Quotes About Caution

There is nothing more imprudent than excessive prudence.

It is always safe to learn, even from our enemies, seldom safe to venture to instruct, even our friends.

Deliberate with caution, but act with decision; and yield with graciousness, or oppose with firmness.

It was a maxim with Foxey—our revered father, gentlemen—"Always suspect everybody."

Be wery careful o' widders all your life.

For a long time, Oliver remained motionless in this attitude. The candle was burning low in the socket when he rose to his feet. Having gazed cautiously round him, and listened intently, he gently undid the fastenings of the door, and looked abroad.

Let us take heed how we laugh without reason, lest we cry with it.

if I should make a mistake, it could never be set right in your lifetime.

Mr. Dennis received this part of the scheme with a wry face, observing that as a general principle he objected to women altogether, as being unsafe and slippery persons on whom there was no calculating with any certainty, and who were never in the same mind for four-and-twenty hours at a stretch.

This may be premature. I have set it down too soon, perhaps. But let it stand.

Flattery is like smoking — it is not dangerous so long as you do not inhale.

The saying that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing is, to my mind, a very dangerous adage. If knowledge is real and genuine, I do not believe that it is other than a very valuable possession, however infinitesimal its quantity may be. Indeed, if a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger?

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

Look both ways before entering the insanity.

If you must hold yourself up to your children as an object lesson (which is not at all necessary), hold yourself up as a warning and not as an example.

The world is burdened with young fogies. Old men with ossified minds are easily dealt with. But men who look young, act young and everlastingly harp on the fact that they are young, but who nevertheless think and act with a degree of caution that would be excessive in their grandfathers, are the curse of the world. Their very conservatism is secondhand, and they don't know what they are conserving.

It's a strange world of language in which skating on thin ice can get you into hot water.

Be careful not to drown in a mirage.

Prudence operates on life in the same manner as rules on composition: it produces vigilance rather than elevation.... prudence keeps life safe, but does not often make it happy.

If you treat the unknown as a minefield and never enter, you may avoid getting blasted but won't ever get to run along with the butterflies.

You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backward.

Tho' I fancy'd the rose, yet I dreaded the thorn.

"Safety First" is "Safety Always."

Safety always, always safety.