Buster survives tornados, waterfalls, avalanches of boulders, and falls from great heights, and never pauses to take a bow: He has his eye on his goal. And his movies, seen as a group, are like a sustained act of optimism in the face of adversity; surprising, how without asking, he earns our admiration and tenderness. Because he was funny, because he wore a porkpie hat, Keaton's physical skills are often undervalued … no silent star did more dangerous stunts than Buster Keaton. Instead of using doubles, he himself doubled for his actors, doing their stunts as well as his own.
And learn the luxury of doing good.
He who did well in war just earns the right To begin doing well in peace.
Life is always so full. Getting and spending we lay waste to our powers. Why do we let ourselves be so busy and miss doing things we should have, or would have, liked to do?
As a leadership coach, one of the questions I always ask myself is, “Does this leader lead in a way that is compatible with humans?” or some version of that. People are designed to function with energy and use their gifts and talents to work toward fruitful outcomes. They do that from the moment they wake up in the morning until they lie down at night. From making the coffee to making computers, people have what it takes to get it done, if the right ingredients are present and the wrong ones are not. The leader’s job is to lead in ways such that people can do what they are best at doing: using their gifts and their brains to get great results.
First degree: to be blamed for doing evil, and praised for doing good. Second degree: to be neither praised nor blamed.
only one criterion mattered when picking a job—fast growth. When companies grow quickly, there are more things to do than there are people to do them. When companies grow more slowly or stop growing, there is less to do and too many people to not be doing them. Politics and stagnation set in, and everyone falters. He told me, “If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, you don’t ask what seat. You just get on.
We have inherited an incredibly beautiful and complex garden, but the trouble is that we have been appallingly bad gardeners. We have not bothered to acquaint ourselves with the simplest principles of gardening. By neglecting our garden, we are storing up for ourselves, in the not very distant future, a world catastrophe as bad as any atomic war, and we are doing it with all the bland complacency of an idiot child chopping up a Rembrandt with a pair of scissors.
Nothing can do men of good will more harm than apparent compromises with parties that subscribe to antimoral and antidemocratic and anti-God forces. We must have the courage to detach our support from men who are doing evil. We must bear them no hatred, but we must break with them. [ Communism and the Conscience of the West , 1948, p. 126.]
That indolent but agreeable condition of doing nothing.
It is the beautiful work of Christianity everywhere to adjust the burden of life to those who bear it, and them to it. It has a perfectly miraculous gift of healing. Without doing any violence to human nature it sets it right with life, harmonizing it with all surrounding things, and restoring those who are jaded with the fatigue and dust of the world to a new grace of living. Pax Vobiscum, p. 46.
Die Vernunft ist auf das Werdende, der Verstand auf das Gewordene angewiesen; jene bekummert sich nicht: wozu? dieser fragt nicht: woher?=--Reason is directed to what is a-doing or proceeding, understanding to what is done or past; the former is not concerned about the "whereto," the latter inquires not about the "whence."
[J]ust as an individual is called “good” without qualification, not because of a single good act or good quality, even though it be of heroic proportions, but because of his good habits , that is, his moral virtues ; so a society is not to be called “good” without qualification for the good individuals in it or for some great collective act of generosity or valor, but only for its good institutions , that is its Social Justice . And just as vice is as much a habit as virtue; so bad institutions are as much organized as good ones. The only difference is in the kind of organization and that is determined by its end: the good to secure the development and perfection of the full human life, and the bad to grasp some sort of immediate advantage regardless of the consequences. [“Virtue is the Habit of Doing Good,” Chapter V, Introduction to Social Justice. ]
the phenomenology of enjoyment has eight major components. When people reflect on how it feels when their experience is most positive, they mention at least one, and often all, of the following. First, the experience usually occurs when we confront tasks we have a chance of completing. Second, we must be able to concentrate on what we are doing. Third and fourth, the concentration is usually possible because the task undertaken has clear goals and provides immediate feedback. Fifth, one acts with a deep but effortless involvement that removes from awareness the worries and frustrations of everyday life. Sixth, enjoyable experiences allow people to exercise a sense of control over their actions. Seventh, concern for the self disappears, yet paradoxically the sense of self emerges stronger after the flow experience is over. Finally, the sense of the duration of time is altered; hours pass by in minutes, and minutes can stretch out to seem like hours. The combination of all these elements causes a sense of deep enjoyment that is so rewarding people feel that expending a great deal of energy is worthwhile simply to be able to feel it.
But, if that task is important to your future, you will have to do it. You cannot avoid it. Successful people make a habit of doing things they don't like to do. If
Noch ist es Tag, da ruhre sich der Mann, / Die Nacht tritt ein, wo niemand wirken kann=--It is still day, in which to be up and doing; the night is setting in wherein no man can work.
