Caution Quotes

“Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”
― Alexander Pope, An Essay On Criticism

“Don't ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up.”
― Robert Frost

“Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature.”
― tom robbins

“It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institution and merely lukewarm defenders in those who gain by the new ones. ”
― Niccolò Machiavelli

“Scars fade with time. And the ones that never go away, well, they build character, maturity, caution.”
― Erin McCarthy, The Pregnancy Test

“Don't do anything that you wouldn't feel comfortable reading about in the newspaper the next day.”
― Joel Osteen, Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential

“The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise.”
― Tacitus

“When shrouded meanings and grim intentions are nicely polished up and pokerfaced personae are generously palming off their fantasy constructs, caution is the watchword, since rimpling water on the well of truth swiftly obscures our vision and perception. ("Trompe le pied.")”
― Erik Pevernagie

“You can’t win unless you try to win, but you can lose by trying not to lose.”
― Jack Campbell, Relentless

“I never feel unsafe except for when the majority is on my side.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“If you are too careful, you are so occupied in being careful that you are sure to stumble over something.”
― Gertrude Stein

“We must substitute courage for caution.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“The second mouse gets the cheese!”
― Terry Pratchett, The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

“The Dimwit's Guide to the Female Mind might assist your efforts in understanding human females. But it must be pointed out that this subject can be a dangerous adventure and should be undertaken with extreme caution. After all, human males have been trying to understand their females for generations, and most of the time they come away from these encounters looking like someone stuck their tails into an electric socket.”
― Anne Bishop, Marked in Flesh

“Trust is not a gasoline-soaked blanket that succumbs to the matches of betrayal, never able to be used for its warmth again; it’s a tapestry that wears thin in places, but can be patched over if you have the right materials, circumstances, and patience to repair it. If you don’t, you’re always the one who feels the coldest when winter comes.”
― A.J. Darkholme, Rise of the Morningstar

“We cannot be too cautious, Hannelore. Just because someone knocks on the door doesn't mean you have to open it. Sometimes, sweet girl, there are wolves at the door. If we are not careful, they might eat us.”
― Ruta Sepetys, Salt to the Sea

“...remember that the danger that is most to be feared is never the danger we are most afraid of.”
― Andrew Lang, The Red Fairy Book

“To be careless in making decisions is to naively believe that a single decision impacts nothing more than that single decision, for a single decision can spawn a thousand others that were entirely unnecessary or it can bring peace to a thousand places we never knew existed.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough, Flecks of Gold on a Path of Stone: Simple Truths for Life's Complex Journey

“I should have been bolder and kissed her at the end. I should have been more cautious. I had talked too much. I had said too little.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“Maxim 29:
The enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy. No more. No less.

-The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries”
― Howard Tayler

“Misery don't call ahead. That's why you have to stay awake - otherwise it just walks on in your door.”
― Toni Morrison, Home

“You have grudged the very fire in your house because the wood cost overmuch!" he cried. "You have grudged life. To live cost overmuch, and you have refused to pay the price. Your life has been like a cabin where the fire is out and there are no blankets on the floor." He signaled to a slave to fill his glass, which he held aloft. "But I have lived. And I have been warm with life as you have never been warm. It is true, you shall live long. But the longest nights are the cold nights when a man shivers and lies awake. My nights have been short, but I have slept warm”
― Jack London, To Build a Fire and Other Stories

“Wives?" she asked, interrupting him. For a moment, he had assumed she was tuning to the novel. Then he saw her waiting, suspicious eyes, so he replied cautiously, "None active," as if wives were volcanoes.”
― John le Carré, The Honourable Schoolboy

“The prudent man is always sincere, and feels horror at the very thought of exposing himself to the disgrace which attends upon the detection of falsehood. But though always sincere, he is not always frank and open; and though he never tells any thing but the truth, he does not always think himself bound, when not properly called upon, to tell the whole truth. As he is cautious in his actions, so he is reserved in his speech; and never rashly or unnecessarily obtrudes his opinion concerning either things or persons.”
― Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments

“(about William Blake)

[Blake] said most of us mix up God and Satan. He said that what most people think is God is merely prudence, and the restrainer and inhibitor of energy, which results in fear and passivity and "imaginative death."

And what we so often call "reason" and think is so fine, is not intelligence or understanding at all, but just this: it is arguing from our *memory* and the sensations of our body and from the warnings of other people, that if we do such and such a thing we will be uncomfortable. "It won't pay." "People will think it is silly." "No one else does it." "It is immoral."

But the only way you can grow in understanding and discover whether a thing is good or bad, Blake says, is to do it. "Sooner strangle an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires."

For this "Reason" as Blake calls it (which is really just caution) continually nips and punctures and shrivels the imagination and the ardor and the freedom and the passionate enthusiasm welling up in us. It is Satan, Blake said. It is the only enemy of God. "For nothing is pleasing to God except the invention of beautiful and exalted things." And when a prominent citizen of his time, a logical, opining, erudite, measured, rationalistic, Know-it-all, warned people against "mere enthusiasm," Blake wrote furiously (he was a tender-hearted, violent and fierce red-haired man): "Mere enthusiasm is the All in All!”
― Brenda Ueland, If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit

“Maxim 30:
A little trust goes a long way. The less you use, the further you'll go.

-The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries”
― Howard Tayler

“It's hard to know that you're flying too high until the feathers start dropping.”
― Darcie Little Badger, Elatsoe

“We stay the same as we've always been, keeping to the path we've walked our whole lives. Paths that carry so much importance and perceived stability that we are utterly convinced it is the only one to walk – that anyone not walking it with us is being misled.”
― A.J. Darkholme, Rise of the Morningstar

“Beware of the thief who is after your cash; but be more cautious of the thief in the mind that's after your kind, your promise - your dream, your future.”
― Bernard Kelvin Clive

“Be careful when getting what you exactly need in life.”
― Oscar Auliq-Ice