Caution In Life Quotes & Sayings

Take caution when declaring war because you may believe it will be easy, but war will always end in despair. — Anonymous

To all parties present and participating in the life of the country, Aunt Alexandra was one of the last of her kind: she had river-boat, boarding-school manners; let any moral come along and she would uphold it; she was born in the objective case; she was an incurable gossip. When Aunt Alexandra went to school, self-doubt could not be found in any textbook, so she knew not its meaning. She was never bored, and given the slightest chance she would exercise her royal prerogative: she would arrange, advise, caution, and warn. She never let a chance escape her to point out the shortcomings of other tribal groups to the greater glory of our own, a habit that amused Jem rather than annoyed him: Aunty better watch how she talks - scratch most folks in Maycomb and they're kin to us. — Harper Lee

It's important that we attempt to extend life beyond Earth now. It is the first time in the four billion-year history of Earth that it's been possible, and that window could be open for a long time - hopefully it is - or it could be open for a short time. We should err on the side of caution and do something now. — Elon Musk

I don't quite know... but... something needs to change in my life. The incident earlier today... it's left me in a very odd mood. I'm not sure what needs to occur, or how, or when.. but I can feel it. It's almost... I feel so damned restless. I can't adequately explain it, even to you, because I'm not sure what I'm talking about. But... something's out there, and I need to be ready for it."
Alistair was still, expression strange and unreadable. "And are you?"
"Am I what?"
"Ready for change. And before you reply, let me caution you: fate, or destiny, or God, or whatever you call it, has an uncanny way of supplying what you ask for. But the strangest thing is, often we don't consider the ramifications of our request. There's an old saying that warns some things in life are not for the faint of heart. So, I'll ask again: are you ready for this... this change? Even if it turns your life completely and irrevocably upside down? — D.R. Ranshaw

The road is messy in the way that real life is messy. It leads us out of denial and into reality, out of theory and into practice, out of caution and into action, out of statistics and into stories - in short, out of our heads and into our hearts. — Gloria Steinem

Value caution in all your dealings with strangers. — Steven Redhead

Primus is certainly learning caution," said Secundus to his four other dead brothers.
"Well, you know what they say," whispered Quintus, in the wistful tones of the dead, which sounded, on that day, like the lapping of distant waves upon the shingle, "a man who is tired of looking over his shoulder for Septimus is tired of life. — Neil Gaiman

Beliefs constitute the basic stratum, that which lies deepest, in the architecture of our life. By them we live, and by the same token we rarely think of them ... One may symbolize the individual life as a bank of issue. The bank lives on the credit of a gold reserve which is rarely seen, which lies at the bottom of metal coffers hidden in the vaults of the building. The most elementary caution will suggest that from time to time the effective condition of these guaranties
of these credences, one might say, that are the basis of credit
be passed in review. — Jose Ortega Y Gasset

Holding on will not make something come back. In my experience, it actually pushes it farther away. You cannot go back and undo what's done, my friends. You can only move forward. And if your deepest compulsions and instincts tell you that you're meant to be with that person or doing that thing, you should let go and move forth and see how life takes you there. Clearly, things aren't going according to your desired plan already, so why not throw caution to the wind and see where you end up. — Brianna Wiest

She never indulged in reveries or tried to be clever in her conversation; she seemed to have drawn a line in her mind beyond which she never went. It was quite obvious that feelings, every kind of relationship, including love, entered into her life on equal terms with everything else, while in the case of other women love quite manifestly takes part, if not in deeds, then in words, in all the problems of life, and everything else is allowed in only in so far as love leaves room for it. The thing this woman esteemed most was the art of living, of being able to control oneself, of keeping a balance between thought and intention, intention and realization. You could never take her unawares, by surprise, but she was like a watchful enemy whose expectant gaze would always be fixed on you, however hard you tried to lie in wait for him. High society was her element, and therefore tact and caution prompted her every thought, word, and movement. — Ivan Goncharov

The swim of things. I go on an airplane. I walk under the Empire State Building. I take the bus, and the subway, and am surrounded by strangers the whole time. I certainly have room in my life for caution, but I have no room in my life for paralyzing fear. There's always a risk. There always has been. But I'd rather live my life than die of negations. — David Levithan

