Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Deeds
Who doth right deeds
Is twice born, and who doeth ill deeds vile.
Edwin Arnold—Light of Asia. Bk. VI. L. 78.
Deeds, not words.
Beaumont and Fletcher—Lover’s Progress. Act III. Sc. 6.
All your better deeds
Shall be in water writ, but this in marble.
Beaumont and Fletcher—Philaster. Act V. Sc. 3.
L’injure se grave en métal; et le bienfait s’escrit en l’onde.
An injury graves itself in metal, but a benefit writes itself in water.
Jean Bertaut.
Qui facit per alium facit per se.
Anything done for another is done for oneself.
Boniface VIII—Maxim. Sexti. Corp. Jur. Bk. V. 12. Derived from Paulus—Digest. Bk. I. 17. (Quod jessu alterius solvitur pro eo est quasi ipsi solutum esset.)
We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; and we have done those things which we ought not to have done.
Book of Common Prayer. General Confession.
To be nameless in worthy deeds, exceeds an infamous history.
Sir Thomas Browne—Hydriotaphia. Ch. V.
’Tis not what man Does which exalts him, but what man Would do.
Robert Browning—Saul. XVIII.
For now the field is not far off
Where we must give the world a proof
Of deeds, not words.
Butler—Hudibras. Pt. I. Canto I. L. 867.
Little deeds of kindness, little words of love,
Make our earth an Eden like the heaven above.
Julia A. Carney—Little Things. (Originally “make this pleasant earth below.”)
His deedes inimitable, like the Sea
That shuts still as it opes, and leaves no tracts
Nor prints of Precedent for poore men’s facts.
George Chapman—Bussy d’Ambois. Act I. Sc. 1.
So our lives
In acts exemplarie, not only winne
Ourselves good Names, but doth to others give
Matter for virtuous Deedes, by which wee live.
George Chapman—Bussy d’Ambois. Act I. Sc. 1.
Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well.
Earl of Chesterfield—Letters. March 10, 1746.
The will for the deed.
Colley Cibber—The Rival Fools. Act III.
Facta ejus cum dictis discrepant.
His deeds do not agree with his words.
Cicero—De Finibus. Bk. II. 30.
This is the Thing that I was born to do.
Samuel Daniel—Musophilus. St. 100.
Deeds are males, words females are.
Sir John Davies—Scene of Folly. P. 147.
“I worked for men,” my Lord will say,
When we meet at the end of the King’s highway;
“I walked with the beggar along the road,
I kissed the bondsman stung by the goad,
I bore my half of the porter’s load.
And what did you do,” my Lord will say,
“As you traveled along the King’s highway?”
Robert Davies—My Lord and I.
Thy Will for Deed I do accept.
Du Bartas—Divine Weekes and Workes. Second Week. Third Day. Pt. II.
Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.
George Eliot—Adam Bede. Ch. XXIX.
Our deeds still travel with us from afar.
And what we have been makes us what we are.
George Eliot—Motto to Middlemarch. Ch. LXX.
Things of to-day?
Deeds which are harvest for Eternity!
Ebenezer Elliott—Hymn. L. 22.
Go put your creed into your deed,
Nor speak with double tongue.
Emerson—Ode. Concord. July 4, 1857.
Did nothing in particular,
And did it very well.
W. S. Gilbert—Iolanthe.
Und künftige Thaten drangen wie die Sterne
Rings um uns her unzählig aus der Nacht.
And future deeds crowded round us as the countless stars in the night.
Goethe—Iphigenia auf Tauris. II. 1. 121.
For as one star another far exceeds,
So souls in heaven are placèd by their deeds.
Robert Greene—A Maiden’s Dream.
If thou do ill, the joy fades, not the pains.
If well, the pain doth fade, the joy remains.
George Herbert—Church Porch. Last lines. Same idea in Cato and Musonius.
My hour at last has come;
Yet not ingloriously or passively
I die, but first will do some valiant deed,
Of which mankind shall hear in after time.
Homer—Iliad. Bk. XXII. Bryant’s trans.
Oh! ’tis easy
To beget great deeds; but in the rearing of them—
The threading in cold blood each mean detail,
And furze brake of half-pertinent circumstance—
There lies the self-denial.
Charles Kingsley—Saint’s Tragedy. Act IV. Sc. 3.
When a man dies they who survive him ask what property he has left behind. The angel who bends over the dying man asks what good deeds he has sent before him.
The Koran.
But the good deed, through the ages
Living in historic pages,
Brighter grows and gleams immortal,
Unconsumed by moth or rust.
Longfellow—Norman Baron.
