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Risk

Last updated:  23 December 1998


When all actions are mathematically calculated, they also take on a stupid quality.
Adorno, Theodor W. (1974), Minima moralia. Reflections from damaged life. (First published in German 1951.) London (NLB), 107

In risk perception, humans act less as individuals and more as social beings who have internalized social pressures and delegated their decision-making processes to institutions. They manage as well as they do, without knowing the risks they face, by following social rules on what to ignore: institutions are their problem-simplifying devices.
Douglas, Mary & Wildavsky, Aaron, Risk and culture. An essay on the selection of technological and environmental dangers. Berkeley, CA (University of California Press), 1982, 80

Risk-assessment techniques are the expert answer to the question of how much wealth should be sacrificed for how much health.
Douglas, Mary & Wildavsky, Aaron, Risk and culture. An essay on the selection of technological and environmental dangers. Berkeley, CA (University of California Press), 1982, 67

Science and risk assessment cannot tell us what we need to know about threats of danger since they explicitly try to exclude moral ideas about the good life. Where responsibility starts, they stop.
Douglas, Mary & Wildavsky, Aaron, Risk and culture. An essay on the selection of technological and environmental dangers. Berkeley, CA (University of California Press), 1982, 81

It seems that rational human behavior does not use elaborate calculation for making crisis decisions, nor does it separate out risks one by one or two by two. Rather it focuses on the infrastructure of everyday comportment, setting up the conditions for surviving crises by building flexible, feasible aims into a way of life.
Douglas, Mary & Wildavsky, Aaron, Risk and culture. An essay on the selection of technological and environmental dangers. Berkeley, CA (University of California Press), 1982, 81

The satisfactions in smoking and drinking and driving are not private pleasures. Even if they were, habits would still be hard to change because they are locked into life styles. But most habits, good and bad, are social, rooted in community life.
In a tight community a man has his work cut out to meet the neighbors' standards. This is where he gets the health education that he cannot ignore. (p. 85)
A real-life risk portfolio is not a selection made by private ratiocination. (p. 85)
Douglas, Mary & Wildavsky, Aaron, Risk and culture. An essay on the selection of technological and environmental dangers. Berkeley, CA (University of California Press), 1982, 84

... people select their awareness of certain dangers to conform with a specific way of life ... (...) To alter risk selection and risk perception, then, would depend on changing the social organization.
Douglas, Mary & Wildavsky, Aaron, Risk and culture. An essay on the selection of technological and environmental dangers. Berkeley, CA (University of California Press), 1982, 9

Each form of social life has its own typical risk portfolio. Common values lead to common fears. (...) Risk taking and risk aversion, shared confidence and shared fears, are part of the dialogue on how best to organize social relations.
Douglas, Mary & Wildavsky, Aaron, Risk and culture. An essay on the selection of technological and environmental dangers. Berkeley, CA (University of California Press), 1982, 8

Medical attention has always been a risk for the patient. Now it is a big risk for the doctor as well.
Douglas, Mary & Wildavsky, Aaron, Risk and culture. An essay on the selection of technological and environmental dangers. Berkeley, CA (University of California Press), 1982, 34

No doubt there are risks that we would rather not run but that we undertake in order to gain other benefits. People do live in Los Angeles, for example, not for the privilege of breathing in smog but in order to take advantage of its natural beauty, warm climate, job opportunities, and so on. Life's choices, after all, often come in bundles of goods and bads, which have to be taken whole.
Douglas, Mary & Wildavsky, Aaron, Risk and culture. An essay on the selection of technological and environmental dangers. Berkeley, CA (University of California Press), 1982, 18

Any attempt to shape the world and modify human personality in order to create a self-chosen pattern of life involves many unknown consequences. Human destiny is bound to remain a gamble, because at some unpredictable time and in some unforeseeable manner nature will strike back. The multiplicity of determinants which affect biological systems limits the power of the experimental method to predict their trends and behavior.
Dubos, René, Mirage of Health. Utopias, progress, and biological change. New Brunswick (Rutgers University Press), 1987, 266-267

Man could escape danger only by renouncing adventure, by abandoning that which has given to the human condition its unique character and genius among the rest of living things.
Dubos, René, Mirage of Health. Utopias, progress, and biological change. New Brunswick (Rutgers University Press), 1987, 281

... men as a rule are more preoccupied with the dangers that threaten their life than interested in the biological forces on which they depend for a constructive existence.
Dubos, René, Mirage of health. Utopias, progress, and biological change. New Brunswick (Rutgers University Press), 1987, 69

As long as mankind is made up of independent individuals with free will, there cannot be any social status quo. Men will develop new urges, and these will give rise to new problems, which will require ever new solutions. Human life implies adventure, and there is no adventure without struggles and dangers.
Dubos, René, Mirage of Health. Utopias, progress, and biological change. New Brunswick (Rutgers University Press), 1987, 278