To be careless in making decisions is to naively believe that a single decision impacts nothing more than that single decision, for a single decision can spawn a thousand others that were entirely unnecessary or it can bring peace to a thousand places we never knew existed. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

I've never been much for self-revelation. In two decades of public life, I always approached the limelight with extreme caution. Not that I kept my personal life off-limits; rather, the personal life I put on display was a blend of fact and fiction. — James McGreevey

I love the unanswered question, the unresolved story, the unclimbed mountain, the tender shard of an incomplete dream. Most of the time. But is it mandatory for a writer to be ambiguous about everything? Isn't it true that there have been fearful episodes in human history when prudence and discretion would have just been euphemisms for pusillanimity? When caution was actually cowardice? When sophistication was disguised decadence? When circumspection was really a kind of espousal? Isn't it true, or at least theoretically possible, that there are times in the life of a people or a nation when the political climate demands that we - even the most sophisticated of us - overtly take sides? I think such times are upon us. — Arundhati Roy

You have grudged the very fire in your house because the wood cost overmuch!" he cried. "You have grudged life. To live cost overmuch, and you have refused to pay the price. Your life has been like a cabin where the fire is out and there are no blankets on the floor." He signaled to a slave to fill his glass, which he held aloft. "But I have lived. And I have been warm with life as you have never been warm. It is true, you shall live long. But the longest nights are the cold nights when a man shivers and lies awake. My nights have been short, but I have slept warm — Jack London

We may say that all ages are dangerous to all people, in this dangerous life we live. But the thirties are a specially dangerous time for women. They have outlived the shyness and restraints of girlhood, and not attained to the caution and discretion of middle age. They are reckless, and consciously or unconsciously on the lookout for adventure. They see ahead of them the end of youth, and that quickens their pace. — Rose Macaulay

The smoke! The golden smoke!
His robe whipped upward, turning him until his face was directed downward into the abyss. With his gaze on the depths, he recognized a maelstrom of boiling rapids there, the mirror of his life-precipitous currents and plunges, all movement gathering up all substance. Leto's words wound through his mind on a path of golden smoke: "Caution is the path to mediocrity. Gliding, passionless mediocrity is all that most people think they can achieve." Moneo fell freely then in the ecstasy of awareness. The universe opened for him like clear glass, everything flowing in a no Time. — Frank Herbert

Look behind you in gratitude.
Look ahead of you in hope.
Look beside you in caution.
Look around you in faith. — Matshona Dhliwayo

Be careful when getting what you exactly need in life. — Auliq Ice

A securely attached child will store an internal working model of a responsive, loving, reliable care-giver, and of a self that is worthy of love and attention and will bring these assumptions to bear on all other relationships. Conversely, an insecurely attached child may view the world as a dangerous place in which other people are to be treated with great caution, and see himself as ineffective and unworthy of love. These assumptions are relatively stable and enduring: those built up in the early years of life are particularly persistent and unlikely to be modified by subsequent experience. — Jeremy Holmes

They say that the British cannot fix anything properly without a dinner, but I'm sure the Americans can fix nothing without a drink. If you meet, you drink; if you part, you drink; if you make acquaintance, you drink; if you close a bargain, you drink; they quarrel in their drink, and they make it up with a drink. They drink, because it is hot; they drink, because it is cold. If successful in elections, they drink and rejoice; if not, they drink and swear; - they begin to drink early in the morning, they leave off late at night; they commence it early in life, and they continue it, until they soon drop into the grave. To use their own expression, the way they drink is "quite a caution." As for water, what the man said, when asked to belong to the Temperance Society, appears to be the general opinion: "it's very good for navigation. — Frederick Marryat

I think falling in love should come with a warning label: CAUTION - side effects may include breaking up, accompanied by heartache, severe mood swings, withdrawal from people and life itself, wasted hours obsessing over bitter reflections, a need to destroy something (preferably something expensive that shatters), uncontrollable tear ducts, stress, a loss of appetite (Cheetos and Dr. Pepper exempt), a bleak and narrow outlook on the future, and an overall hatred of everyone and everything (especially all the happy couples you see strolling hand-in-hand, placed on your path only to exacerbate your isolation and misery). All above reactions will be intensified with the consumption of one or more alcoholic beverages. — Katie Kacvinsky

