Acts

Une ample Come¤  die a'   cent actes divers, Et dont la sce'  ne est l'Univers. A grand comedy in one hundred different acts, On the stage of the universe.

—La Fontaine,Jean de

Mr Creston Clarke played King Lear at theTabor Grand last night. All through five acts of Shakespeare's tragedy he played the king as though under momentary apprehension that someone else was about to play the ace.

—Field, Eugene

Men are rewarded and punished not for what they do, but rather forhow theiracts are defined.Thisiswhy men are more interested in better justifying themselves than in better behaving themselves.

—Szasz,Thomas Stephen

That best portion of a good man's life, His little, nameless, unremembered, acts Of kindness and of love.

—Wordsworth,William

In a nation ruled by swine, all pigs are upwardly- mobileöand the rest of us are fucked until we can put our acts together: not necessarily to win, but mainly to keep from losing completely.We owe that to ourselves and our crippled self-image as something better than a nation of panicked sheep.

—Thompson, Hunter S(tockton)

Yet the order of the acts is planned And the end of the way inescapable. I am alone; all drowns in the Pharisees' hypocrisy.

—Pasternak, Boris

   Upon Saint Crispin's day Fought was this noble fray, Which fame did not delay To England to carry; Oh, when shall English men With such acts fill a pen, Or England breed again Such a King Harry?

—Drayton, Michael