You know you're in a developed country when: you lift a phone and you hear a dial tone; you dial a number and it rings at your first try; you take the 9:50 flight and the plane leaves at 9:50; you come to a party two hours late and the guests are leaving; you got to an office and people are working; you step on the street and cars screech to a halt; you drive on a freeway and everyone stays on his lane; you open the faucet and water comes out; you switch on the light and there is light.
You know you're in an undeveloped country when: you lift a phone and you hear the sound of silence; you dial a number and you hear the murmur of the cosmos; you take the 9:50 flight and leave at 12:00; you come to a party two hours late and it is just starting; you go to an office and people are sleeping; you step on a street and you are nearly run over by two buses racing to stop; you drive carefully and everyone is trying to shove you off the road; you open a faucet and you hear the moaning of the wind; you switch on the light and you curse the Napocor.
If there is an outstanding difference between the rich and poor countries - apart from wealth - it is predictability. The one is predictable, the other is not ...
In the first, you can rely on rules to be followed and jobs to be done. In the second, you may not. Or you may rely on them not to. That is also the difference between the rich countries and ours. They may not always rely on what their government officials are saying. We can always rely on the opposite of what our government officials are saying. Each time they tell us we will become a newly industrialized country by the year 2000, we do not get elated. We get frightened out of our wits.
de Quiros, Conrado, Rich country, poor country. In: Philippine Daily Inquirer of September 26, 1993, No 291, Vol. VIII, p.5

Life without risk would be like chilli without heat - edible but bland.
Egger, Gary, Spark, Ross & Lawson, Jim, Health promotion strategies & methods. Sydney (McGraw-Hill), 1990, 17

The traditional focus of health promotion campaigns on individual risk should, by now, be seen as only a small part of health promotion strategy.
Egger, Gary, Spark, Ross & Lawson, Jim, Health promotion strategies & methods. Sydney (McGraw-Hill), 1990, 120

High-consequence risks form one particular segment of the generalised 'climate of risk' characteristic of late modernity - one characterised by regular shifts in knowledge-claims as mediated by expert systems.
Giddens, Anthony (1991), Modernity and self-identity. Self and society in the late modern age. Cambridge (Polity Press), 123

The risk climate of modernity is thus unsettling for everyone: no one escapes.
Giddens, Anthony (1991), Modernity and self-identity. Self and society in the late modern age. Cambridge (Polity Press), 124

High-consequence risks have a distinctive quality. The more calamitous the hazards they involve, the less we have any real experience of what we risk: for if things 'go wrong', it is already too late.
Giddens, Anthony (1991), Modernity and self-identity. Self and society in the late modern age. Cambridge (Polity Press), 122

Risk concerns future happenings - as related to present practices - and the colonising of the future therefore opens up new settings of risk, some of which are institutionally organised.
Giddens, Anthony (1991), Modernity and self-identity. Self and society in the late modern age. Cambridge (Polity Press), 117

Life-planning takes account of a 'package' of risks rather than calculating the implications of distinct segments of risky behaviour. Taking certain risks in pursuit of a given lifestyle, in other words, is accepted to be within 'tolerable limits' as part of the overall package.
(...)
Thinking in terms of risk becomes more or less inevitable and [Seitenwechsel] most people will ne conscious also of the risks of [refusing - kursiv] to think in this way, even if they may choose to ignore those risks. In the charged reflexive settings of high modernity, living on 'automatic pilot' becomes more and more difficult to do, and it becomes less and less possible to protect any lifestyle, no matter how firmly pre-established, from the generalised risk climate.
Giddens, Anthony (1991), Modernity and self-identity. Self and society in the late modern age. Cambridge (Polity Press), 125-126

[C]ultivated risk-taking represents an 'experiment with trust' (in the sense of basic trust) which consequently has implications for an individual's self-identity. (...) In cultivated risk-taking, the encounter with danger and its resolution are bound up in the same activity, whereas in other consequential settings the payoff of chosen strategies may not be seen for years afterwards.
Giddens, Anthony (1991), Modernity and self-identity. Self and society in the late modern age. Cambridge (Polity Press), 133

The sustaining of life, in a bodily sense as well as in the sense of psychological health, is inherently subject to risk.
Giddens, Anthony (1991), Modernity and self-identity. Self and society in the late modern age. Cambridge (Polity Press), 40

To live in the universe of high modernity is to live in an environment of chance and risk, the ineveitable concomitants of a system geared to the domination of nature and the reflexive making of history. Fate and destiny have no formal part to play in such a system, which operates (as a matter of principle) via what I shall call open human control of the natural and social worlds.
Giddens, Anthony (1991), Modernity and self-identity. Self and society in the late modern age. Cambridge (Polity Press), 109

