Speak Less Do More Quotes & Sayings

Nothing remains intact without effort. Repetition of formulas does not assure the transmission of thought. It is not safe to entrust a doctrinal treasure to the passivity of memory. Intelligence must play a part in its conservation, rediscovering it, so to speak, in the process. — Henri De Lubac

I'm not a boastful person. I like my actions to speak for me. — Daniel A. D'Aniello

I like being free to take on any project that inspires me and to trust that the work will speak for itself. — Gugu Mbatha-Raw

Every mother can easily imagine losing a child. Motherhood is always half loss anyway. The three-year-old is lost at five, the five-year-old at nine. We consort with ghosts, even as we sit and eat with, scold and kiss, their current corporeal forms. We speak to people who have vanished and, when they answer us, they do the same. Naturally, the information in these speeches is garbled in the translation. — Karen Joy Fowler

I shall need to courage to do what I'm about to do: speak. And risk the enormous surprise I shall feel at the poverty of the spoken thing. As soon as it's out of my mouth, I'll have to add: that's not it, that's not it! But I cannot be afraid of being ridiculous, I always preferred less to more also out of fear of the ridiculous: because there's also the shattering of modesty. I'm putting off having to speak to myself. Out of fear? And because I don't have a word to say. I don't have a word to say. So why don't I shut up? But if I do not force out the word muteness will swallow me forever in waves. — Clarice Lispector

There are ministers who never speak of repentance or self-denial. Naturally they are popular, but they are false prophets. — J.I. Packer

Canada was for me very much Sweden, you know? Very much open people, that they read books, they go see films. I felt at home in Canada. And also, you speak French. — Michael Nyqvist

Self-confidence depends on environment: one does not speak in the same tone in the drawing room than in the kitchen. — Gustave Flaubert

But a lot of my training can be done in Aston - a lot of the hard work, so to speak. But a new atmosphere, a new place, and it's good for me because I didn't want to get stuck in one spot, so coming home is good, back and forth, you know, where my roots are. — Elvis Stojko

The Red God takes what is his, lovely girl. And only death may pay for life. You saved me and the two I was with. You stole three deaths from the Red God. We have to give them back. Speak three names and the man will do the rest. Three lives I will give you - no more, no less, and we're done. — George R R Martin

What will that mean to each of you? It will mean that those of you who might have lived to be seventy-one must die at seventy. Some of you who might have lived to be eighty-six must cough up your ghost at eighty-five. That's a great age. A year more or less doesn't sound like much. When the time comes, boys, you may regret. But, you will be able to say, this year I spent well, I gave for Pip, I made a loan of life for sweet Pipkin, the fairest apple that ever almost fell too early off the harvest tree. Some of you at forty-nine must cross life off at forty-eight. Some at fifty-five must lay them down to Forever's Sleep at fifty-four. Do you catch the whole thing intact now, boys? Do you add the figures? Is the arithmetic plain? A year! Who will bid three hundred and sixty-five entire days from out his own soul, to get old Pipkin back? Think, boys. Silence. Then, speak. — Ray Bradbury

speak less about what you have done. think more about what you can do — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

When you are a media celebrity, every word you speak is dissected, as are those you choose not to speak. — Nancy Gibbs

One reason that challenge brings happiness is that it allows you to expand your self - definition. You become larger. Suddenly you can do yoga or make homemade beer or speak a decent amount of Spanish. Research shows that the more elements make up your identity, the less threatening it is when any one element is threatened. — Gretchen Rubin

It make one's mouth hurt to speak with such forced merriment. — David Sedaris

Love is one of those topics that plenty of people try to write about but not enough try to do. — Criss Jami

Books are delightful society. If you go into a room and find it full of books - even without taking them from the shelves they seem to speak to you, to bid you welcome. — William Ewart Gladstone

Think about it this way
our actions speak truth our words cannot. — Na

A word, Sir Jamie. Quickly!"
You may speak freely, Alwyn," Jamie sighed. "You are always making too mcuh of minor incidents."
You're no' going to believe it, Sir Jamie," Alwyn gasped. "But I swear every male Fergusson alive is outside our gate. — Johanna Lindsey

Armenian is the language to speak with God. — Lord Byron

In heaven, Lucas would be beautiful. He'd speak a language everyone understood. — Michael Cunningham

It's a fact of life that how you dress affects how you are perceived and whether your contribution to a meeting is registered as worth listening to. It was most alarming the way people's attitudes changed when I started wearing my designer suits to committee meetings. Obviously, it's not just the clothes that count; you have got to have something worth saying. But it si true that some people's views are dismissed before they speak because others perceive them as just a secretary! — Stephanie Ellis

Our passion for fear consumes us and gives birth to the imaginary. Once fear is unleashed, it feeds upon us and rips us apart like a wild animal. Its hold is great, narrow is the escape and treacherous the road. I know of what I speak, for I was once his victim. — Nancy B. Brewer

