Quotes about doing
page 24

“We have, in fact, two kinds of morality side by side; one which we preach but do not practise, and another which we practise but seldom preach.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1920s, Sceptical Essays (1928), Ch. 8: Eastern and Western Ideals of Happiness

“Being brave is when you have to do something because you know it is right, but at the same time, you are afraid to do it, because it might hurt or whatever. But you do it anyway.”

Meg Cabot book All American Girl

Source: All-American Girl

Time, Hurt

“Glendower: I can call the spirits from the vasty deep.
Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
But will they come, when you do call for them?”

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) English playwright and poet

Source: King Henry IV, Part 1

“Nothing we do can change the past, but everything we do changes the future.”

Ashleigh Brilliant (1933) American author and cartoonist

Change, Past, Future

“One thing was certain, that the white kitten had had nothing to do with it-- it was the black kitten's fault entirely.”

Lewis Carroll book Through the Looking-Glass

Source: Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There

“"Do I look like someone who has something to do here on Earth?" - That's what I'd like to answer the busybodies who inquire into my activities.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)
Source: The Trouble with Being Born

“You cannot make someone love you. All you can do is be someone who can be loved. The rest is up up them.”

H. Jackson Brown, Jr. (1940) American writer

Love

“Love can make you do things that you never thought possible.”

Phil Collins (1951) English musician, songwriter and actor

Love

“All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know.”

Ernest Hemingway book A Moveable Feast

Source: A Moveable Feast (1964), Ch. 2
Context: I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, "Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know."

“Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done, and why. Then do it.”

Robert A. Heinlein Time Enough for Love

Source: Time Enough for Love

“When reading a book, be very certain that you never go past a word you do not fully understand. The only reason a person gives up a study or becomes confused or unable to learn is because he or she has gone past a word that was not understood.”

L. Ron Hubbard (1911–1986) American science fiction author, philosopher, cult leader, and the founder of the Church of Scientology

Books, Understanding, Study, Learning

“To spend time is to pass it in a specified manner. To waste time is to expend it thoughtlessly or carelessly. We all have time to spend or waste, and it is our decision what to do with it. But once passed, it is gone forever.”

Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker

Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 10

Decision, Time

“As long as you are convinced you have never done anything, you can never do anything.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

“My life-my whole life- take it, and do with it what you will. I love you-love you as I have never loved any living thing. From the moment I met you I loved you, loved you blindly, adoringly, madly!

You didn't know it then-you know it now.”

Oscar Wilde Lady Windermere's Fan

Source: Lady Windermere's Fan

Love, Life

“We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Source: Letters and Papers from Prison

People, Light, Suffering, Learning

“The idea occurred to him when he was twenty. At first it was only a vague idea, a question looming — what should I do? — with an answer taking shape: nothing.”

Georges Perec (1936–1982) French writer

Idea, Question

“Do not be duped by little duties. Do not be a chore man all your days.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

“It's been interesting, "Frostpine said casually. "I wanted Daja to get some experience of other smiths'-and other mages'- ways of doing things, if only so she can see mine is best.”

Tamora Pierce book Cold Fire

Source: Cold Fire

Way

“Imagine me; I shall not exist if you do not imagine me; try to discern the doe in me, trembling in the forest of my own iniquity; let's even smile a little. After all, there is no harm in smiling.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Lolita

Source: Lolita

Smile, Imagination

“Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.”

Steven Weinberg (1933) American theoretical physicist

Address at the Conference on Cosmic Design, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Washington, D.C. (April 1999) This comment is modified in a later article derived from these talks: :Frederick Douglass told in his Narrative how his condition as a slave became worse when his master underwent a religious conversion that allowed him to justify slavery as the punishment of the children of Ham. Mark Twain described his mother as a genuinely good person, whose soft heart pitied even Satan, but who had no doubt about the legitimacy of slavery, because in years of living in antebellum Missouri she had never heard any sermon opposing slavery, but only countless sermons preaching that slavery was God's will. With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil — that takes religion. :* "A Designer Universe?" at PhysLink.com http://www.physlink.com/Education/essay_weinberg.cfm

People, Religion, Evil

“What do you think about me is not my business the important thing is what I think about myself…”

Robert T. Kiyosaki (1947) American finance author , investor

Source: Rich Dad's Cashflow Quadrant: Rich Dad's Guide to Financial Freedom

Thinking, Business

“Then may I tell you that the very next words I read were these – ‘Chloe liked Olivia…’ Do not start. Do not blush. Let us admit in the privacy of our own society that these things sometimes happen. Sometimes women do like women.”

