consequences Quotes

“The consequences of our actions are always so complicated, so diverse, that predicting the future is a very difficult business indeed.”

“What it said was something like this—at least this is the sense of it though the poetry, when you read it there, was better: Make your choice, adventurous Stranger; Strike the bell and bide the danger, Or wonder, till it drives you mad, What would have followed if you had. ‘No fear!’ said Polly. ‘We don’t want any danger.’ ‘Oh but don’t you see it’s no good!’ said Digory. ‘We can’t get out of it now. We shall always be wondering what else would have happened if we had struck the bell. I’m not going home to be driven mad by always thinking of that. No fear!‘”

“What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence. The question is what can you make people believe you have done.”

“Throw a stone into the stream and the ripples that propagate themselves are the beautiful type of all influence.”

“Every natural action is graceful.”

“The consequences of every act are included in the act itself.”

“For all my obsessing over the consequences of that night, I had misunderstood the vital truth: that its not affecting me, that was its effect.”

“You are responsible for what you say and do. You are not responsible for whether or not people freak out about it.”

“Every action we take has consequences, Vin,” Kelsier said. “I’ve found that in both Allomancy and life, the person who can best judge the consequences of their actions will be the most successful.”

“Such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere.”

“Our happiness or unhappiness depends to an important degree upon the habit of mind we cultivate.”

“Listen, Sam, if it was nature, nobody wouldn’t have tuh look out for babies touchin’ stoves, would they? ’Cause dey just naturally wouldn’t touch it. But dey sho will. So it’s caution.” “Naw it ain’t, it’s nature, cause nature makes caution. It’s de strongest thing dat God ever made, now. Fact is it’s de onliest thing God every made. He made nature and nature made everything else.”

“Let a man radically alter his thoughts, and he will be astonished at the rapid transformation it will effect in the material conditions of his life.”

“Act is the blossom of thought; and joy and suffering are its fruits; thus does a man garner in the sweet and biter fruitage of his own husbandry”

“His father, a happy-go-lucky and reckless buck, had thought nothing of living close to human beings except that he would be able to forage in their garden in the early morning. He had paid dearly for his rashness.”

“Don’t aim at success—the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself, or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself.”

“That the Jew is tasteful and epicurean, more so than the German, is the mere consequence of his geographical origin and his cultural age.

“I fooled myself. I had to. Everybody has to. If the good had been twice as good and the bad only half as bad, I still ought to have seen it, all through as I did in the beginning, because I am, as you say, sensitive. But I didn’t want to see it, because I would have then had to think about the consequences of seeing it, what followed from seeing it, what I must do to be decent. I wanted my home and family, my job, my career, a place in the community.”

“We are free to choose our paths, but we can’t choose the consequences that come with them.”

“JUROR #8: This is somebody’s life. We can’t decide in five minutes.”

“Too many, Thomas thought. Too many by far. His joy dribbled away, turned into a deep mourning for the twenty people who’d lost their lives. Despite the alternative, despite knowing that if they hadn’t tried to escape, all of them might’ve died, it still hurt, even though he hadn’t known them very well. Such a display of death—how could it be considered a victory?”

“I didn’t do anything wrong. All I know is I saw two people struggling to get inside these walls and they couldn’t make it. To ignore that because of some stupid rule seemed selfish, cowardly, and...well, stupid. If you want to throw me in jail for trying to save someone’s life, then go ahead. Next time I promise I’ll point at them and laugh, then go eat some of Frypan’s dinner.”

″‘Aguántate tantito y la fruta caerá en tu mano,’ he said. ‘Wait a little while and the fruit will fall into your hand. You must be patient, Esperanza.‘”

“A State may survive the influence of a host of bad laws, and the mischief they cause is frequently exaggerated; but a law which encourages the growth of the canker within must prove fatal in the end, although its bad consequences may not be immediately perceived.”

“Give yourself no choice but to succeed. Let the consequences of failure become so dire and so unthinkable that you’ll have no choice but to do whatever it takes to succeed.”

“In retrospect, I remember feeling somewhat relieved - that the chaos and insanity would finally be behind me.”

″‘One day’ - I gestured with my chin toward the plate glass - ‘all that will be gone, and so will all that so-called loyalty. And when that day comes, I don’t want you to have any knowledge of some of the things that went on here. That’s why I’m evasive with you sometimes. It’s not that I don’t trust you or that I don’t respect you - or that I don’t value your opinion. It’s the opposite, Dad. I keep things from you because I love you, and because I admire you, and because I want to protect you from the fallout when all this starts to unwind.‘”

“Sow a thought, reap an action; sow an action, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character, reap a destiny.”

