Acts Quotes - 5
More Acts Quotes
Yet the order of the acts is planned And the end of the way inescapable. I am alone; all drowns in the Pharisees' hypocrisy.
Boris Pasternak— 1958 Doctor Zhivago.
He who desires but acts not breeds pestilence.
william blake— Line 5 (Proverbs of Hell)
The gods, after all, are only human, and once their rage has been placated they are perfectly capable of acts of mercy and grace.
— "The Vengeance of Hera"
Great thoughts reduced to practice become great acts.
william hazlitt— "On the Knowledge of Character"
I cannot forgive my friends for dying; I do not find these vanishing acts of theirs at all amusing.
Logan Pearsall Smith— Age and Death
The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
— George Eliot, in Middlemarch : A Study of Provincial Life (1871)
When the possessions and households of citizens are no longer honored by the acts, as well as the principles, of their government, then the concentration camp ceases to be one of the possibilities of human nature and becomes one of its likelihoods.
wendell berry— "The Landscaping of Hell : Strip-Mine Morality" (1965)
Moral obligation is to me so very strong a Stimulant, that in 9 cases out of ten it acts as a Narcotic. The Blow that should rouse, stuns me.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge— Letter to Henry Crabb Robinson (12 March 1811).
Variant: It is by acts and not by ideas that people live.
anatole france— As quoted in The Ironic Temper : Anatole France and His Time (1932)
Leibniz’s theory on the subject as substantia ideans in the sense of a causative agent of decision and acts stands much closer to a materialist interpretation of history than does a philosophy which reduces the thinking subject to the role of subsuming protocol sentences under general propositions and deducing other sentences from them.
max horkheimer— p. 149 ("The Latest Attack on Metaphysics" (1937))
But there was no harshness in the eyes which, looking at the world from under their tawny eyebrows, gave the impression of a man ever alert to greet a redeeming instinct in others but often disappointed. He lived at a little distance from his body, regarding his own acts with doubtful side-glances. He had an odd autobiographical habit which led him to compose in his mind from time to time a short sentence about himself containing a subject in the third person and a predicate in the past tense.
james joyce— "A Painful Case"
What they, in their innocence , cannot comprehend is that a properly constituted, healthy , decent man never writes, acts, or composes.
thomas mann— "Tonio Kröger" on general opinions about artists.
Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endurance, These are the seals of that most firm assurance Which bars the pit over Destruction’s strength; And if, with infirm hand, Eternity, Mother of many acts and hours, should free The serpent that would clasp her with his length; These are the spells by which to reassume An empire o’er the disentangled doom.
Percy Bysshe Shelley— Demogorgon, Act IV, l. 562–569.
So man, who here seems principal alone, Perhaps acts second to some sphere unknown Touches some wheel, or verges to some goal; 'Tis but a part we see, and not a whole.
Alexander Pope— Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man (1733-34), Epistle I, line 57.
I have learned by experience that no man's character can be eventually injured but by his own acts.
— Rowland Hill, p. 45. (Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895))
Jesus assumes the wisdom, power, love, and accessibility of God. Without attempting to prove these attributes, he simply acts as if their truth were beyond dispute.
— p.16 (Something More, A Consideration of the Vast, Undeveloped Resources of Life (1920))
The city is quite calm nowadays, even though residual criminal acts remain. On terrorist issues we bet on Serval. People rely on Serval for this kind of issue, much more than on the UN soldiers.
— Aboubacrime Cisse, president of the council of Timbuktu localities, quoted on Bloomberg, "Timbuktu Seeks Rebirth After Islamist Militants’ Destruction", March 31, 2014.
"Honesty is the best policy," but he who acts on that principle is not an honest man.
— Archbishop Richard Whately, Thoughts and Apothegms, Part II, Chapter XVIII. Pious Frauds; On Some Obstacles to the Attainment of Truth, and to its Progress in the World
Not by not acting in this world does one become free from action, nor does one approach perfection by renunciation only. Not even for a moment does someone exist without acting. Even against one’s will, one acts by the nature-born qualities.
— Krishna; Chapter 3, verses 4–5; Gavin Flood and Charles Martin translation
When a legislature undertakes to proscribe the exercise of a citizen 's constitutional rights it acts lawlessly and the citizen can take matters into his own hands and proceed on the basis that such a law is no law at all.
— William Orville Douglas, in The Supreme Court and Religion in American Life, Vol. 1: The Odyssey of the ..., p.52
We call you to be a people of manners, principles, honor, and purity, to reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling and trading with interest.
osama bin laden— Osama Bin Laden, Full text: bin Laden's "letter to America"', The Observer, November 24, 2002.
Variant translations: The superior man acts before he speaks, and afterwards speaks according to his actions. The greater man does not boast of himself, But does what he must do. A good man does not give orders, but leads by example.
— Virtue (or the man of virtue) is not left to stand alone. He who practices it will have neighbors.
The first thing that Allah made obligatory upon my Ummah was the five prayers; and the first thing from their acts of worship that shall be taken up will be the five prayers; and the first thing that they will be questioned about will be the five prayers.
— Kanzul `Ummal, Volume 7, Tradition 18859
It has been granted to her to be clothed with bright, clean, fine linen for the fine linen stands for the righteous acts of the holy ones.
— Apocalypse 19: 8
Friendship itself prompts it (Government of the U. S.) to say to the Imperial Government (Germany) that repetition by the commanders of German naval vessels of acts in contravention of those rights (neutral) must be regarded by the Government of the United States, when they affect American citizens, as deliberately unfriendly.
— Secretary of War Lansing. Reply to the German Lusitania Note (July 21, 1915). Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 841-60.
Not only are Israel’s actions illegal acts of war on Palestinians but they don’t keep Jews safe either. As Jews and as human beings, we demand Israel stop committing atrocities in our name.
— Sam Miller-Eisenstein [2]
acts themselves alone are history, and these are neither the exclusive property of Hume, Gibbon nor Voltaire, Echard, Rapin, Plutarch, nor Herodotus. Tell me the acts, O historian, and leave me to reason upon them as I please; away with your reasoning and your rubbish. All that is not action is not worth reading.
william blake— Blake's Exhibition and Catalogue of 1809, A Descriptive Catalogue of Pictures: Number V. The Ancient Britons
No stops are ever inserted in acts of Parliament, or in deeds; but the Courts of law, in construing them, must read them with such stops as will give effect to the whole.
kenyon, lloyd, 1st baron kenyon— Doe d. Willis and others v. Martin and others (1790), 4 T. R. 65.
Notwithstanding all the care and anxiety of the persons who frame acts of Parliament to guard against every event, it frequently turns out that certain cases were not foreseen.
kenyon, lloyd, 1st baron kenyon— Farmer v. Legg (1797), 7 T. R. 190.
The House of Commons is called the Lower House, in twenty acts of Parliament; but what are twenty acts of Parliament amongst Friends?
john selden— John Selden, Table Talk (1689), p. 38.
