Spring Into Action Quotes & Sayings

The difficulty is to keep a tight reign on our emotions. They may remain, but it is not they who are to rule the action. They have no authority. A life lived in God is not lived on the plane of the feelings, but of the will. In Scripture the heart is the will - the man himself, the spring of all action, the ruling power bestowed on him by his Creator, capable of choosing and acting. — Elisabeth Elliot

The impulse to perform a worthy action often springs from our best nature, but is afterwards tainted by the spur of selfishness or sinister interest. — Emile Souvestre

Hope may spring eternal in the human breast but it only materializes through action. — Marty Rubin

Action is the stream, and contemplation is the spring. — Thomas Merton

Prayer by its nature is communion and union of man with God; by its action it is the reconciliation of man with God, the mother and daughter of tears, a bridge for crossing temptations, a wall of protection from afflictions, a crushing of conflicts, boundless activity, the spring of virtues, the source of spiritual gifts, invisible progress, food of the soul, the enlightening of the mind, an axe for despair, a demonstration of hope, release from sorrow, the wealth of monks. — Ignatius Bryanchaninov

Everything fades so quickly, turns into legend, and soon oblivion covers it. And those are the ones who shone. The rest - "unknown, unasked-for" a minute after death. What is "eternal" fame? Emptiness. Then what should we work for? Only this: proper understanding; unselfish action; truthful speech. A resolve to accept whatever happens as necessary and familiar, flowing like water from that same source and spring. — Marcus Aurelius

The complaints of contemporary writes, who deplore the increase of luxury and deprevation of manners, are commonly expressive of their peculiar temper and situation. There are few observers who possess a clear and comprehensive view of the revolutions of society, and who are capable of discovering the nice and secret springs of action which impel, in the same uniform direction, the bland and capricious passions of a multitude of individuals. — Edward Gibbon

Were not the disadvantages of slavery too obvious to stand in need of it, I might enumerate and describe the tedious train of calamities inseparable from it. I might show that it is fatal to religion and morality; that it tends to debase the mind, and corrupt its noblest springs of action. I might show that it relaxes the sinews of industry, clips the wings of commerce, and introduces misery and indigence in every shape. — Alexander Hamilton

As politicians weigh courses of action against their political agendas the death toll weighs heavy on the conscience of the world. The once vibrant Syrian streets are now haunted by the souls of the innocent and the historic monuments that told of an unrivalled Arab civilisation no longer stand tall. — Aysha Taryam

Your hands are tied in action, but your hands are not tied in imagination and everything springs forth from the imagination. Everything. — Esther Hicks

These are the living springs of great thoughts and great actions. Everything grows clear in the reflections from the Infinite. — Louis Pasteur

The more we see that any action springs not from the motive of obedience, the more evident is it that it is a temptation of the enemy; for when God sends an inspiration, the very first effect of it is to infuse a spirit of docility. — Teresa Of Avila

It was a spring without voices. On the mornings that had once throbbed with the dawn chorus of robins, catbirds, doves, jays, wrens, and scores of other bird voices there was now no sound; only silence lay over the fields and woods and marsh ...
Even the streams were now lifeless ... No witchcraft, no enemy action had silenced the rebirth of new life in this stricken world.
The people had done it themselves ... — Rachel Carson

I mean, the job is Pearl Harbor. And you better not spends weeks and weeks and weeks trying to assign blame or deciding on a complete plan for fighting the whole war, you know, and letting a committee decide where the battleships should go and all of that. You better spring into action with the best people you have. — Howard Warren Buffett

Rarely did events play out as imagined, in any case. The order of future events was transient. In the same way that the past was reconfigured by selective memory, future events, too, were moving targets. One could only act on instinct, grab hold of an intuited perfect moment, and spring into action. — James Luceno

Pleasure and pain are the only springs of action in man, and always will be. — Claude Adrien Helvetius

It is from the unseen world that the phenomenal world emerges, and it is from the unseen realm of our hearts that all actions spring. The well-known civil rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr. said that in order for people to condemn injustice, they must go through four stages. The first stage is that people must ascertain that indeed injustices are being perpetrated. In his case, it was injustices against African Americans in the United States. The second stage is to negotiate, that is, approach the oppressor and demand justice. If the oppressor refuses, King said that the third stage is self-purification, which starts with the question: "Are we ourselves wrongdoers? Are we ourselves oppressors?" The fourth stage, then, is to take action after true self-examination, after removing one's own wrongs before demanding justice from others. — Hamza Yusuf

The Spirit of God is given to the true saints to dwell in them as his proper lasting abode to dwell in them and to influence their hearts as a principle of new nature or as a divine supernatural spring of life and action. — Jonathan Edwards

The need to express one's self in writing springs from a maladjustment of life, or from an inner conflict which the adolescent (or the grown man) cannot resolve in action. — Andre Maurois

