Great Throughts Treasury

"The game of life is a game of boomerangs. Our thoughts, deeds, and words return to us sooner or later, with astounding accuracy." -

"The game of life is the game of boomerangs. Our thoughts, deeds, and words return to us sooner or later, with astounding accuracy." -

"Men’s thoughts are as much according to their inclination; their discourse and speeches according to their learning and infused opinions; but their deeds are after as they have been accustomed." - Francis Bacon

"Our deeds determine us… as much as we determine our deeds." -

"Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds." -

"Good deeds are done by good people." - Hebrew Proverbs

"Deeds are mightier than words are, actions mightier than boastings." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Weak minds make treaties with the passions they cannot overcome, and try to purchase happiness at the expense of principle; but the resolute will of a strong man scorns such means, and struggles nobly with his foe to achieve great deeds." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"It is a bitter thought to an avaricious spirit that by and by all these accumulations must be left behind. Wee can only carry away from this world the flavor of our good or evil deeds." - Henry Ward Beecher

"There is no more mischievous absurdity than this judging of actions from the outside as they look to us, instead of from the inside as they look to the actors; nothing more irrational than to criticize deeds as though the doers of them had the same desires, hopes, fears, and restraints as ourselves." - Herbert Spencer

"Great deeds are usually wrought at great risks." - Herodotus NULL

"Deeds survive the doers." - Horace Mann

"In the name of religion many great and fine deeds have been performed. In the name of religion also, thousands and millions have been killed, and every possible crime has been committed." - Jawaharlal Nehru

"We are all interconnected and help being one another into the expression of our full potential through words, thoughts, and deeds that are unimaginable in their simplicity and untraceable in their complexity…Integrity means wholeness. Actions are whole when they conform to inner believes." - Joan Borysenko

"But this is human life: the war, the deeds, the disappointment, the anxiety, imagination's struggles, far and nigh, all human; bearing in themselves this god, that they are still the air, the subtle food, to make us feel existence." - John Keats

"I am metaphor embracing reality, and reality revealing the singleness of the spirit; and a witness confirming the deeds of the gods." - Kahlil Gibran

"Many a time I have made a comparison between nobility of sacrifice and happiness of rebellion to find out which one is nobler and more beautiful; but until now I have distilled only one truth out of the whole matter, and this truth is sincerity, which makes all our deeds beautiful and honorable." - Kahlil Gibran

"We judge others by their words and deeds, ourselves by our thoughts and our intentions." - Madame La Comtesse, Diane de Vobrillac (Marie de Beausacq)

"The way to achieve love for the Almighty is to concentrate on His deeds and creation and become aware of His infinite wisdom. The more you appreciate the complexity and beauty of the world, the greater your appreciation of the Almighty." - Maimonides, given name Moses ben Maimon or Moshe ben Maimon, known as "Rambam" NULL

"The altogether courageous and great spirit has, above all, two characteristics. First, he is indifferent to outward circumstances. Such a person is convinced that nothing but moral goodness and propriety are worth admiring and striving for. He knows he ought not be subject to any person, passion, or accident of fortune. His second characteristic is that when his soul has been disciplined in this way, he should do things that are not only great and highly useful, but also deeds that are arduous, laborious and fraught with danger to life and to those things that make life worthwhile." - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL

"God... created man; He has also created the circumstances under which he lives and acts; but still He has endowed man with discretion to choose how to act... And as he can exercise his discretion or his will in doing a thing or not doing it, he is responsible for his own deeds, and made to suffer the consequences." - Muhammad Ali, born Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr.

