extend it into free territory and around our own homes. Let us stand against it!”

“I beg to assure you that I have never written you, or spoken to you, in greater kindness of feeling than now, nor with a fuller purpose to sustain you, so far as in my most anxious judgment, I consistently can. But you must act.”

“There were all kinds of things I was afraid of at first, ranging from grizzly bears to 'mean' horses and gun-fighters; but by acting as if I was not afraid I gradually ceased to be afraid.”

“Some say ‘Man is what he eats’ and some say ‘A man’s thinking determines his character’. It might be even more true to say ‘A man’s life and character are governed by his breathing’! This is because a person can neither digest what he eats nor act up to his ideas unless his breathing qualifies him to do so.”

“A person is strong only when he stands upon his own truth, when he speaks and acts from his deepest convictions. Then, whatever the situation he may be in, he always knows what he must say and do. He may fall, but he cannot bring shame upon himself or his cause. If we seek the liberation of the people by means of a lie, we will surely grow confused, go astray, and lose sight of our objective, and if we have any influence at all on the people we will lead them astray as well — in other words, we will be acting in the spirit of reaction and to its benefit.”

“There is a great analogy between grace and genius, for genius is a grace. The real man of genius is the one who acts by grace or by impulsion, without ever contemplating himself and without ever saying to himself: Yes! It is by grace that I act.”

“When we resort to violence ... we lose sight of why we are in the world and even end up committing senseless acts of cruelty. We see this in the folly of war, where Christ is crucified yet another time.”

“Love consists in embracing acts of obedience and in avoiding acts of disobedience which implies that the devotee of God develops his kinship with God as he merges his will in His will and avoids that which is forbidden by Him.”

“When you come from your memory, you create one kind of experience. When you come from your intention, you create another kind of experience altogether. Always, with your choices, you are answering a single question: Who am I? Every act is an act of self-definition.”

“Some believe it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. It is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love.”

“We know that kindness is always pleasant and reassuring. But strangely not everyone thinks and acts this way.”

“Literature is an act of communion.”

“Devotion to the truth is the hallmark of morality; there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking.”

“Independent will is our capacity to act. It gives us the power to transcend our paradigms, to swim upstream, to rewrite our scripts, to act based on principle rather than reacting based on emotion or circumstance.”

“… but somehow the madness around me and the turmoil I carried within myself acted as counterweights, and I survived in the centre.”

“Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything.”

“To think, analyze and invent are not anomalous acts, but the normal respiration of the intelligence.”

“I know you’re almost forty, look almost thirty, think you’re just over twenty and act as though you’re barely ten.”

“Rest and laughter are the most spiritual and subversive acts of all. Laugh, rest, slow down.”

“I wanted to tell people, "My depression is acting up today" as an excuse for not seeing them, but I never managed to pull it off.”

“Man is the only living species that has the power to act as his own destroyer—and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.”

“Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night.”

“Love is an act of faith & its face should always be covered in mystery. Every moment should be lived with feeling & emotion because if we try to decipher it & understand it, the magic disappears.”

“Every small, unselfish action nudges the world into a better path. An accumulation of small acts can change the world.”

“The true measurement of a person’s worth isn’t what they say they believe in, but what they do in defense of those beliefs,” he said. “If you’re not acting on your beliefs, then they probably aren’t real.”

“We must act out passion before we can feel it.”

“… the finest act of seeing is necessarily always the act of not seeing something else.”

“I think we're given multiple chances to meet multiple soulmates. Sure, you could meet a soulmate in highschool. But that doesn't mean if you don't act on it, you'll never meet anyone else. You will, just at a time that's more convenient for you.”

“Acting is the most minor of gifts and not a very high-class way to earn a living. After all, Shirley Temple could do it at the age of four.”

“Writing fiction is the act of weaving a series of lies to arrive at a greater truth.”

“To know what is right and choose to ignore it is the act of a coward.”

“I didn't know what to say. I felt like crying, Goddammit everybody in the world wants an explanation for your acts and for your very being.”

“There is a boundary to men's passions when they act from feeling; none when they are under the influence of imagination.”

“You can never visit the same place twice. Each time, it's a different story. By the very act of coming back, you wipe out what came before.”

“That chain of relationships made me think of how connections are made--you read a book, you meet a person, you have a single experience, and your life is changed in some way. No act, therefore, however small, should be dismissed or ignored.”

“In the act of tearing something apart, you lose its meaning.”

“Faith doesn't mean you never doubt. It only means you never act upon your doubts.”

“Heroes were ordinary people who knew that even if their own lives were impossibly knotted, they could untangle someone else's. And maybe that one act could lead someone to rescue you right back.”

“What is building, and rebuilding and rebuilding again, but an act of faith?”

