Top 100 Act Not Quotes
#1. Lovers cannot imagine any opposition, no matter how small, to the beloved. They cannot endure to see the beloved veiled by something that causes Him to be forgotten. Moreover, lovers regard as futile any speech not about the beloved, and any act not related to Him as ingratitude and disloyalty.
Fethullah Gulen
#2. It is the ultimate metafictional act, not homicide but suicide. (Wallace would say that one of the problems of metafiction is that there is no difference.)
D.T. Max
#3. Evil is an act, not an appetite. How many haven't wanted to slash the throat of some boor across the dining room table? Present company excepted of course. Everyone has the appetite. If you give in to it, it, that act is evil. The appetite is normal.
Gregory Maguire
#4. In the beginning was the Word. Man acts it out. He is the act, not the actor.
Henry Miller
#5. Act not just react. Take 'HE' out of 'WHINE,' you get 'WIN.' Spare yourself from the trap of the destructive habit called 'complaining.
Jay Mark Mateo Balmes
#6. Stripped of their property, crushed and mutilated, they still embody the nobility of Israel and the eternity of God, while their enemy - who is your enemy as well - embodies all that is most vile in man. I shall act not as their detractor, but as their melitz yosher, their intercessor.
Elie Wiesel
#7. To gain knowledge, we must learn to ask the right questions; and to get answers, we must act, not wait for answers to occur to us.
Anatol Rapoport
#8. The truth of Zen is the truth of life, and life means to live, to move, to act, not merely to reflect.
D.T. Suzuki
#9. Act, not for the results, but for the action.
Lead, not for the mission, but for the vision.
See, not through your beliefs, but through the eyes.
Trust, not because of your beliefs, but because of truth.
Think before you do and do because it is right.
Debasish Mridha
#10. I had, like, two goals in my career: One was to try to get into 'Second City.' When I moved to Chicago, my goal was to try to work at 'Second City.' And beyond that, my goal was to make enough money as an actor to not do anything else but act, not have to go and wait tables again.
Steve Carell
#11. This jewel is the wisdom and compassion that it takes to act not on behalf of ourselves but for all beings. This is where real confidence and competence come from. Once we possess this jewel, our life becomes blessed.
Sakyong Mipham
#12. Humans feel at home in a world of things, whose essences and laws it can grasp and define in terms of concepts; but shy and ill at ease in a world of existences, because to exist is an act, not a thing.
Etienne Gilson
#15. Making sense of everything is not an obligation or even a possibility. Acceptance of mystery is an act not of resignation but humility. - David Wolpe
Lois Tverberg
#16. I will talk and act, not on my knees, but with prudence.
Lech Walesa
#17. To refrigerate a clock was an extremely violent act, not one I could explain to anyone.
Peter Carey
#18. And when we describe it as I shall do, it becomes plain that imagination is a specifically human gift. To imagine is the characteristic act, not of the poet's mind, or the painter's, or the scientist's, but of the mind of man.
Jacob Bronowski
#19. To remember was an act not of excavation but of self-creation in the present tense.
Laura Secor
#20. I voted for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, not because I thought it was the best we could do, but because I thought it was a whole lot better than the current system.
Ron Wyden
#21. The trees act not as individuals, but somehow as a collective. Exactly how they do this, we don't yet know. But what we see is the power of unity. What happens to one happens to us all. We can starve together or feast together.
Robin Wall Kimmerer
#22. He who asks a question is a fool for a minute; he who does not remains a fool forever.
When you realize that by changing your perspective, big things can be seen as little things, it becomes much harder to worry about anything. Commitment is an act, not a word.
Jean-Paul Sartre
#23. Faith is about doing. You are how you act, not just how you believe.
Mitch Albom
#24. I always felt like I needed to act. Not that I wanted to act, but I needed to. And I still feel that same way. There's an expression that I get to have in acting that I can't consciously express in my life. It has always defined me and it always will.