“In climbing, having confidence in your partners is no small concern. One climber’s actions can affect the welfare of the entire team. The consequences of a poorly tied knot, a stumble, a dislodged rock, or some other careless deed are as likely to be felt by the perpetrator’s colleagues as the perpetrator.”

“None of them imagined that a horrible ordeal was drawing nigh. Nobody suspected that by the end of that long day, every minute would matter.”

″While we are free to choose our actions, we are not free to choose the consequences of those actions. Consequences are governed by natural law….We can decide to step in front of a fast-moving train, but we cannot decide what will happen when the train hits us.″

“‘Life might take you down different roads. But each of you gets to decide which one to take.’”

“I want deliberately to encourage this mighty longing after God. The lack of it has brought us to our present low estate.

″‘Everything I do is wrong. You think I don’t know that? I’ve screwed up my entire existence, and everyone who’s close to me gets screwed right along with me.‘”

“Whatever one of us asked the other to do - it was assumed the asker would weigh all the consequences - the other would do.”

“You make your choices, and then your choices make you.”

“If I take away the consequences of people’s choices, I destroy the possibility of love. Love that is forced is no love at all.”

“The fact that every meal we eat carries its load of chlorinated hydrocarbons is the inevitable consequence of the almost universal spraying or dusting of agricultural crops with these poisons.”

“This was one of the consequences of the civil war. People stopped trusting each other, and every stranger became an enemy. Even people who knew you became extremely careful about how they related or spoke to you.”

“Thousands of men, it is true, will have to pay for my happiness with their lives; but what is that to me, provided I see you again! All this is perhaps folly--perhaps insanity; but tell me what woman has a lover more truly in love; what queen a servant more ardent.”

“There was every reason to believe I was heading for trouble, that I’d pushed my luck a bit far.”

“In America—even if the consequences are tragic—you are not responsible for someone else’s safety. You aren’t obligated to help anyone in distress. Not if you’re the one who started the fire, not if you’re a passerby to car wreck, not if you’re a perfectly matched donor.”

“Death holds up an all-seeing mirror, ‘the mirror of past actions’, to our eyes, in which the consequences of all our negative and positive actions are clearly seen and there is a weighing of our past actions in the light of their consequences, the balance of which will determine the kind of existence or mental state we are being driven to enter.”

“Joy is not a requirement of Christian discipleship, it is a consequence. It is not what we have to acquire to experience life in Christ; it is what comes to us when we are walking in the way of faith and obedience.”

“But length of days with an evil heart is only length of misery and already she begins to know it. All get what they want; they do not always like it.”

″‘It was I who wounded you,’ said Aslan. ‘I am the only lion you met in all your journeyings. Do you know why I tore you?’ ‘No, sir.’ ‘The scratches on your back, tear for tear, throb for throb, blood for blood, were equal to the stripes laid on the back of your stepmother’s slave because of the drugged sleep you cast upon her. You needed to know what it felt like.’

“Your life depends on their actions. I have never busted a cap on a woman or anybody much under sixteen years but I will do what I have to do.”

“Once he had his hands inside the Munford player’s shoulder pads, he lifted him off the ground. It was a perfectly legal block, with unusual consequences. He drove the Munford player straight down the field for 15 yards, then took a hard left, toward the Munford sidelines.”

“We are living in an interdependent world where what our children hear, see, feel, and learn will affect how they grow up and who they turn out to be.”

“Making the decision to have a child—it’s wondrous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.”

″‘Haven’t you ever wondered,’ he attempted, ‘what good it is for them to be healed, those people that Jesus cures? They’re happy at first. But what happens to them after that? What does the blind man think, when he has wanted for years to see, and then looks at his wife in rags and his children covered in sores?”

“Drunk Rachel sees no consequences, she is either excessively expansive and optimistic or wrapped up in hate. She has no past, no future. She exists purely in the moment.”

“I never learn. I wake with a crushing sensation of wrongness, of shame, and I know immediately that I’ve done something stupid.”

“‘Do you think I care if Aslan dooms me to death?’ said the King. ‘That would be nothing, nothing at all. Would it not be better to be dead than to have this horrible fear that Aslan has come and is not like the Aslan we have believed in and longed for? It is as if the sun rose one day and were a black sun.‘”

“No there’s no way not to suffer. But you try all kinds of ways to keep from drowning in it, to keep on top of it, and to make it seem—well, like, you. Like you did something, all right, and now you’re suffering for it.”

“I understood what innocent intent had brought me to, and ... waded out beyond my depth.”

“Humanity had been strong, energetic, and intelligent, and had used all its abundant vitality to alter the conditions under which it lived. And now came the reaction of the altered conditions.”

