In the journey of life, every action we take is accompanied by consequences—some anticipated, others unforeseen. Navigating these outcomes requires resilience, wisdom, and introspection. Embracing the lessons that come with facing consequences can lead to personal growth and a better understanding of the world around us. Within this post, we have curated a selection of 57 insightful quotes that delve into the essence of accountability and the importance of owning our decisions. Whether you're seeking inspiration to make informed choices or need encouragement to embrace the outcomes of your actions, these powerful words resonate with the universal truth that our lives are shaped by the consequences of what we do.
1. “Every little trifle, for some reason, does seem incalculably important today, and when you say of a thing that 'nothing hangs on it,' it sounds like blasphemy. There's never any knowing—(how am I to put it?)—which of our actions, which of our idlenesses won't have things hanging on it for ever.” - E.M. Forster
2. “If, before every action, we were to begin by weighing up the consequences, thinking about them in earnest, first the immediate consequences, then the probable, then the possible, then the imaginable ones, we should never move beyond the point where our first thought brought us to a halt. The good and evil resulting from our words and deeds go on apportioning themselves, one assumes in a reasonably uniform and balanced way, throughout all the days to follow, including those endless days, when we shall not be here to find out, to congratulate ourselves or ask for pardon, indeed there are those who claim that this is the much talked of immortality.” - José Saramago
3. “He hated sounding guilty. Terrible things always followed.” - Mel Odom
4. “The thing about real life is, when you do something stupid, it normally costs you. In books the heroes can make as many mistakes as they like. It doesn't matter what they do, because everything works out in the end. They'll beat the bad guys and put things right and everything ends up cool.In real life, vacuum cleaners kill spiders. If you cross a busy road without looking, you get whacked by a car. If you fall from a tree, you break some bones. Real life's nasty. It's cruel. It doesn't care about heroes and happy endings and the way things should be. In real life, bad things happen. People die. Fights are lost. Evil often wins. I just wanted to make that clear before I begun.” - Darren Shan
5. “When you choose an action, you choose the consequences of that action. When you desire a consequence you had damned well better take the action that would create it.” - Lois McMaster Bujold
6. “Don't kill her now, just when we've gone to all that trouble to rescue her," said Jeffrey.” - Jeanne Birdsall
7. “Se antes de cada acto nosso nos puséssemos a prever todas as consequências dele, a pensar nelas a sério, primeiro as imediatas, depois as prováveis, depois as possíveis, depois as imagináveis, não chegaríamos sequer a mover-nos de onde o primeiro pensamento nos tivesse feito parar.” - José Saramago
8. “Eliza: The problem with YOU is that you don't take the RESPONSIBILITY for anything@ You think you can just run around, doing whatever you want to whoever you want, and that it's going to be fine. That everything is just going to be TAKE CARE of for you, with no consequences.Cooper: No. I don't, and I have had consequences from what happened with me and you.Eliza: Yeah? Like what?Cooper: I lost you, that was my consequence.” - Lauren Barnholdt
9. “Daja doesn't exactly need to be tested on whether she's honorable or not." "Doesn't she? Don't all of you? This is your first taste of the things which may come from your being powerful mages. People will offer you gold, status, even love. I want to know how you will react. If want to know if your teachers will release greedy, thoughtless monsters into the world.” - Tamora Pierce
10. “Мъжете, които действат необмислено, винаги се изненадват от последствията.” - Sarah Addison Allen
11. “The Wrong we have Done, Thought, or Intended Will wreak its Vengeance onOur SOULS.” - Carl Gustav Jung
12. “Wait.” Stefan’s voice was hard suddenly. Bonnie and Elena turned back and froze, embracing each other, trembling. “What is your—your father—going to do to you when he finds out that you allowed this?”"He will not kill me,” Sage said brusquely, the wild tone back in his voice. “He may even find it as amusant as I do, and we will be sharing a belly laugh tomorrow.” - L.J. Smith
13. “If every time we choose a turd, society, at a great expense, simply allows us to redeem it for a pepperoni, then not only will we never learn to make smart choices, we will also surrender the freedom to choose, because a choice without consequences is no choice at all.” - Tom Robbins
14. “What's the use you learning to do right when it's troublesome to do right and ain't no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same?” - Mark Twain
