Cautionary Quotes

“Here, at the edges,Whispering to you,And we’re not alone; not aloneHere, in the dark.We are behind the door, in the corners,In the room where you’ve just extinguished the light.We flicker in the shadow you cast on the wall.We are the prickle on the back of your neck.Curled, in words unspoken,We are the shiver on your uneasy flesh,The creep of the unknown on your skin.Can you feel us?Here, at the edges.From the Foreword of Cautionary Tales - by Emmanuelle de Maupassant”

“If you wish to view this as a cautionary tale, be my guest.”

“After all, a man's life, when all is said and done, should serve some greater purpose than that of a hero in a cautionary tale.”

“It's a difficult undertaking. I've been married for four years and I see this movie as a cautionary tale about people who've gone deeply out of communication.”

“Apollo has something to teach us as we enter a new century of genetic modification, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology. It's a cautionary tale about that most fundamentally human of human tragedies .. wanting something so badly that you end up destroying it.”

“PDR: Persons of Dubious Reality; refugees from the collective consciousness. Uninvited visitors who have fallen through the grating that divides the real, from the written. They arrive with their actions hardwired due to their repetitious existence and the older and more basic they are, the more rigidly they stick to them. Characters from cautionary tales are particularly mindless; they do what they do because it's what they've always done.And it's our job to stop them.”

“We are the voices in the shadows,Between the light and shade,Betwixt life and restful death,In the dark periphery of the unseen.We’re here, At the edges. We are the villainous punished,The innocent murdered or abandoned,Our lives ended by foul means, or unspeakable deeds.We are your lovers long gone; your siblings forsaken.Can you hear us?At the edgesFrom the Foreword of Cautionary Tales - by Emmanuelle de Maupassant”

“It was the ultimate cautionary tale, the moral being Don't fall, as if they were made of glass. In a sense they were--their fragility was irrefutable, medically proven--and yet Emily detested the inevitable rundown of accidents and tragedies, the more fortunate clucking their tongues and counting their blessings, all the while knowing it was just a matter of time. She didn't need to be reminded that she was a single misstep from disaster, especially here, without Henry, surrounded by the survivors of an earlier life.”

“Fairytales by nature only talk about the victors. The survivors. Nobody speaks about what happens to those who failed, except in the abstract: as cautionary tales to guide others onto the path to success. How many brave knights fell to the dragon before he was slayed by the noble prince? How many children burned to a crisp and eaten before the wicked witch received her due? These stories are lost, but the lesson behind them is not: it is not enough to be merely pure and good.”

“In the Scotland of the early seventeenth century, an old woman living alone in Kirkcudbrightshire was accused of witchcraft and on conviction was rolled downhill in a blazing tar barrel. One of the charges against her was that she walked withershins round a well near her cottage which was used by other people. The well was afterwards known as the Witch's Well. These episodes must surely serve as cautionary tales to anyone tempted to transgress the usual custom of walking deasil round a holy well.”