Quotes about deed
page 4

David Myatt photo
Orison Swett Marden photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo

“United States! the ages plead, —
Present and Past in under-song, —
Go put your creed into your deed,
Nor speak with double tongue.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Ode, st. 5
1860s, May-Day and Other Pieces (1867)

Mario Bunge photo

“If one aims to judge political movements, their deeds are far more important than their speeches, which are often masking rather than revealing.”

Mario Bunge (1919) Argentine philosopher and physicist

Emergence and Convergence (2003), p. 424.
2000s

Colin Blackburn, Baron Blackburn photo
Cormac McCarthy photo
Norman Spinrad photo

“Flaming torches arching from hand to hand, the silken rolling of flesh on flesh, tautened wire vibrating to the human word, ideogrammatic gestures of fear, love, and rage, the mathematical grace of bodies moving through space—all seemed revealed as shadows on the void, the pauvre panoply of man’s attempt to transcend the universe of space and time through the transmaterial purity of abstract form.
Yet beyond this noble dance of human art, the highest expression of our spirit’s striving to transcend the realm of time and form, lay that which could not be encompassed by the artifice of man. From nothing are we born, to nothing do we go; the universe we know is but the void looped back upon itself, and form is but illusion’s final veil.
We touch that which lies beyond only in those fleeting rare moments when the reality of form dissolves—through molecule and charge, the perfection of the meditative trance, orgasmic ego-loss, transcendent peaks of art, mayhap the instant of our death.
Vraiment, is not the history of man from pigments smeared on the walls of caves to our present starflung age, our sciences and arts, our religions and our philosophies, our cultures and our noble dreams, our heroics and our darkest deeds, but the dance of spirit round this central void, the striving to transcend, and the deadly fear of same?”

Source: The Void Captain's Tale (1983), Chapter 10 (p. 117)

Walt Whitman photo
Robert Frost photo
Bram van Velde photo
Clement Attlee photo
Abdul Halim of Kedah photo

“If in taking my new duty, I brought qualities that are lacking of widsom and experience that makes a youth, hence I will try to replace this demerit with a vehement spirit to do deeds.”

Abdul Halim of Kedah (1927–2017) King of Malaysia

31st birthday speech http://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/Digitised/Article/beritaharian19581129-1.2.93?ST=1&AT=filter&K=tengku+halim&KA=tengku+halim&DF=&DT=&Display=0&AO=false&NPT=&L=&CTA=&NID=&CT=&WC=&YR=1958&QT=tengku,halim&oref=article 28/11/1958

Mahmud of Ghazni photo
Moshe Chaim Luzzatto photo
Lewis Mumford photo
Charlton Heston photo
Nikos Kazantzakis photo
William Hazlitt photo

“Great deeds are usually wrought at great risks.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"Whether Genius is Conscious of its Powers?"
The Plain Speaker (1826)

Ernesto Che Guevara photo

“Words that do not match deeds are unimportant.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

As quoted in Seeds of Revolution: A Collection of Axioms, Passages and Proverbs, Volume 1 (2009) by Iam A. Freeman

George Eliot photo
Clare Boothe Luce photo

“No good deed goes unpunished.”

Clare Boothe Luce (1903–1987) American writer, politician, ambassador, journalist and anti-Communist activist

Roman Candle (Leticia Baldridge), p. 129 (1956)
Source: This famous quip was first quoted in print by Luce's social secretary Letitia Baldrige in Roman Candle (Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1956), 129: "When I would entreat her to engage in resolving a specific case, she replied, 'No good deed goes unpunished, Tish, remember that.'" Oscar Wilde, Billy Wilder, and Andrew Mellon have also been cited as sources, but without written evidence.

Voltairine de Cleyre photo
Julian of Norwich photo
Milarepa photo

“Do not spend your life committing sinful deeds;
It is good for you to practice holy Dharma.”

Milarepa (1052–1135) Tibetan yogi

Source: Ref: en.wikiquote.org - Milarepa / Quotes / The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa: The Life-Story and Teaching of the Greatest Poet-Saint Ever to Appear in the History of Buddhism / Song to the Hunter

George Sarton photo

“A deed happens in a definite place at a definite time, but if it be sufficiently great and pregnant, its virtue radiates everywhere in time and space.”

