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deed quotes

  •    We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness, Which we from time to time most grievouslyhave committed,By thought, word, and deed, Against thy Divine Majesty, Provoking most justly thy wrath and indignation against us.

    -Book of Common Prayer
    Holy Communion, General Confession.

  •    The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason.

    -T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot
      Murder in the Cathedral, pt.1.

  •   Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity, There never was a Cat of such deceitfulness and suavity. He always has an alibi, and one or two to spare: At whatever timethe deed took place!

    -T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot
    MACAVITY WASN'T THERE1939  Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats,'Macavity: The Mystery Cat'.

  • Non enim rei effectus, sed efficientis affectus in crimine est. Nec qu× fiunt, sed quo animo fiunt, ×quitus pensat. Crime liesnot inthe deed, but inthe doer'sintention: it is not what was done, but the spirit in which it was done that justice should consider.

    -He  lo|«  se
    c.1135  First letter to Peter  Abelard.

  • O for ten years, that I may overwhelm Myself in poesy; so I may do the deed That my own soul has to itself decreed.

    -John Keats
      'Sleep and Poetry', l.96^8.

  • All visible objects, man, are but aspasteboard masks.But in each eventin the living act, the undoubted deedthere, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask!

    - Herman Melville
      Captain  Ahab. Moby Dick, ch.36.

  • Y'are the deed's creature.

    -Thomas Middleton
      The Changeling (with William Rowley), act 3, sc.4.

  • But one thing we learned: there is no glory in the deed Until the soldier wears a badge of tarnished braid.

    - Sir Herbert Edward Read
      'To a Conscript of1940'.

  • I'll say, a strangemanisa marvel, with hismighty talk; but what's a squabble in your back-yard, and the blow of a loy, have taught me that there's a great gap between a gallous story and a dirty deed. 834

    -John Millington Synge
      Pegeen Mike.The Playboy of theWesternWorld, act 3.

  • How beggarly appear arguments before a defiant deed!

    -Walt(er) Whitman
      Leaves of Grass,'Broad-Axe Song', later 'Song of theBroad- Axe' (from1867).

Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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