A Quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Spurious prudence, making the senses final, is the god of sots and cowards, and is the subject of all comedy. It is nature's joke, and therefore literature's. True prudence limits this sensualism by admitting the knowledge of an internal and real world.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Quote Topics

Admitting Comedy Cowards Final God Internal Joke Knowledge Limits Literature Making Nature Prudence Real Real World Senses Subject Therefore True World

Quote Author

Ralph Waldo Emerson
American - Philosopher
May 25, 1803 - April 27, 1882

The step between prudence and paranoia is short and steep. Prudence wears a seat belt. Paranoia avoids cars. Prudence washes with soap. Paranoia avoids human contact. Prudence saves for old age. Paranoia hoards even trash. Prudence prepares and plans, paranoia panics. Prudence calculates the risk and takes the plunge. Paranoia never enters the water.

Max Lucado

Imprudence relies on luck, prudence on method. That gives prudence less edge than it expects.

Mason Cooley

Swift calls discretion low prudence; it is high prudence, and one of the most important elements entering into either social or political life.

Edwin Hubbel Chapin

If the prudence of reserve and decorum dictates silence in some circumstances, in others prudence of a higher order may justify us in speaking our thoughts.

Edmund Burke

[Prudence] is the virtue of that part of the intellect [the calculative] to which it belongs; and . . . our choice of actions will not be right without Prudence any more than without Moral Virtue, since, while Moral Virtue enables us to achieve the end, Prudence makes us adopt the right means to the end.

Aristotle

If a man of good natural disposition acquires Intelligence [as a whole], then he excels in conduct, and the disposition which previously only resembled Virtue, will now be Virtue in the true sense. Hence just as with the faculty of forming opinions [the calculative faculty] there are two qualities, Cleverness and Prudence, so also in the moral part of the soul there are two qualities, natural virtue and true Virtue; and true Virtue cannot exist without Prudence.

Aristotle

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

Vincent de Paul

Prudence is the virtue of the senses. It is the science of appearances. It is the outmost action of the inward life.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The limits of prudence: one cannot jump out of a burning building gradually.

Mason Cooley

O tyrant love, when held by you, We may to prudence bid adieu. [Fr., Amour! Amour! quand tu nous tiens On peut bien dire, Adieu, prudence.]

Jean de La Fontaine

The world is filled with the proverbs and acts and winkings of a base prudence, which is a devotion to matter, as if we possessedno other faculties than the palate, the nose, the touch, the eye and ear; a prudence which adores the Rule of Three, which never subscribes, which never gives, which seldom lends, and asks but one question of any project,--Will it bake bread?

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Prudence therefore consists in knowing how to distinguish degrees of disadvantage.

Niccolo Machiavelli

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

Oliver Goldsmith

Prudence is the knowledge of things to be sought, and those to be shunned.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

The fortitude which has encountered no dangers, that prudence which has surmounted no difficulties, that integrity which has been attacked by no temptation, can at best be considered but as gold not yet brought to the test, of which therefore the true value cannot be assigned.