George Sarton (1884–1956) American historian of science

Preface.
A History of Science Vol.2 Hellenistic Science and Culture in the Last Three Centuries B.C. (1959)

Tanith Lee photo
Kuvempu photo

“It was a day of blackest deed
When Delhi streets of fame
Did glitter well by cursed greed
Of harsh Timoor the lame.”

Kuvempu (1904–1994) Kannada novelist, poet, playwright, critic, and thinker

From Kuvempu’s writings in English on the historical subject of Timoor’s invasion of India. Quoted here. Poet, nature lover and humanist, 24 November 2013, Archive Organization http://web.archive.org/web/20060318053230/http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/apr252004/sh1.asp,

Hồ Xuân Hương photo
Julian of Norwich photo
William Congreve photo
Henry Clay photo
Hans Frank photo

“After the deed is done, one always becomes clever and philosophical.”

Hans Frank (1900–1946) German war criminal

To Leon Goldensohn, March 16, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004 - Page 29

Plutarch photo
Jeffrey Tucker photo
Maimónides photo
Werner von Blomberg photo
Samuel Johnson photo
Thomas De Witt Talmage photo

“There are many who write good deeds in the dust, and injuries on marble.”

Stefano Guazzo (1530–1593) Italian writer

Ve ne sono molti che scrivono i beneficii nella polvere, e l'ingiurie nel marmo.
Del Prencipe di Valacchia, p. 79.
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 436.

Mahmud of Ghazni photo

“Asjadi composed the following qaSida in honour of this expedition: When the King of kings marched to Somnat, He made his own deeds the standard of miracles' 'Once more he led his army against Somnat, which is a large city on the coast of the ocean, a place of worship of the Brahmans who worship a large idol. There are many golden idols there. Although certain historians have called this idol Manat, and say that it is the identical idol which Arab idolaters brought to the coast of Hindustan in the time of the Lord of the Missive (may the blessings and peace of God be upon him), this story has no foundation because the Brahmans of India firmly believe that this idol has been in that place since the time of Kishan, that is to say four thousand years and a fraction' The reason for this mistake must surely be the resemblance in name, and nothing else' The fort was taken and Mahmud broke the idol in fragments and sent it to Ghaznin, where it was placed at the door of the Jama' Masjid and trodden under foot.'….'In the year AH 402 (AD 1011) he set out for Thanesar and Jaipal, the son of the former Jaipal, offered him a present of fifty elephants and much treasure. The Sultan, however, was not to be deterred from his purpose; so he refused to accept his present, and seeing Thanesar empty he sacked it and destroyed its idol temples, and took away to Ghaznin, the idol known as Chakarsum on account of which the Hindus had been ruined; and having placed it in his court, caused it to be trampled under foot by the people… From thence he went to Mathra (Mathura) which is a place of worship of the infidels and the birthplace of Kishan, the son of Basudev, whom the Hindus Worship as a divinity - where there are idol temples without number, and took it without any contest and razed it to the ground. Great wealth and booty fell into the hands of the Muslims, among the rest they broke up by the orders of the Sultan, a golden idol.”

Mahmud of Ghazni (971–1030) Sultan of Ghazni

Muntakhabut-Tawarikh, translated into English by George S.A. Ranking, Patna Reprint 1973, Vol. I, p. 17-28
Quotes from Muslim medieval histories

George Herbert photo

“475. Fine words dresse ill deedes.”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

Jacula Prudentum (1651)

Orson Welles photo

“Thank you, Donald, for that well-meant but rather pedestrian introduction. Regarding yourself, I quote from the third part of Shakespeare's Henry VI, Act Two, Scene One. Richard speaks, "Were thy heart as hard as steel/ As thou hast shown it flinty by thy deeds/ I come to pierce it, or to give thee mine." To translate into your own idiom, Donald; you're a yo-yo. Now I direct my remarks to Dean Martin, who is being honored here tonight… for reasons that completely elude me. No, I'm not being fair to Dean because - this is true - in his way Dean, and I know him very well, has the soul of a poet. I'm told that in his most famous song Dean authored a lyric which is so romantic, so touching that it will be enjoyed by generations of lovers until the end of time. Let's share it together. [Opens a songsheet for Dean's "That's Amore" and reads in a monotone] "When the moon hits your eye/ Like a big pizza-pie/ That's amore" Now, that's what I call 'touching', Dean. It has all the romanticism of a Ty-D-Bol commercial. "When the world seems to shine/ Like you've had too much wine/ That's amore" What a profound thought. It could be inscribed forever on a cocktail napkin. Hey, there's more. "Tippy-tippy-tay/ Like a gay tarantella" Like a gay tarantella? Apparently, Dean has a 'side Dean' we know nothing about. "When the stars make you drool/ Just like a pasta fazool…. Scuzza me, but you see/ Back in old Napoli/ That's amore" No, Dean; that's infermo, Italian for "sickened". Now, lyrics like that - lyrics like that ought to be issued with a warning: a song like that is hazardous to your health. Ladies and gentlemen… [motions to Dean] you are looking at the end result!”