Dylan McDermott
#25. Study, find all the good teachers and study with them, get involved in acting to act, not to be famous or for the money. Do plays. It's not worth it if you are just in it for the money. You have to love it.
Philip Seymour Hoffman
#26. The disclosure of a new fact, the leap forward, the conquest over yesterday's ignorance, is an act not of reason but of imagination, of intuition.
Charles Nicolle
#27. Advent means "coming." Note that it is an action in progress, an act not yet accomplished, one we look forward to with renewed hope. Therefore, it is a time of expectation and preparation. It is a time of waiting and watching, of preparing our hearts and minds for the coming of Jesus Christ.
Nan Lewis Doerr
#28. We act not for ourselves but for the whole human race. The event of our experiment is to show whether man can be trusted with self - government.
Thomas Jefferson
#29. The body, I had been taught, wants only to live. Suicide, I had understood, is an act not of the body against itself but of the will against the body. Yet here I beheld a body that was going to die rather than change its nature.
J.M. Coetzee
#30. Actors should ACT. Not sell perfume, or write cookbooks.
Lauren Graham
#32. We act not out of our own authority but from an accompanied place.
Ben Pink Dandelion
#33. One should act not with worry but with faith;
One should act willingly and selflessly,
Let life be, the way it is.
Gian Kumar
#34. Where do you learn how to act? Not at church. America is a lot more like pagan Rome than we think. We still sacrifice to objects to gain our social goals.
Dave Hickey
#36. Active, successful natures act, not according to the maxim, "know thyself," but as if prompted by the commandment: will a self, and so become a self.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#37. In some ways, calm bodily protest has a nakedness to it that may be deeply embarrassing for observers; an act not unlike the bare-faced Oliver Twist effrontery that stands vulnerably before authority, asking for more or better.
Michael Leunig
#38. She didn't trust herself to pull off a seductress act, not with Sorin. He would probably just throw her out.
Leah Cypess
#39. Forgiveness is a mystical act, not a reasonable one.
Caroline Myss
#40. Play is a uniquely adaptive act, not subordinate to some other adaptive act, but with a special function of its own in human experience.
Johan Huizinga
#41. But revision is a creative act, not merely an analytical imposition of rules of style on a more creative first draft. That's a myth - that the first draft is more creative and everything after that is ruining creativity.
K.M. Soehnlein
#42. Act, not for results, just for action.
Give, not for appreciation, just to help.
Be kind, not for something in return, just to love.
Debasish Mridha
#43. philosophy teaches us to act, not to speak;
Seneca.
#44. Art thou in the darkness? Mind it not, for if thou dost it will feed thee more. But stand still, and act not, and wait in patience, till light arises out of darkness and leads thee.
James Nayler
#45. There is no act of love that is not an act of work or courage. No exceptions.
M. Scott Peck
#46. If any man is able to convince me and show me that I do not think or act right, I will gladly change; for I seek the truth by which no man was ever injured. But he is injured who abides in his error and ignorance.
Marcus Aurelius
#47. You do not need permission to be you. Just be your authentic, brilliant, one-soul-only self. You are a marvel. Act like it!
Toni Sorenson
#48. The highest of all is not to understand the highest but to act upon it.
Soren Kierkegaard
#49. What I thought as a young adult is you act like you have it together whether or not you do because that is what church people do. That is not what God has called us to do.
Beth Moore
#50. When you act, you've got to be like a poet or a musician. It's not about evidence before court. It's not a forensic subject. It's poetry; it's a completely different place.
Rhys Ifans
#51. I think boredom is the beginning of every authentic act. ( ... ) Boredom opens up the space, for new engagements. Without boredom, no creativity. If you are not bored, you just stupidly enjoy the situation in which you are.
Slavoj Zizek
#52. Do not act incautiously when confronting a little bald wrinkly smiling man!
Terry Pratchett
#53. But shall we be happy, to say that we live in the dusk rather than in the full night? Shall we rejoice that we shall only suffer, while your offspring will be the ones to know the torments of the damned? Shall this be why we do not act?
