Prudence Quotes - Page 5

• The great end of prudence is to give cheerfulness to those hours which splendour cannot gild, and acclamation cannot exhilarate; those soft intervals of unbended amusement, in which a man shrinks to his natural dimensions, and throws aside the ornaments or disguises which he feels in privacy to be useless incumbrances, and to lose all effect when they become familiar. To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labour tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.

  Samuel Johnson

  Home, Ambition, Men

  Samuel Johnson (1787). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: Together with His Life, and Notes on His Lives of the Poets, by Sir John Hawkins, Knt. In Eleven Volumes ...”, p.431

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• I do not comprehend those rules of conduct that make us so content with self and so cold to those we love. I detest prudence, I even hate (suffer me to say so) those duties of friendship which substitute propriety for interest, and circumspection for feeling. How shall I say it? I love the abandonment to impulse, I act from impulse only, and I love to madness that others do the same by me.

  Jeanne Julie Eleonore de Lespinasse

  Hate, Self, Feelings

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• One very clear impression I had of all the Beautiful People was their prudence. It may be that they paid for their own airline tickets, but they paid for little else.

  James Brady

  Beautiful, People, May

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• Stage charm guarantees in advance an actor's hold on the audience, it helps him to carry over to large numbers of people his creative purposes. It enhances his roles and his art. Yet it is of utmost importance that he use this precious gift with prudence, wisdom, and modesty. It is a great shame when he does not realize this and goes on to exploit, to play on his ability to charm.

  Constantin Stanislavski

  Art, Play, Numbers

  Constantin Stanislavski (2013). “Building A Character”, p.272, Routledge

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• Invention is an Heroic thing, and plac'd above the reach of a low, and vulgar Genius. It requires an active, a bold, a nimble, a restless mind: a thousand difficulties must be contemn'd with which a mean heart would be broken: many attempts must be made to no purpose: much Treasure must sometimes be scatter'd without any return: much violence, and vigour of thoughts must attend it: some irregularities, and excesses must be granted it, that would hardly be pardon'd by the severe Rules of Prudence.

  Thomas Sprat

  Mean, Heart, Science

  Thomas Sprat (1722). “The History of the Royal Society of London: For the Improving of Natural Knowledge”, p.392

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• The one characteristic more essential than any other is foresight... It should be the growing nation with a future which takes the long look ahead.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Long, Essentials, Looks

  Theodore Roosevelt (2012). “In the Words of Theodore Roosevelt: Quotations from the Man in the Arena”, p.73, Cornell University Press

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• Place three individuals in a situation wherein the interest of each depends on the voice of the others, and give to two of them an interest opposed to the rights of the third. Will the latter be secure? The prudence of every man would shun the danger. The rules & forms of justice suppose & guard against it. Will two thousand in a like situation be less likely to encroach on the rights of one thousand?

  James Madison

  Men, Rights, Two

  James Madison, Ralph Ketcham “Selected Writings of James Madison”, Hackett Publishing

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• Our religion is one which challenges the ordinary human standards by holding that the ideal of life is the spirit of a little child. We tend to glorify adulthood and wisdom and worldly prudence, but the Gospel reverses all this. The Gospel says that the inescapable condition of entrance into the divine fellowship is that we turn and become as a little child.

  D. Elton Trueblood

  Children, Challenges, Ordinary

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• Wise and prudent men and intelligent conservatives have long known that in a changing world worthy institutions can be conserved only by adjusting them to the changing time.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Life, Wise, Men

  Roosevelt, Franklin D. (1938). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: F.D. Roosevelt, 1936, Volume 5”, p.390, Best Books on

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• Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead, and to tend downwards with great weight and pressure towards hell; and if God should let you go, you would immediately sink and switfly
  descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf, and your healthy constitution, and your own care and prudence, and best contrivance, and all your righteousness, would have no more influence to
  uphold you and keep you out of hell, than a spider's web would have to stop a fallen rock.

  Jonathan Edwards

  Rocks, Healthy, Spiders

  Jonathan Edwards (2012). “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God and Other Puritan Sermons”, p.177, Courier Corporation

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• Running back-to-back races requires a certain tactical prudence. Going too hard in any one race might jeopardize your performance in another. Maintaining proper hydration and caloric equilibrium also becomes increasingly critical.