Orson Welles (1915–1985) American actor, director, writer and producer

Speech given at a Dean Martin Celebrity Roast. Viewable here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlKR0i-51S4.

Erich Fromm photo

“Even good deeds by the enemy are considered a sign of particular devilishness, meant to deceive us and the world, while our bad deeds are necessary and justified by our noble goals which they serve.”

The Art of Loving (1956)
Context: The lack of objectivity, as far as foreign nations are concerned, is notorious. From one day to another, another nation is made out to be utterly depraved and fiendish, while one’s own nation stands for everything that is good and noble. Every action of the enemy is judged by one standard — every action of oneself by another. Even good deeds by the enemy are considered a sign of particular devilishness, meant to deceive us and the world, while our bad deeds are necessary and justified by our noble goals which they serve.

Frederick William Robertson photo
John Lancaster Spalding photo

“To clothe truth in fitting words is to feel a satisfaction like that which comes of doing good deeds.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 23

Norman Spinrad photo
Enoch Powell photo
James McCosh photo
Joaquin Miller photo
Plutarch photo
Homér photo

“Be both a speaker of words and a doer of deeds.”

IX. 443 (tr. Andrew Lang).
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

John F. Kennedy photo

“It was early in the Seventeenth Century that Francis Bacon remarked on three recent inventions already transforming the world: the compass, gunpowder and the printing press. Now the links between the nations first forged by the compass have made us all citizens of the world, the hopes and threats of one becoming the hopes and threats of us all. In that one world's efforts to live together, the evolution of gunpowder to its ultimate limit has warned mankind of the terrible consequences of failure.
And so it is to the printing press — to the recorder of man's deeds, the keeper of his conscience, the courier of his news — that we look for strength and assistance, confident that with your help man will be what he was born to be: free and independent.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Kennedy here references Francis Bacon’s Aphorism 129 of Novum Organum: Again, we should notice the force, effect, and consequences of inventions, which are nowhere more conspicuous than in those three which were unknown to the ancients; namely, printing, gunpowder, and the compass. For these three have changed the appearance and state of the whole world; first in literature, then in warfare, and lastly in navigation: and innumerable changes have been thence derived, so that no empire, sect, or star, appears to have exercised a greater power and influence on human affairs than these mechanical discoveries.
1961, Address to ANPA

Mahasi Sayadaw photo
Immanuel Kant photo

“My experience of the original Edison phonograph goes back to the period when it was first introduced into this country. In fact, I have good reason to believe that I was among the very first persons in London to make a vocal record, though I never received a copy of it, and if I did it got lost long ago. It must have been in 1881 or 1882, and the place where the deed was done was on the first floor of a shop in Hatton Garden, where I had been invited to listen to the wonderful new invention. To begin with, I heard pieces both in song and speech produced by the friction of a needle against a revolving cylinder, or spool, fixed in what looked like a musical box. It sounded to my ear like someone singing about half a mile away, or talking at the other end of a big hall; but the effect was rather pleasant, save for a peculiar nasal quality wholly due to the mechanism, though there was little of the scratching which later was a prominent feature of the flat disc. Recording for that primitive machine was a comparatively simple matter. I had to keep my mouth about six inches away from the horn and remember not to make my voice too loud if I wanted anything approximating to a clear reproduction; that was all. When it was played over to me and I heard my own voice for the first time, one or two friends who were present said that it sounded rather like mine; others declared that they would never have recognised it. I daresay both opinions were correct.”

Herman Klein (1856–1934) British musical critic journalist and singing teacher

The Gramophone magazine, December 1933

Thomas Bradwardine photo
Charles Reade photo
Winston S. Churchill photo
Leo Tolstoy photo

“Giving alms is only a virtuous deed when you give money that you yourself worked to get.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Source: Path of Life (1909), p. 83

Francois Rabelais photo

“We will take the good-will for the deed.”

Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Fourth Book (1548, 1552), Chapter 49.

