Prudence Quotes - Page 15

• . . . in the final analysis, virtue is not found in extremes, but in prudence . . .

  Vincent de Paul

  Finals, Analysis, Virtue

  Saint Vincent de Paul, Pierre Coste (1992). “Correspondence, conferences, documents”, New City Pr

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• Foresight is good when it is subject to the latter, but it becomes excessive when we are in a hurry to avoid something we fear. We rely more on our own efforts than on those of his Providence, and we think we are doing a great deal by anticipating His orders by our own disorder, which causes us to rely on human prudence rather than on his Word.

  Vincent de Paul

  Faith, Thinking, Order

  Saint Vincent de Paul, Pierre Coste (1993). “Correspondence, Conferences, Documents: Apr. 1650-July 1653”, New City Pr

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• Where destiny blunders, human prudence will not avail.

  Publilius Syrus

  Destiny, Blunders, Humans

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• Ask any rich man of common prudence to which of the two sorts of people he has lent the greater part of his stock, to those who, he thinks, will employ it profitably, or to those who will spend it idly, and he will laugh at you for proposing the question.

  Adam Smith

  Men, Thinking, Two

  Adam Smith (1843). “An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations With a Life of the Author: Also a View of the Doctrine of Smith, Compared with that of the French Economists, with a Method of Facilitating the Study of His Works, from the French of M. Jariner”, p.144

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• It is not the part of prudence to neglect that which antiquity in its long experience has approved and which is also taught by apostolic authority.

  Pope Leo XIII

  Long, Taught, Neglect

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• My mother took too much, a great deal too much, care of me; she over-educated, over-instructed, over-dosed me with premature lessons of prudence: she was so afraid that I should ever do a foolish thing, or not say a wise one, that she prompted my every word, and guided my every action. So I grew up, seeing with her eyes, hearing with her ears, and judging with her understanding, till, at length, it was found out that I had not eyes, ears or understanding of my own.

  Maria Edgeworth

  Wise, Mother, Eye

  Maria Edgeworth, Richard Lovell Edgeworth (1826). “Works of Maria Edgeworth: Tales of fashionable life. 1826.- -v. 7. Patronage. 1825”, p.2

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• A determination never to do what is wrong, prudence, and good-humor, will go far toward securing to you the estimation of the world.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Determination, World, Good Humor

  Thomas Jefferson, Joyce Appleby, Terence Ball (1999). “Jefferson: Political Writings”, p.277, Cambridge University Press

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• [Prudence] replaces [strength] by saving the man who has the misfortune of not possessing it from most occasions when it's needed.

  Nicolas Chamfort

  Men, Saving, He Man

  Sébastien-Roch-Nicolas Chamfort (2003). “Chamfort: Reflections on Life, Love & Society : Together with Anecdotes and Little Philosophical Dialogues”

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• As there are none so weak that we may venture to injure them with impunity, so there are none so low that they may not at some time be able to repay an obligation. Therefore, what benevolence would dictate, prudence would confirm.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  May, Venture, Able

  Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.37

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• Like a young heir, come a little prematurely to a large inheritance, we shall wanton and run riot until we have brought our reputation to the brink of ruin, and then, like him, shall have to labor with the current of opinion, when COMPELLED perhaps, to do what prudence and common policy pointed out, as plain as any problem in Euclid, in the first instance.

  George Washington

  Running, Inheritance, Littles

  George Washington (1872). “Words of Washington”, p.106

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• It looks like a waste of life, that mowing down of our best years by a relentless passion which itself falls dead on the top of them. But it is not so. Every year I live I am more convinced that the waste of life lies in the love we have not given, the powers we have not used, the selfish prudence which will risk nothing, and which, shirking pain, misses happiness as well. No one ever yet was the poorer in the long run for having once in a lifetime 'let out all the length of the reins.'

  Mary Cholmondeley

  Running, Pain, Selfish

  Mary Cholmondeley (2016). “Red Pottage”, p.142, Mary Cholmondeley

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• A small number of temples was protected by the fears, the venality, the taste, or the prudence of the civil and ecclesiastical governors. The temple of the Celestial Venus at Carthage, whose sacred precincts formed a circumference of two miles, was judiciously converted into a Christian church; and a similar consecration has preserved inviolate the majestic dome of the Pantheon at Rome.

  Edward Gibbon

  Christian, Numbers, Rome

  Edward Gibbon (1998). “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, p.562, Wordsworth Editions

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• . . . idealism is one of the greatest forces in the world. It makes seeming impossibilities possible and succeeds where prudence fails. But unless the idealist is brave and has the courage to face the truth, his idealism creates nothing.

  Grenville Kleiser

  Courage, Truth, Bravery

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• A man who raises himself by degrees to wealth and power, contracts, in the course of this protracted labor, habits of prudence and restraint which he cannot afterwards shake off. A man cannot gradually enlarge his mind as he does his house.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Success, Men, House

  Alexis de Tocqueville (1840). “Democracy in America”, p.245

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• The bounds of a man's knowledge are easily concealed, if he has but prudence.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Men, Cunning, Concealed

  Oliver Goldsmith, David Masson (1869). “The Miscellaneous Works of Oliver Goldsmith”, p.250

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• If you are out of trouble, watch for danger. And when you live well, then consider the most your life, lest ruin take it unawares.

  Sophocles

  Watches, Ruins, Trouble

  David Grene, Sophocles (1959). “Sophocles”, [Chicago] : University of Chicago Press

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• When desperate ills demand a speedy cure, Distrust is cowardice, and prudence folly.

  Samuel Johnson

  Demand, Desperate, Cowardice

  Samuel Johnson (1809). “Works”, p.225

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• Always take an extra quarter to the laundry room.

  Wes Smith

  Advice, Rooms, Laundry

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• It is a common thing for men to benumb their own arms, and make them as dead and useless by leaning too much upon them: so it is in a moral as well as a natural way: all the prudence and pains in the world avail nothing without God. So saith the Psalmist, in Psalm cxxvii. 2.

  John Flavel

  Pain, Work, Men

  John Flavel (1799). “Whole Works of the Rev. Mr. John Flavel”, p.387

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• All men of conscience or prudence ply to windward, to maintain their wars to be defensive.

  Roger Williams

  War, Men, Plies

  Roger Williams (1963). “Complete Writings”

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• He who has far to ride spares his horse.

  Jean Racine

  Horse, Spares

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• Let no one trust so entirely to natural prudence as to persuade himself that it will suffice to guide him without help from experience.

  Francesco Guicciardini

  Helping, Natural, Guides

  Francesco Guicciardini (1890). “Counsels and Reflections of Francesco Guicciardini”

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• A woman is sometimes fugitive, irrational, indeterminable, illogical and contradictory. A great deal of forbearance ought to be shown her, and a good deal of prudence exercised with regard to her, for she may bring about innumerable evils without knowing it. Capable of all kinds of devotion, and of all kinds of treason, monster incomprehensible, raised to the second power, she is at once the delight and the terror of man.

  Henri Frederic Amiel

  Women, Knowing, Evil

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• Fortune is said to be blind, but her favorites never are. Ambition has the eye of the eagle, prudence that of the lynx; the first looks through the air, the last along the ground.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Ambition, Eye, Air

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• There's other ways to protect yourself and your family, Arlen. Wisdom. Prudence. Humility. It's not brave to fight a battle you can't win.

  Peter V. Brett

  Humility, Fighting, Winning

  Peter V. Brett (2009). “The Warded Man: Book One of The Demon Cycle”, p.28, Del Rey

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