  Dean Karnazes

  Running, Hydration, Race

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• If the federal government should overpass the just bounds of its authority and make a tyrannical use of its powers, the people, whose creature it is, must appeal to the standard they have formed, and take such measures to redress the injury done to the Constitution as the exigency may suggest and prudence justify.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Government, People, Use

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (1842). “The Federalist, on the New Constitution, Written in the Year 1788”, p.144

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• A few major opportunities, clearly recognizable as such, will usually come to one who continuously searches and waits, with a curious mind, loving diagnosis involving multiple variables. And then all that is required is a willingness to bet heavily when the odds are extremely favorable, using resources available as a result of prudence and patience in the past.

  Charlie Munger

  Past, Opportunity, Odds

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• Be slow of tongue and quick of eye.

  Miguel de Cervantes

  Eye, Tongue, Caution

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• There is not a more important and fundamental principle in legislation, than that the ways and means ought always to face the public engagements; that our appropriations should ever go hand in hand with our promises. To say that the United States should be answerable for twenty-five millions of dollars without knowing whether the ways and means can be provided, and without knowing whether those who are to succeed us will think with us on the subject, would be rash and unjustifiable. Sir, in my opinion, it would be hazarding the public faith in a manner contrary to every idea of prudence.

  James Madison

  Mean, Thinking, Knowing

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• We may be in a rapidly evolving international financial system with all the bells and whistles of the so-called new economy. But the old-economy rules of prudence are as formidable as ever. We violate them at our own peril.

  Alan Greenspan

  Bells, May, Financial

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• Prudence does not save us, but shows us pictures of our destroyers.

  Mason Cooley

  Doe, Shows, Destroyers

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• On a fading summer evening, late in the last hours of his old life, Peter Jaxon-son of Demetrius and Prudence Jaxon, First Family; descendent of Terrence Jaxon, signatory of the One Law; great-great-nephew of the one known as Auntie, Last of the First; Peter of Souls, the Man of Days and the One Who Stood-took his position on the catwalk above Main Gate, waiting to kill his brother.

  Justin Cronin

  Summer, Brother, Son

  Justin Cronin (2010). “The Passage: A Novel (Book One of The Passage Trilogy)”, p.267, Ballantine Books

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• Prudence never kindled a fire in the human mind; I have no hope for conservation born of fear.

  Aldo Leopold

  Fire, Mind, Conservation

  Aldo Leopold (2013). “Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)”, p.572, Library of America

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• In the embers shining bright
  A garden grows for thy delight,
  With roses yellow, red, and white.
  But, O my child, beware, beware!
  Touch not the roses growing there,
  For every rose a thorn doth bear.

  Richard Watson Gilder

  Children, Garden, Yellow

  Richard Watson Gilder (1885). “Lyrics”

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• Rashness attends youth, as prudence does old age.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Age, Doe, Youth

  Marcus Tullius Cicero, James LOGAN (Chief Justice of the Province of Pennsylvania.) (1750). “Cato Major; Or, a Treatise on Old Age ... With Explanatory Notes from the Roman History. By Mr. Loggan [sic]. To which is Prefixed, the Life of Marcus Tullius Cicero”, p.42

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• Education must have two foundations --morality as a support for virtue, prudence as a defense for self against the vices of others. By letting the balance incline to the side of morality, you only make dupes or martyrs; by letting it incline to the other, you make calculating egoists.

  Nicolas Chamfort

  Education, Self, Two

  Sébastien-Roch-Nicolas Chamfort (1902). “The Cynic's Breviary: Maxims and Anecdotes from Nicolas de Chamfort”

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• Prudence suspects that happiness is a bait set by risk.

  Mason Cooley

  Happiness, Risk, Bait

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• The majority of persons choose their wives with as little prudence as they eat. They see a troll with nothing else to recommend her but a pair of thighs and choice hunkers, and so smart to void their seed that they marry her at once. They imagine they can live in marvelous contentment with handsome feet and ambrosial buttocks. Most men are accredited fools shortly after they leave the womb.

  Edward Dahlberg

  Marriage, Smart, Men

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• Be wise; let prudence dictate all your counsels; preserve peace with all men, if possible; stand by the Constitution of your country; observe its principles; and above all, show yourselves men of God, worthy citizens.

  Joseph Smith, Jr.

  Wise, Country, Freedom

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