“Hundreds of millions of people buy fast food every day without giving it much thought, unaware of the subtle and not so subtle ramifications of their purchases . . . They should know what really lurks between those sesame-seed buns. As the old saying goes: You are what you eat.”

“As you sow in your subconscious mind, so shall you reap in your body and environment.”

“Does one deserve to have evil done to her by consequence of putting herself where evil can reach her?”

“It’s the price of rootlessness. Motion sickness. The only cure: to keep moving.”

“Life is just a series of dumb decisions and indecisions and coincidences that we ascribe meaning to.”

“The bean, who had prudently stayed behind on the shore, could not but laugh at the event, was unable to stop, and laughed so heartily that she burst.”

“Unlucky wretch that I am!”

“You see now what has happened on account of your not listening to my counsel.”

“For better or for worse, we ate the fruit of knowledge long, long ago.”

“Mistakes aren’t a necessary evil. They aren’t evil at all. They are an inevitable consequence of doing something new (and as such should be seen as valuable; without them we have no originality).”

“He had done this. He had brought all this about. In all of his life these two murders were the most meaningful things that had ever happened to him.”

“And how can you say a man had a good mind when he couldn’t even bother to do anything when the best-hearted, most beautiful woman in the world, his own wife, was dying for lack of love and understanding…”

“The First Great Cause and Mover of all above When first He made that fairest chain of love, Great was the consequence and high the intent.”

“The world is one great web, and a man dare not touch a single strand lest all the others tremble.”

“The evil-doer mourns in this world, and he mourns in the next; he mourns in both. He mourns and suffers when he sees the evil of his own work.”

“Haste still pays haste, and leisure answers leisure Like doth quit like, and Measure still for Measure.”

“This little girl is giving me an opportunity to illustrate the consequences of rule breaking. Even the prince’s cousins are punished when they choose to misbehave, though I think I’ll employ slightly different methods for you.”

“I said that I was no good. That is true, but still I was not exactly a comic opera villain. I had led an easy-going reckless life, taking what invited me of pleasure, deploring and sometimes bitterly regretting consequences.”

“The test is not a complex one: when the alarm goes off, do you get up out of bed, or do you lie there in comfort and fall back to sleep? If you have the discipline to get out of bed, you win—you pass the test. If you are mentally weak for that moment and you let that weakness keep you in bed, you fail. Though it seems small, that weakness translates to more significant decisions. But if you exercise discipline, that too translates to more substantial elements of your life.”

“When setting expectations, no matter what has been said or written, if substandard performance is accepted and no one is held accountable—if there are no consequences—that poor performance becomes the new standard.”

“To get along with God, consider the consequences of your behavior”

“Well, you may get off on being a beautiful stereotype, regardless of the social consequences, but my conscience won’t allow it.”

“Foreordain it? No. The man’s circumstances and environment order it. His first act determines the second and all that follow after.”

″ Men of his type so dread all deliberation that they glory in the practice of the instantaneous decision. They think they are saving themselves from irresolution; in reality they are sparing themselves the contemplation of all the consequences of their acts.”

“The mind of Caesar. It is the reverse of most men’s. It rejoices in committing itself. To us arrive each day a score of challenges; we must say yes or no to decisions that will set off chains of consequences. ”

“Caesar embraces decision. It is as though he felt his mind to be operating only when it is interlocking itself with significant consequences. Caesar shrinks from no responsibility. He heaps more and more upon his shoulders.”

“The central movement of the mind is the desire for unrestricted liberty and (...) this movement is invariably accompanied by its opposite, a dread of the consequences of liberty.”

“You may go into the fields or down the lane, but don’t go into Mr. McGregor’s garden. Your Father had an accident there; he was put in a pie by Mrs. Mcgregor.”

“Mama’s plan had a list of all the rude things she wanted to stop. Besides each one was a penalty- a job or chore that went with it.

“Trying not to believe things when in your heart you are almost sure they are true, is as bad for the temper as anything I know.”

“Time out.”

The illustrations are vibrant and Jamela’s Dress is a lovely story of a young African girl who loves dressing in her mother’s expensive fabrics, she takes it to parade around town but when the fabric is ruined, Jamela has to face the consequences.

“For you it was just one day, then business as usual. For us it was one day, and every single day that came after.”

“Failure to act always brings consequences. But sometimes, those consequences can be turned to one’s advantage.”

“Last week, there were 400 people in the Senior Class. Today there are 399. One student became a statistic when he lost his life in an accident involving drinking and driving. Usually, statistics don’t mean much, but this statistic had a name, a face, a basketball jersey, and friends.”

“He wished he could go back in time to the turning point, the moment inside the treasury when he was smitten with envy of the King’s wealth. If history could be unwound and he were there again, he would consider the consequences and he wouldn’t steal.”

