Quotes About Consequence

The Judge, whose eyes had gone in the general direction, recalled them, leaned back in his seat, and looked steadily at the man whose life was in his hand, as Mr. Attorney-General rose to spin the rope, grind the axe, and hammer the nails into the scaffold.

He is going to pay the forfeit: it will be paid in five minutes more. Let him be

The change was made in me; the thing was done. Well or ill done, excusably or inexcusably, it was done.

Altogether, the Old Bailey, at that date, was a choice illustration of the precept, that "Whatever is right;" an aphorism that would be as final as it is lazy, did it not include the troublesome consequence, that nothing that ever was, was wrong.

But its the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.

The change was made in me; the thing was done. Well or ill done, excusably or inescusably, it was done.

Ah me!" said he, "what might have been is not what is!

That sort of calculus is easy enough if the potential good is to unidentified people. It's easy to dismiss a faceless abstraction. It's much harder to look a real person in the eye and say: 'For my belief in the inviolability of the eight-cell embryo you must die.' That's often what the 'saviour sibling' cases boil down to.

Men are not punished for their sins, but by them.

If you wait for tomorrow, tomorrow comes. If you don't wait for tomorrow, tomorrow comes.

When you say, "The burned child dreads the fire," you mean that he is already a master of induction.

Putting off an easy thing makes it hard, and putting off a hard thing makes it impossible.

Prepare and prevent, don't repair and repent.

The safest risk is the one you didn't take.

But the day will come when you will have to answer for it! You know I didn't come here alone to-day——!" Both men looked startled and glanced uneasily into the shadows, as if there might be someone lurking there. "God came with me and He knows! He'll make you remember some day!

I was just saying to your colleague, the referee has got me the sack, thank him ever so much for that, won't you?

if people begin by thinking rationally, the danger is that they may end by acting rationally also.

He ran over a few people, nothing major. Mess runs over people. Sometimes, people don't get up. That's life.

Didn't anyone who changed things ultimately lead some people—perhaps many people—to death, grief, torment?

What would Tullia have done?

It should go without saying that any cause is better served by doing something well than by doing it badly... In fact, it is better to do nothing for the cause at all than to do something that reflects badly on it... So the first principle of responsible activism should not be "Do something." Instead, one should take a page from medical ethics and "First, do no harm." (Harm to the cause, that is.)

Anger always makes you feel good at the time. Makes you feel bigger than yourself makes you feel that everything you do is justified. But it's a trap. Corran

Os ataco con espinas y respondéis con plomo. ¿No es ése el centro del problema?

Travers shifted uneasily in her chair. "Sir, can't you give us more time on this? Marlow's a hell of a guy to unleash in this situation—it's like letting a fifteen-year-old loose in a whorehouse, if you'll pardon the metaphor." "It's a simile. And I want him.