Thinking in terms of risk certainly has its unsettling aspects (...), but it is also a means of seeking to stabilise outcomes, a mode of colonising the future. The more or less constant, profound and rapid momentum of change characteristic of modern institutions, coupled with structured reflexivity, mean that on the level of everyday practice as well as philosophical [Seitenwechsel] interpretation, nothing can be taken for granted. What is acceptable/appropriate/recommended behaviour today may be seen differently tomorrow in the light of altered circumstances or incoming knowledge-claims.
Giddens, Anthony (1991), Modernity and self-identity. Self and society in the late modern age. Cambridge (Polity Press), 133-134

The difficulties of living in a secular risk culture are compounded by the importance of lifestyle choices.
Giddens, Anthony (1991), Modernity and self-identity. Self and society in the late modern age. Cambridge (Polity Press), 182

Abstract systems depend on trust, yet they provide none of the moral rewards which can be obtained from personalised trust, or were often available in traditional settings from the moral frameworks within which everyday life was undertaken. Moreover, the wholesale penetration of abstract systems into daily life creates risks which the individual is not well placed to confront; high-consequence risks fall into this category. Greater interdependence, up to and including globally independent systems, means greater vulnerability when untoward events occur that affect those systems as a whole.
Giddens, Anthony (1991), Modernity and self-identity. Self and society in the late modern age. Cambridge (Polity Press), 136

The thesis that risk assessment itself is inherently risky is nowhere better borne out than in the area of high-consequence risks.
Giddens, Anthony (1991), Modernity and self-identity. Self and society in the late modern age. Cambridge (Polity Press), 122

'Taking charge of one's life' involves risk, because it means confronting a diversity of open possibilities.
Giddens, Anthony (1991), Modernity and self-identity. Self and society in the late modern age. Cambridge (Polity Press), 73

The negative connotation of the word risk creates a fundamental problem in the notion of 'risk taking', namely differences in perception regarding the inherent value or worth of some action or behaviour between the 'risk taker' and the risk assessor. Risk taking implies intent on the part of the actor, but the intentions of the action are not fully appreciated or acknowledged with this one-sided view of risk. The risk assessor judges the actions of another individual to be harmful (or bad?). The (real or perceived) benefits to the individual of smoking, eating, drinking, driving, flying, or whatever, are not considered. The health-enhancing aspects of the benefit of some action to the individual may more than compensate for its health-threatening aspects (rational behaviour?). The notion of risk as wager - assessing both losses and gains - would seem a more appropriate conception of risk in relation to 'risk taking'. Analysis of both positive and negative aspects of behaviour would provide the 'risk taker' an opportunity to play an active role in labelling and evaluating 'risk', thereby wresting exclusive power to determine 'risk' away from an external 'expert'.
Hayes, Michael V., On the epistemology of risk: Language, logic and social science. In: Social Science and Medicine 1992, Vol. 35, No. 4, 401-407, here: 404

'Safety', the wife of Pablo said. 'There is no such thing as safety. There are so many seeking safety here now that they make a great danger. In seeking safety now you lose all.'
Hemingway, Ernest M. (1976), For whom the bell tolls. London (Grafton, originally published 1941), 54

Life is short, science is long; opportunity is elusive, experiment is dangerous, judgement is difficult.
Hippocrates, Hippocratic writings. Edited with an introduction by G.E.R. Lloyd. Harmondsworth (Penguin), 1978, 206

The problems raised by alcohol and tobacco cannot, it goes without saying, be solved by prohibition. The universal and ever-present urge to self-transcendence is not to be abolished by slamming the currently popular Doors in the Wall. The only reasonable policy is to open other, better doors in the hope of inducing men and women to exchange their old bad habits for new and less harmful ones. Some of these other, better doors will be social and technological in nature, others religious or psychological, others dietetic, educational, athletic. But the need for the frequent chemical vacations from intolerable selfhood and repulsive surroundings will undoubtedly remain.
Huxley, Aldous, The doors of perception. London (Triad Grafton) 1977, 52

But the man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out. He will be wiser but less cocksure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable Mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend.
Huxley, Aldous, The doors of perception. London (Triad Grafton) 1977, 64

Most men and women lead lives at the worst so painful, at the best so monotonous, poor and limited that the urge to escape, the longing to transcend themselves if only for a few moments, is and has always been one of the principal appetites of the soul.
Huxley, Aldous, The doors of perception. London (Triad Grafton) 1977, 50

We now spend a good deal more on drink and smoke than we spend on education. This, of course, is not surprising. The urge to escape from selfhood and the environment is in almost everyone almost all the time.
Huxley, Aldous, The doors of perception. London (Triad Grafton) 1977, 51