Before you start some work, always ask yourself three questions – Why am I doing it, What the results might be and Will I be successful. Only when you think deeply and find satisfactory answers to these questions, go ahead.
He is just as truly running counter to God's will by being intentionally wretched as by intentionally doing wrong.
Amelia is Jeremy’s opposite. She’s real. She’s literate. I like her a lot. Or maybe I just like the idea of her. Because she’s so young that she’s out of the question, I can mentally make her into the Perfect Woman in Waiting. Is that what I’m doing?
Though an inheritance of acres may be bequeathed, an inheritance of knowledge and wisdom cannot. The wealthy man may pay others for doing his work for him, but it is impossible to get his thinking done for him by another, or to purchase any kind of self-culture.--_Samuel Smiles._
Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel … the moment you feel, you're nobody-but-yourself. To be nobody-but-yourself-in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.
Saying and doing are two things.
Much of my life had been devoted to trying not to cry in front of people who loved me, so I knew what Augustus was doing. You clench your teeth. You look up. You tell yourself that if they see you cry, it will hurt them, and you will be nothing but a Sadness in their lives, and you must not become a mere sadness, so you will not cry, and you say all of this to yourself while looking up at the ceiling, and then you swallow even though your throat does not want to close and you look at the person who loves you and smile.
Rather privation of limbs than weariness of doing good. The power of using my limbs shall fail me before the power of being useful. Rather death than weariness. I cannot be satiated with serving. I do not weary of giving help. No amount of work is sufficient to weary me. This is a carnival motto: "Sine lassitudine." Hands in which ducats and precious stones abound like snow never grow weary of serving, but such a service is for its utility only and not for our profit. Nature has formed me thus.
For all their luxury was doing good.
What is it with guys that they think their interest is such a compliment, that when they hit on you, no matter how crudely, they think they’re doing you such a big fat favor? No matter how young or how old or how ugly or broke down they are, they all seem to think they are the sun and truly expect any woman to bask in their glow.
That you may retain your self-respect, it is better to displease the people by doing what you know is right, than to temporarily please them by doing what you know is wrong.
In all things there must be order, but it must of such a kind as is possible to observe … to see a man burnt for doing as he thought right, harms the people, for this is a matter of conscience.
Let us, then, be up and doing, With a heart for any fate; Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labour and to wait.
Never by reflection, only by doing what it lies on him to do, is self-knowledge possible to any man.
Parents are commonly more careful to bestow wit on their children than virtue, the art of speaking well than of doing well; but their manners ought to be the great concern.
If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is doing the thinking.
In my opinion a man's first duty is to find a way of supporting himself, thereby relieving other people of the necessity of supporting him. Moreover, the learning to do work of practical value in the world, in an exact and careful manner, is of itself a very-important education, the effects of which make themselves felt in all other pursuits. The habit of doing that which you do not care about when you would much rather be doing something else, is invaluable.
You may twist the word freedom as long as you please, but at last it comes to quiet enjoyment of your own property, or it comes to nothing. Why do men want any of those things that are called political rights and privileges? Why do they, for instance, want to vote at elections for members of parliament? Oh! Because they shall then have an influence over the conduct of those members. And of what use is that? Oh! Then they will prevent the members from doing wrong. What wrong? Why, imposing taxes that ought not to be paid. That is all; that is the use, and the only use, of any right or privilege that men in general can have. [ A History of the Protestant Reformation in England and Ireland , 1827, §456.]
Quality means doing it right when no one is looking.
Nothing done by man in the past has any deeper sense than what he is doing now.
In all situations= (out of Tophet) =there is a duty, and our highest blessedness lies in doing it.
I'm going to stop undoing, deconstructing, I'm going to start building. Even with Colombe I'll try to do something positive. What matters is what you are doing when you die, and when June 16th comes around, I want to be building.
Everything maintains itself by motion. And if it were possible to describe a diameter of air on the sphere of the earth, like to a well, which would extend from one superficies to the other, {151} and if a weighty body were dropped into this well, the body would seek to remain stationary at the centre, but so strong would be the impetus that for many years it would prevent it from so doing.
For the welfare of society, as for that of individual men, it is surely essential that there should be a statute of limitations in respect of the consequences of wrong-doing.
He wrought all kind of service with a noble ease / That graced the lowliest act in doing it.
How numerous the little foxes are! Little compromises with the world; disobedience to the still, small voice in little things; little indulgences of the flesh to the neglect of duty; little strokes of policy; doing evil in little things that good may come; and the beauty, and the fruitfulness of the vine are sacrificed!--_J. Hudson Taylor._
If thou sustain injustice, console thyself; the true unhappiness is in doing it.
The time of breeding is the time of doing children good; and not as many who think they have done fairly if they leave them a good portion after their decease.