Virginia Woolf book A Room of One's Own

Source: A Room of One's Own

Women, Reading

“Trees cause more pollution than automobiles do.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Tree

“You can’t live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you.”

John Wooden (1910–2010) American basketball coach

They Call Me Coach (1972)
Variant: You cannot live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you

Perfection

“What Hells and Purgatories and Heavens I have inside of me! But who sees me do anything that disagrees with life--me, so calm and peaceful?”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Source: The Book of Disquiet

Life, Peace, Hell

“For the things we have to learn before we can do, we learn by doing.”

Aristotle book Nicomachean Ethics

Book II, 1103a.33: Cited in: Oxford Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (2005), 21:9
Nicomachean Ethics
Source: The Nicomachean Ethics

Learning

“Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Pt. 1, ch. 10
Atticus Finch & Maudie Atkinson
Source: To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
Context: "I'd rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you'll go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird." That was the only time I ever heard Atticus say it was a sin to do something, and I asked Miss Maudie about it.
“Your father's right," she said. "Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."

People, Music, Singing, Heart

“Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely if ever do they forgive them.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Mrs. Arbuthnot http://books.google.com/books?id=RHkWAAAAYAAJ&q=%22Children+begin+by+loving+their+parents+after+a+time%22+%22they+judge+them+rarely+if+ever+do+they+forgive+them%22&pg=PA187#v=onepage, Act IV A Woman of No Importance (1893) Variant: Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them. Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

For Parents, Love, Children, Forgiveness

“What kind of grad student do you take? “I never take a straight A student. A real scientist tends to be critical, and somewhere along the line, they had to rebel against their teachers.”

Lynn Margulis (1938–2011) American evolutionary biologist

Teachers

“I would tell you that you looked really hot today when I saw you naked, but that probably wouldn't be appropriate, being as we're in bed together but not doing anything."
Stark - Hunted”

P. C. Cast (1960) American writer

“If you are insecure, guess what? The rest of the world is too. Do not overestimate the competition and underestimate yourself. You are better than you think.”

T. Harv Eker (1954) American writer

World, Thinking

“Do you see that out there? The strange, unfamiliar light? It's called the sun. Let's go get us a little.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: The Hollow

Light, Sun

“Right is right, and wrong is wrong, and a body ain’t got no business doing wrong when he ain’t ignorant and knows better.”

Mark Twain book Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Source: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Business

“Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.”

Frédéric Bastiat book The Law

Source: The Law (1850)
Context: Life, faculties, production — in other words, individuality, liberty, property — this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it. Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.

Life, Men, Law

“You’re killing me here, Sage!”
“I’m not doing anything.”
“Exactly my point.”

Richelle Mead Bloodlines

Source: Bloodlines

“Here's a quick rule of thumb: Don't annoy science fiction writers. These are people who destroy entire planets before lunch. Think of what they'll do to you.”

John Scalzi (1969) American science fiction writer

People, Thinking, Science

“No man knows what he can do until he tries.”

Carter G. Woodson book The Mis-Education of the Negro

Source: The Mis-Education of the Negro

“They obeyed, as wise men do when a woman puts her foot down…”

Terry Pratchett book Nation

Source: Nation

Men

“Dogs do speak, but only to those who know how to listen.”

Orhan Pamuk (1952) Turkish novelist, screenwriter, and Nobel Prize in Literature recipient

Source: My Name is Red

For Mother, Dogs

“My whole wretched life swam before my weary eyes, and I realized no matter what you do it's bound to be a waste of time in the end so you might as well go mad.”

Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American writer

Source: On the Road: The Original Scroll

Life, Time, Madness

“Do something everyday that you don't want to do; this is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Pain

“But [Everett] and McCandless, at least they tried to follow their dream. That’s what was great about them. They tried. Not many do.”

Jon Krakauer book Into the Wild

Source: Into the Wild

Dreams

“Life is like crossing a river. If you take a huge step-aim for too bigger dreams-then the current will knock you off your feet and carry you away.
The way to do it is small steps, you will take hold of life. You will get there in the end.”

Louis Sachar (1954) American writer of children's books

Life, Dreams, Way

“What do I have in common with Jews? I don't even have anything in common with myself.”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

“If you can see the invisible, God will do the impossible.”

Joel Osteen (1963) American televangelist and author

God

“Do you know the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results."