People who speak or act in an ordinary fashion are most likely to be those who have been the recipients of higher experiences. But because they do not rage around, wild-eyed, people think that they are very ordinary folk and therefore not aware of anything unknown to the general run of man. — Idries Shah

I feel it is now my duty to speak to young women, to encourage them to have careers and, particularly, careers in science. — Rosalyn Sussman Yalow

Very few men can speak of Nature, for instance, with any truth. They overstep her modesty, somehow or other, and confer no favor.They do not speak a good word for her. Most cry better than they speak, and you can get more nature out of them by pinching than by addressing them. The surliness with which the woodchopper speaks of his woods, handling them as indifferently as his axe, is better than the mealy-mouthed enthusiasm of the lover of nature. Better that the primrose by the river's brim be a yellow primrose, and nothing more, than that it be something less. — Henry David Thoreau

Why do people let me speak to them so rudely? If they'd let me get away with less, I might think what I said mattered more. — Leah Stewart

You're a slave? (Eleni)
I was. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have come here. (Acheron)
Take your cloak off and sit, Acheron. You've done nothing to apologize for. I admire you all the more for stopping to help us. It's nothing for a nobleman to do so, yet they seldom bother to help those less fortunate. For a freedman to speak up in defense of another takes great courage and character. What you did is all the more noble and kind, and I would be honored to have you sit at my table with us. (Acheron) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

This is a secret they won't tell but that I, in my shadowy fashion, have overheard - the more they speak of me and the less they do about me, the more popular they become. What geniuses! The louder they squabble, the brighter they shine! Wisely and with calculating cunning, they have reached a tacit agreement - that, when it comes to immigration, there will be no common agreement. — Anonymous

In fact, we are the untouchables to the civilians. They think, more or less explicitly - with all the nuances lying between contempt and commiseration - that as we have been condemned to this life of ours, reduced to our condition, we must be tainted by some mysterious, grave sin. They hear us speak in many different languages, which they do not understand and which sound to them as grotesque as animal noises; they see us reduced to ignoble slavery, without hair, without honor and without names, beaten every day, more abject every day, and they never see in our eyes a light of rebellion, or of peace, or of faith. They know us as thieves and untrustworthy, muddy, ragged and starving, and mistaking the effect for the cause, they judge us worthy of our abasement. — Primo Levi

My French definitely improves the more I drink, as I worry less and less about absolutely perfect grammar. I do speak and understand the language, just not particularly well. — Anthony Bourdain

Because every day when I wake up, the clouds gather, a little darker each day, and I feel less and less equipped to do anything about them. To go anywhere. To make a change. To speak more than the occasional sentence. So I go to the bookstores. I do not want to speak and I do not want to be spoken to. I find it hurts my ears. My head. My skin. And people are quiet in bookstores. I like the anonymous, mute companionship of my fellow browsers. — Juliann Garey

What would it be like if i thought i was pretty
what would it be like if i carried that knowledge around
like i do the knowledge that i am a writer
pretty like peonies pretty like satin pretty like the child i was
would i speak to you differently
would i be healthier less stressed
less worried
would i buy more shoes or fewer
would i be more or less afraid
of death would i find something else
to hate about myself
would i get this jealous
when your eyes aren't touching me
in this city of movie star beauties
would i be able to write such raw and seductive words
would you have fallen in love with me sooner
would i have frightened you away
before you had the chance? — Francesca Lia Block

Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars - mere globs of gas atoms. I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination - stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one - million - year - old light. A vast pattern - of which I am a part ... What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it. Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent? — Richard Feynman

The stations of uncensored expression are closing down; the lights are going out; but there is still time for those to whom freedom and parliamentary government mean something, to consult together. Let me, then, speak in truth and earnestness while time remains. — Winston Churchill

When I create works of art, I do it because it is part of me and I must create. But afterward, when the work is done, I hope that it'll speak to people, that it'll open up their hearts or their minds. That cannot happen if the art is buried for safekeeping. — Nalini Singh

I believe that there are people who think as I do, who have thought as I do, who will think as I do. There are those who will live, unconscious of me, but continuing my attitude, so to speak, as I continue, unknowingly, the similar attitude of those before me. I could write and write. All it takes is a motion of the hand in response to a brain impulse, trained from childhood to record in our own American brand of hieroglyphics the translations of external stimuli. How much of my brain is wilfully my own? How much is not a rubber stamp of what I have read and heard and lived? Sure, I make a sort of synthesis of what I come across, but that is all that differentiates me from another person? - - - That I have banged into and assimilated various things? That my environment and a chance combination of genes got me where I am? — Sylvia Plath

Once upon a time, the Reindeer took a running leap and jumped over the Northern Lights.
But he jumped too low, and the long fur of his beautiful flowing tail got singed by the rainbow fires of the aurora.
To this day the reindeer has no tail to speak of. But he is too busy pulling the Important Sleigh to notice what is lost. And he certainly doesn't complain.
What's your excuse? — Vera Nazarian