Take the famous utterance, "I am God." Some people think this is a great pretension, but "I am God" is in fact a great humility. Those who say, instead, "I am a servant of God" believe that two exist, themselves and God. But those who say, "I am God" have become nothing and have cast themselves to the winds. They say, "I am God" meaning, "I am not, God is all. There is no existence but God. I have lost all separation. I am nothing." In this the humility is greater.
This is what ordinary people don't understand. When they render service in honor of God's glory, their servanthood is still present. Even though it is for the sake of God, they still see themselves and their own actions as well as God - they are not drowned in the water. That person is drowned when no movement, nor any action belongs to them, all their movements spring from the movement of the water. — Rumi

The multitude of men look satisfied and pleased; as if enjoying a full banquet, as if mounted on a tower in spring. I alone seem listless and still, my desires having as yet given no indication of their presence. I am like an infant which has not yet smiled. I look dejected and forlorn, as if I had no home to go to. The multitude of men all have enough and to spare. I alone seem to have lost everything. My mind is that of a stupid man; I am in a state of chaos.
Ordinary men look bright and intelligent, while I alone seem to be benighted. They look full of discrimination, while I alone am dull and confused. I seem to be carried about as on the sea, drifting as if I had nowhere to rest. All men have their spheres of action, while I alone seem dull and incapable, like a rude borderer.
(Thus) I alone am different from other men, but I value the nursing-mother (the Tao). — Lao-Tzu

The need to express oneself in writing springs from a mal-adjustment to life, or from an inner conflict which the adolescent (or the grown man) cannot resolve in action. Those to whom action comes as easily as breathing rarely feel the need to break loose from the real, to rise above, and describe it ... I do not mean that it is enough to be maladjusted to become a great writer, but writing is, for some, a method of resolving a conflict, provided they have the necessary talent. — Andre Maurois

Kid, let me tell you something. Most people spend their short time in this world less than half alive. They wander through their days in a haze of responsibility and resentment. Something happens to them not long after they're born. They get conflicted about what they want and start worshiping the wrong gods. Should. Mercy. Equality. Altruism. There's nothing you should do. Do what you want. Mercy isn't Nature's way. She's an equal opportunity killer. We aren't born the same. Some are stronger, faster. Never apologize for it. Altruism is an impossible concept. There's no action you can make that doesn't spring from how you want to feel about yourself. — Karen Marie Moning

The feeling of absurdity does not spring from the mere scrutiny of a fact or an impression, but that it bursts from the comparison between a bare fact and a certain reality, between an action and the world that transcends it. The absurd is essentially a divorce. It lies in neither of the elements compared; it is born of their confrontation. — Albert Camus

Take the case of just actions; just punishments and chastisements do indeed spring from a good principle, but they are good only because we cannot do without them - it would be better that neither individuals nor states should need anything of the sort - but actions which aim at honor and advantage are absolutely the best. The conditional action is only the choice of a lesser evil; whereas these are the foundation and creation of good. A good man may make the best even of poverty and disease, and the other ills of life; — Aristotle.

What does somebody like you want? More power? More toys? More sex?"
"All of the above. All the time."
"Greedy bugger."
"Kid, let me tell you something. Most people spend their short time in this world less than half alive. They wander through their days in a haze of responsibility and resentment. Something happens to them not long after they're born. They get conflicted about what they want and start worshipping the wrong gods. Should. Mercy. Equality. Altruism. There's nothing you should do. Do what you want. Mercy isn't Nature's way. She's an equal opportunity killer. We aren't born the same. Some are stronger, smarter, faster. Never apologize for it. Altruism is an impossible concept. There's no action you can make that doesn't spring from how you want to feel about yourself. Not greedy, Dani. Alive. And happy about it every single fucking day. — Karen Marie Moning

There is a quiet courage that comes from an inward spring of confidence in the meaning and significance of life. Such courage is an underground river, flowing far beneath the shifting events of one's experience, keeping alive a thousand little springs of action. — Howard Thurman

Because I want to get a lot done, I can sometimes do that in the flesh. If I don't rest in the Lord, and enjoy him as I should, my action doesn't spring from my identity and enjoyment of Christ. When that happens, I end up getting the glory rather than Jesus. — Francis Chan

Hope can produce the finest and most permanent springs of action. — Maria Edgeworth

No kind action ever stops with itself. One kind action leads to another. Good example is followed. A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees. The greatest work that kindness does to others is that it makes them kind themselves. — Amelia Earhart

I witnessed the birth of time itself. I watched the mortal coil spring forth from perfect darkness. I watched the stars form, watched this world coalesce, watched as life was breathed into it and as your kind rose to rule it." She put both hands on the table and leaned toward me, her blue eyes cold and hard. "Thus far, I have behaved as a guest ought. But do not mistake propriety for weakness, mortal. I beg you not to oblige me to take further action. — Jim Butcher

Imagine a state of affairs in which, for each man killed in action, two spring from the ground full of strength and energy. If there is a planet where such things happen, war, it must be admitted, is conducted there under conditions so different from those we see down here that it no longer deserves even to be called by the same name. — Frederic Bastiat

Every character has an inward spring; let Christ be that spring. Every action has a keynote; let Christ be that note, to which your whole life is attuned. — William Henry Drummond