"Wrong. That's the definition of determination.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: Through the Zombie Glass

“Dear Jesus, do something.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Pale Fire

Source: Pale Fire

“Sometimes people let the same problem make them miserable for years when they could just say, "So what." That's one of my favorite things to say. "So what." "My mother didn't love me." So what. "My husband won't ball me." So what. "I'm a success but I'm still alone." So what. I don't know how I made it through all the years before I learned how to do that trick. It took a long time for me to learn it, but once you do, you never forget.”

Andy Warhol book The Philosophy of Andy Warhol

Source: 1975, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (1975), Ch. 7: Time
Source: The Philosophy of Andy Warhol

Love, People, Problem, Learning

“It is so shocking to find out how many people do not believe that they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult.”

Frank Herbert book Dune

Source: Dune

People, Learning

“Do one thing at a Time, and while doing it put your whole Soul into it to the exclusion of all else.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Soul, Time

“Dogs do not have many advantages over people, but one of them is extremely important: euthanasia is not forbidden by law in their case; animals have the right to a merciful death.”

Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Death, People, Law, Dogs

“All that is important is this one moment in movement. Make the moment important, vital, and worth living. Do not let it slip away unnoticed and unused.”

Martha Graham (1894–1991) American dancer and choreographer

“I want to do something splendid…
Something heroic or wonderful that won’t be forgotten after I’m dead…
I think I shall write books.”

Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888) American novelist

Books, Thinking, Dead

“The truth of God's love is not that He allows bad things to happen, it's his promise that he will be there with us--when they do.”

Janette Oke (1935) Canadian writer

Source: Love Comes Softly

Love, God, Truth

“You may lie with your mouth, but with the mouth you make as you do so you none the less tell the truth.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Truth, Lie

“Val: Why do you go out there?
Sandra: Because dead people give such good advice.
Val: What advice do they give?
Sandra: Just one word- live!”

Tennessee Williams (1911–1983) American playwright

Source: Battle of Angels

People, Dead

“He had had much experience of physicians, and said 'the only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd druther not'.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Source: Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World

Health, Way, Drink

“Welly, welly, welly, welly, welly, welly, well. To what do I owe the extreme pleasure of this surprising visit?”

Anthony Burgess book A Clockwork Orange

Source: A Clockwork Orange

Pleasure

“What did thinking ever do for me, to what great place did thinking ever bring me? I think and think and think. I've thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005)
Context: I never thought about things at all, everything changed, the distance that wedged itself between me and my happiness wasn't the world, it wasn't the bombs and burning buildings, it was me, my thinking, my cancer of never letting go, is ignorance bliss, I don't know, but it's so painful to think, and tell me, what did thinking ever do for me, to what great place did thinking ever bring me? I think and think and think, I've thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it. (p. 17)

Thinking, Time, Happiness

“Never do anything wrong to make a friend or keep one”

Robert E. Lee (1807–1870) Confederate general in the Civil War

As quoted in Extraordinary Lives: The Art and Craft of American Biography (1986) by Robert A. Caro and William Knowlton Zinsser. Also quoted in Truman by David McCullough (1992), p. 44, New York: Simon & Schuster.-
Context: You must be frank with the world; frankness is the child of honesty and courage. Say just what you mean to do on every occasion, and take it for granted you mean to do right … Never do anything wrong to make a friend or keep one; the man who requires you to do so, is dearly purchased at a sacrifice. Deal kindly, but firmly with all your classmates; you will find it the policy which wears best. Above all do not appear to others what you are not.

“… my body has become
another country
and I feel like an unemployed
illegal alien
how will I survive
where I do not belong
I belong with you”

Patrick Califia-Rice (1954) American writer

Feeling, Country

“A man is more than the sum of all the things he can do.”

Bill Clinton My Life

Source: My Life

“I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.”

Thomas Paine book The Age of Reason

Source: 1790s, The Age of Reason, Part I (1794)

“An Assassin, a real Assassin, had to look like one - black clothes, hood, boots, and all. If they could wear any clothes, any disguise, then what could anyone do but spend all day in a small room with a loaded crossbow pointed at the door?”

Terry Pratchett book Night Watch

Source: Night Watch

Clothes

“The real purpose of books is to trap the mind into doing its own thinking.”

Christopher Morley (1890–1957) American journalist, novelist, essayist and poet

Books, Thinking

“The whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events do not happen in an arbitrary manner, but that they reflect a certain underlying order, which may or may not be divinely inspired.”

Stephen Hawking book A Brief History of Time

Source: A Brief History of Time (1988), Ch. 8

History, Science

“Don't do anything I wouldn't do, if you ever find anything I wouldn't do.”

