Quotes about doing

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“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.”

“We ought not to be weary of doing little things for the love of God, who regards not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed.”

“It's overwhelming. I feel as if I am living in an illusion a dream where all things are possible. Amazing things do happen I know but always to someone else always in some far off place and time.”

“Language is courage: the ability to conceive a thought, to speak it, and by doing so to make it true.”

“You cannot help people permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves.”

“Nymphets do not occur in polar regions.”

“This is what the things can teach us: to fall, patiently to trust our heaviness. Even a bird has to do that before he can fly.”

“Why do I get the feeling that if you give me a hard time, I'll tell all of our year-mates your family nickname is Meathead?”

“if you wanted to do something absolutely honest, something true, it always turned out to be a thing that had to be done alone.”

“Worldly Wisdom

Do not stay in the field!
Nor climb out of sight.
The best view of the world
Is from a medium height.”

“Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?”

“You cannot do wrong and feel right. It is impossible!”

“A sense of calm came over me. More and more often I found myself thinking, "This is where I belong. This is what I came into this world to do.”

“I am a man" he told her, "and men do not consume pink beverages. Get thee gone woman, and bring me something brown.”

“Because the truth is, I do love him. I've loved him without ceasing. I've loved him since that very first day. I loved him even when I swore I didn't. I can't help it. I just do.”

“Logic takes care of itself; all we have to do is to look and see how it does it.”

“While you are going through your trial, you can recall your past victories and count the blessings that you do have with a sure hope of greater ones to allow if you are faithful.”

“Do not become so attached to any one belief than you cannot see past it to another possibility.”

“Is there any real purpose in being alive if all we are going to do is get up every day and live only for ourselves?
Live your life to help others. Give & live selflessly.”

“We have reached a point today where labor-saving devices are good only when they do not throw the worker out of his job.”

“Did you ever think that in a past life Alec was an old woman with ninety cats who was always yelling at the neighborhood kids to get off her lawn? Because I do”

“Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.”

“She thought there were no Gods; no one was to blame; and so she evolved this atheist's religion of doing good for the sake of goodness.”

“People's whole lives do pass in front of their eye before dying. The process is called "Living”

“Never expect God to do for you what you don't do to others.”

“Do you find it easy to get drunk on words?"

"So easy that, to tell you the truth, I am seldom perfectly sober.”

“If you want a lover
I'll do anything you ask me to.
And if you want another kind of love
I'll wear a mask for you.”

“Granny was an old-fashioned witch. She didn’t do good for people, she did right by them.”

“I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.”

“If a person offends you, and you are in doubt as to whether it was intentional or not, do not resort to extreme measures; simply watch your chance, and hit him with a brick.”

“I want to tell you, don't marry suffering. Some people do. They get married to it, and sleep and eat together, just as husband and wife. If they go with joy they think it's adultery.”

“The key to winning, as always, was looking as if you had every right, nay, duty to be where you were. It helped if you could also suggest in every line of your body that no one else had any rights to be doing anything, anywhere, whatsoever.”

“Success means doing the best we can with what we have. Success is the doing, not the getting — in the trying, not the triumph.”

“I don't know what to do with the horrifying freedom that can destroy me.”

“Do you remember what you said to me once? That you could help me only by loving me? Well-you did love me for a moment; and it helped me. It has always helped me.”

“I am glad that the country world…retains a power to use our English tongue. It is a part of its sense of reality, of its vocabulary of definite terms, and of its habit of earthly common sense. I find this country writing an excellent corrective of the urban vocabulary of abstractions and of the emotion disguised as thinking which abstractions and humbug have loosed upon the world. May there always be such things as a door, a milk pail, and a loaf of bread, and words to do them honor.”

“In this world, who can do a thing, will not;
And who would do it, cannot, I perceive:
Yet the will's somewhat — somewhat, too, the power —
And thus we half-men struggle.”

“Even if I say something, do not believe this nonsense, but do not disbelieve it either. Just see, "Someone is willing to sit in front of so many people and talk absolute nonsense, something that is totally absurd. Let me see what this is about." If you keep that much openness, the possibility is alive in your life. If you believe it, you will kill it. If you disbelieve it, you will kill it.”

