Circumspection Quotes - Page 2

• The moderate are not usually the most sincere, for the same circumspection which makes them moderate makes them likewise retentive of what could give offence.

  Walter Savage Landor

  Giving, Sincere, Prudence

  Walter Savage Landor (2016). “Delphi Collected Poetical Works of Walter Savage Landor (Illustrated)”, Delphi Classics

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Don't limp in front of the lame.

  Francois Rabelais

  Lame, Decorum, Fronts

  8 Copy quote

• Try to remember this: what you project Is what you will perceive; what you perceive With any passion, be it love or terror, May take on whims and powers of its own. Therefore a numb and grudging circumspection Will serve you best - unless you overdo it, Watching your step too narrowly, refusing To specify a world, shrinking your purview To a tight vision of your inching shoes, Which may, as soon as you come to think, be crossing An unseen gorge upon a rotten trestle.

  Richard Wilbur

  Passion, Thinking, Shoes

  Richard Wilbur (2006). “Collected Poems 1943-2004”, p.235, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The mode of founding a college is, commonly, to get up a subscription of dollars and cents, and then, following blindly the principles of a division of labor to its extreme,--a principle which should never be followed but with circumspection,--to call in a contractor who makes this a subject of speculation,... and for these oversights successive generations have to pay.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Education, College, Division Of Labor

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.39, Graphic Arts Books

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Do nothing rashly; want of circumspection is the chief cause of failure and disaster. Fortune, wise lover of the wise, selects him for her lord who ere he acts reflects.

  J. K. Bharavi

  Wise, Want, Causes

  4 Copy quote

• Circumspection is not one of my better, favorite conditions, really.

  Robert Plant

  Conditions

  Interview with Maranda Pleasant, www.marandapleasantmedia.com. May 25, 2013.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• When envoys are sent with compliments in their mouths, it is a sign that the enemy wishes for a truce. If the enemy's troops march up angrily and remain facing ours for a long time without either joining battle or removing demands, the situation is one that requires great vigilance and circumspection. To begin by bluster, but afterward to take fright at the enemy's numbers, shows a supreme lack of intelligence.

  Sun Tzu

  Art, War, Numbers

  7 Copy quote

• In proportion to the value of this revolution; in proportion to the importance of instruments, every word of which decides a question between power and liberty; in proportion to the solemnity of acts, proclaiming the will authenticated by the seal of the people, the only earthly source of authority, ought to be the vigilance with which they are guarded by every citizen in private life, and the circumspection with which they are executed by every citizen in public trust.

  James Madison

  People, Liberty, Citizens

  4 Copy quote

• Prudent and active men, who know their strength and use it with limit and circumspection, alone go far in the affairs of the world.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Men, Limits, Use

  6 Copy quote

• We exhort the compromisers to open their hearts to truth, to free themselves of their wretched and blind circumspection, of their intellectual arrogance, and of the servile fear which dries up their souls and paralyzes their movements. Let us therefore trust the eternal Spirit which destroys and annihilates only because it is the unfathomable and eternal source of all life. The passion for destruction is a creative passion, too!

  Mikhail Bakunin

  Passion, Heart, Intellectual Arrogance

  "The Reaction in Germany" by Mikhail Bakunin (October 1842), signed "Jules Elysard"; as quoted in Mikhail Bakunin "Bakunin on Anarchism" edited and translated by Sam Dolgoff, www.marxists.org. 1971.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Caution is the daughter of circumspection, but she tends to outgrow her mother.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Daughter, Mother, Caution

  4 Copy quote

• True courage is mixed with circumspection, the kind of healthy skepticism that asks, 'Is this the best way to do this?' True cowardice is marked by chronic skepticism, which always says, 'It can't be done.'

  William Bennett

  Healthy, Way, Done

  William J. Bennett (1993). “The Book of Virtues: A Treasury of Great Moral Stories”, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The fool rushed to certain conclusions.
  The middling man approached them warily, and with circumspection.
  And the wise man, perceiving them from afar, decided to go round another way.

  Thomas William Hodgson Crosland

  Wise, Men, Afar

  Thomas William Hodgson Crosland (1908). “Little stings”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Newspapers write about other newspapers with circumspection, ... about themselves with awe, and only after mature reflection.

  A. J. Liebling

  Writing, Reflection, Mature

  4 Copy quote

• A beautiful woman, if poor, should use double circumspection; for her beauty will tempt others, her poverty herself.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Beautiful, Temptation, Use

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.26

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is not therefore the business of philosophy, in our present situation in the universe, to attempt to take in at once, in one view, the whole scheme of nature; but to extend, with great care and circumspection, our knowledge, by just steps, from sensible things, as far as our observations or reasonings from them will carry us, in our enquiries concerning either the greater motions and operations of nature, or her more subtile and hidden works. In this way Sir Isaac Newton proceeded in his discoveries.

  Colin Maclaurin

  Philosophy, Knowledge, Science

  Colin Maclaurin (1750). “An Account of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophical Discoveries. 2. Ed”, p.20

  6 Copy quote

  Show source