action

401.

I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.

- Baruch de Spinoza

402.

It has always been my practice to cast a long paragraph in a single mould, to try it by my ear, to deposit it in my memory, but to suspend the action of the pen till I had given the last polish to my work.

- Edward Gibbon

403.

What we all want is inward rest; rest of heart and brain; the calm, strong, self-contained, self-denying character, which needs no stimulants, for it has no fits of depression; which needs no narcotics, for it has no fits of excitement; which needs no ascetic restraints, for it is strong enough to use God's gifts without abusing them; the character, in a word, which is truly temperate, not in drink and food merely, but in all desires, thoughts, and actions.

- Essays. 1873.

404.

The formula ‘Two and two makes five’ is not without its attractions.

- Fedor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky

405.

That action is best, which procures the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers.

- Francis Hutcheson

406.

There is a Providence which rules this earth, whose name is neither Political Economy nor Expediency, but the Living God, who makes every right action reward, and every wrong action punish, itself.

- History Lecture, Cambridge. 1866.

407.

Would you not like to try all sorts of lives—one is so very small— but that is the satisfaction of writing one can impersonate so many people.

- Katherine Mansfield

408.

Some quick music is inexpressibly mournful. It seems just like one's own feelings--exultation and action, with the remembrance of past sorrow wailing up, yet without bitterness, tender in its shrillness, through the mingled tide of present joy; and the notes seem thoughts--thoughts pure of words; and a spirit seems to call to me in them and cry, "Hast thou not felt all this?" And I start when I find myself answering unconsciously, "Yes, yes, I know it all! Surely we are a part of all we see and hear!" And then, the harmony thickens, and all distinct sound is pressed together and absorbed in a confused paroxysm of delight, where still the female treble and the male bass are distinct for a moment, and then one again--absorbed into each other's being--sweetened and strengthened by each other's melody. . . .

- Letters and Memories. 1842.

409.

We must remember that dissatisfaction at existing evil (the feeling of all young and ardent minds), the struggle to escape from the "circumstance" of the evil world, has a carnal counterfeit--the love of novelty, and self-will, and self-conceit, which may thrust us down into the abysses of misrule and uncertainty; as it has done such men as Shelley and Byron; trying vainly every loophole, beating against the prison bars of an imperfect system; neither degraded enough to make themselves a fool's paradise within it, nor wise enough to escape from it through Christ, "the door into the sheepfold," to return when they will, and bring others with them into the serene empyrean of spiritual truth--truth which explains, and arranges, and hallows, and subdues everything.

- Letters and Memories. 1842.

410.

Why need we suppose that heaven is to be one vast lazy retrospect? Why is not eternity to have action and change, yet both like God, compatible with rest and immutability? This earth is but one minor planet of a minor system. Are there no more worlds? Will there not be incident and action springing from these when the fate of this world is decided? Has the evil one touched this alone? Is it not self-conceit which makes us think the redemption of this earth the one event of eternity?

- Letters. 1842.

411.

The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is you really want to say.

- Mark Twain

412.

Passion and reason in a healthy mind ought to be inseparable. We need not be passionless because we reason correctly. Strange to say, one's feelings will often sharpen one's knowledge of the truth, as they do one's powers of action.

- MS. 1843.

413.

That poet knew but little of either streams or hearts who wrote--
"Nor ever had the breeze of passion Stirred her heart's clear depths."
The lonely fisher, the lover of streams and living fountains, knows that when the stream stops it is turbid. The deep pools and still flats are always brown--always dark--the mud lies in them, the trout sleep in them. When they are clearest they are still tinged brown or gray with some foreign matter held in solution--the brown of selfish sensuality or the gray of morbid melancholy. But when they are free again! when they hurry over rock and weed and sparkling pebble-shallow, then they are clear! Then all the foreign matter, the defilement which earth pours into them, falls to the ground, and into them the trout work up for life and health and food; and through their swift yet yielding eddies--moulding themselves to every accident, yet separate and undefiled--shine up the delicate beauties of the subaqueous world, the Spirit-glories which we can only see in this life through the medium of another human soul, but which we can never see unless that soul is stirred by circumstance into passion and motion and action strong and swift. Only the streams which have undergone long and severe struggles from their very fountain-head have clear pools.

- MS. 1843.

414.

Let us make life one poem--not of dreams or sentiments--but of actions, not done Byronically as proofs of genius, but for our own self-education, alone, in secret, awaiting the crisis which shall call us forth to the battle to do just what other people do, only, perhaps, by an utterly different self-education. That is the life of great spirits, after, perhaps, many many years of seclusion, of silent training in the lower paths of God's vineyard, till their hearts have settled into a still, deep, yet swift current, and those who have been faithful over a few things are made rulers over many things.

- MS. Letter. 1842.

415.

Morbid melancholy results from subjectivity of mind. The self-contemplating mind, if it be a conscientious and feeling one, must be dissatisfied with what it sees within. Then it begins unconsciously to flatter itself with the idea that it is not the "moi" but the "non moi," the world around, which is evil. Hence comes Manichaeism, Asceticism, and that morbid tone of mind which is so accustomed to look for sorrow that it finds it even in joy--because it will not confess to itself that sorrow belongs to sin, and that sin belongs to self; and therefore it vents its dissatisfaction on God's earth, and not on itself in repentance and humiliation. The world looks dark. Shall we therefore be dark too? Is it not our business to bring it back to light and joy?

- MS. Letter. 1843.

416.

In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satisfaction is provided with a resource against calamity.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

417.

We want words to do more than they can. We try to do with them what comes to very much like trying to mend a watch with a pickaxe or to paint a miniature with a mop; we expect them to help us to grip and dissect that which in ultimate essence is as ungrippable as shadow. Nevertheless there they are; we have got to live with them, and the wise course is to treat them as we do our neighbors, and make the best and not the worst of them. But they are parvenu people as compared with thought and action.

- Samuel Butler

418.

Have you never cried in your hearts with longing, almost with impatience, "Surely, surely, there is an ideal Holy One somewhere--or else, how could have arisen in my mind the conception, however faint, of an ideal holiness? But where? oh, where? Not in the world around strewn with unholiness. Not in myself, unholy too, without and within. Is there a Holy One, whom I may contemplate with utter delight? and if so, where is He? Oh, that I might behold, if but for a moment, His perfect beauty, even though, as in the fable of Semele of old, 'the lightning of His glance were death.'" . . . And then, oh, then--has there not come that for which our spirit was athirst--the very breath of pure air, the very gleam of pure light, the very strain of pure music--for it is the very music of the spheres--in those words, "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come"? Yes, whatever else is unholy, there is a Holy One--spotless and undefiled, serene and self-contained. Whatever else I cannot trust, there is One whom I can trust utterly. Whatever else I am dissatisfied with, there is One whom I can contemplate with utter satisfaction, and bathe my stained soul in that eternal fount of purity. And who is He? Who, save the Cause and Maker and Ruler of all things past, present, and to come?

- Sermon on All Saints' Day. 1874.

419.

Speech is the mirror of action.

- Solon

420.

Self-sacrifice! What is love worth that does not show itself in action? and more, which does not show itself in passion in the true sense of that word: namely, in suffering? in daring, in struggling, in grieving, in agonising, and, if need be, in dying for the object of its love? Every mother will give but one answer to that question.

- Westminster Sermons. 1870.