When Demosthenes was asked what was the first part of an orator, what the second, and what the third? he answered, "Action." The same may I say. If any should ask me what is the first, the second, the third part of a Christian, I must answer, "Action."—T. Brooks.
Our best conjectures, as to the true spring of actions, are very uncertain; the actions themselves are all we must pretend to know from history. That Cæsar was murdered by twenty-four conspirators, I doubt not; but I very much doubt whether their love of liberty was the sole cause.—Chesterfield.
Action is generally defective, and proves an abortion without previous contemplation. Contemplation generates, action propagates.—Owen Feltham.
Remember you have not a sinew whose law of strength is not action; you have not a faculty of body, mind, or soul, whose law of improvement is not energy.—E. B. Hall.
Our actions must clothe us with an immortality loathsome or glorious.—Colton.
Outward actions can never give a just estimate of us, since there are many perfections of a man which are not capable of appearing in actions.—Addison.
Mark this well, ye proud men of action! Ye are, after all, nothing but unconscious instruments of the men of thought.—Heinrich Heine.
Actors.—Players, sir! I look upon them as no better than creatures set upon tables and joint stools to make faces and produce laughter, like dancing dogs. But, sir, you will allow that some players are better than others? Yes, sir; as some dogs dance better than others.—Johnson.
Each under his borrowed guise the actor belongs to himself. He has put on a mask, beneath it his real face still exists; he has thrown himself into a foreign individuality, which in some sense forms a shelter to the integrity of his own character; he may indeed wear festive attire, but his mourning is beneath it; he may smile, divert, act, his soul is still his own; his inner life is undisturbed; no indiscreet question will lift the veil, no coarse hand will burst open the gates of the sanctuary.—Countess de Gasparin.
Oh, there be players that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of Christians, nor the gait of Christian, pagan, or man, have so strutted and bellowed, that I have thought some of Nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably!—Shakespeare.