“It is the act of reading itself that I miss, the opportunity to retreat further and further from the world until I have found some space, some air that isn't stale, that hasn't been breathed by my family a thousand times already.”

“People are never so completely and enthusiastically evil as when they act out of religious conviction.”

“If we had the courage to love we would not so value these acts of war.”

“For those who know the value of and exquisite taste of solitary freedom (for one is only free when alone), the act of leaving is the bravest and most beautiful of all.”

“Your work should be an act of love, not a marriage of convenience.”

“Forgiveness is a mystical act, not a reasonable one.”

“… It is when we act freely, for the sake of the action itself rather than for ulterior motives, that we learn to become more than what we were.”

“Remember there’s no such thing as a small act of kindness. Every act creates a ripple with no logical end.”

“Writing is the act of discovery.”

“We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstacies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude.”

“Writing is not some quiet, closet act.”

“The purpose of life is to familiarize oneself with this after-death body so that the act of dying will not create confusion in the psyche.”

“Joy is the goal of existence, and joy is not to be stumbled upon, but to be achieved, and the act of treason is to let its vision drown in the swamp of the moment's torture.”

“Love is the most powerful motivator in the world. It spurs mortals to greatness. Their noblest and bravest acts are done for love.”

“To all appearances, the artist acts like a mediumistic being who, from the labyrinth beyond time and space, seeks his way out to a clearing.”

“And woman is the same as horses: two wills act in opposition inside her. With one will she wants to subject herself utterly. With the other she wants to bolt, and pitch her rider to perdition.”

“And in that moment, everything I knew to be true about myself up until then was gone. I was acting like another woman, yet I was more myself than ever before.”

“the juniors were acting different because they are now the seniors. They even had T-shirts made. I don't know who plans these things.”

“Evident in every small act of kindness, it was love as a verb. Love that made me feel more complete than I had ever felt in my glamorous, Jimmy Choo filled past.”

“We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life. All that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about.”

“I would say act like a man of thought and think like a man of action.”

“It is an extraordinary act of courage,' said Tulas Shorn, 'to come to know a stranger's pain.”

“John Brooke is acting dreadfully, and Meg likes it!”

“As I have often said, she has two styles of acting: with or without the beard.”

“What if love wasn't the act of finding what you were missing but the give-and-take that made you both match?”

“To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.”

“It is best to act with confidence, no matter how little right you have to it.”

“If you go to your death rather than do everything you might to prevent what is happening, you are merely committing suicide and trying to make yourself feel better about it. That is the act of a coward. It is beneath contempt.”

“The knowledge that she would never be loved in return acted upon her ideas as a tide acts upon cliffs.”

“Enjoyment appears at the boundary between boredom and anxiety, when the challenges are just balanced with the person's capacity to act.”

“It is human nature to think wisely and to act in an absurd fashion.”

“All that is necessary to break the spell of inertia and frustration is this: Act as if it were impossible to fail.”

“you are right where you should be / now act like it”

“Act with kindness but do not expect gratitude.”

“Books choose their authors; the act of creation is not entirely a rational and conscious one.”

“I think that enduring, committed love between a married couple, along with raising children, is the most noble act anyone can aspire to. It is not written about very much.”

“Forgiveness is not an occasional act, it is a constant attitude.”

“… not deciding to act would be identical with deciding not to act.”

“If you want to be enthusiastic,
act enthusiastic.”

“That, in essence, is the catastrophe of suicide for those who survive: not only the loss of someone, but the loss of the chance to persuade that person to act differently, the loss of the chance to connect.”

“Having a child is surely the most beautifully irrational act that two people in love can commit.”

“That if desperate times call for desperate measures, then I'm free to act as desperately as I wish.”

“Laughter between two is sometimes a closer act of love than any other.”

“But do you know how old I will be by the time I learn to really play the piano / act / paint / write a decent play?"
Yes… the same age you will be if you don't.”

“When in love, the sight of the beloved has a completeness which no words and no embrace can match: a completeness which only the act of making love can temporarily accommodate”

“My wish for you is that you continue. Continue to be who and how you are, to astonish a mean world with your acts of kindness. Continue to allow humor to lighten the burden of your tender heart.”

“Anya jumped in front of the man, acting as his shield. “Now, Sabin. He didn’t mean any harm. He’s borderline stupid. You know that.”

“Act as if it were impossible to fail.”

“I don't want it to be attributed to a loss of control on my part. When I throw you out of the window, I want there to be no doubt the act was deliberate.”

“One cannot toss ambassadors back like bad fish," said Eugenides. "You treat them with care, or you'll find you've committed an act of war.”

“If God wanted us to act on instinct, we wouldn't have the power of reason.”

“The difference between good and evil men is not found in the acts they are willing to commit—but merely in what name they are willing to commit them in.”