Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Our intentions tend to be much more real to us than our actions, and this can lead to a great deal of misunderstanding with other people, to whom our actions tend to be much more real than our intentions.
Repeatedly we question the necessity of our actions and evaluate critically the reasons for carrying them out. But in flow there is no need to reflect, because the action carries us forward as if by magic.
As individuals, we will be judged in our lives by the totality of our actions. Not one thing will stand out. And I think that's how we get judged by our colleagues and that's how we get judged by the good lord.
All of our actions have in their doing the seed of their undoing. ... That in her creation of her children there should be the unspeakable promise of their death, for by their birth she had created mortal beings.
One cannot proclaim the Gospel of Jesus without the tangible witness of one’s life. Those who listen to us and observe us must be able to see in our actions what they hear from our lips, and so give glory to God!
When we cast our bread upon the waters we can presume that someone downstream whose face we will never know will benefit from our action, as we who are downstream from another will profit from the grantor's gift.
For my own part, I am apt to join in the opinion with those who believe that all the regions of Nature swarm with spirits, and that we have multitudes of spectators on all our actions when we think ourselves most alone.
Principles are natural laws that are external to us and that ultimately control the consequences of our actions. Values are internal and subjective and represent that which we feel strongest about in guiding our behavior.
We can most easily fulfill our desires when our actions are motivated by love. We expand the least effort, and we offer no resistance. We tap into the infinite organizing power of the universe to do less and accomplish everything.
When our actions create discord in another person, we, ourselves, in this lifetime or another, will feel that discord. Likewise, if our actions create harmony and empowerment in another, we also come to feel that harmony and empowerment.
As human beings, we are always torn between individual freedom and the ability of choose our actions, and the need for at least enough social structure so that anarchy, chaos, and warlordery - or the war of all against all - can be avoided.
In proportion as we endeavor to live according to the guidance of reason, shall we strive as much as possible to depend less on hope, to liberate ourselves from fear, to rule fortune, and to direct our actions by the sure counsels of reason.
There is a place within each of us where we cannot hide from the truth, where virtue sits as judge. To admit the truth of our actions is to go before that court, where process is irrelevant. Good and evil are intents, and intent is without excuse.
Genes are not simple triggers. No one is hardwired to commit murder or any other crime. Our actions are always the result of stupendously complex gene-environment interactions, and environment is likely to remain the more important influence by far.
Those moments in between the moments, those are the most interesting. What's unspoken, the way we talk around things, the way our actions are inconsistent with what we're feeling, how anger and affection manifest themselves in strange ways at inappropriate times.
Whenever we show others the goodness of God, whenever we follow our Teacher by imitating His posture of humble and ready service, our actions are sacred and ministerial. To be called into the priesthood, as all of us are, is to be called to a life of presence, of kindness.
We are many, many people and yet we are one. What we do today with our thinking, what we do tomorrow with our thoughts, what we do with our actions and our interactions with people determines the course of the universe itself. You are not powerless. You are not without power.
To have an idea of a thing is not just to get certain sensations from it. It is to be able to respond to the thing in view of its place in an inclusive scheme of action; it is to foresee the drift and probable consequence of the action of the thing upon us and of our action upon it.
We feel that our actions are voluntary when they follow a decision and involuntary when they happen without decision. But if a decision itself were voluntary every decision would have to be preceded by a decision to decide - An infinite regression which fortunately does not occur. Oddly enough, if we had to decide to decide, we would not be free to decide
We are masters of our actions from the beginning up to the very end. But, in the case of our habits, we are only masters of their commencement - each particular little increase being as imperceptible as in the case of bodily infirmities. But yet our habits are voluntary, in that it was once in our power to adopt or not to adopt such or such a course of conduct.
How do we define, how do we describe, how do we explain and/or understand ourselves? What sort of creatures do we take ourselves to be? What are we? Who are we? Why are we? How do we come to be what or who we are or take ourselves to be? How do we give an account of ourselves? How do we account for ourselves, our actions, interactions, transactions (praxis), our biologic processes? Our specific human existence?
The Christian is free from all other human beings. He does not have to live over against others, controlled by their actions and responses. Rather, he lives according to Christ's commands. This is Christian freedom. It is a freedom unknown by others. It is not just when others do the things that we like that we act properly toward them; we are free to do good even when they don't because our actions are not dependent on their responses. It is the Lord Christ when we serve!