Round a turn of the Qin Fortress winds the Wei River,
And Yellow Mountain foot-hills enclose the Court of China;
Past the South Gate willows comes the Car of Many Bells
On the upper Palace-Garden Road-a solid length of blossom;
A Forbidden City roof holds two phoenixes in cloud;
The foliage of spring shelters multitudes from rain;
And now, when the heavens are propitious for action,
Here is our Emperor ready-no wasteful wanderer. — Wang Wei

Then I flipped my hair across his face and said, Do you like my hair, baby? It's Winterfresh, like a mountain spring. — Cheyanne Young

Maybe Leland would appear there by chance in the morning his chin freshly shaved against his stiff new collar and upon seeing his love in such duress would spring into action. Maybe he would even carry her out like a princess in a bedtime story. — Anna Godbersen

Reyna set her dagger on the table. Percy had the vague feeling he'd seen her before. Her hair was black and glossy as volcanic rock, woven in a single braid down her back. She had the poise of a sword fighter - relaxed yet vigilant, as if ready to spring into action at any moment. The worry lines around her eyes made her look older than she probably was. "We have met, — Rick Riordan

anticipated this trend in the 1950s, when it used Jackson Pollock's action paintings as the backdrop for a fashion shoot for its spring collection. For Indiana the experience was a salutary one. The wordage he utilised in his paintings had always been carefully chosen and carried great emotional resonance, much of it directly autobiographical. He was not a neutralist. He was not attempting to transform the word 'love' into a slogan or logo, but that's what happened anyway, and the effect it had on his reputation as an artist was considerable. Because of the commercial proliferation of the LOVE — Rob Chapman

If your house is on fire, you don't comfort yourself with the thought that houses have been catching fire for thousands of years. You don't sit idly back and think, "Oh well, that is the way of nature." You get going, immediately. And you don't spring into action because of an idealistic notion that houses deserve to be saved. You do it because if you don't, you won't have a place to live. — Bill Nye

Real laughter is spontaneous. Like water from the spring it bubbles forth a creation of mingled action and spontaneity - two magic potions in themselves - the very essence of laughter - the unrestrained emotion within us! — Douglas Fairbanks

Nothing did more to spur the boom in stocks than the decision made by the New York Federal Reserve bank, in the spring of 1927, to cut the rediscount rate. Benjamin Strong, Governor of the bank, was chief advocate of this unwise measure, which was taken largely at the behest of Montagu Norman of the Bank of England ... At the time of the Banks action I warned of its consequences ... I felt that sooner or later the market had to break. — Bernard Baruch

Self-love, the spring of motion, acts the soul;
Reason's comparing balance rules the whole.
Man, but for that no action could attend,
And, but for this, were active to no end:
Fix'd like a plant on his peculiar spot,
To draw nutrition, propagate, and rot;
Or, meteor-like, flame lawless thro' the void,
Destroying others, by himself destroy'd. — Alexander Pope

A human action becomes genuinely important when it springs from the soil of a clear-sighted awareness of the temporality and the ephemerally of everything human. It is only this awareness that can breathe any greatness into an action. — Vaclav Havel

The energy that actually shapes the world springs from emotions - racial pride, leader-worship, religious belief, love of war - which liberal intellectuals mechanically write off as anachronisms, and which they have usually destroyed so completely in themselves as to have lost all power of action. — George Orwell

But what is this state? It is like a morning of spring, varied in its life and beauty, yet one and entire.
All the conflicts and contradictions of life are reconciled; knowledge, love and action harmonized; pleasure and pain become one in beauty, enjoyment and renunciation equal in goodness; the breach between the finite and the infinite fills with love and overflows; every moment carries its message of the eternal; the formless appears to us in the form of the flower, of the fruit; the boundless takes us up in his arms as a father and walks by our side as a friend.
While yet we have not attained the internal harmony, and the wholeness of our being, our life remains a life of habits. The world still appears to us as a machine, to be mastered where it is useful, to be guarded against where it is dangerous, and never to be known in its full fellowship with us, alike in its physical nature and in its spiritual life and beauty. — Rabindranath Tagore

So complex is the human spirit that it can itself scarce discern the deep springs which impel it to action. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Most of the avoidable suffering in life springs from our attempts to escape the unavoidable suffering inherent in the fragmentary nature of our present existence. We expect immortal satisfactions from mortal conditions, and lasting and perfect happiness in the midst of universal change. To encourage this expectation, to persuade mankind that the ideal is realizable in this world, after a few preliminary changes in external conditions, is the distinguishing mark of all charlatans, whether in thought or action. — Hugh Kingsmill

Democracy can only spring from practising it early, and democratic action was not to expected from young people brought up under a close authoritarian system. — Dora Russell

A vast charitable effort swung into action in order to head off widespread famine: a lecture tour of the United States undertaken by Parnell early in 1880 ensured publicity for the plight of Ireland and generated substantial relief funds; the US government dispatched a supply ship, which docked at Queenstown in the spring of 1880; and ships of the Royal Navy landed relief supplies along the west coast. Significantly, — Neil Hegarty

[Animals] do not so much act as be put into action, and that objects make an impression on their senses such that it is necessary for them to follow it just as it is necessary for the wheels of a clock to follow the weights and the spring that pulls them. — Marin Mersenne