“It is inbred in us that we have to do exceptional things for God: but we have not. We have to be exceptional in the ordinary things, to be holy in mean streets, among mean people, and this is not learned in five minutes”

“Power isn't doing something terrible to someone who's weaker than you, … It's having the strength to do something terrible, and choosing not to.”

“My dearest life, I know you are not mine forever; but do love me even if it’s for this moment. After that I shall vanish into the forest where you cast me, I won’t ask anyone for anything again. Give me something that can last me till I die.”

“Whenever you are asked if you can do a job, tell 'em, 'Certainly I can!' Then get busy and find out how to do it.”

“Anybody will do for you, but not for me. I must have.”

“The pas has no power to stop you from being present now. Only your grievance about the past can do that.”

“Just remember, you can do anything you set your mind to, but it takes action, perseverance, and facing your fears.”

“I was merely endeavoring to indicate that if we do not grab events by the collar they will have us by the throat.
-Lord Vetinari”

“I hope you liked them, Reader; that they did for you what any good story should do--make you forget the real stuff weighing on your mind for a little while and take you away to a place you've never been. It's the most amiable sort of magic I know.”

“If voting made any difference they wouldn't let us do it.”

“Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.”

“People always ask me how long it takes to do my hair. I don’t know, I’m never there.”

“But what do I have? The things I'm told and the things I tell, that's all. And as far as I know, that never yet made anyone fly.”

“Though those that are betray'd Do feel the treason sharply, yet the traitor stands in worse case of woe”

“You've no idea how long life goes on and how many, many changes it brings. Young people seem to imagine that it's over in a flash, that they do this thing, or that thing, and then die, but I can assure you they are quite wrong.”

“Do not mourn the dead. They know what they are doing.”

“What'll you do if you can't find a way to cure him?" Seth asked.
Dale paused. "I'll never know that day has come, because I'll never stop trying.”

“A lot of what we experience as strength comes from knowing what to do with weakness.”

“Self-control is something for which I do not strive. Self-control means wanting to be effective at some random point in the infinite radiations of my spiritual existence.”

“I do not believe anyone can be perfectly well, who has a brain and a heart”

“I don’t regret the things I’ve done. I regret the things I didn’t do when I had the chance.”

“What is this thing called life? I believe
That the earth and the stars too, and the whole glittering universe, and rocks on the mountains have life,
Only we do not call it so--I speak of the life
That oxidizes fats and proteins and carbo-
Hydrates to live on, and from that chemical energy
Makes pleasure and pain, wonder, love, adoration, hatred and terror: how do these things grow
From a chemical reaction?
I think they were here already, I think the rocks
And the earth and the other planets, and the stars and the galaxies
have their various consciousness, all things are conscious;
But the nerves of an animal, the nerves and brain
Bring it to focus; the nerves and brain are like a burning-glass
To concentrate the heat and make it catch fire:
It seems to us martyrs hotter than the blazing hearth
From which it came. So we scream and laugh, clamorous animals
Born howling to die groaning: the old stones in the dooryard
Prefer silence; but those and all things have their own awareness,
As the cells of a man have; they feel and feed and influence each other, each unto all,
Like the cells of a man's body making one being,
They make one being, one consciousness, one life, one God.”

“Peace is not something you wish for, it is something you make, something you are, something you do, and something you give away.”

“Do you know how wizards like to be buried?"
"Yes!"
"Well, how?"
Granny Weatherwax paused at the bottom of the stairs.
"Reluctantly.”

“We do not fear being called meticulous, inclining as we do to the view that only the exhaustive can be truly interesting.”

“Don't use a five-dollar word when a fifty-cent word will do.”

“Do not deny the classical approach, simply as a reaction, or you will have created another pattern and trapped yourself there.”

“It's not differences that divide us. It's our judgments about each other that do.”

“You do not have to sit outside in the dark. If, however, you want to look at the stars, you will find that darkness is necessary. But the stars neither require nor demand it.”

