Silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way.
—Jane Austen
Life is governed by a multitude of forces. It would be smooth sailing if one could determine the course of one's actions only by one general principle whose application at a given moment was too obvious to need even a moment's reflection. But I cannot recall a single act which could be so easily determined.
—Mahatma Gandhi
The actions of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts.
—James Joyce
We have too many high sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them.
—Abigail Adams
I've arrived at this outermost edge of my life by my own actions. Where I am is thoroughly unacceptable. Therefore, I must stop doing what I've been doing.
—Alice Koller
All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, and desire.
—Aristotle
Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting a particular way... you become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions.
—Aristotle
Deliberation is the function of the many; action is the function of one.
—Charles De Gaulle
The superior man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his actions.
—Confucius
You cannot have a proud and chivalrous spirit if your conduct is mean and paltry; for whatever a man's actions are, such must be his spirit.
—Demosthenes
I have long since come to believe that people never mean half of what they say, and that it is best to disregard their talk and judge only their actions.
—Dorothy Day
An event had happened, upon which it is difficult to speak, and impossible to be silent.
—Edmund Burke
You ask me why I do not write something....I think one's feelings waste themselves in words, they ought all to be distilled into actions and into actions which bring results.
—Florence Nightingale
In this theater of man's life, it is reserved only for God and for angels to be lookers-on.
—Georges Clemenceau
Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money. It lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.
—Herbert Hoover