Quotes & Sayings About Stillness And Action

The non-action of the wise man is not inaction. It is not studied. It is not shaken by anything. The sage is quiet because he is not moved, not because he wills to be quiet ... Joy does all things without concern. For emptiness, stillness, tranquillity, tastelessness, silence, and non-action are the root of all things. — Zhuangzi

The secret of the receptive Must be sought in stillness; Within stillness there remains The potential for action. — Sun Bu'er

The stillness of prayer is the most essential condition for fruitful action. Before all else, the disciple kneels down. — Gianna Beretta Molla

Self-esteem is not a value that, once achieved, is maintained automatically thereafter; like every other human value, including life itself, it can be maintained only by action. Self-esteem, the basic conviction that one is competent to live, can be maintained only so long as one is engaged in a process of growth, only so long as one is committed to the task of increasing one's efficacy. In living entities, nature does not permit stillness: when one ceases to grow, one proceeds to disintegrate
in the mental no less than in the physical. — Ayn Rand

There is a stillness that accompanies the death of a loved one. Everything becomes quieter, but it's not just sound that is dimmed. Movement, action, perception, emotion - everything is distant and removed. Maybe — Penny Reid

Stillness and action are relative, not absolute, principles. It is important to find a balance of yin and yang, not just in qigong, but in everyday life. In movement, seek stillness and rest. In rest, be mindful and attentive. — Ken Cohen

What is this true meditation? It is to make everything: coughing, swallowing, waving the arms, motion, stillness, words, action, the evil and the good, prosperity and shame, gain and loss, right and wrong, into one single koan. — Hakuin Ekaku

The attack came without warning, in the pre-dawn stillness on the day they were due to leave. A series of solid concussions shook the walls and sent Simon scrambling from his bunk. Max thrust a handgun at him, which he immediately fumbled and dropped. — A. Ashley Straker

Stillness is training for action. — Andrew Cohen

Warriorship is an infinitely nuanced subject. A true warrior desires nothing so much as to be perfectly appropriate, "in sync" with space and time in each and every moment. The perfection of warrior timing results in a kind of invisibility. Walking between the super strings of karma, or bound activity, the warrior engages in kriya, or spontaneous action. This is the actionless action spoken of so eloquently by Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita. Only the natural perfection of kriya ensures that a warrior's actions will be of real benefit to those she serves. Walking between and in a state of total non-distraction, a warrior's invisibility is identical to her invincibility. In the warrior heart is a dynamic stillness that is unperturbed by any arising of this world, by any impediment or seeming obstacle. Even when we have not realized this perfection, it is our warrior hearts, still mostly unknown to us, that lead us steadily on to realization. — Shambhavi Sarasvati

He realized that he needed a clear mind and clear emotion to draw and execute well from the beginning to the end of his work. We draw our most potent creativity from deep wells. That is not to say we cannot exercise energy as we execute. But we often mistake time pressures, stress and deadlines, alongside the cacophony of an always-on world, as the necessary stimuli to create great work. I believe great work comes from a place of stillness where one's focus is total on the action in hand, directed fully by the heart. — Alan Moore

Taoist philosophy, Rest is prior to motion and stillness prior to action. — Arianna Huffington

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead!
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger. — William Shakespeare

When we remove all emotion, all judgement, and all expectation there is only love left. Love is found in the stillness of the soul. Love is without action, without attachment or need. Love is the subtle energy that flows through all of creation. Love transcends your being into ascension. Love is the harmony and the music of the universe, love is all there is. — L.J. Vanier

Meditation is not words, a mantram, or self hypnosis, the drug of illusions. It must happen without your volition. It must take place in the quiet stillness of the night, when you are suddenly awake and see that the brain is quiet and there is a peculiar quality of meditation going on. It must take place as silently as a snake among the tall grass, green in the fresh morning light. It must take place in the deep recesses of the brain. Meditation is not an achievement. There is no method, system or practice. Meditation begins with the ending of comparison, the ending of the becoming or not becoming. As the bee whispers among the leaves so the whispering of meditation is action. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Patience is about understanding the right moment for action and the right moment for stillness. — Alberto Villoldo

The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to God.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Bring us farther from God and nearer to the Dust. — T. S. Eliot

