Prudence Inspirational Quotes

When nobody practices what they strongly believe in, that day will be a triumph of prudence.

Cheating is a sin, but honest cunning is simply prudence. It is a virtue. To be sure, it has a likeness to roguery, but that cannot be helped. He who has not learned to practice it is a fool.

Tolerance is not a Christian value. Charity, justice, mercy, prudence, honesty--these are Christian values.

Mixing old wine with new wine is stupidity, but mixing old wisdom with new wisdom is maturity.

Watching Prudence, Kit suddenly felt a queer prickling along her spine There was something different about her. The child's head was up. Her eyes were fastened levelly on the magistrate. Prudence was not afraid!

Don't always use prudence for precaution, sometimes use it for progress.

I say that every prince must desire to be considered merciful and not cruel. He must, however, take care not to misuse this mercifulness. … A prince, therefore, must not mind incurring the charge of cruelty for the purpose of keeping his subjects united and confident; for, with a very few examples, he will be more merciful than those who, from excess of tenderness, allow disorders to arise, from whence spring murders and rapine; for these as a rule injure the whole community, while the executions carried out by the prince injure only one individual. And of all princes, it is impossible for a new prince to escape the name of cruel, new states being always full of dangers. … Nevertheless, he must be cautious in believing and acting, and must not inspire fear of his own accord, and must proceed in a temperate manner with prudence and humanity, so that too much confidence does not render him incautious, and too much diffidence does not render him intolerant.

Give up all hope of a better past.

Prudence is precaution, prudence is protection.

A single candle can fight against any darkness and light up a room. Its glow can be seen for miles in the gloom of dusk. A single candle can comfort our spirit in a storm as its flame tangos with the shadows and flickers with resilient hopes. A single candle can show us the way simply by standing by our side. A single candle can inspire nostalgia and warm our very souls. So too… can a single person. Burn brightly today.

As long as I am confident that i did everything i should have done, without stinting, there is nothing I need to fear. I can place my future in the hands of time. If we treat time with all the respect, prudence, and courtesy it deserves, it will become our ally.

No matter how much the original Rule of St. Francis has changed, I think his spirit and his inspiration are still the fundamental thing in Franciscan life. And it is an inspiration rooted in joy, because it is guided by the prudence and wisdom which are revealed only to the little ones - the glad wisdom of those who have had the grace and the madness to throw away everything in one uncompromising rush, and to walk around barefooted in the simple confidence that if they get into trouble, God will come and get them out of it again.

A moment of peril is often also a moment of kindness and affection. We are thrown off our guard by the general agitation of our feelings, and betray the intensity of those, which at more tranquil periods, our prudence at least conceals, if it cannot altogether suppress them.

, A moment of peril is often also a moment of kindness and affection. We are thrown off our guard by the general agitation of our feelings, and betray the intensity of those, which at more tranquil periods, our prudence at least conceals, if it cannot altogether suppress them

Siddhartha conocía a muchos venerables brahmanes y, sobre todo, a su padre, el puro, el sabio, el más digno de veneración. Admirable era ese padre de talante noble y sereno, vida casta y Prudenci en el hablar, bajo cuya frente habitaba pensamientos generosos y sutiles. Pero él, que sabía tanto ¿era feliz acaso? ¿Tenía paz interior? ¿No era también un buscador, consumido por la misma sed de verdad? ¿Y no necesitaba beber continuamente en las fuentes sagradas, calmar su sed en los sacrificios, en los libros, en los diálogos con otros brahmanes? ¿ Por que justamente él, el Irreprochable, tenía que purificarse a diario de su pecados...¡Había que encontrarla, descubrir ese manantial en el propio YO y poseerlo! Todo lo demás no era sino búsqueda vana, extravío, confusión.

Yet our world of abundance, with seas of wine and alps of bread, has hardly turned out to be the ebullient place dreamt of by our ancestors in the famine-stricken years of the Middle Ages. The brightest minds spend their working lives simplifying or accelerating functions of unreasonable banality. Engineers write theses on the velocities of scanning machines and consultants devote their careers to implementing minor economies in the movements of shelf-stackers and forklift operators. The alcohol-inspired fights that break out in market towns on Saturday evenings are predictable symptoms of fury at our incarceration. They are a reminder of the price we pay for our daily submission at the altars of prudence and order - and of the rage that silently accumulates beneath a uniquely law-abiding and compliant surface.

