Quotes About Consequences

After all, good intentions have little to do with positive outcomes

If there's evil in recklessness, there's also evil in banality.

politicians were prisoners of misguided

Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.

Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.

Then he read the words of the scroll slowly, first in Japanese and then carefully translated into English: 'There is really nothing you must be. And there is nothing you must do. There is really nothing you must have. And there is nothing you must know. There is really nothing you must become. However. It helps to understand that fire burns, and when it rains, the earth gets wet. . . .' 'Whatever, there are consequences. Nobody is exempt,' said the master.

As long as life exists, something always happens next. There are always consequences—always sequels.

If you only make it up, you never have to live it down.

Oysters open completely when the moon is full; and when the crab sees one it throws a piece of stone or seaweed into it and the oyster cannot close again so that it serves the crab for meat. Such is the fate of him who opens his mouth too much and thereby puts himself at the mercy of the listener. Leonardo da Vinci, 1452-1519

But the human tongue is a beast that few can master. It strains constantly to break out of its cage, and if it is not tamed, it will run wild and cause you grief. Power cannot accrue to those who squander their treasure of words.

Excuses satisfy no one and apologies make everyone uncomfortable

There is nothing to be gained by insulting a person unnecessarily. Swallow the impulse to offend, even if the other person seems weak. The satisfaction is meager compared to the danger that someday he or she will be in a position to hurt you.

ashamed of yourself? What do you think your father, my old friend, would have said if he had been here to-night, and had known of all your goings on?

Once, early on, while still engaged in shipping and sidetracked by a rare vacation in his lavish, specially built yacht, he came back to find that his partners had ousted him from his firm. The classic Vanderbilt response? I won't sue you for the law is too slow. I will ruin you!

The government, Lincoln suggests, should intervene to protect individuals from other individuals—to redress the natural consequences of inequalities of power.

Your life today is the sum total of your choices. So if you're not happy with it, look back at your choices and start making different ones. Even if you are struck by lighting and injured, you made choices that led you to that spot at a particular time - and you get to choose how you feel about it afterward.

If there were a button that would end the world, and that button were right in front of me, I would have smashed it so hard at that moment. I often thought about a button like that, and when I did, I always knew that I'd push it.

Tell your secret to the wind, but don't blame it for telling the trees.

He knew I'd seen everything in that alley, that I'd stood there and done nothing. He knew that I'd betrayed him and yet he was rescuing me once again, maybe for the last time.

When you kill a man, you steal a life, Baba said. You steal his wife's right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness. Do you see?

it always falls on the sober to pay for the sins of the drunk.

Creating means vandalizing the lives of other people, turning them into unwilling and unwitting participants. You steal their desires, their dreams, pocket their flaws, their suffering. You take what does not belong to you. You do this knowingly.

At that moment, she cannot think of a more reckless, irrational thing than choosing to become a parent.

When you kill a man, You steal a life. You steal his wife's right to a husband, Rob his children of a father.