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S. Austin Allibone, comp. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. 1880.

Caution

As a man should always be upon his guard against the vices to which he is most exposed, so should we take a more than ordinary care not to lie at the mercy of the weather in our moral conduct.

Joseph Addison.

I knew a wise man that had it for a by-word when he saw men hasten to a conclusion, “Stay a little, that we may make an end the sooner.”

Francis Bacon: Essay XXVI., Of Dispatch.

The swiftest animal conjoined with a heavy body implies that common moral, festina lente; and that celerity should always be contempered with cunctation.

He that exhorteth to beware of an enemy’s policy doth not give counsel to be impolitic; but rather to use all prudent foresight and circumspection lest our simplicity be over-reached by cunning slights.

Richard Hooker.

One series of consequences will not serve the turn, but many different and opposite deductions must be examined, and laid together, before a man can come to make a right judgment of the point in question.

Some will not venture to look beyond the received notions of the age, nor have so presumptuous a thought as to be wiser than their neighbours.