Terry Pratchett book Carpe Jugulum

Source: Carpe Jugulum

“The most mentally deranged people are certainly those who see in others indications of insanity they do not notice in themselves.”

Leo Tolstoy book The Devil

Source: The Devil

People

“Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Variant: Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.

Success, Happy, Motivational, Good Morning

“If you are willing to do only what’s easy, life will be hard. But if you are willing to do what’s hard, life will be easy.”

T. Harv Eker (1954) American writer

Powerful, Life

“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

"Note on Dogma"
Proper Studies (1927)
Source: Complete Essays 2, 1926-29

Annie Dillard (1945) American writer

Source: The Writing Life

Learning

“What is my life for and what am I going to do with it? I don't know and I'm afraid.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Journals of Sylvia Plath

Life

“After all that I'd been through, after all that I'd learned and all that I'd been given, I was going to do what I had been doing every day for the last few years now: just show up and do the best that I could do with whatever lay in front of me.”

Michael J. Fox (1961) Canadian-American actor

Source: Lucky Man

Learning

“Prayer is the force as real as terrestrial gravity. As a physician, I have seen men, after all other therapy had failed, lifted out of disease and melancholy by the serene effort of prayer. Only in prayer do we achieve that complete and harmonious assembly of body, mind and spirit which gives the frail human reed its unshakable strength.”

Alexis Carrel (1873–1944) French surgeon and biologist

Men, Disease, Effort

“It’s a good thing when you don’t dare do something if you don’t think it’s right. But it’s not good when you think something’s not right because you don’t dare do it.”

Sigrid Undset (1882–1949) Norwegian writer

Source: The Wreath

Thinking

“Percy scowled. "I-I know you."
Nico raised his eyebrows. "Do you?”

Rick Riordan book The Son of Neptune

Source: The Son of Neptune

“Tides do what tides do–they turn.”

Derek Landy Skulduggery Pleasant

Source: Skulduggery Pleasant

“The phrase 'Someone ought to do something' was not, by itself, a helpful one. People who used itadded the rider 'and that someone is me'.”

Terry Pratchett book Hogfather

Source: Hogfather

People, Help

“My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

Leadership, World, Religion, Country

“His mind worked fast, flying in emergency supplies of common sense, as human minds do, to construct a huge anchor in sanity and prove that what happened hadn't really happened and, if it had happened, hadn't happened much.”

Terry Pratchett Thud!

Source: Thud!

Sense, Flying

“If you know that I am an unbeliever, then you know me better than I do myself. I may be an unbeliever, but I am an unbeliever who has a nostalgia for a belief.”

Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922–1975) Italian film director, poet, writer and intellectual

Interview in Film Culture, no. 42 (1966), p. 101 https://books.google.it/books?hl=it&id=Jq2RAAAAIAAJ&dq=%22If+you+know%22.

Nostalgia

“We love until we do not. For us, love doesn't fade gradually. It snaps like a branch bent too far.”

Holly Black book The Darkest Part of the Forest

Source: The Darkest Part of the Forest

Love

“Do you wish people to think well of you? Don't speak well of yourself.”

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher

People, Thinking

“I obviously do everything to be "hard to understand" myself”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Beyond Good and Evil

Source: Beyond Good and Evil

Understanding

“Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“Stay afraid, but do it anyway. What’s important is the action. You don’t have to wait to be confident. Just do it and eventually the confidence will follow.”

Carrie Fisher (1956–2016) American actress, screenwriter and novelist

Confidence, Waiting

“Insanity is knowing that what you're doing is completely idiotic, but still, somehow, you just can't stop it.”

Elizabeth Wurtzel book Prozac Nation

Source: Prozac Nation

“We do not need to eat animals, wear animals, or use animals for entertainment purposes, and our only defense of these uses is our pleasure, amusement, and convenience.”

Gary L. Francione (1954) American legal scholar

Pleasure, Animals

“I can't die yet, doctor. Not yet. I have things to do. Afterwords I'll have a whole lifetime in which to die.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Angel's Game

Source: The Angel's Game

“When good Americans die, they go to Paris"
"Where do bad Americans go?"
"They stay in America”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Act I.
A Woman of No Importance (1893)
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray
Context: Mrs. Allonby: They say, Lady Hunstanton, that when good Americans die they go to Paris.
Lady Hunstanton: Indeed? And when bad Americans die, where do they go to?
Lord Illingworth: Oh, they go to America.

“If I had another face, do you think I would wear this one?”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Attributed in Jean Dresden Grambs (1959), Abraham Lincoln Through the Eyes of High School Youth
Misattributed
Variant: If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?

Thinking