Robin Hobb
#54. We must meet reverses boldly, and not suffer them to frighten us, my dear. We must learn to act the play out. We must live misfortune down, Trot!
Charles Dickens
#56. MANY MANAGE TO SEPARATE THEIR LIFE FROM THEIR FILMS. THEY LIVE ONE WAY AND EXPRESS OTHER IDEAS IN THEIR WORKS. THEY ARE ABLE TO SPLIT THEIR CONSCIENCE. I CAN'T. TO ME CINEMA IS NOT JUST MY JOB: IT'S MY LIFE, AND EACH FILM IS AN ACT OF MY LIFE.
Andrei Tarkovsky
#57. Those who are actively seeking enlightenment will not find it because the act of looking for it is the distraction from it.
Enza Vita
#58. Most people are not, I have realized, emotionally well-practiced. We tend to misunderstand our fears and misinterpret our desires. We act when we ought to sit still; we feel when we should instead think, and in the end, this allows our emotions to handle us as opposed to us handling them.
Lynn Toler
#59. What America did in Vietnam and the Congo - we feel. And as a result come these demonstrations. I am not defending the act of burning USIS books. We deplore it. But we can understand the motives of the students.
Sukarno
#60. A mystery confounds the problem of industry in art. In the last analysis, to work is simply not enough. But we have to act as if it were, leaving reward aside.
Anne Truitt
#61. I'm not going to start churning out what you expect. If you want me to be a manufactured act, you can f*** off.
Lady Gaga
#62. Devilish men should not be allowed to hold kittens, babies, or bouquets of wildflowers. There ought to be an Act of Parliament.
Tessa Dare
#63. Thus the creation, which seems an arbitrary act, supposes laws as invariable as those of the fatality of the Atheists. It would be absurd to say that the Creator might govern the world without those rules, since without them it could not subsist.
Charles De Secondat
#64. If you want to act, do school plays. If they're not there, create them, and the same with local repertory. They are the grounding for a lot of people. Make it happen.
William Kircher
#65. Happiness and unhappiness are in the heart and spirit of each one of us: If you feel unhappy, then place yourself above that and act so that your happiness does not get to be dependent on anything.
Catherine The Great
#66. My dream is not Hollywood, but to perform my act in English to 30 people in a Soho comedy club, to show New Yorkers what they look like from the French point of view.
Gad Elmaleh
#67. The sage does not act and therefore does not fail, does not seize and therefore does not lose.
Laozi
#68. It should be possible to exist with only a short shelf of books, to read and give away. After all - we may not open a book, once read, for ten years or more. But the act of reading has made it part of us - to relinquish it would be to lose an extension of our being.
Pam Brown
#69. In this world is not the creative act of the genius always a protest against the inertia of the mass?
Adolf Hitler
#70. The greatest act of courage is not falling in love But, despite everything, falling in love again.
Robin Wayne Bailey
#71. I always wanted praise, and I always wanted attention; I won't lie to you. I was a jazz critic, and that wasn't good enough for me. I wanted people to write about me, not me about them. So I thought, 'What could I do? I can't sing, I can't dance, I can't act or anything like that. OK, I can write.'
Harvey Pekar
#72. Often the difference between a successful person and a failure is not one has better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on one's ideas, to take a calculated risk - and to act.
Andre Malraux
#73. Time does not act on memory to soften the edges, blur the details; if anything, it sharpens them. Emotions may lose their acid outlines, but not places and people, not if you wish to retain them.
Susan Moody
#74. As a rapper, you sort of act in music videos and in the persona you adopt onstage. You kinda have to put yourself out there and be courageous even to be a rapper. So, to step into acting was not that difficult a transition to make.
Queen Latifah
#75. A democratic medical establishment does not alter people's bodies to fit regressive social norms; it advocates for patients by demanding the social body get its act together.