"Strange thoughts beget strange deeds." - Percy Bysshe Shelley

"Good deeds return to the house of their author." - Persian Proverbs

"Small deeds done are better than great deeds planned" - Peter Marshall

"We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not figures on a dial. We should count time by heart throbs. He most lives who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best." - Philip James Bailey

"Let each man think himself an act of God, his mind a thought, his life a breath of God; and let each try, by great thoughts and good deeds, to show the most of heaven he hath in him." - Philip James Bailey

"Those who aim at great deeds must also suffer greatly." - Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL

"Great men have often the shortest biographies. Their real life is in their books or deeds. There is properly no history, only biography." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Let not the emphasis of hospitality lie in bed and board; but let truth and love and honor and courtesy flow in all thy deeds." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"He is not wise to me who is wise in words only, but he who is wise in deeds." - Saint Gregory, aka Pope Gregory I, St. Gregory the Dialogist, "Gregory the Great" NULL

"The exhortation of the wise, unaccompanied by practice, falls on the heart as rain on stone; and he whose words are at variance with his deeds disgraces himself; hence, words which come not from the heart can never penetrate the ear." - Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron

"Men's words are ever bolder than their deeds." -

"To be nameless in worthy deeds exceeds an infamous history." -

"Fame is the perfume of heroic deeds." - Socrates NULL

"Such as thy words are, such will thy affections be esteemed; and such will thy deeds as thy affections, and such thy life as thy deeds." - Socrates NULL

"Not by words would I make my life famous, but by deeds." - Sophocles NULL

"What good is it if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds?" -

"What is man and what use is he? What do his good or evil deeds signify? His span of life is at most a hundred years; compared with endless time, his few years are like one drop of sea-water or a single grain of sand. That is why the Lord is patient with them, lavishing his mercy upon them." -

"He who has much learning but no good deeds is like an unbridled horse, that throws off the rider as soon as he mounts." - Talmud or The Talmud NULL

"He whose deeds exceed his wisdom will endure; but he whose wisdom exceeds his deeds, his wisdom will not endure." - Talmud or The Talmud NULL

"Deeds of kindness are equal in weight to all the commandments." - Talmud or The Talmud NULL

"Everyone whose deeds are more than their wisdom, their wisdom endures. And everyone whose wisdom is more than their deeds, their wisdom does not endure." - Talmud or The Talmud NULL

"It is not the critic that counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who at the worst, if he fails, at last fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

"Titles are of no value to posterity; the name of a man who has achieved great deeds imposes more respect than any or all epithets." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

"Words pay no debts, give her deeds." - William Shakespeare

"A person who is goal oriented will be able to overcome difficulties that others are unable to cope with. The stronger one is motivated to reach a certain goal, the easier it is for him to tolerate and even ignore difficulties. Hence a person who is strongly goal oriented to do good deeds will easily be able to minimize the amount of difficulty he experiences in doing those deeds." - Zelig Pliskin

"I've never known any human being, high or humble, who ever regretted, when nearing life's end, having done kindly deeds. But I have known more than one millionaire who became haunted by the realization that they had led selfish lives." -

"I've never known any human being, high or humble, who ever regretted, when nearing life's end, having done kindly deeds. But I have known more than one millionaire who became haunted by the realization that they had led selfish lives." - B. C. Forbes, fully Bertie Charles "B.C." Forbes

"Help with deeds, not words. " - Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, sometimes known as Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam

"The era of Moshiach is the fulfillment and culmination of the creation of the world, for which purpose it was originally created. Something of this revelation has been experienced once before on earth, at the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai [when] "To you it has been shown, to know that the L-rd is G‑d; there is none else beside Him" (Deuteronomy 4:35). G‑dliness was then perceived with physical vision.... Subsquently, however, sin coarsened both them and the world - until the era of Moshiach, when the physicality of the body and the world will be refined, and we will be able to apprehend the revealed Divine light which will shine forth to Israel by means of the Torah.... "The glory of G‑d will be revealed; and all flesh will see that the mouth of G‑d has spoken" (Isaiah 40:5)... This all depends on our deeds and labor throughout the duration of the galut... When a person does a mitzvah, he draws down a flow of Divine light into the world, to be suffused and integrated into the material reality." - Shneur Zalman of Liadi