Activity Quotes

“Don't mistake activity with achievement.”
― John Wooden

“One of the best protections against disappointment is to have a lot going on.”
― Alain de Botton

“Happiness is a state of activity.”
― Aristotle

“The conventional mind is passive - it consumes information and regurgitates it in familiar forms. The dimensional mind is active, transforming everything it digests into something new and original, creating instead of consuming.”
― Robert Greene, Mastery

“Activity and rest are two vital aspects of life. To find a balance in them is a skill in itself. Wisdom is knowing when to have rest, when to have activity, and how much of each to have. Finding them in each other - activity in rest and rest in activity - is the ultimate freedom.”
― Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Celebrating Silence

“I also think he is given to disguises...Sometimes he wears spectacles and sometimes he does not. And twice he has worn an extremely peculiar hat. Inside.”
― Julia Quinn, What Happens in London

“I’ve decided the act that cannot wait / is the important will to create / But, ah, if my belly is ignored / the pantry door I shall implore / But I’ve been known to reach the bed / ideas still famished in my head.”
― Roman Payne, Cities & Countries

“The only activity a cynic will find contagious is yawning, that is, with other people, at other people.”
― Criss Jami, Diotima, Battery, Electric Personality

“We do not learn for the benefit of anyone, we learn to unlearn ignorance.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson

“To reprove a harm-doer, put him to shame by doing a good deed in return.”
― Thiruvalluvar, Thirukkural

“The most valuable tasks you can do each day are often the hardest and most complex. But the payoff and rewards for completing these tasks efficiently can be tremendous.”
― Brian Tracy, Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time

“Esoteric things progress not according to time, but by activity, they can be slow or quick, depending upon the efforts made.”
― Belsebuub

“The world is a busy place filled with many busy businesses, both the Godly and the ungodly. It means before you go on to accept any activity or event that comes into the world, you must weigh its Values, examine the Virtues, listen to Views and then you give your Verdict. Satan is not wise; he is just crafty!”
― Israelmore Ayivor

“Do you know how fast you are walking? ... To get a close estimate, count the number of steps you take in a minute and divide by 30... :)”
― Albina Fabiani

“I had a day when I was busy in the world, where the activity created a turmoil on the surface of my consciousness like waves on the surface of the ocean, which made it difficult to see through the waves to the inner silence.
It reminded me that we need to develop both the capacity to use the mind when engaged in activity and social relations, and to be able to let go of the activity and to come in contact with the deep inner silence.
The relationship between being active in the world and in social relations and the inner silence is like the relationship between the waves on the surface of the ocean and the deep inner silence on the bottom of the ocean.”
― Swami Dhyan Giten, Presence - Working from Within. The Psychology of Being

“Reading is an activity of civilized beings.”
― Toba Beta

“Teach a child a useful skill. Build confidence and self-esteem that lasts a lifetime.”
― Sybrina Durant, Boo's Shoes - A Rabbit and Fox Story: Learn To Tie Shoelaces

“The vainglory of wishing to understand is dangerous, immoral and, above all, old-fashioned. The modern way – perhaps the final way - is to say: Go forward, without knowing why, as quickly as possible, towards an unknown goal! To act and think are opposites which identify one only in the Absolute. To accomplish all one's movements – of the head, the arms, the legs – without ever quite attaining the status of a puppet, but with a certainty that gives one a feeling of rightness: that is what is nowadays held up as the ideal. Be citizens of Universal activity! Forget to be conscious of ourselves! The blind horse gallops without hesitation, not knowing where it is going, not caring where it has been: so let up put out our eyes!”
― Remy de Gourmont

“Each one's no longer conscious
Of the high wall, or the rest:
Since the one enduring fortress,
Is the soldier's iron breast.

If you’d live unconquered,
Quickly arm, and fight the real foe:
Every wife an Amazon bred,
And every child a hero.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“The Second Koran tells us that the darkness in ourselves is a sinister thing. It waits until we relax, it waits until we reach the most vulnerable moments, and then it snares us. I want to be dutiful. I want to do what I should. But when I go back to the tube, I think of where I am going; to that small house and my empty room. What will I do tonight? Make more paper flowers, more wreaths? I am sick of them. Sick of the Nekropolis.

I can take the tube to my mistress' house, or I can go by the street where Mardin's house is. I'm tired. I'm ready to go to my little room and relax. Oh, Holy One, I dread the empty evening. Maybe I should go by the street just to fill up time. I have all this empty time in front of me. Tonight and tomorrow and the week after and the next month and all down through the years as I never marry and become a dried-up woman. Evenings spent folding paper. Days cleaning someone else's house. Free afternoons spent shopping a bit, stopping in tea shops because my feet hurt. That is what lives are, aren't they? Attempts to fill our time with activity designed to prevent us from realizing that there is no meaning?”
― Maureen F. McHugh

“Nobody is going to save you but yourself and the ‘best’ and only way to do so is
through action.”
― Oli Anderson, Personal Revolutions: A Short Course in Realness

“Here we must take account of one of St. Thomas's conceptual distinctions, which at first seems like unnecessary caviling. It is the distinction between "uncreated" and "created" happiness. We have here something which, while not at all obvious, is nevertheless fraught with consequences for our whole feeling about life. Namely, this: what does indeed make us happy is the infinite and uncreated richness of God; but participation in this, happiness itself, is entirely a "creatural" reality governed from within by our humanity; it is not something that descends overwhelmingly upon us from outside. That is, it is not only something that happens to us; we ourselves are intensely active participants in our own happiness.
Beatitude - Thomas is saying - cannot possibly be conceived as a merely objective condition of sheer existence. It is not a mere quality, not pure passivity, not simply a feeling. It is something that takes place in the alert core of the mind... Happiness is an act and an activity of the soul.”
― Josef Pieper, Happiness and Contemplation

“Fresh activity is the best way to conquer depression. Ruth, not the type to linger in grief, took the initiative to contribute to her very-small household. Ruth was anxious to know and be known by her new community.
Michael Ben Zehabe, Ruth: a woman’s guide to husband material, pg 41”
― Michael Ben Zehabe, Ruth: A Woman's Guide to Husband Material

“This agitation is becoming so great that the higher culture can no longer allow its fruits to ripen; it is as if the seasons were following to quickly from one another. From lack of rest, our civilization is ending in a new barbarism. Never have the active, which is to say the restless, people been prized more. Therefore, one of the necessary correctives that must be applied to the character of humanity is a massive strengthening of the contemplative element.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits

“Activity and creativity are, by and large, good for man’s soul. But remember that you don’t have to do something every single day, to be busy every single second. Not even meditation or the like. Sometimes your inner self just wants to sit, to breathe, to enjoy; to beautifully exist. Because by beautifully existing, you have already done more than enough!”
― Giannis Delimitsos

“The truth about being persistent is plain and simple… it works. Persistency gets the job done. We only get flustered when we stop short of our goal.”
― Cathy Burnham Martin, Healthy Thinking Habits: Seven Attitude Skills Simplified

“Do whatever it takes. Give whatever you can. With full commitment, you can live well with yourself, regardless of the results.”
― Cathy Burnham Martin, Healthy Thinking Habits: Seven Attitude Skills Simplified

“Florida fires honest people.”
― Steven Magee

“Altitude tourism is a relatively new activity for the masses.”
― Steven Magee, Toxic Altitude

“I find police internal affairs feigning problematic police officers are just doing their jobs to be a very dangerous activity they engage in!”
― Steven Magee