This is what I have learned in these short weeks in the refuge: You cannot afford to make careless mistakes, like meditating in the presence of wolves, or topping your boots in the river, or losing a glove, or not securing your tent down properly. Death is a daily occurrence in the wild, not noticed, not respected, not mourned. In the Arctic, I've learned that ego is as useless as money. Choose one's travel companions well. Physical strength and prudence are necessary. Imagination and ingenuity are our finest traits. Expect anything. You can change your mind like the weather. Patience is more powerful than anger. Humor is attractive than fear. Pay attention. Listen. We are most alive when we are discovering. Humility is the capacity to see. We are meant to live simply. We are meant to live joyfully. Life continues with and without us. Beauty is another word for God.

(Archidamus:) We are not stimulated by the allurements of flattery into dangerous courses of which we disapprove; nor are we goaded by offensive charges into compliance with any man's wishes. Our habits of discipline make us both brave and wise; brave, because the spirit of loyalty quickens the sense of honour, and the sense of honour inspires courage; wise, because we are not so highly educated that we have learned to despise the laws, and are too severely trained and of too loyal a spirit to disobey them. We have not acquired that useless over-intelligence which makes a man an excellent critic of an enemy's plans, but paralyses him in the moment of action. We think that the wits of our enemies are as good as our own, and that the element of fortune cannot be forecast in words. Let us assume that they have common prudence, and let our preparations be, not words, but deeds. Our hopes ought not to rest on the probability of their making mistakes, but on our own caution and foresight. (Book 1 Chapter 84.2-4)

But I am pondering over the skill with which you have presented the whole argument in support of your proposition, Ischomachus. For you stated that husbandry is the easiest of all arts to learn, and after hearing all that you have said, I am quite convinced that this is so. Of course it is, cried Ischomachus; but I grant you, Socrates, that in respect of aptitude for command, which is common to all forms of business alike—agriculture, politics, estate-management, warfare—in that respect the intelligence shown by different classes of men varies greatly. [...]Just as a love of work may spring up in the mind of a private soldier here and there, so a whole army under the influence of a good leader is inspired with love of work and ambition to distinguish itself under the commander’s eye. Let this be the feeling of the rank and file for their commander; and I tell you, he is the strong leader, he, and not the sturdiest soldier, not the best with bow and javelin, not the man who rides the best horse and is foremost in facing danger, not the ideal of knight or targeteer, but he who can make his soldiers feel that they are bound to follow him through fire and in any adventure. [...]And this, in my judgment, is the greatest thing in every operation that makes any demand on the labour of men, and therefore in agriculture. Mind you, I do not go so far as to say that this can be learnt at sight or at a single hearing. On the contrary, to acquire these powers a man needs education; he must be possessed of great natural gifts; above all, he must be a genius. For I reckon this gift is not altogether human, but divine—this power to win willing obedience: it is manifestly a gift of the gods to the true votaries of prudence. Despotic rule over unwilling subjects they give, I fancy, to those whom they judge worthy to live the life of Tantalus, of whom it is said that in hell he spends eternity, dreading a second death.

Non-rational creatures do not look before or after, but live in the animal eternity of a perpetual present; instinct is their animal grace and constant inspiration; and they are never tempted to live otherwise than in accord with their own animal dharma, or immanent law. Thanks to his reasoning powers and to the instrument of reason, language, man (in his merely human condition) lives nostalgically, apprehensively and hopefully in the past and future as well as in the present; has no instincts to tell him what to do; must rely on personal cleverness, rather than on inspiration from the divine Nature of Things; finds himself in a condition of chronic civil war between passion and prudence and, on a higher level of awareness and ethical sensibility, between egotism and dawning spirituality. But this "wearisome condition of humanity" is the indispensable prerequisite of enlightenment and deliverance. Man must live in time in order to be able to advance into eternity, no longer on the animal, but on the spiritual level; he must be conscious of himself as a separate ego in order to be able consciously to transcend separate selfhood; he must do battle with the lower self in older that he may become identified with that higher Self within him, which is akin to the divine Not-Self; and finally he must make use of his cleverness in order to pass beyond cleverness to the intellectual vision of Truth, the immediate, unitive knowledge of the divine Ground. Reason and its works "are not and cannot be a proximate means of union with God." The proximate means is "intellect," in the scholastic sense of the word, or spirit. In the last analysis the use and purpose of reason is to create the internal and external conditions favourable to its own transfiguration by and into spirit. It is the lamp by which it finds the way to go beyond itself. We see, then, that as a means to a proximate means to an End, discursive reasoning is of enormous value. But if, in our pride and madness, we treat it as a proximate means to the divine End (as so many religious people have done and still do), or if, denying the existence of an eternal End, we regard it as at once the means to Progress and its ever-receding goal in time, cleverness becomes the enemy, a source of spiritual blindness, moral evil and social disaster. At no period in history has cleverness been so highly valued or, in certain directions, so widely and efficiently trained as at the present time. And at no time have intellectual vision and spirituality been less esteemed, or the End to which they are proximate means less widely and less earnestly sought for. Because technology advances, we fancy that we are making corresponding progress all along the line; because we have considerable power over inanimate nature, we are convinced that we are the self-sufficient masters of our fate and captains of our souls; and because cleverness has given us technology and power, we believe, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, that we have only to go on being yet cleverer in a yet more systematic way to achieve social order, international peace and personal happiness.