It is not your business and mine to study whether we shall get to heaven, or even to study whether we shall be good men; it is our business to study how we shall come into the midst of the purposes of God and have the unspeakable privilege in these few years of doing something of His work.--_Phillips Brooks._
The significance of life is doing something.
observation is an act of creation, and that consciousness is doing the creating.
You’re pretty passionate about your unhappiness, aren’t you, Chris?” I looked right back at her and said, “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well.
I carry your heart with me (I carry it in my heart)I am never without it (anywhere I go you go,my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling) I fear no fate (for you are my fate,my sweet)I want no world (for beautiful you are my world,my true) and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide) and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart I carry your heart (I carry it in my heart)
He who is sparing in cheerfulness is more sparing in doing a kindness.
We live in a world changing so rapidly that what we mean frequently by common sense is doing the thing that would have been right last year.
Christ never wrote a tract, but He went about doing good.
I am of opinion that our Indian Empire is a curse to us. But so long as we make up our minds to hold it, we must also make up our minds to do those things which are needful to hold it effectually, and in the long-run it will be found that so doing is real justice both for ourselves, our subject population, and the Afghans themselves.
"Behold the man!" was Pilate's jeer. That is what all the ages have been doing since, and the vision has grown more and more glorious. As they have looked, the crown of thorns has become a crown of golden radiance, and the cast-off robe has glistened like the garments He wore on the night of the transfiguration. Martyrs have smiled in the flames at that vision. Sinners have turned at it to a new life. Little children have seen it, and have had awakened by it dim recollections of their heaven-home. Toward it the souls of men yearn ever.--_Robert E. Speer._
If I choose to take jest in earnest, no one shall put me to shame for doing so; and if I choose to carry on= (_treiben_) =earnest in jest, I shall be always myself= (
There are things that should be done, not spoken; that, till the doing of them is begun, cannot be spoken.
There are two, and only two, forms of possible gospel or "good message"--one, that men are saved by themselves doing what is right; and the other, that they are saved by believing that somebody also did right instead of them. The first of these gospels is eternally true and holy; the other eternally false, damnable, and damning.
None more impatiently suffer injuries than those that are most forward in doing them.= (?)
Diversification is protection against ignorance. It makes little sense if you know what you are doing.
Every great reform which has been effected has consisted, not in doing something new, but in undoing something old.
Reform, like charity, must begin at home. Once well at home, how will it radiate outwards, irrepressible, into all that we touch and handle, speak and work; kindling ever new light by incalculable contagion; spreading, in geometric ratio, far and wide; doing good only, wherever it spreads, and not evil.
Liberty is the right of doing whatever the laws permit.
The entire grace, happiness, and virtue of= (a young man's) =life depend on his contentment in doing what he can dutifully, and in staying where he is peaceably.
Wohl ungluckselig ist der Mann, / Der unterlasst das, was er kann, / Und unterfangt sich, was er nicht versteht; / Kein Wunder, dass er zu Grunde geht=--Unhappy indeed is the man who leaves off doing what he can do, and undertakes to do what he does not understand; no wonder he comes to no good.
That State action always has been more or less misdirected, and always will be so, is, I believe, perfectly true. But I am not aware that it is more true of the action of men in their corporate capacity than it is of the doings of individuals. The wisest and most dispassionate man in existence, merely wishing to go from one stile in a field to the opposite, will not walk quite straight--he is always going a little wrong, and always correcting himself; and I can only congratulate the individualist who is able to say that his general course of life has been of a less undulatory character. To abolish State action, because its direction is never more than approximately correct, appears to me to be much the same thing as abolishing the man at the wheel altogether, because, do what he will, the ship yaws more or less. "Why should I be robbed of my property to pay for teaching another man's children?" is an individualist question, which is not unfrequently put as if it settles the whole business. Perhaps it does, but I find difficulties in seeing why it should. The parish in which I live makes me pay my share for the paving and lighting of a great many streets that I never pass through; and I might plead that I am robbed to smooth the way and lighten the darkness of other people. But I am afraid the parochial authorities would not let me off on this plea; and I must confess I do not see why they should.
In morals, as in art, saying is nothing, doing is all.
We hear constantly of what Nature is doing, but we rarely hear of what man is thinking. We want ideas, and we get more facts.
If one is but secure at the foundation, he will not be pained by departure from minor details or affairs that are contrary to expectation. But in the end, the details of a matter are important. The right and wrong of one's way of doing things are found in trivial matters.
We live in a world saturated with information. We have virtually unlimited amounts of data at our fingertips at all times, and we’re well versed in the arguments about the dangers of not knowing enough and not doing our homework. But what I have sensed is an enormous frustration with the unexpected costs of knowing too much, of being inundated with information. We have come to confuse information with understanding.
It's not worth doing something unless someone, somewhere, would much rather you weren't doing it.
The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person who is doing it
The man of character, sensitive to the meaning of what he is doing, will know how to discover the ethical paths in the maze of possible behavior.
