# Deeds

    This page relates to the concept of actions performed. For the legal document conveying property, see Deed.
Deeds are actions or acts; something that is done, often simply as opposed to rhetoric or deliberation, but occasionally with reference in particular to brave or noteworthy actions.

## Quotes

* Good deeds remain good, no matter whether we know how the world was made or not. Vile deeds are vile, no matter whether we know or do not know what, after death, will be the fate of the doer.
** Felix Adler, Life and Destiny (1913), Section 9 : Ethical Outlook
* All your better deeds Shall be in water writ, but this in marble.
** Beaumont and Fletcher, Philaster, or Love Lies a-Bleeding (c. 1609; printed 1629), Act V, scene 3.
* For now the field is not far off Where we must give the world a proof Of deeds, not words.
** Samuel Butler, Hudibras, Part I (1663-64), Canto I, line 867.
* Your great deeds are unparallelled, your magnificence is praised! Young woman, Inana, your praise is sweet!
** Enheduanna, A Hymn to Inana (23rd century BCE), lines 272-274 .
* Deeds, not words.
** John Fletcher and Philip Massinger, The Lover's Progress (c. 1623-24), Act III, scene 6; credited to .
* That swarm of ants that I observed, each one following the one ahead, have every one been Indra in the world of the gods by virtue of their own past action. And now, by virtue of their deeds done in the past, they have gradually fallen to the state of ants.
** Krishna, Indra and the Ants Indra and the Ants, Classical Hindu Mythology: A Reader in the Sanskrit Puranas, Pg. 321 by Cornelia Dimmitt
* 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 (1860), Part II, Canto V, Stanza 8.
* See golden days, fruitful of golden deeds, With joy and love triumphing.
** John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book III, line 336.
* Nor think thou with wind Of æry threats to awe whom yet with deeds Thou canst not.
** John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book VI, line 282.
* I on the other side Us'd no ambition to commend my deeds; The deeds themselves, though mute, spoke loud the doer.
** John Milton, Samson Agonistes (1671), line 246.
* Les belles actions cachées sont les plus estimables.
** Noble deeds that are concealed are most esteemed.
** Blaise Pascal, Pensées (1669), I, IX. 21.
* 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.
** William Shakespeare, All's Well That Ends Well (1600s), Act II, scene 3, line 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.
** William Shakespeare, Coriolanus (c. 1607-08), Act II, scene 2, line 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.
** William Shakespeare, Cymbeline (1611), Act V, scene 5, line 7.
* There shall be done A deed of dreadful note.
** William Shakespeare, Macbeth (1605), Act III, scene 2, line 43.
* A deed without a name.
** William Shakespeare, Macbeth (1605), Act IV, scene 1, line 49.
* The flighty purpose never is o'ertook, Unless the deed go with it.
** William Shakespeare, Macbeth (1605), Act IV, scene 1, line 146.
* Unnatural deeds Do breed unnatural troubles: infected minds To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets.
** William Shakespeare, Macbeth (1605), Act V, scene 1, line 79.
* How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world.
** William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice (late 1590s), Act V, scene 1, line 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.
** William Shakespeare, Richard II (c. 1595), Act V, scene 5, line 115.
* They look into the beauty of thy mind, And that, in guess, they measure by thy deeds.
** William Shakespeare, Sonnet LXIX.
* I give thee thanks in part of thy deserts, And will with deeds requite thy gentleness.
** William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus (c. 1584-1590), Act I, scene 1, line 236.
* Go in, and cheer the town; we'll forth and fight; Do deeds worth praise and tell you them at night.
** William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida (c. 1602), Act V, scene 3, line 92.
* One good deed dying tongueless Slaughters a thousand waiting upon that. Our praises are our wages.
** William Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale (c. 1610-11), Act I, scene 2, line 92.
* You must take the will for the deed.
** Jonathan Swift, Polite Conversation (c. 1738), Dialogue II.

### Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

    Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 184-87.
* Who doth right deeds Is twice born, and who doeth ill deeds vile.
** Edwin Arnold, Light of Asia (1879), Book VI, line 78.
* 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, Book V. 12. Derived from Paulus, Digest, Book 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, Chapter V.
* 'Tis not what man Does which exalts him, but what man Would do.
** Robert Browning, Saul, XVIII.
* 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, scene 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, scene 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 (1709), Act III.
* Facta ejus cum dictis discrepant.
** His deeds do not agree with his words.
** Cicero, De Finibus, Book II. 30.
* This is the Thing that I was born to do.
** Samuel Daniel, Musophilus, Stanza 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.
** Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas, Divine Weekes and Workes, Second Week (1584), Third Day, Part II.
* Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.
** George Eliot, Adam Bede, Chapter XXIX.
* Our deeds still travel with us from afar. And what we have been makes us what we are.
** George Eliot, Motto to Middlemarch, Chapter LXX.
* Things of to-day? Deeds which are harvest for Eternity!
** Ebenezer Elliott, Hymn, line 22.
* Go put your creed into your deed, Nor speak with double tongue.
** Ralph Waldo 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.
** Johann Wolfgang von 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, The Iliad, Book XXII. Bryant's translation.
* 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, scene 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.
** Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Norman Baron.
* 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 translation.
* Acta deos nunquam mortalia fallunt.
** The deeds of men never escape the gods.
** Ovid, Tristium, I. 2. 97.
* 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.
** François Rabelais, Works, Book IV, Chapter XLIX.
* Your deeds are known, In words that kindle glory from the stone.
** Friedrich Schiller, The Walk.
* Wer gar zu viel bedenkt wird wenig leisten.
** He who considers too much will perform little.
** Friedrich Schiller, Wilhelm Tell, III. 1.
* Nemo beneficia in calendario scribit.
** Nobody makes an entry of his good deeds in his day-book.
** Seneca the Younger, De Beneficiis, I. 2.
* You do the deeds, And your ungodly deeds find me the words.
** Sophocles, Electra, line 624. Milton's translation.