Quotes About Consequence

In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing. —THEODORE ROOSEVELT

Poor Mr. Smith, having been so rudely dragged from his high horse, was never able to mount it again, and completed the lecture in a manner not at all comfortable to himself.

I know they will murder him," she said, "and then when it is too late they will find out what they have done!

When he woke the next morning, or rather late in the next day, after his night's work, he was no longer able to tell himself that the world was all right with him. Who does not know that sudden thoughtfulness at waking, that first matutinal retrospection, and prospection, into things as they have been and are to be; and the lowness of heart, the blankness of hope which follows the first remembrance of some folly lately done, some word ill-spoken, some money misspent, —

But death wipes out many faults, and a self-inflicted death caused by remorse will, in the minds of many, wash a blackamoor almost white.

By God!" said Mr. Wharton, rising from his chair suddenly, "if there were money to be made by it, I believe that he would murder you without scruple

Tal vez hoy nos robes la vida, pero ten en cuenta lo siguiente: ¡nosotros nos llevaremos a cambio la tuya!

What can you answer? Now be careful, don't arouse my spite, Or with my slipper I'll take you napping, faces slapping Left and right.

Obrar por ignorancia y obrar con ignorancia no son lo mísmo.

Choice not chance determines your destiny [my family motto...credited to Aristotle]

Choice, not chance, determines your destiny.

Rash men wish for dangers beforehand but draw back when they are in them. Brave men are excited at the moment of action, but collected beforehand.

For this alone is lacking even to God, to make undone the things that have once been done. (Quoting Agathon)

When one has thoroughly got imbued into one's head the leading truth that nothing happens without a cause, one grows not only large-minded, but large-hearted.

God is not mocked!

You can't have action without reaction.

It had to happen to someone. There is nothing exceptional about you, any more than there is about the first neutron that starts the chain reaction in an atomic bomb. It simply happens to be the first. Any other neutron would have served

I've murdered something beautiful, Jimmy told himself. But then Rama had killed him.

The choice had been made. The bomb was already looking ahead, to the terminus of its new trajectory.

The Cold Equations

I wanted to end the world, but I'll settle for ending yours.

There is no satisfaction in vengeance unless the offender has time to realize who it is that strikes him, and why retribution has come upon him.

It has always seemed to me that so long as you produce your dramatic effect, accuracy of detail matters little. I have never striven for it and I have made some bad mistakes in consequence. What matter if I hold my readers?

I suppose I shall have to compound a felony, as usual.