15. “We are free to choose our paths, but we can't choose the consequences that come with them.” - Sean Covey
16. “I've made a decision and now I must face the consequences.” - J. Michael Straczynski
17. “Future generations would be convinced that nothing good could ever have existed in a country that produced such evil. They would think only of these evils. It would be as if these unleashed dark forces had grotesquely marched like devils on dead horses, backward through the gash in the present, and had destroyed the German past too.” - Eric Metaxas
18. “Karma has been a pop culture term for ages. But really, what the heck is it?Karma is not an inviolate engine of cosmic punishment. Rather, it is a neutral sequence of acts, results, and consequences.Receiving misfortune does not necessarily indicate that one has committed evil. But it is a sufficient indicator of something else.And that something else can be anything, as long as it is a logical consequence of what has come before.Consider: if you fall into a well, you are not a bad person who deserves to suffer—you are merely someone who took a wrong step. Or someone who had one drink too many. Or got a head rush due to poor circulation. Or forgot to wear your glasses. Or—The reasons are plentiful, and all plausible. But the chain of cause and effect goes way, way back into the deepest hoariest recesses of your personal past.So never rule out retribution. But never expect it.” - Vera Nazarian
19. “This was one of the casualties of war, that trust itself seemed to die a thousand deaths.” - Eric Metaxas
20. “Actions always have consequences!” - Joel Coen
21. “That’s right; put on the steam, fasten down the escape-valve, and sit on it, and see there you’ll land.” - Harriet Beecher Stowe
22. “What you are, and who you are should provide greater clarity about where you have been and where you are headed. Although one distinguishes spiritual from physical nature, the ultimate unification of the two is the consequence of the struggle for internal, external and eternal – peace.” - T.F. Hodge
23. “If you build the guts to do something, anything, then you better save enough to face the consequences.” - Criss Jami
24. “Screw the rules, damn the consequences, and just love. Love until it kills you, because there's nothing better worth dying for.” - Karen Amanda Hooper
25. “In much of the rest of the world, rich people live in gated communities and drink bottled water. That's increasingly the case in Los Angeles where I come from. So that wealthy people in much of the world are insulated from the consequences of their actions."[Why Societies Collapse, ABC Local, July 17, 2003]” - Jared Diamond
26. “Words have consequences.” - Albert Marrin
27. “Leaving the person I love in danger and continuing to live on is the same as being dead.-Hyuga, Natsume” - Higuchi Tachibana
28. “Yeah, they look great, but that isn't a fantasy come true, Harry. That's a wood chipper in Playboy bunny clothing.” - Jim Butcher
29. “The consequences of our actions take hold of us, quite indifferent to our claim that meanwhile we have 'improved.” - Friedrich Nietzsche
30. “It's only knitting and it's one of the few times in your life when there are no bad consequences to a mistake.” - Stephanie Pearl-McPhee
31. “You took a life and the theft went unpunished. God didn't strike you down. The sky didn't fall. The morning after, you turned on the faucet and water still came out... It was still good when you raised your arm for a cab and one came towards you out of the flow like magic. You did things that were supposed to end you and found they were only things that changed you. It was a disappointment and a revelation and a bereavement and a new thrilling nudity. It was the basic prosaic obscenity: You kept going.” - Glen Duncan
32. “The walls were coming down around me, but still, I couldn't imagine telling the truth. Not now. It was too late. How can I tell Mom and Dad what we'd done? It would ruin everything. It would ruin their image of me; it would ruin every thought they'd ever had about who I was. It would be another death.Another loss. Another miscarriage.” - Dana Reinhardt
33. “Our actions are like ships which we may watch set out to sea, and not know when or with what cargo they will return to port.” - Iris Murdoch
34. “[O]ver sufficiently long a term, as everyone knows, there is nothing that does not have as its consequence death.” - Mohsin Hamid
35. “Sometimes, what's right is not peaceful or passive. What matters is that you do not hide from the consequences. You bear what must be borne.” - Orson Scott Card