Writing to Gov. Nicholas Cooke on October 12, 1776, he explained, The Advantages arising from a judicious appointment of Officers, and the fatal consequences that result from the want of them, are too obvious to require Arguments to prove them; I shall, therefore, beg leave to add only, that as the well doing, nay the very existence of every Army, to any profitable purposes, depend upon it, that too much regard cannot be had to the choosing of Men of Merit and such as are, not only under the influence of a warm attachment to their Country, but who also possess sentiments of principles of the strictest honor. Men of this Character, are fit for Office, and will use their best endeavours to introduce that discipline and subordination, which are essential to good order, and inspire that Confidence in the Men, which alone can give success to the interesting and important contest in which we are engaged. 50 Washington consistently underscored his view of the “immense consequence” of having “men of the most respectable characters” as the officers surrounding the commanderin chief. He wrote years later to Secretary of War, James McHenry as a new army was being contemplated to address the post-French Revolutionary government: To remark to a Military Man how all important the General Staff of an Army is to its well being, and how essential consequently to the Commander in Chief, seems to be unnecessary; and yet a good choice is of such immense consequence, that I must be allowed to explain myself. The Inspector General, Quartermaster General, Adjutant General, and Officer commanding the Corps of Artillerists and Engineers, ought to be men of the most respectable characters, and of first rate abilities; because, from the nature of their respective Offices, and from their being always about the Commander in Chief who is obliged to entrust many things to them confidentially, scarcely any movement can take place without their knowledge. It follows then, that besides possessing the qualifications just mentioned, they ought to have those of Integrity and prudence in

Their compliments were almost universal, their warnings few, if dire. Wine was a force for good, a substance that enabled people to relax while simultaneously elevating their minds, inspiring drinkers to “laughter and wisdom and prudence and learning.

Life invariably provides every individual a cause to discover prudence amidst disquiet.

Self-preservation is not a man’s first duty: flight is his last. Better and wiser and infinitely nobler to stand a mark for the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" and to stop at our post though we fall there, better infinitely to toil on, even when toil seems vain, than cowardly to keep a whole skin at the cost of a wounded conscience or despairingly to fling up work, because the ground is hard and the growth of the seed imperceptible. Prudent advices, when the prudence is only inspired by sense, are generally foolish.

If your prudence stops you every time from taking an action, then you are no more prudent, you are frightened.

Let us remember that false prudence is tin, true acquired prudence is silver, infused prudence is gold, and the inspirations of the gift of counsel are diamonds, of the same order as the divine light. “He that followeth Me walketh not in darkness, but shall have the light of life.”1339

A delirious person would think there's only one way, and that way is simple, but the truth is no way of living is simple, and there are many ways like there are many roads, but one must think above the system, and the individual must work strong to avail enough to be satisfied.