A scattering of pinpoint lights shows up in the blackness ahead. A town or village straddling the highway. The indicator on the speedometer begins to lose ground. The man glances in his mirror at the girl, a little anxiously as if this oncoming town were some kind of test to be met.
An illuminated road sign flashes by:
CAUTION!
MAIN STREET AHEAD - SLOW UP
The man nods grimly, as if agreeing with that first word. But not in the way it is meant.
The lights grow bigger, spread out on either side. Street lights peer out here and there among the trees. The highway suddenly sprouts a plank sidewalk on each side of it. Dark store-windows glide by.
With an instinctive gesture, the man dims his lights from blinding platinum to just a pale wash. A lunch-room window drifts by. ("Jane Brown's Body") — Cornell Woolrich

A WORD OF CAUTION The material in this chapter is "tough stuff." It should be read, studied, and prayed about when life is more or less routine. It should be stored up or hidden in our hearts (see Psalm 119:11) for the time of adversity when we must draw upon its truth. Above all, we need to be very sensitive about instructing someone else in the sovereignty of God and encouraging that person to trust God when he or she is in the midst of adversity or pain. It is much easier to trust in the sovereignty of God when it is the other person who is hurting. We need to be like Jesus, of whom it was said, "A bruised reed he will not break" (Matthew 12:20). Let us not be guilty of breaking a bruised reed (a heavy heart) by insensitive treatment of the heavy doctrine of the sovereignty of God. — Jerry Bridges

Nisi flashed his charismatic, mysterious smile. "Now, with this in mind, are you ready to take the next step?"

Despite Caleb's attempts at caution - at circumspection and even suspicion - the man's words stirred his blood. They teased the possibilities of the power within his reach, real power extending far beyond parlor tricks and personal protection to a place where the course of life itself could be changed.

"I am. — G.S. Jennsen

He met indeed many accomplished and amiable ecclesiastics, but it seemed to him that the more thoughtful among them had either acquired their peace of mind at the cost of a certain sensitiveness, or had taken refuge in a study of the past, as the early hermits fled to the desert from the disorders of Antioch and Alexandria. None seemed disposed to face the actual problems of life, and this attitude of caution or indifference had produced a stagnation of thought that contrasted strongly with the animation of Sir William Hamilton's circle in Naples. The result — Edith Wharton

If your banker breaks, you snap; if your apothecary by mistake sends you poison in your pills, you die. True, you may say that, by exceeding caution, you may possibly escape these and the multitudinous other evil chances of life. But handle Queequeg's monkey-rope heedfully as I would, sometimes he jerked it so, that I came very near sliding overboard. Nor could I possibly forget that, do what I would, I only had the management of one end of it. — Herman Melville

If something was worth writing down, it was worth writing down in full. And she had a horror of lists
grocery lists, Christmas card lists, and most grisly of all, to-do lists. Lists, like appointment books, were nails driven into the future. She knew this was an odd objection to be raised by a person whose daily life was utterly predictable, who never threw caution, or anything else, to the winds, who never packed light, because she never packed at all. Still, the future was a sleeping monster, not to be poked. — Jincy Willett

Too often, the notion of progress is used as a code word for perfection, the chain of being in a different guise. The term should be employed with caution. Some see an arrow of time in biology, as in physics, but in the opposite direction- a relentless tendency to improve, just as a universe has a built-in trend towards chaos and disorder. That is too optimistic. Some lineages get more complicated, some simpler, and much of life has to struggle to stay in the same place. If everyone is evolving, nobody can afford to stop, and there may be constant change with no overall advance at all. — Steve Jones

This guarded mode of existence was like living under a tyranny. People's speech, their voices, their very glances, became furtive and repressed. Every individual taste, every natural appetite, was bridled by caution. The people asleep in those houses, I thought, tried to live like the mice in their own kitchens; to make no noise, to leave no trace, to slip over the surface of things in the dark. The growing piles of ashes and cinders in the back yards were the only evidence that the wasteful, consuming process of life went on at all. — Willa Cather

