To do an evil action is base: to do a good action without incurring danger is common enough; but it is part of a good man to do great and noble deeds, though he risks everything.

Plutarch, reported in Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers by Josiah H. Gilbert (1895)

Christian life is action: not a speculating, not a debating, but a doing. One thing, and only one, in this world has eternity stamped upon it. Feelings pass; resolves and thoughts pass; opinions change. What you have done lasts—lasts in you. Through the ages, through eternity, what you have done for Christ—that, and only that, you are.

Frederick W. Robertson (1816–1853), from Sermons Preached at Trinity Chapel, Brighton, v. III (1859)

Our grand business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.

Thomas Carlyle, from Carlyle’s essay “Signs of the Times,” which originally appeared in the Edinburgh Review in 1829