La censure sous Ceaușescu, vue par Vasile Andru (p. 327-328) : Il y avait une dizaine de procédés. Ma génération les a tous pratiqués, appliqués surtout d'une façon empirique selon l'inspiration du moment. Ces procédés commencent par un palier lexical-sémantique, continue avec l'observation de stratégies de construction et d'expression, l'écriture entre les lignes, le syntagme énigmatique, l'utilisation de procédés ésopiques tels que l'allégorie et la parabole ou les déguisements spatio-temporelles et, enfin, divers procédés expérimentaux. Tout cela était associé aux stratégies de négociation. En voici quelques exemples : Les mots défendus : l'affût de la censure commencée dès le mot… Il existait des listes de mots prohibés. Lorsque le livre avait reçu le visa de la censure (donc sans les mots refusés), je travaillais à nouveau le texte avant son impression. Je remettais à leur place certains mots défendus… Le rédacteur du livre (l'éditeur) devait être un allié sinon tout tombé à l'eau… Les codes allusifs : ils ont conduit à une littérature ésopique. En Roumanie tout le monde a appris ces codes allusifs de sorte qu'ils fonctionnaient au niveau de la société. Ainsi, l'expression ésopique n'a-t-elle pas isolé l'écrivain, quoiqu'elle ait peut-être isolé notre littérature du monde entier. Le récit allégorique : je crois que les années soixante-dix ont propulsé en général l'allégorie pour deux raisons : la première, c'était l'angoisse existentielle (poussée parfois jusqu'à la névrose) et la seconde, c'était l'ambition universaliste. La tendance à l'occultation était associée à créer des visions vastes. Cette démarche cachait tout autant un geste cognitif que contestataire. Le déguisement romantique : le genre historique nous a permis à nous les écrivains, des renvois au présent. En parlant de la manière dont Trajan a puni les délateurs de Rome, il était clair à quels délateurs je faisais allusion. L'expérimentation littéraire : avec les proses des années 1980 j'ai introduit des procédés plus élaborés - le montage cinétique, le « relanceur textuel » coupé du contexte. En cela, il ne s'agissait pas seulement de contrecarrer la vigilance de la censure, mais de repenser l'efficience du langage, il s'agissait d'une « revigoration » moderniste. Quoiqu'il en soit, je n'ai jamais misé sur la naïveté de la censure ou sur sa bêtise. Les censeurs n'étaient pas bêtes, on ne pouvait pas les duper. Ils étaient diplômés, c'était nos anciens camarades de faculté. Malgré les procédés utilisés il arrivait qu'un livre soit refusé. Il fallait alors changer la maison d'édition et il pouvait arriver que la publication soit accordée à l'une de ces maisons plutôt qu'à l'autre. Entraient en alors en jeu le zèle ou l'excès de prudence avec lesquels ces dernières agissaient.

The alcohol-inspired fights that break out in market towns on Saturday evenings are predictable symptoms of fury at our incarceration. They are a reminder of the price we pay for our daily submission at the altars of prudence and order — and of the rage that silently accumulates beneath a uniquely law-abiding and compliant surface.

The awareness that one was in the presence of such an insurgent came at a pheromonal level. He didn’t have to be brash or intimidating. If he had the right qualities, they carried through the air around him despite his quietude. Some men were fiery and motivational, leading with a barely restrained recklessness and a demeanor of perpetually fresh anger. Others were intellectual warriors, brains in circuit with the matrix in space where vectors flew toward other vectors and the results of battle followed from the nature of their intersections. The fighter’s way was elemental. It was not possible to cultivate it reliably in an academic meritocracy, or to gauge it by class rank. The woodsmen with their squirrel guns who beat the British at New Orleans rallied to Andrew Jackson’s readiness to fury, a scent that inspired fear, his instinct to abandon prudence and seize a sudden opening to kill.

Although making decisions by testing God with fleeces is generally a bad idea, sometimes it can look similar to setting reasonable goals. For example, suppose you are considering running a marathon. But you decide that you won’t sign up for the 26.2 mile race unless you first lose fifteen pounds and finish a half-marathon. In a way this sounds like laying out a fleece, but it is really just prudence and good goal setting. Humble goals and loosely held plans are good. Expecting God to do tricks for us is bad. Don’t pray: “God, if You want me to go out on this date, then make my professors cancel all their assignments for the weekend. If You don’t do that, I’ll just tell Josh that it wasn’t the Lord’s will that we go out.” The whole fleece approach to life is dangerously close to violating Jesus’ admonition, “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test” (Matthew 4:7). Now, I know Gideon asked God for some special dew. But there are good reasons to think Gideon’s request is not a normative example. For starters, Gideon didn’t have a Bible. More than likely, he didn’t have a single page of God’s inspired Word of his own. More importantly, the book of Judges generally does not provide a good example of much of anything. When the theme of the book is “everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25), we should think twice before copying whatever practices or attitudes we find in its chapters. Gideon’s request was probably an indication of cowardice and unbelief more than faithful, wise decision making.

it has acquired prudence and discretion and orders its life well. Its limitations are those of vision: it has not yet experienced to the full the inspiring force of love. It has not made a full self-oblation, a total self-surrender. Its love is still governed by reason, and so its progress is slow.

