A Quote by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

We have learnt, rather too late, that action comes, not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Quote Topics

Action Late Learnt Rather Readiness Responsibility Thought Too Too Late

Quote Author

Dietrich Bonhoeffer
German - Theologian
February 4, 1906 - April 9, 1945

Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility.

G. M. Trevelyan

I thought that if the right time gets missed, if one has refused or been refused something for too long, it's too late, even if it is finally tackled with energy and received with joy. Or is there no such thing as "too late"? Is there only "late," and is "late" always better than "never"? I don't know.

Bernhard Schlink

We live, understandably enough, with the sense of urgency; our clock, like Baudelaire's, has had the hands removed and bears the legend, "It is later than you think." But with us it is always a little too late for mind, yet never too late for honest stupidity; always a little too late for understanding, never too late for righteous, bewildered wrath; always too late for thought, never too late for naïve moralizing. We seem to like to condemn our finest but not our worst qualities by pitting them against the exigency of time.

Lionel Trilling

I have tried," I said, "but he does not believe me. It is too late for that now" (it is always too late for truth, I thought).

Jean Rhys

It was too late for happiness - but not too late to be helped by the thought of what I had missed. That is all I haved lived on - don't take it from me now

Edith Wharton

It's not the side-effects of the cocaine - I'm thinking that it must be love. It's too late to be grateful, It's too late to be hateful, It's too late to be late again, The European cannon is here.

David Bowie

I didn't want the responsibility, I didn't know how to handle the responsibility of speaking for the gay community. I always felt like I owed them a huge apology for coming out too late.

Sean Hayes

The language "it's too late" is very unsuitable for most environmental issues. It's too late for the dodo and for people who've starved to death already, but it's not too late to prevent an even bigger crisis. The sooner we act on the environment, the better.

Jeremy Grantham

The language 'It's too late' is very unsuitable for most environmental issues. It's too late for the dodo and for people who've starved to death already, but it's not too late to prevent an even bigger crisis. The sooner we act on the environment, the better.

Jeremy Grantham

Time is a factor in all action. An imperfect scheme put into action at the proper time is better than a perfect one accomplished too late.

Andre Maurois

Acting is always something I thought I could do, and I thought I would be pretty good at it, but I thought that I missed the opportunity, that it was too late.

Greg Poehler

I had never thought of myself as a dramatist, and, for really good technical results, the thought came too late: a man of letters has become too wordy to write economically for the stage.

Laurence Housman

And it was too late. No one wants to believe something is too late, but it is always becoming too late, and then it is.

Elizabeth Strout

Then, if action is possible or necessary, you take action or rather right action happens through you. Right action is action that is appropriate to the whole. When the action is accomplished, the alert, spacious stillness remains.