We are our own fates. Our own deeds
Are our doomsmen. Man’s life was made
Not for men’s creeds,
But men’s actions.
Owen Meredith (Lord Lytton)—Lucile. Pt. II. Canto V. St. 8.
See golden days, fruitful of golden deeds,
With joy and love triumphing.
Milton—Paradise Lost. Bk. III. L. 336.
Nor think thou with wind
Of æry threats to awe whom yet with deeds
Thou canst not.
Milton—Paradise Lost. Bk. VI. L. 282.
I on the other side
Us’d no ambition to commend my deeds;
The deeds themselves, though mute, spoke loud the doer.
Milton—Samson Agonistes. L. 246.
For men use, if they have an evil tourne, to write it in marble; and whoso doth us a good tourne we write it in duste.
Sir Thomas More—Richard III and his miserable End.
Actis ævum implet, non segnibus annis.
He fills his lifetime with deeds, not with inactive years.
Ovid—Ad Liviam. 449. Adapted probably from Albinovanus Pedo, contemporary poet with Ovid.
Ipse decor, recti facti si præmia desint,
Non movet.
Men do not value a good deed unless it brings a reward.
Ovid—Epistolæ Ex Ponto. II. 3. 13.
Di pia facta vident.
The gods see the deeds of the righteous.
Ovid—Fasti. II. 117.
The deed I intend is great,
But what, as yet, I know not.
Ovid—Metamorphoses. Sandy’s trans.
Acta deos nunquam mortalia fallunt.
The deeds of men never escape the gods.
Ovid—Tristium. I. 2. 97.
Les belles actions cachées sont les plus estimables.
Noble deeds that are concealed are most esteemed.
Pascal—Pensées. I. IX. 21.
Dictis facta suppetant.
Let deeds correspond with words.
Plautus—Pseudolus. Act I. 1.
Nequam illud verbum est, Bene vult, nisi qui benefacit.
“He wishes well” is worthless, unless the deed go with it.
Plautus—Trinummus. II. 4. 38.
We’ll take the good-will for the deed.
Rabelais—Works. Bk. IV. Ch. XLIX.
Your deeds are known,
In words that kindle glory from the stone.
Schiller—The Walk.
Wer gar zu viel bedenkt wird wenig leisten.
He who considers too much will perform little.
Schiller—Wilhelm Tell. III. 1.
Nemo beneficia in calendario scribit.
Nobody makes an entry of his good deeds in his day-book.
Seneca—De Beneficiis. I. 2.
From lowest place when virtuous things proceed,
The place is dignified by the doer’s deed:
Where great additions swell’s and virtue none,
It is a dropsied honour. Good alone
Is good without a name.
All’s Well That Ends Well. Act II. Sc. 3. L. 132.
He covets less
Than misery itself would give; rewards
His deeds with doing them, and is content
To spend the time to end it.
Coriolanus. Act II. Sc. 2. L. 130.
I never saw
Such noble fury in so poor a thing;
Such precious deeds in one that promis’d nought
But beggary and poor looks.
Cymbeline. Act V. Sc. 5. L. 7.
There shall be done
A deed of dreadful note.
Macbeth. Act III. Sc. 2. L. 43.
A deed without a name.
Macbeth. Act IV. Sc. 1. L. 49.
The flighty purpose never is o’ertook,
Unless the deed go with it.
Macbeth. Act IV. Sc. 1. L. 146.
Unnatural deeds
Do breed unnatural troubles: infected minds
To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets.
Macbeth. Act V. Sc. 1. L. 79.
How far that little candle throws his beams!
So shines a good deed in a naughty world.
Merchant of Venice. Act V. Sc. 1. L. 90.
O, would the deed were good!
For now the devil, that told me I did well,
Says that this deed is chronicled in hell.
Richard II. Act V. Sc. 5. L. 115.
They look into the beauty of thy mind,
And that, in guess, they measure by thy deeds.
Sonnet LXIX.
I give thee thanks in part of thy deserts,
And will with deeds requite thy gentleness.
Titus Andronicus. Act I. Sc. 1. L. 236.
Go in, and cheer the town; we’ll forth and fight;
Do deeds worth praise and tell you them at night.
Troilus and Cressida. Act V. Sc. 3. L. 92.
One good deed dying tongueless
Slaughters a thousand waiting upon that.
Our praises are our wages.
Winter’s Tale. Act I. Sc. 2. L. 92.
You do the deeds,
And your ungodly deeds find me the words.
Sophocles—Electra. L. 624. Milton’s trans.
You must take the will for the deed.
Swift—Polite Conversation. Dialogue II.