If you wish success in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother and hope your guardian genius. — Joseph Addison

Each of us can be a leader. We need to remember that the mantle of leadership is not the cloak of comfort, but the robe of responsibility. Perhaps our service is to youth. If so, I caution: 'Youth needs fewer critics and more models.' One hundred years from now it will not matter what kind of a car we drove, what kind of a house we lived in, how much we had in the bank account, nor what our clothes looked like. But the world may be a little better because we were important in the life of a boy or a girl. — Thomas S. Monson

Like everything else in his life, he crashed forward, caution the first casualty. — Neal Shusterman

It seemed to me that the people who made the rules of the road had figured out everything that would help a person drive safely right down to having a sign that tells you you're passing through a place where deer cross. Somebody should stick up some signs on the highway of life.
CAUTION: JERKS CROSSING.
Blinking yellow lights when you're about to to something stupid.
Stop signs in front of people who could hurt you.
Green lights shining when you're doing the right thing.
It would make the whole experience easier. — Joan Bauer

Observing any human being from infancy, seeing someone come into existence, like a new flower in bud, each petal first tightly furled around another, and then the natural loosening and unfurling, the opening into a bloom, the life of that bloom, must be something wonderful to behold; to see experience collect in the eyes, around the corners of the mouth, the weighing down of the brow, the heaviness in heart and soul, the thick gathering around the waist, the breasts, the slowing down of footsteps not from old age but only with the caution of life-all this is something so wonderful to observe, so wonderful to behold; the pleasure for the observer, the beholder, is an invisible current between the two, observed and observer, beheld and beholder, and I believe that no life is complete, no life is really whole, without this invisible current, which is in many ways a definition of love. — Jamaica Kincaid

Shall we not, then, lay down a law, in the first place, that boys shall abstain altogether from wine till their eighteenth year, thereby teaching that it is wrong to add fire to fire, as through a funnel, pouring it into their body and soul before they proceed to the labor of life, thus exercising a caution as to the maddening habits of youth. — Plato

The perfect adventure shouldn't be that much more hazardous in a real sense than ordinary life, for that invisible rope that holds us here can always break. We can live a life of bored caution and die of cancer. Better to take the adventure, minimize the risks, get the information, and then go forward in the knowledge that we've done everything we can. No, — Laurence Gonzales

Caution has its place, no doubt, but we cannot refuse our support to a serious venture which challenges the whole of the personality. If we oppose it, we are trying to suppress what is best in man - his daring and his aspirations. And should we succeed, we should only have stood in the way of that invaluable experience which might have given a meaning to life. — Carl Jung

I haven't been a good guest in Hugo's life. I access his memories and discover that he and Austin first became boyfriends at this very celebration, a year ago this weekend. They'd been friends for a little while, but they'd never talked about how they felt. They were each afraid of ruining the friendship, and instead of making it better, their caution made everything awkward. So finally, as a pair of twentysomething men passed by holding hands, Austin said, "Hey, that could be us in ten years."
And Hugo said, "Or ten months."
And Austin said, "Or ten days."
And Hugo said, "Or ten minutes."
And Austin said, "Or ten seconds."
Then they each counted to ten, and held hands for the rest of the day.
The start of it.
Hugo would have remembered this.
But I didn't. — David Levithan

It is the condition of our present state to see more than we can attain; the exactest vigilance and caution can never maintain a single day of unmingled innocence ... It is, however, necessary for the idea of perfection to be proposed, that we may have some object to which our endeavours are to be directed; and he that is most deficient in the duties of life makes some atonement for his faults if he warns others against his own failings, and hinders, by the salubrity of his admonitions, the contagion of his example. — Samuel Johnson

Life itself is a sea full of reefs and maelstroms that a human being takes the greatest care and caution to avoid; he uses all his efforts and ingenuity to wend his way through, while knowing that even if he is successful, every step brings him closer to the greatest, the total, the inescapable and irreparable shipwreck, and in fact steers him right up to it, - to death: this is the final goal of the miserable journey and worse for him that all the reefs he managed to avoid. — Arthur Schopenhauer

