“I am ashamed of my emptiness”, said the Word to Work,
“I know how poor I am when I see you”, said the Work to Word. Rabindamath Tagore “Stray Birds”
“People who know how to act are never preachers”, -Emerson
“A thought that does not result in an action is nothing much, and an action which does not proceed from a thought is nothing at all” –George Bernanos
“Action springs not from thought but from a readiness for responsibility”, -Dietrich Bonheoffer, “Thoughts on Baptism”
“In the arena of human life the honors and rewards fall to those who show their good qualities in action” –Anstotle, “Ethics”
What hand and brain went ever paired?
What heart alike conceived and dared?
What act proved all its thought had been? Robert Browing, “The Last Ride Together”,Men and Women
It is no profit to have learned well, if you neglect to do well. Life is made up of constant calls to action, and we seldom have time for more than hastily contrived answers. A life of action and danger moderates the dread of death. It not only gives us fortitude to bear pain, but also teaches us at every step the precarious tenure on which we hold our present being. Action is the greatest business of humankind, and the whole matter about which all laws are conversant. To dispose a soul to action, we must upset its equilibrium. The test of any man lies in action.
“Actions will remove the doubt that theory cannot solve”
“I myself must mix with action, lest I wither by despair”
Against Nature’s silence, we use action; in the vast indifference, we invest a meaning; we don’t watch unmoved, we intervene and say that this and this are wrong and work to alter them or to improve them. From the moment of birth, we are immersed in action, and can only fitfully guide it by taking thought. Originality and the feeling of one’s own dignity are achieved only through work and struggle. We become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions.
The best preparation for good work tomorrow is to do good work today. No race can prosper until it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.
No one knows what he can do until he tries. Nothing can come of nothing. Action is the proper fruit of knowledge. He that would have the fruit must climb the tree. Roasted Pigeons will not fly into one’s mouth.
“If you don’t crack the shell, you can’t eat the nut” Rus. Proverb
“By labor fire is got out of a stone” Dutch Proverb
“More effort, more prosperity” Euripides
If we rightly estimate things, what in them is purely owing to nature and what to labor, we shall find ninety-nine parts of a hundred are wholly to be put on the account of labor. Genius is 99 % perspiration and 1 % inspiration. The quality of life is determined by its activities. Renunciation and activity both liberate, but to work is better than to renounce. “Men of action” whose minds are too busy with the day’s work to see beyond it are the essential men. We cannot do without them, and yet we must not allow all our vision to be bound by the limitations of “men of action”.
There can be no acting or doing of any kind until it be recognized there is a thing to be done; thing once recognized, doing in thousand shapes becomes possible. The materials of action are variable, but the use we make of them should be constant. Most men are at a coma when they are at rest, and mad when they act. Therefore, in action, be primitive; in foresight, be strategist. The scientist or the follower of whatever discipline who has the habit of comparing him not with other followers but with the discipline it will have a lower opinion of himself, excellent he is. Great actions are not always true sons of great and mighty resolutions; but the fact is that our deeds determine us as much as we determine our deeds.
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