John Ruskin photo

“We have much studied and much perfected, of late, the great civilized invention of the division of labour; only we give it a false name. It is not, truly speaking, the labour that it divided; but the men: — Divided into mere segments of men — broken into small fragments and crumbs of life; so that all the little piece of intelligence that is left in a man is not enough to make a pin, or a nail, but exhausts itself in making the point of a pin or the head of a nail. Now it is a good and desirable thing, truly, to make many pins in a day; but if we could only see with what crystal sand their points were polished, — sand of human soul, much to be magnified before it can be discerned for what it is — we should think that there might be some loss in it also. And the great cry that rises from our manufacturing cities, louder than their furnace blast, is all in very deed for this, — that we manufacture everything there except men; we blanch cotton, and strengthen steel, and refine sugar, and shape pottery; but to brighten, to strengthen, to refine, or to form a single living spirit, never enters into our estimate of advantages. And all the evil to which that cry is urging our myriads can be met only in one way: not by teaching nor preaching, for to teach them is but to show them their misery, and to preach at them, if we do nothing more than preach, is to mock at it. It can only be met by a right understanding, on the part of all classes, of what kinds of labour are good for men, raising them, and making them happy; by a determined sacrifice of such convenience or beauty, or cheapness as is to be got only by the degradation of the workman; and by equally determined demand for the products and results of healthy and ennobling labour.”

Volume II, chapter VI, section 16.
The Stones of Venice (1853)

Báb photo
Joseph Goebbels photo

“Christianity is not a religion for the masses, let alone for all. Cultivated by few and translated into deeds, it is one of the most splendid blossoms that can grow in the soul of a good man.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

Das Christentum ist keine Religion für viele, geschweige denn für alle. Von wenigen gepflegt und in die Tat umgesetzt, ist es eine der köstlichsten Blüten, die eine Kulturseele je getrieben hat.
Michael: a German fate in diary notes (1926)

William Cobbett photo

“In one point, and that too of more importance than is generally attached to it, the puritans of the two epochs bear a critical resemblance, namely, their hostility to rural and athletic sports: to those sports, which string the nerves and strengthen the frame, which excite an emulation in deeds of hardihood and valour, and which imperceptibly instill honour, generosity, and a love of glory, into the mind of the clown. Men thus formed are pupils unfit for the puritanical school; therefore it is, that the sect are incessantly labouring to eradicate, fibre by fibre, the last poor remains of English manners. And, sorry I am to tell you, that they meet with but too many abettors, where they ought to meet with resolute foes. Their pretexts are plausible: gentleness and humanity are the cant of the day. Weak men are imposed on, and wise men want the courage to resist. Instead of preserving those assemblages and those sports, in which the nobleman mixed with his peasants, which made the poor man proud of his inferiority, and created in his breast a personal affection for his lord, too many of the rulers of this land are now hunting the common people from every scene of diversion, and driving them to a club or a conventicle, at the former of which they suck in the delicious rudiments of earthly equality, and, at the latter, the no less delicious doctrine, that there is no lawful king but King Jesus.”

William Cobbett (1763–1835) English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist

Political Register (27 February 1802).

Thomas Jackson photo

“If a man’s deeds do not outlive him, of what value is a mark in stone?”

Sean Russell (1952) author

Source: World Without End (1995), Chapter 24 (p. 341)

Julian of Norwich photo
Ray Comfort photo
Democritus photo

“Men achieve tranquillity through moderation in pleasure and through the symmetry of life. Want and superfluity are apt to upset them and to cause great perturbations in the soul. The souls that are rent by violent conflicts are neither stable nor tranquil. One should therefore set his mind upon the things that are within his power, and be content with his opportunities, nor let his memory dwell very long on the envied and admired of men, nor idly sit and dream of them. Rather, he should contemplate the lives of those who suffer hardship, and vividly bring to mind their sufferings, so that your own present situation may appear to you important and to be envied, and so that it may no longer be your portion to suffer torture in your soul by your longing for more. For he who admires those who have, and whom other men deem blest of fortune, and who spends all his time idly dreaming of them, will be forced to be always contriving some new device because of his [insatiable] desire, until he ends by doing some desperate deed forbidden by the laws. And therefore one ought not to desire other men's blessings, and one ought not to envy those who have more, but rather, comparing his life with that of those who fare worse, and laying to heart their sufferings, deem himself blest of fortune in that he lives and fares so much better than they. Holding fast to this saying you will pass your life in greater tranquillity and will avert not a few of the plagues of life—envy and jealousy and bitterness of mind.”