Alice Dreger
#76. What I'm proposing, to myself and other people, is what I often call the tourist attitude - that you act as though you've never been there before. So that you're not supposed to know anything about it. If you really get down to brass tacks, we have never been anywhere before.
John Cage
#77. Forgiveness is not the act of doing nothing to the one who hurts you. It's easy to do nothing, but hard to forgive.
Ogwo David Emenike
#78. It's not as if you can act bigger to fit the surroundings or the budget more. Whatever, it just doesn't work that way.
Famke Janssen
#79. When you're angry you act according to your emotions, not with your mind.
Lakshmi Menon
#80. The community does not fight crime well by chasing it; after-the-fact, crime has won and the target of violence is injured or worse. Crime is fought best not by chasing it, but by facing it before it can become a completed act.
Crime is fought best at the scene of the violence.
John Longenecker
#81. But the act, called the sexual act, is not for the depositing of seed. It is for leaping off into the unknown, as from a cliff's edge, like Sappho into the sea.
D.H. Lawrence
#82. Murder in the murderer is no such ruinous thought as poets and romancers will have it; it does not unsettle him, or fright him from his ordinary notice of trifles; it is an act quite easy to be contemplated.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#84. I do not intend for 'honor, courage, and commitment' to be just words; I expect them to frame the way that we live and act.
Charles C. Krulak
#85. Christian researcher George Barna concludes, "American Christianity has largely failed since the middle of the twentieth century because Jesus' modern-day disciples do not act like Jesus.
Skye Jethani
#87. The desert wears ... a veil of mystery. Motionless and silent it evokes in us an elusive hint of something unknown, unknowable, about to be revealed. Since the desert does not act it seems to be waiting
but waiting for what?
Edward Abbey
#88. He is omnipresent not only virtually but also substantially. ... In him all things are contained and move, but he does not act on them nor they on him. ... He is always and everywhere. ... He is all eye, all ear, all brain, all arm, all force of sensing, of understanding, and of acting.5
James Gleick
#89. Great services are not canceled by one act or by one single error.
Benjamin Disraeli
#90. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama's strategy is to lead from behind. It sounds like what he is outlining is not to lead at all. We cannot continue to outsource foreign policy. We must lead. We are the most powerful nation in the world. We need to begin to act like it, again.
Marco Rubio
#91. He understood very little about this strange situation, and to act in a situation one does not understand is to invite the most terrible consequences.
Stephen King
#92. Giving respect is an obligation, not a favor; it is an act of maturity, birthed in a profound understanding of God's good grace.
Gary L. Thomas
#93. Here God is not approached as an object that we must love, but as a mystery present in the very act of love itself.
Peter Rollins
#94. Maybe the ability to confer attention to another person was not simply common courtesy, but was the fundamental act of humanity. When it came down to it, all we ever really have to give each other is our attention. Wasn't that what love was? Paying selfless attention?
Carolyn Jourdan
#95. It doesn't matter what's wrong with him. We're not going to act like he doesn't exist. Not anymore.
Carrie Butler
#96. Dream not that worldlings will admire you, or that the more holy and the more Christ-like you are, the more peaceably people will act towards you. They prized not the polished gem, how should they value the jewel in the rough?
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
#97. Wilberforce and the band of abolitionists knew that a private faith that did not act in the face of oppression was no faith at all.
Charles Colson
#98. Those who are inspired are willing to pay a premium or endure inconvenience, even personal suffering. Those who are able to inspire will create a following of people - supporters, voters, customers, workers - who act for the good of the whole not because they have to, but because they want to.
Simon Sinek
#99. We need to keep our ears open to the realities of life. If we don't act on life and take action to make things happen, it will act on us and give us results we might not want.
Robin Sharma
#100. I push him from my mind. This is no act of easy omission on my part; I do not consign him casually to a forgotten past. It is rather an act of will
a kind of self-performed surgery on my soul ... the bloodiest of mutilations.
Jim Fergus
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