The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident.
--
Table Talk. In The Athenaeum (1834).Charles Lamb
The relation of thought to action filled my mind on waking, and I found myself carried toward a bizarre formula, which seems to have something of the night still clinging about it: Action is but coarsened thought; thought become concrete, obscure, and unconscious. It seemed to me that our most trifling actions, of eating, walking, and sleeping, were the condensation of a multitude of truths and thoughts, and that the wealth of ideas involved was in direct proportion to the commonness of the action (as our dreams are the more active, the deeper our sleep). We are hemmed round with mystery, and the greatest mysteries are contained in what we see and do every day. In all spontaneity the work of creation is reproduced in analogy. When the spontaneity is unconscious, you have simple action; when it is conscious, intelligent and moral action.
Henri-Frederic Amiel
And mothers are always more interested in the condition of your underwear than your body if you're ever in an accident. And they tell you that, "I hope for my sake that if you're ever in an accident, you have on clean underwear!" Well, I thought that was what an accident was! Look, you're driving a truck. Here comes another truck, gonna hit you. Now, whether you hit the truck or not, you're going to have soiled underwear! Because first you say it, then you do it! Now here comes your mother to the hospital. "Did he have on clean underwear?" "Yes, we found it in the glove compartment."
Bill Cosby
No kind action ever stops with itself. One kind action leads to another. Good example is followed. A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees. The greatest work that kindness does to others is that it makes them kind themselves.
Amelia Earhart
The spirit is the cause of all our thoughts and body-action, and everything, but it is untouched by good or evil, pleasure or pain, heat or cold, and all the dualism of nature, although it lends its light to everything.
Swami Vivekananda
The art of music is good, for the reason, among others, that it produces pleasure; but what proof is it possible to give that pleasure is good? If, then, it is asserted that there is a comprehensive formula, including all things which are in themselves good, and that whatever else is good, is not so as an end, but as a mean, the formula may be accepted or rejected, but is not a subject of what is commonly understood by proof.
John Stuart Mill
Lamb, Charles
Lamb, Willis
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