Democritus Ancient Greek philosopher, pupil of Leucippus, founder of the atomic theory

Source Book in Ancient Philosophy (1907), The Golden Sayings of Democritus

Julian of Norwich photo
Richard Brinsley Sheridan photo

“Date not the life which thou hast run by the mean of reckoning of the hours and days, which though hast breathed: a life spent worthily should be measured by a nobler line, — by deeds, not years…”

Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751–1816) Irish-British politician, playwright and writer

Pizarro (first acted 24 May 1799), Act iv, Scene 1. Compare: "Who well lives, long lives; for this age of ours / Should not be numbered by years, daies, and hours", Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas, Second Week, Fourth Day, Book ii.

Hannah Arendt photo
Henry Nettleship photo
Washington Irving photo
Ilana Mercer photo
Mata Amritanandamayi photo
Naum Gabo photo
George Chapman photo
Frederick Douglass photo
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe photo

“The deed is everything, the glory nothing.”

Act IV, A High Mountain Range
Faust, Part 2 (1832)

Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas photo

“The will for deed I doe accept.”

Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas (1544–1590) French writer

Second Week, Third Day, Part ii. Compare: "You must take the will for the deed", Jonathan Swift, Polite Conversation, Dialogue ii.
La Seconde Semaine (1584)

Ronald David Laing photo

“The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice there is little we can do to change until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds.”

Ronald David Laing (1927–1989) Scottish psychiatrist and author

Attributed to R.D. Lang in: Jack Lee Seymour, Margaret Ann Crain, Joseph V. Crockett (1993) Educating Christians. p. 53

Zoroaster photo
Clarence Thomas photo
Muhammad al-Taqi photo
Giovannino Guareschi photo
Báb photo
John Greenleaf Whittier photo

“Each crisis brings its word and deed.”

John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892) American Quaker poet and advocate of the abolition of slavery

The lost Occasion, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

A. C. Benson photo
Edward Young photo
Mahmud of Ghazni photo

“The Sultan himself joined in the pursuit, and went after them as far as the fort called Bhimnagar [Nagarkot, modern Kangra], which is very strong, situated on the promontory of a lofty hill, in the midst of impassable waters. The kings of Hind, the chiefs of that country, and rich devotees, used to amass their treasures and precious jewels, and send them time after time to be presented to the large idol that they might receive a reward for their good deeds and draw near to their God. So the Sultan advanced near to this crow's fruit, ^ and this accumulation of years, which had attained such an amount that the backs of camels would not carry it, nor vessels contain it, nor writers hands record it, nor the imagination of an arithmetician conceive it. The Sultan brought his forces under the fort and surrounded it, and prepared to attack the garrison vigorously, boldly, and wisely. When the defenders saw the hills covered with the armies of plunderers, and the arrows ascending towards them like flaming sparks of fire, great fear came upon them, and, calling out for mercy, they opened the gates, and fell on the earth, like sparrows before a hawk, or rain before lightning. Thus did God grant an easy conquest of this fort to the Sultan, and bestowed on him as plunder the products of mines and seas, the ornaments of heads and breasts, to his heart's content. … After this he returned to Ghazna in triumph; and, on his arrival there, he ordered the court-yard of his palace to be covered with a carpet, on which he displayed jewels and unbored pearls and rubies, shining like sparks, or like wine congealed with ice, and emeralds like fresh sprigs of myrtle, and diamonds in size and weight like pomegranates. Then ambassadors from foreign countries, including the envoy from Tagh^n Khan, king of Turkistin, assembled to see the wealth which they had never yet even read of in books of the ancients, and which had never been accumulated by kings of Persia or of Rum, or even by Karun, who had only to express a wish and Grod granted it.”

Mahmud of Ghazni (971–1030) Sultan of Ghazni

About the capture of Bhimnagar, Tarikh Yamini (Kitabu-l Yamini) by Al Utbi, in Elliot and Dowson, Vol. II : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. p. 34-35 Also quoted in Jain, Meenakshi (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts.
Quotes (971 CE to 1013 CE)

Robert Graves photo

“Then all you lovers have good heed
Vex not young Love in word or deed:
Love never leaves an unpaid debt,
He will not pardon nor forget.”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

"Advice To Lovers".
Country Sentiment (1920)