We might be tempted to think that knowledge of unchanging classes or kinds or species could simply take the place of knowledge of the unchanging causes. But this would be to ignore the manifest dependence of classes of beings on the existence of those (individual) beings. Xenophon’s Socrates never speaks of separately existing “ideas”: the classes or kinds are not separate from their members; the characters are always characters of the things possessing them. It is true that the characters are causes of those things, setting limits to them. They share this responsibility, however, with something other than them, something for which they are not responsible and whose existence and nature are guaranteed neither by them nor by anything else we know of. (Socrates may point to this shared responsibility when he calls attention to the dissimilar behavior of things possessing the same perceptible character.) As a result, we cannot know, though we may suspect, that some classes are permanent. The deepest implication of Socrates’ criticism of his philosophic predecessors becomes clear only when we consider more precisely what it was the pre-Socratics were trying to do. They had attempted to discover not merely the state of the cosmos but “the necessities” by which each of the heavenly things comes into being or “the way the god contrives each of the heavenly things” understood as the way he must contrive them. Needless to say, they understood the reign of necessity to extend to earthly matters as well. Human prudence and folly, as well as chance, derive from the fundamental necessity and are limited by it. Their most basic contention, the inspiration of the doctrines by which they sought to elaborate and vindicate that contention, was that not just anything can come into being or come to pass but only what accords with or is permitted by the nature of the fundamental cause or causes. But if the fundamental causes are undiscoverable, must one not regard this contention as merely plausible? Yet could Socrates, either as a philosopher or as a human being, leave it an open question whether “just anything” can come to pass?

Fiscal responsibility is key to financial strength, enabling efficient financial navigation during market uncertainty with purpose and prudence.

With the power vested in him, he is not reckless. He does not undermine the powerless just because he is a powerful man. He uses his power with such prudence. His presence creates a beautiful, enchanting experience. He brings people together and serenades the atmosphere.

He is committed to making an impact. He is the kind of man who truly cares. That is why he never intentionally causes others to shed tears. Benevolence is well entrenched in his divine assignment. With sheer prudence, he demonstrates God's magnificence.

A wise man exudes wisdom and sheer confidence. His actions are guided by sound judgment and discernment. His decisions are taken with prudence.

La censure sous Ceaușescu, vue par Vasile Andru : Il y avait une dizaine de procédés. Ma génération les a tous pratiqués, appliqués surtout d'une façon empirique selon l'inspiration du moment. Ces procédés commencent par un palier lexical-sémantique, continue avec l'observation de stratégies de construction et d'expression, l'écriture entre les lignes, le syntagme énigmatique, l'utilisation de procédés ésopiques tels que l'allégorie et la parabole ou les déguisements spatio-temporelles et, enfin, divers procédés expérimentaux. Tout cela était associé aux stratégies de négociation. En voici quelques exemples : Les mots défendus : l'affût de la censure commencée dès le mot… Il existait des listes de mots prohibés. Lorsque le livre avait reçu le visa de la censure (donc sans les mots refusés), je travaillais à nouveau le texte avant son impression. Je remettais à leur place certains mots défendus… Le rédacteur du livre (l'éditeur) devait être un allié sinon tout tombé à l'eau… Les codes allusifs : ils ont conduit à une littérature ésopique. En Roumanie tout le monde a appris ces codes allusifs de sorte qu'ils fonctionnaient au niveau de la société. Ainsi, l'expression ésopique n'a-t-elle pas isolé l'écrivain, quoiqu'elle ait peut-être isolé notre littérature du monde entier. Le récit allégorique : je crois que les années soixante-dix ont propulsé en général l'allégorie pour deux raisons : la première, c'était l'angoisse existentielle (poussée parfois jusqu'à la névrose) et la seconde, c'était l'ambition universaliste. La tendance à l'occultation était associée à créer des visions vastes. Cette démarche cachait tout autant un geste cognitif que contestataire. Le déguisement romantique : le genre historique nous a permis à nous les écrivains, des renvois au présent. En parlant de la manière dont Trajan a puni les délateurs de Rome, il était clair à quels délateurs je faisais allusion. L'expérimentation littéraire : avec les proses des années 1980 j'ai introduit des procédés plus élaborés - le montage cinétique, le « relanceur textuel » coupé du contexte. En cela, il ne s'agissait pas seulement de contrecarrer la vigilance de la censure, mais de repenser l'efficience du langage, il s'agissait d'une « revigoration » moderniste. Quoiqu'il en soit, je n'ai jamais misé sur la naïveté de la censure ou sur sa bêtise. Les censeurs n'étaient pas bêtes, on ne pouvait pas les duper. Ils étaient diplômés, c'était nos anciens camarades de faculté. Malgré les procédés utilisés il arrivait qu'un livre soit refusé. Il fallait alors changer la maison d'édition et il pouvait arriver que la publication soit accordée à l'une de ces maisons plutôt qu'à l'autre. Entraient en alors en jeu le zèle ou l'excès de prudence avec lesquels ces dernières agissaient.