One cannot help doing a good office when it comes in one's way.
The thought of the presence of God renders us familiar with the practice of doing in all things His holy will.--ST. VINCENT DE PAUL.
~Bravery.~--True bravery is shown by performing without witnesses what one might be capable of doing before all the world.--_Rochefoucauld._
The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. [Speech, “Where Do We Go From Here?” by Martin Luther King, Jr. made to the Tenth Anniversary Convention of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (S.C.L.C) in Atlanta on August 16, 1967. Dr. King projected in it the issues which led to Poor People’s March on Washington. From Foner, Philip S., The Voice of Black America: New York, 1972.] A nation that will keep people in slavery for 244 years will “thingify” them and make them things. And therefore, they will exploit them and poor people generally economically. And a nation that will exploit economically will have to have foreign investments and everything else, and it will have to use its military might to protect them. All of these problems are tied together. What I’m saying today is that we must go from this convention and say, “America, you must be born again! . . .[ Ibid .] What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love. . . . [ Ibid .] Another basic challenge is to discover how to organize our strength in terms of economic and political power. [Ibid.] Power properly understood is nothing but the ability to achieve purpose. It is the strength required to bring about social, political and economic change. Walter Reuther defined power one day. He said, “Power is the ability of a labor union like the U.A.W. to make the most powerful corporation in the world, General Motors, say ‘Yes’ when it wants to say ‘No.’ That’s power.” [Ibid.] Now a lot of us are preachers, and all of us have our moral convictions and concerns, and so often have problems with power. There is nothing wrong with power if power is used correctly. [Ibid.] [A] host of positive psychological changes inevitably will result from widespread economic security. The dignity of the individual will flourish when the decisions concerning his life are in his own hands, when he has the means to seek self-improvement. Personal conflicts among husbands, wives and children will diminish when the unjust measurement of human worth on the scale of dollars is eliminated. [Ibid.] [T]he Movement must address itself to the question of restructuring the whole of American society. There are forty million poor people here. And one day we must ask the question, “Why are there forty million poor people in America?” And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I’m simply saying that more and more, we’ve got to begin to ask questions about the whole society. We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life’s market place. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. It means that questions must be raised. You see, my friends, when you deal with this, you begin to ask the question, “Who owns the oil?” You begin to ask the question, “Who owns the iron ore?” [Ibid.] One night, a juror came to Jesus and he wanted to know what he could do to be saved. Jesus didn’t get bogged down in the kind of isolated approach of what he shouldn’t do. Jesus didn’t say, “Now Nicodemus, you must stop lying.” He didn’t say, “Nicodemus, you must stop cheating if you are doing that.” He didn’t say, “Nicodemus, you must not commit adultery.” He didn’t say, “Nicodemus, now you must stop drinking liquor if you are doing that excessively.” He said something altogether different, because Jesus realized something basic – that if a man will lie, he will steal. And if a man will steal, he will kill. So instead of just getting bogged down in one thing, Jesus looked at him and said, “Nicodemus, you must be born again.” He said, in other words, “Your whole structure must be changed.” A nation that will keep people in slavery for 244 years will “thingify” them — make them things. Therefore they will exploit them, and poor people generally, economically. And a nation that will exploit economically will have to have foreign investments and everything else, and will have to use its military might to protect them. All of these problems are tied together. What I am saying today is that we must go from this convention and say, “America, you must be born again!” [Ibid.] [L]et us go out with a “divine dissatisfaction.” Let us be dissatisfied until America will no longer have a high blood pressure of creeds and an anemia of deeds. Let us be dissatisfied until the tragic walls that separate the outer city of wealth and comfort and the inner city of poverty and despair shall be crushed by the battering rams of the forces of justice. Let us be dissatisfied until those that live on the outskirts of hope are brought into the metropolis of daily security. Let us be dissatisfied until slums are cast into the junk heaps of history, and every family is living in a decent sanitary home. Let us be dissatisfied until the dark yesterdays of segregated schools will be transformed into bright tomorrows of quality, integrated education. Let us be dissatisfied until integration is not seen as a problem but as an opportunity to participate in the beauty of diversity. Let us be dissatisfied until men and women, however black they may be, will be judged on the basis of the content of their character and not on the basis of the color of their skin. Let us be dissatisfied. Let us be dissatisfied until every state capitol houses a governor who will do justly, who will love mercy and who will walk humbly with his God. Let us be dissatisfied until from every city hall, justice will roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream. Let us be dissatisfied until that day when the lion and the lamb shall lie down together. and every man will sit under his own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid. Let us be dissatisfied. And men will recognize that out of one blood God made all men to dwell upon the face of the earth. Let us be dissatisfied until that day when nobody will shout “White Power!” — when nobody will shout “Black Power!” — but everybody will talk about God’s power and human power. [Ibid.]