“Do ye not understand?"he said, in near desparation. "I would lay the world at your feet, Claire-and I have nothing to give ye!"
He honestly thought it mattered.”

“Whenever we seek to avoid the responsibility for our own behavior, we do so by attempting to give that responsibility to some other individual or organization or entity. But this means we then give away our power to that entity.”

“If I think more about death than some other people, it is probably because I love life more than they do.”

“What do we know but that we face one another in this place?”

“What you tell me about in the nights. That is not love. That is only passion and lust. When you love you wish to do things for. You wish to sacrifice for. You wish to serve.”

“Our ambition should be to rule ourselves, the true kingdom for each one of us; and true progress is to know more, and be more, and to do more.”

“Those who still think that listening isn’t an art should see if they can do it half as well.”

“I don't know when we'll see each other again or what the world will be like when we do. We may both have seen many horrible things. But I will think of you every time I need to be reminded that there is beauty and goodness in the world.”

“Alec looked at her and shook his head. "How do you manage never to get mud on your clothes?"
Isabelle shrugged philosophically. "I'm pure at heart. It repels the dirt.”

“When your mother asks, "Do you want a piece of advice?" it's a mere formality. It doesn't matter if you answer yes or no. You're going to get it anyway.”

“And if they don't believe us, I can give them the ghost eyes, you can go all big and threatening, Farmer can do his cracknob simpleton, and my lady can don her nobleness. We'll do all right.”

“People do not wish to appear foolish; to avoid the appearance of foolishness, they are willing to remain actually fools.”

“Each one must do his part if we wish to show that the nation is worthy of its good fortune.”

“Sometimes, when I have to do something I don't want to do, I pretend I'm a character from a book. It's easier to know what they would do.”

“Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world… would do this, it would change the earth.”

“But we're going to smile and pretend we're fine with the dorky birthmas gifts because people do not get that they can't mush a birthday into christmas.”

“What do you suppose is the use of a child without any meaning? Even a joke should have some meaning-- and a child's more imporant than a joke, I hope. You couldn't deny that, even if you tried with both hands.”

“467. I am sitting with a philosopher in the garden; he says again and again "I know that that's a tree", pointing to a tree that is near us. Someone else arrives and hears this, and I tell them: "This fellow isn't insane. We are only doing philosophy."”

“When I was a boy a farmer's wife who lived five miles from our village had great fame as a faith-doctor—that was what she called herself. Sufferers came to her from all around, and she laid her hand upon them and said, "Have faith—it is all that is necessary," and they went away well of their ailments. She was not a religious woman, and pretended to no occult powers. She said that the patient's faith in her did the work. Several times I saw her make immediate cures of severe toothaches. My mother was the patient. In Austria there is a peasant who drives a great trade in this sort of industry, and has both the high and the low for patients. He gets into prison every now and then for practising without a diploma, but his business is as brisk as ever when he gets out, for his work is unquestionably successful and keeps his reputation high. In Bavaria there is a man who performed so many great cures that he had to retire from his profession of stage-carpentering in order to meet the demand of his constantly increasing body of customers. He goes on from year to year doing his miracles, and has become very rich. He pretends to no religious helps, no supernatural aids, but thinks there is something in his make-up which inspires the confidence of his patients, and that it is this confidence which does the work, and not some mysterious power issuing from himself.”

“Later I had two green ones [alligator pears] — not so perfect. I painted them several times [c. 1920] when the men [American modernist artists, a. o. Marsden Hartley ] didn't think much of what I was doing. They were all discussing Paul Cézanne, with long involved remarks about the 'plastic quality' of his form and colour. I was an outsider. My colour and form were not acceptable. It had nothing to do with Cézanne or anything else. I didn't understand what they were talking about why one colour was better than another... Years later when I finally got to Cézanne's Mont Sainte-Victoire in the south of France, I remember sitting there thinking, 'How could they attach all those analytical remarks to anything he did with that mountain?”