36. “Perhaps the rest of the world was gone. It was the most plausible answer. Heaven knows she couldn’t see or think of anyone else. That must be the answer, they were the only two people left, as the Earth spun into a timeless abyss. Claire once read time doesn’t pass at normal speeds within a black hole. If one were to travel into a black hole for only moments and return again, centuries would have passed. That explained the sensation she felt, once again peering into his dark gaze. She wouldn’t look away; she’d trained herself better than that. Then again, she reasoned, it wasn’t an option. She couldn’t divert her gaze if she wanted. The hold upon her stare was stronger than any ropes or chains made by man. Claire knew from experience, submitting to the hold was her best chance at survival. Fighting was a futile waste of energy.” - Aleatha Romig
37. “She sat back down, arms once again crossed over her breasts. It was the most direct she’d ever spoken to him, and it felt liberating. Unfortunately, the resentment coursing through her veins wouldn’t allow her to relish her new found independence. She expected her words to incite anger; after all, she’d experienced his anger before. Nevertheless, carelessly and unapologetically Claire forged ahead, “I would prefer the words, but you are welcome to say, one through four, if that’s easier for you.” - Aleatha Romig
38. “He spoke again as if he hadn’t just shattered his promise and her security. Her house of glass now lay in a pile of shards.” - Aleatha Romig
39. “God she hated the dance. A blow to the cheek one minute and discussing a romantic getaway the next. It was the one step forward, two steps back waltz. She wanted to scream. Sitting on the side of the bed, Claire allowed herself tears and swallowed” - Aleatha Romig
40. “In their figurative game of chess, Anthony Rawlings had Claire in check. Every move she made, he countered.” - Aleatha Romig
41. “What good is a smooth tongue without sharp teeth?” - Jocelyn Murray
42. “Don’t think so. We all make our choices, and those choices have consequences.” - Kami Garcia
43. “Every decision has a consequence.” - Damon Darrell
44. “What you did when you were young could kill you. It just might take years to do it.” - Courtney Milan
45. “Some decisions in life naturally lead to an unhappy ending, leaving you sinking by degrees in a lake of quicksand. And, unless someone reaches to pull you out, chances are you will drown in the consequences.” - Richelle E. Goodrich
46. “The moving hand once having writ moves on. Nor all thy piety nor wit can lure it back to cancel half a line.” - Omar Khayyám
47. “It is better to tell the truth and face the punishment, than to lie and face the consequences.” - Anthony Liccione
48. “We shall draw from the heart of suffering itself the means of inspiration and survival.-Sir Winston Churchill” - Aleatha Romig
49. “Some things you sentence yourself to life for.” - Donna Lynn Hope
50. “I have to live with my mistakes, but I don’t have to regret them. I regret my actions but I can’t regret the consequences. We all make our own paths in life. Everyone we meet, everything we do, it changes us. It makes us who we are. And, if we’re lucky, we’re given the chance to make things right again.” - Karina Halle
51. “Can you sacrifice people?' I asked. 'Take their magic that way?''Yes,' he said. 'But there's a catch.''What's the catch?''You get hunted down even unto the ends of the Earth and summarily executed.” - Ben Aaronovitch
52. “Sometimes I think if we didn’t have these problems the whole world would stop spinning on her axis, we’d all stop spinning on our axises, axes, or whatever you want to call them, and then we’d have to settle into the nasty business of finding a way to be happy.” - Daniel Clausen
53. “I meant that the hatred of that July day in Nashville was alive and well on that horrible day in Pittsburgh. People hate others so they strike like snakes. It’s all connected—we’re all connected, bumping around into each other, some of us good, some bad, most a mixture. Every thought acted upon has consequences. Every one.” - Laura Anderson Kurk
54. “Every brush stroke on the canvas, every dab of color introduced, the fine textures impressed in the paint—this accumulation of many small acts combines to shape a final work of art. And so it is with life; each step, each deed, each brief choice builds gradually, day by day, to shape both character and destiny.” - Richelle E. Goodrich
55. “Planetologist call it the conundrum of unforeseen ecological consequence. I call it the whack-a-mole rule of human meddling. She clasped both hands like a child hammering. WHACK! We change something here. Oops, that makes another problem pop up there where we didn't expect it. WHACK! So, we whack that mole. Oops! We're so smart that we're a menace.” - Robert Buettner
56. “WHAT ARE THE CONSEQUENCES when we go against our instincts? What are the consequences of not speaking out? What are the consequences of guilt, shame, and doubt?” - Terry Tempest Williams
57. “If you spend your time hoping someone will suffer the consequences for what they did to your heart, then you're allowing them to hurt you a second time in your mind.” - Shannon L. Alder