“You must not change one thing, one pebble, one grain of sand, until you know what good and evil will follow on that act. The world is in balance, in Equilibrium. A wizard’s power of Changing and of Summoning can shake the balance of the world. It is dangerous, that power.”

“You have great power inborn in you, and you used that power wrongly, to work a spell over which you had no control, not knowing how that spell affects the balance of light and dark, life and death, good and evil. And you were moved to do this by pride and by hate. Is it any wonder the result was ruin?”

The first thing he gives to the wind is the brooch which comes back as the snow spider and suddenly magic is in his life, real and with consequences and responsibilities.

″...oftentimes these ministers of darkness tell us truths in little things, to betray us into deeds of greatest consequence.”

“Where does it ever say, anywhere, that only bad can come from bad actions? Maybe sometimes— the wrong way is the right way? You can take the wrong path and it still comes out where you want to be?”

Pooh Bear stretched out a paw, and Rabbit pulled and pulled and pulled.... “Ow!” cried Pooh. “You’re hurting!” “The fact is,” said Rabbit, “you’re stuck.” “It all comes,” said Pooh crossly, “of not having front doors big enough.” “It all comes,” said Rabbit sternly, “of eating too much. I thought at the time,” said Rabbit, “only I didn’t like to say anything,” said Rabbit, “that one of us was eating too much,” said Rabbit, “and I knew it wasn’t me,” he said.

“Wherefore not; since all the powers of nature call so earnestly for the confession of sin, that these black weeds have sprung up out of a buried heart, to make manifest an unspoken crime?”

“By thy first step awry thou didst plant the germ of evil; but since that moment, it has all been a dark necessity.”

“I am not sorry you lost them, for you broke the rules, and deserved some punishment for disobedience,” was the severe reply, which rather disappointed the young lady, who expected nothing but sympathy.

“You would have done well to think about them before you committed the assault,”

“It is true, then,” he said, rather uttering his thoughts aloud than addressing his companion,—“it is true, then, that all our actions leave their traces—some sad, others bright—on our paths; it is true that every step in our lives is like the course of an insect on the sands;—it leaves its track! Alas, to many the path is traced by tears.”

“Sometimes, as Hamlet says: ‘Foul deeds will rise, Though all the earth o’erwhelm them, to men’s eyes;’ but, like a phosphoric light, they rise but to mislead.”

“We shall both get into trouble. You will ruin both yourself and me by your folly.”

“Can you be a coward?” continued Villefort, with increasing excitement, “you, who could count, one by one, the minutes of four death agonies? You, who have arranged your infernal plans, and removed the beverages with a talent and precision almost miraculous? Have you, then, who have calculated everything with such nicety, have you forgotten to calculate one thing—I mean where the revelation of your crimes will lead you to? Oh, it is impossible—you must have saved some surer, more subtle and deadly poison than any other, that you might escape the punishment that you deserve. You have done this—I hope so, at least.”

He had been shorn, at one cut, of all those mysterious weapons whereby he had been able to make a living easily and to escape the consequences of his actions.

“Choose your bridge, Mr. Pip,” returned Wemmick, “and take a walk upon your bridge, and pitch your money into the Thames over the centre arch of your bridge, and you know the end of it. Serve a friend with it, and you may know the end of it too,—but it’s a less pleasant and profitable end.”

All the truth of my position came flashing on me; and its disappointments, dangers, disgraces, consequences of all kinds, rushed in in such a multitude that I was borne down by them and had to struggle for every breath I drew.

“I was sent for life. It’s death to come back. There’s been overmuch coming back of late years, and I should of a certainty be hanged if took.”

That he would be leniently treated, I could not hope. He who had been presented in the worst light at his trial, who had since broken prison and had been tried again, who had returned from transportation under a life sentence, and who had occasioned the death of the man who was the cause of his arrest.

″...consequence has its tax”

“The fool has had no more sense than to jump at a woodcutter’s campfire, and has burned his feet,”

“Dad fetch it! This comes of playing hookey and doing everything a feller’s told not to do. I might a been good, like Sid, if I’d a tried—but no, I wouldn’t, of course. But if ever I get off this time, I lay I’ll just waller in Sunday-schools!”

“Whether we have acted rightly or wrongly is another question, but the die is cast,” he said, passing from Russian to French, “and we are bound together for life. We are united by all the ties of love that we hold most sacred.”

“I know this love, that sovereign of hearts, that soul of our souls; yet it never cost me more than a kiss and twenty kicks on the backside. How could this beautiful cause produce in you an effect so abominable?”

“I trod heaven in my thoughts, now exulting in my powers, now burning with the idea of their effects.”