There are moments that cry out to be fulfilled. Like, telling someone you love them. Or giving your money away, all of it. Your heart is beating, isn't it? You're not in chains, are you? There is nothing more pathetic than caution when headlong might save a life, even, possibly, your own. — Mary Oliver

In order that the concept of substance could originate
which is indispensable for logic although in the strictest sense nothing real corresponds to it
it was likewise necessary that for a long time one did not see or perceive the changes in things. The beings that did not see so precisely had an advantage over those who saw everything "in flux." At bottom, every high degree of caution in making inferences and every skeptical tendency constitute a great danger for life. No living beings would have survived if the opposite tendency
to affirm rather than suspend judgment, to err and make up things rather than wait, to assent rather than negate, to pass judgment rather than be just
had not been bred to the point where it became extraordinarily strong. — Friedrich Nietzsche

I can't believe you know so little about firearms."
"I can't believe you know so much," Devonmont countered. "Never seen a woman as keen on guns as you. It's rather chilling."
"Isn't it, though?" Jackson put in. "Better watch it, Devonmont. Her ladyship is liable to shoot first and ask questions later if she finds you doing anything she doesn't approve of."
"I may just take your caution to heart, Pinter." Devonmont winked at Celia. "Then again, some things are worth risking life and limb for."
Celia looked startled, then cast Jackson a smug smile. With a snort, he drank more ale. Devonmont was really starting to irk him. They all were.
"So, Lord Devonmont," Celia said, turning her back on Jackson, "would you like me to show you the difference between a percussion gun and a flintlock?"
"By all means," Devonmont replied. "Though I can't promise to remember any of it later, explain away. — Sabrina Jeffries

[D]on't grow old. With age comes caution, which is another name for cowardice ... Whatever else you do in life, don't cultivate a conscience. Without a conscience a man may never be said to grow old. This is an age of very old young men. — Hesketh Pearson

If I had learned anything in my life about love, it was that they were tenous things that could end at any moment. Caution was essential-but not at the cost of risking your life — Richelle Mead

Allow me to share one simple and very frightening truth with you: your real enemy is someone who knows you. And the better they know you, and the closer they are to you, the greater is their capacity to do you harm.
Total strangers who get a little angry and lose control at sporting events are no real threat, if the proper caution is used. Protective fathers of pretty fourteen-year-old girls will shout and sputter, get loud and use strong language, but in the end they will retreat into their warm houses and leave you alone.
But a person who shares a part of your life, who lives with you and knows all your habits and has a keen insight into what you value most in all the world - this is the person to fear. — David Klass

So many of us think ourselves into smallness, into inferiority, by thinking downward. We are held back by too much caution. We are timid about venturing. We are not bold enough ... Struck down by our own caution, our own lack of faith in ourselves and our abilities. Opportunities? There were many. But always there was risk. Do we dare? We vacillate. Time hurries by. Opportunity gone. We anguish. The years roll on. Finally, we convince ourselves that it's too late and settle for cheap imitations of life. — Og Mandino

I know he hasn't a mean or petty bone in him, but one can err on the side of caution as well as rashness. — Raymond E. Feist

We began our life together at a moment of natural self-pity and defeat that left an inimitable impression on both of us. The rejection chastened me and let me know my proper place in the grand scheme of things. It was the last time I would ever make a move that required boldness or a leap of the imagination. I became tentative, suspicious, and dull. I learned to hold my tongue and mark my trail behind me and to look to the future with a wary eye. Finally, I was robbed of a certain optimism, that reckless acceptance of the world and all it could hand my way that had been my strength and deliverance. — Pat Conroy

Chess teaches foresight, by having to plan ahead; vigilance, by having to keep watch over the whole chess board; caution, by having to restrain ourselves from making hasty moves; and finally, we learn from chess the greatest maxim in life - that even when everything seems to be going badly for us we should not lose heart, but always hoping for a change for the better, steadfastly continue searching for the solutions to our problems. — Benjamin Franklin