Action is the tendency towards making a concerted effort to accomplish a goal.

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• Fate quello che noi diciamo e non quello che noi facciamo.
  • Translation: Do as we say, not as we do.
  • Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron, or Ten Days' Entertainment (c, 1350 [1820 reprint]), Third Day, Seventh Story, p. 207.

• We cannot think first and act afterwards. From the moment of birth we are immersed in action and can only fitfully guide it by taking thought.
  • Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (1925), p. 187.

• Action is transitory—a step, a blow— The motion of a muscle—this way or that— 'Tis done; and in the after-vacancy We wonder at ourselves like men betrayed.
  • William Wordsworth,The White Doe of Rylstone, l. 1 (1807)

Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895).

• Existence was given us for action, rather than indolent and aimless contemplation; our worth is determined by the good deeds we do, rather than by the fine emotions we feel. They greatly mistake, who suppose that God cares for no other pursuit than devotion.
  • Elias Lyman Magoon, p. 2.

• It is well to think well; it is divine to act well.
  • Horace Mann, p. 2.

• Man, being essentially active, must find in activity his joy, as well as his beauty and glory; and labor, like every thing else that is good, is its own reward.
  • Bishop Whipple, p. 3.

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Wed Dec 23 14:56:47 2009