Do not bite at the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook beneath it.
Interpretation
Be wary of tempting pleasures that may come with hidden risks.
This quote by Thomas Jefferson warns against rushing into pleasurable situations without fully understanding the potential consequences. It encourages critical thinking and caution in the face of temptations that might seem attractive but could lead to negative outcomes.
In practice
During a discussion about financial investments, one might use this quote to caution against get-rich-quick schemes.
The firmness with which the (American) people have withstood the... abuses of the press, the discernment they have manifested between truth and falsehood, show that they may safely be trusted to hear everything true and false and to form a correct judgment between them.
I, place economy among the first & most important republican virtues, & public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared
βWe must make our choice between economy and liberty or confusion and servitude...If we run into such debts, we must be taxed in our meat and drink, in our necessities and comforts, in our labor and in our amusements...if we can prevent the government from wasting the labor of the people, under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy.
Very many and very meritorious were the worthy patriots who assisted in bringing back our government to its republican tack. To preserve it in that, will require unremitting vigilance.
A nation, as a society, forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for his society.
Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.
Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I'd have the facts.
Some spiritual traditions view the moment of birth as a passage from a state of wholeness and knowledge to a state of forgetting. In this view of the world, we spend the rest of our lives searching for wholeness and knowledge, wellness and health-the balance and harmony we lost when we were born. If our wholeness is interrupted, then our health suffers, and we need to find a way to restore our sense of meaning. When we move in the direction of that meaning, we're healing.
Son of Heav'n and Earth, Attend: that thou art happy, owe to God; That thou continuest such, owe to thyself, That is, to thy obedience; therein stand.
The truth you believe and cling to makes you unavailable to hear anything new.
Well, pray if you like, only you'd do better to use your judgment.
Improvising is wonderful. But, the thing is that you cannot improvise unless you know exactly what you're doing. That's a kind of paradoxical thing about improvising.
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