The 'mystical experience'. Always here and now - in that freedom which is one with distance in that stillness which is born of silence. But - this is a freedom in the midst of action, a stillness in the midst of other human beings. The mystery is a constant reality to him who, in this world, is free from self-concern, a reality that grows peaceful and mature before the receptive attention of assent. — Dag Hammarskjold

In a universe where all life is in movement, where ever fact seen in perspective is totally engaging, we impose stillness on lively young bodies, distort reality to dullness, make action drudgery. Those who submit - as the majority does - are conditioned to a life lived without their human birthright: work done with the joy and creativity of love.
But what are schools for if not to make children fall so deeply in love with the world that they really want to learn about it? That is the true business of schools. And if they succeed in it, all other desirable developments follow of themselves.
In a proper school, no fact would ever be presented as a soulless one, for the simple reason that there is no such thing. Every facet of reality, discovered where it lives, startles with its wonder, beauty, meaning. — Marjorie Spock

An ordinary mirror is silvered at the back but the window of the night train has darkness behind the glass. My face and the faces of other travellers were now mirrored on this darkness in a succession of stillnesses. Consider this, said the darkness: any motion at any speed is a succession of stillnesses; any section through an action will show just such a plane of stillness as this dark window in which your seeking face is mirrored. And in each plane of stillness is the moment of clarity that makes you responsible for what you do. — Russell Hoban

In summer we live out of doors, and have only impulses and feelings, which are all for action, and must wait commonly for the stillness and longer nights of autumn and winter before any thought will subside; we are sensible that behind the rustling leaves, and the stacks of grain, and the bare clusters of the grape, there is the field of a wholly new life, which no man has lived; that even this earth was made for more mysterious and nobler inhabitants than men and women. In the hues of October sunsets, we see the portals to other mansions than those which we occupy. — Henry David Thoreau

Non-action is unceasing activity. The sage is characterized by eternal and intense activity. His stillness is like the apparent stillness of a fast rotating gyroscope. — Ramana Maharshi

Stillness is our most intense mode of action. It is in our moments of deep quiet that is born every idea, emotion, and drive which we eventually honor with the name of action. We reach highest in meditation, and farthest in prayer. In stillness every human being is great. — Leonard Bernstein

In peace there's nothing so becomes a man as modest stillness and humility; but when the blast of war blows in our ears, then imitate the action of the tiger; stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, disguise fair nature with hard-favor'd rage. — William Shakespeare

The master action to move forward, is a form of inaction; being still and quiet. — Bryant McGill

Observe the silence between your thoughts, actions, reactions, and you will feel the presence of spirit in the stillness of those spaces. — Deepak Chopra

Stillness is not the absence or negation of energy, life, or movement. Stillness is dynamic. It is unconflicted movement, life in harmony with itself, skill in action. It can be experienced whenever there is total, uninhibited, unconflicted participation in the moment you are in - when you are wholeheartedly present with whatever you are doing. — Erich Schiffmann

Meditation in action is endlessly more important than meditation in stillness. — Hakuin Ekaku

No thought, no action, no movement, total stillness: only thus can one manifest the true nature and law of things from within and unconsciously, and at last become one with heaven and earth. — Laozi

Then, if action is possible or necessary, you take action or rather right action happens through you. Right action is action that is appropriate to the whole. When the action is accomplished, the alert, spacious stillness remains. — Eckhart Tolle

The more positive action you take grounded in presence (stillness), the more effective you will become in your line of duty, work or social life. — Christopher Dines

We are used to the actions of human beings, not to their stillness. — V.S. Pritchett

One's action ought to come out of an achieved stillness: not to be a mere rushing on. — D.H. Lawrence

the rhythm of the phases of action and stillness has an intelligence of its own. If we tune in, we can hear that rhythm, and the organ of perception is the desire, the nudge of excitement or the feeling of flow, of rightness, of alignment. It is a feeling of being alive. To listen to that feeling and to trust it is a profound revolution indeed. — Charles Eisenstein

If action is possible or necessary, your action will be in alignment with the whole and supported by creative intelligence, the unconditioned consciousness which in a state of inner openness you become
one with. Circumstances and people then become helpful, cooperative. Coincidences happen.
If no action is possible, you rest in the peace and inner stillness that come with surrender. — Eckhart Tolle