The smallest deed is better than the greatest intention.
Interpretation
Actions hold more value than intentions.
This quote highlights the importance of taking action rather than simply having good intentions. It suggests that even the smallest action can have a greater impact than grand plans that are never executed, emphasizing the need for practical steps towards achieving one’s goals.
In practice
During a motivational speech about community service, one might say this quote to emphasize the importance of volunteering.
The very idea of a bird is a symbol and a suggestion to the poet. A bird seems to be at the top of the scale, so vehement and intense is his life, large-brained, large-lunged, hot, ecstatic, his frame charged with buoyancy and his heart with song.
Naturalists, like poets, are born and then made only by years of painstaking observation.
Every walk to the woods is a religious rite, every bath in the stream is a saving ordinance. Communion service is at all hours, and the bread and wine are from the heart and marrow of Mother Earth.
Next to the laborer in the fields, the walker holds the closest relation to the soil; and he holds a closer and more vital relation to nature because he is freer and his mind more at leisure.
Some of the animals outsee man, outsmell him, outhear him, outrun him, outswim him, because their lives depend more upon these special powers than his does; but he can outwit them all because he has the resourcefulness of reason and is at home in many different fields.
Unadulterated, unsweetened observations are what the real nature-lover craves. No man can invent incidents and traits as interesting as the reality.
Minds are like swords, I do fear. The old ones go to rust.
The mind's direction is more important than its progress.
Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience.
In societies where mature workers are respected and where their wisdom is respected, everybody benefits. Workers are more engaged and productive. Their health is better. They live longer.
What is there in life if you do not work? There is only sensation, and there are only a few sensations— you cannot live on them. You can only live on work, by work, through work. How can you live with self-respect if you do not do things as well as lies in you?
Faith is one foot on the ground, one foot in the air, and a queasy feeling in the stomach.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.