Quotes About Consequence

They say you thatched your roof and now you must not run out of your house if it rains.

Where does the road to ruin start? That's the point of getting all this down, I'm told. To get the handle on some choice you made. Or was made for you.

God grants us long enough lives to punish ourselves.

Poor thing, thought Garnett, to have to commit yourself so hard to one moment of poor judgment.

Loser is a cliff. Once you've gone over, you're over.

The first to fall in any war are forgotten. No love gets lost over one person's reckless mistake. Only after it's a mountain of bodies bagged do we think to raise a flag and call the mistake by a different name, because one downfall times a thousand has got to mean something.

If you knew at the outset what you understood at the end, would you make the same choices, take the same risks, accept the same sacrifices? No. No one would. You can't appreciate the weight of that burden until after you've assumed it. You can't comprehend what it really means.

I had convinced myself I had become safe enough in Rio to see her. I realized now I'd been wrong. The disease I carried was still communicable.

In the scope of the universe, and the arc of justice, my life is of little consequence.

People talk about morality. Sometimes I think there's just what you can do, and what you can't. Well, I could. And I was going to.

ANYTIME YOU MAKE A DECISION AND IT DOESN'T TURN OUT WELL or you find an alternative that would have turned out better, you're a candidate for regret.

This is postdecision regret, regret that occurs after we've experienced the results of a decision. But there is also something called anticipated regret, which rears its head even before a decision is made.

Postdecision regret is sometimes referred to as "buyer's remorse.

If we are responsible for an action that turns out badly and if it almost turned out well, then we are prime candidates for regret.

It is choosers who create new opportunities for themselves and everyone else. But when faced with overwhelming choice, we are forced to become "pickers," which is to say, relatively passive selectors from whatever is available.

have seen that two of the factors affecting regret are Personal responsibility for the result How easily an individual can imagine a counterfactual, better alternative

If people err systematically and substantially in making those predictions, it's likely that they will make some bad decisions—decisions that produce regret, even when events turn out well.

The fact that counterfactual thinking seems to hone in on the controllable aspects of a situation only increases the chances that a person will experience regret when engaging in counterfactual thinking.

And so by carefully investigating what is here and now, we must seek for the things that can save us. We should flee, entirely, all the works of lawlessness; otherwise, they may overwhelm us. And we should hate the error of the present age, that we may be loved in the age to come. 2 We should not allow our souls to relax, thinking they can consort with sinners and the wicked; otherwise we may become like them.

I tried to take it back, but it was too late.

real reason he'd gone was the one most bad decisions have in common: it had seemed like a good idea at the time.

A man's mouth gets him in more trouble than his pecker ever could, most of the time.

It seemed to him that if the wrong man stepped into the marriage-loop with a woman, it was a noose instead of a ring.

This situation is not quite beyond saving, but should you carry on much further - should you give voice to such thoughts - it will be.