“If I tell the Berliners to step forward, they do it. If I tell the Viennese to step forward, they do it, but then they ask why.”

“(…) if you can change yourself you will find that no other change is needed. To change the picture you merely change the film, you do not attack the cinema screen! (…) Clarify your mind, purify your heart, sanctify your life – this is the quickest way to a change of your world.”

“Modern scientists and so-called scholars think that there are no living entities on planets other than this one. Recently they have said that they have gone to the Moon but did not find any living entities there. But Srimad-Bhagavatam and the other Vedic literatures do not agree with this foolish conception.”

“If you have had an unfortunate experience, forget it. If you have made a failure in speech, your song, your book, your article, if you have been placed in an embarrassing position, if you have fallen and hurt yourself by a false step, if you have been slandered and abused, do not dwell upon it. There is not a single redeeming feature in these memories, and the presence of their ghosts will rob you of many a happy hour. There is nothing in it. Drop them. Forget them. Wipe them out of your mind forever. If you have been indiscreet, imprudent, if you have been talked about, if your reputation has been injured so that you fear you can never outgrow it or redeem it, do not drag the hideous shadows, the rattling skeletons about with you, Rub them off from the shite of memory. Wipe them out. Forget them. Start with a clean slate and spend all your energies in keeping it clean for the future.”

“To [aunt] Marie Hill,
Dearest
Why do you tempt me? I really cannot. It's impossible! Be happy? The only thought I have in my mind is to immerse myself in my art, to merge completely with it until I can begin to express what I really feel – and after that to be consumed even more by it. Even if I wanted to, I could not leave here [Worpswede]… I want to live here. I want to 'live' – and develop further as a person and as an artist… Can you understand this? I think you can. And do you approve? I hope so. In any case, I can't do any different..”

“I have satisfied myself that the [cosmic] rays are not generated by the formation of new matter in space, a process which would be like water running up a hill. Nor do they come to any appreciable amount from the stars. According to my investigations the sun emits a radiation of such penetrative power that it is virtually impossible to absorb it in lead or other substances…. This ray, which I call the primary solar ray, gives rise to a secondary radiation by impact against the cosmic dust scattered through space. It is the secondary radiation which now is commonly called the cosmic ray, and comes, of course, equally from all directions in space. [The article continues: The phenomena of radioactivity are not the result of forces within the radioactive substances but are caused by this ray emitted by the sun. If radium could be screened effectively against this ray it would cease to be radioactive, he said. ]”

“… we do not consider it as good engineering practice to consume a resource lavishly just because it happens to be cheap.”

“Even as Japanese responders continue to do heroic work, we know that the damage to the nuclear reactors in Fukushima Daiichi plant poses a substantial risk to people who are nearby. That is why yesterday, we called for an evacuation of American citizens who are within 50 miles of the plant. This decision was based upon a careful scientific evaluation and the guidelines that we would use to keep our citizens safe here in the United States, or anywhere in the world.”

“Do not forget, man, consumed by lust:
you—are the stone, the desert, are death …”

“After Herberholz had shown me all sorts of techniques, I suddenly got very interested in etching. I had a lot to say, I had a subject. Wash off the acid, put on the aquatint: a wonderful technique that you can use to get as many different shades and tones as you want. The 'doing' aspect of art becomes tremendously interesting when you start doing etchings; you get to be a real alchemist.”

“If […] the ability to tell right from wrong should turn out to have anything to do with the ability to think, then we must be able to "demand" its exercise from every sane person, no matter how erudite or ignorant, intelligent or stupid, he may happen to be. Kant—in this respect almost alone among the philosophers—was much bothered by the common opinion that philosophy is only for the few, precisely because of its moral implications.”

“I will not sign a 30-day or a 60-day or a 90-day extension. That is just not an acceptable approach. And if we think it’s going to be hard -- if we think it’s hard now, imagine how these guys are going to be thinking six months from now in the middle of election season where they’re all up. It’s not going to get easier. It’s going to get harder. So we might as well do it now -- pull off the Band-Aid; eat our peas. Now is the time to do it. If not now, when?”