When I grew up in Ireland in the seventies there was no such thing as therapy ... I mean we didn't even have cappuccinos until 1998! So for me music was therapy, it was also the place where one could speak about himself, where he was allowed to speak about his traumatic experiences. — Sinead O'Connor

The Spirit of prayer makes us so intimate with God that we scarcely pass through an experience before we speak to Him about it, either in supplication, in sighing, in pouring out our woes before Him, in fervent requests, or in thanksgiving and adoration. — Ole Hallesby

Many scientists have been drawn to Buddhism out of a sense that the Western tradition has delivered an impoverished conception of basic, human sanity. In the West, if you speak to yourself out loud all day long, you are considered crazy. But speaking to yourself silently - thinking incessantly - is considered perfectly normal. — Sam Harris

I said, "I'm satisfied teaching the martial arts."
"Not me," Arnold responded. "Bodybuilding is just a stepping-stone to me. I plan on becoming a real estate mogul, and from there, I plan to get into the movies."
I had to smile as I said to myself, "How's he going to be an actor when he can hardly speak English? — Chuck Norris

A lot of people probably don't realize how difficult it is to stick to that lawyer speak when you're not a lawyer. I see everyone on 'The Good Wife' - everyone, people who have been there since day one - struggling with that language because it is just not how people talk. — Carrie Preston

Literature is the voice of the age and the state; the character, energy, and resources of the country are reflected and imaged forth in the conceptions of its great minds; they are organs of the time; they speak not their own language, they scarce think their own thoughts; but under an impulse like the prophetic enthusiasm of old, they must feel and utter the sentiments which society inspires. — Edward Everett

The source of wisdom and power, of love and beauty, is within ourselves, but not within our egos. It is within our consciousness. Indeed, its presence provides us with a conscious contrast which enables us to speak of the ego as if it were something different and apart: it is the true Self whereas the ego is only an illusion of the mind. — Paul Brunton

If we are practicing our faith and seeking the companionship of the Holy Spirit, his presence can be felt in our hearts and in our homes. A family having daily family prayers and seeking to keep the commandments of God and honor his name and speak lovingly to one another will have a spiritual feeling in their home that will be discernible to all who enter it. — Dallin H. Oaks

Poetry is my politics. It's an opportunity that gives me a way to speak. — Eileen Myles

Rules were invented by elders so they could get to bed early. Men who speak endlessly on authority only prove they have none. And kings who make speeches about submission only betray twin fears in their hearts: they are not certain they are really true leaders, sent of God. And they live in mortal fear of a rebellion...
No... authority from God is not afraid of challenges, makes no defense, and cares not one whit if it must be dethroned. — Gene Edwards

And the very fact of how you speak somehow influences who you are. The way you move, the way you think, it seeps into your being, and it's quite hard to really break that down entirely. — David Tennant

I'll speak any goddamn way I like. This is my bloody place, and because of you, it's got fucking gunshot holes in the walls and dead bodies all over. Not to mention, a rabid rabbit bit my leg. A wolf, that's respectable. A caribou gore, a fine battle wound, but getting chewed on by a bloody bunny, I won't have it. I want you out! — Eve Langlais

Every word you speak is a prayer, or meditation of reinforcement which creates permanence. — Bryant McGill

A language you cannot speak yourself is not necessarily a god-awful mess, Celia says, transcribing a line of symbols into her notebook. — Erin Morgenstern

My greatest obstacle has to be accepting that the business that I chose to be part of is based on rejection and constantly trying to prove yourself. Letting go of seeing my accent and the way I speak as a limitation. Accepting it as who I am and where I came from. — Roselyn Sanchez

Those involved with practical reactors, humbled by their experiences, speak less and worry more. — Hyman Rickover

I would rather play with forked lightning, or take in my hand living wires with their fiery current, than to speak a reckless word against any servant of Christ, or idly repeat the slanderous darts which thousands of Christians are hurling on others, to the hurt of their own souls and bodies. — A.B. Simpson

The truly monumental can only come about by means of the most exact and refined relation between parts. Since each thing carries both a meaning of its own and an associated meaning in relation to something else - its essential value is relative. We speak of the mood we experience when looking at a landscape. This mood results from the relation of certain things rather than from their separate actualities. This is because objects do not in themselves possess the total effect they give when interrelated. — Hans Hofmann

It takes more time and effort and delicacy to learn the silence of a people than to learn its sounds. Some people have a special gift for this. Perhaps this explains why some missionaries, notwithstanding their efforts, never come to speak properly, to communicate delicately through silences. Although they 'speak with the accent of natives' they remain forever thousands of miles away. The learning of the grammar of silence is an art much more difficult to learn than the grammar of sounds. — Ivan Illich

When I moved to Bombay, it was very harsh. I was nothing like what I am today. I couldn't speak a word of English. In England, people might be very understanding about that, but in Bombay, they're not very forgiving. 'If you don't speak English, how do you expect to work in Hindi films?' — Kangana Ranaut