In youth we take egregious risks because death has no reality for us. Youth goes caparisoned in immortality. It is only in middle age that we are shadowed by the awareness of the transitoriness of life.
James, P.D., Devices and desires. New York (Warner Books), 1989, 173

Maxim 549:
A wise man thinks it more advantageous not to join the battle than to win.
La Rochefoucauld (1959), Maxims. Translated with an introduction by Leonard Tancock. London (Penguin), 109

Maxim 308:
Moderation has been declared a virtue so as to curb the ambition of the great and console lesser folk for their lack of fortune and merit.
La Rochefoucauld (1959), Maxims. Translated with an introduction by Leonard Tancock. London (Penguin), 78

Maxim 470:
All our qualities, whether good or bad, are unstable and ambiguous, and almost all are at the mery of chance.
La Rochefoucauld (1959), Maxims. Translated with an introduction by Leonard Tancock. London (Penguin), 96

Maxim 79:
Silence is the safest policy if you are unsure of yourself.
La Rochefoucauld (1959), Maxims. Translated with an introduction by Leonard Tancock. London (Penguin), 47

Maxim 566:
Moderation is like sobriety: you would like to have some more, but are afraid of making yourself ill.
La Rochefoucauld (1959), Maxims. Translated with an introduction by Leonard Tancock. London (Penguin), 115

In a society in which modern advertising and merchandising techniques, government crop subsidies, peer-group pressure, and the addictive nature of the substance all conspire to encourage cigarette smoking, how voluntary is this high-risk habit?
Leichter, Howard M., Free to be foolish. Politics and health promotion in the United States and Great Britain. Princeton, N.J. (Princeton University Press), 1991, 84

Just as a moral distinction is drawn between "those at risk" and "those posing a risk", health education routinely draws a distinction between the harm caused by external causes out of the individual's control and that caused by oneself. Lifestyle risk discourse overturns the notion that health hazards in postindustrial society are out of the individual's control. On the contrary, the dominant theme of lifestyle risk discourse is the responsibility of the individual to avoid health risks for the sake of his or her own health as well as the greater good of society.
Lupton, Deborah, Risk as moral danger. The Social and political functions of risk discourse in public health. In: International Journal of Health Services, No. 3, Vol. 23, 1993, 425-435, here: 429

Risk discourse in public health can be separated loosely into two perspectives. The first views risk as a health danger to populations that is posed by environmental hazards such as pollution, nuclear waste, and toxic chemical residues. In this conceptualization of risk, the health threat is regarded as a hazard that is external, over which the individual has little control. The common response to such risks on the part of the layperson is anger at governmental authorities, feelings of powerlessness and anxiety, and concern over the seemingly deliberate and unregulated contamination of the environment by the industry.
The second approach to health risk focuses upon risk as a consequence of the "lifestyle" choices made by individuals, and thus places the emphasis upon self-control. Individuals are exhorted by health promotion authorities to evaluate their risk of succumbing to disease and to change their behavior accordingly. Risk assessment related to lifestyle choices is formally undertaken by means of health risk appraisals and screening programs in which the individual participates and is given a rating.
Lupton, Deborah, Risk as moral danger. The Social and political functions of risk discourse in public health. In: International Journal of Health Services, No. 3, Vol. 23, 1993, 425-435, here: 426 and 427

Health education emphasizing risks is a form of pedagogy, which, like other forms, serves to legitimize ideologies and social practices. Risk discourse in the public health sphere allows the state, as the owner of knowledge, to exert power of the bodies of its citizens. Risk discourse, therefore, especially when it emphasizes lifestyle risks, serves as an effective Foucauldian agent of surveillance and control that is difficult to challenge because of its manifest benevolent goal of maintaining standards of health. In doing so, it draws attention away from the structural causes of ill-health.
Lupton, Deborah, Risk as moral danger. The Social and political functions of risk discourse in public health. In: International Journal of Health Services, No. 3, Vol. 23, 1993, 425-435, here: 432-433

No longer is the body a temple to be worshipped as the house of God; it has become a commodified and regulated object that must be strictly monitored by its owner to prevent lapses into health-threatening behaviors as identified by risk discourse. For those with the socioeconomic resources to indulge in risk modification, this discourse may supply the advantages of a new religion; for others, this discourse has the potential to create anxiety and guilt, to promote hopelessness and fear of the future.
Lupton, Deborah, Risk as moral danger. The Social and political functions of risk discourse in public health. In: International Journal of Health Services, No. 3, Vol. 23, 1993, 425-435, here: 433

We need to remain to some degree opaque and unpredictable, particularly when threatened by the predictive practices of others. The satisfaction of this need to at least some degree supplies another necessary condition for human life being meaningful in the ways that it is and can be. It is necessary, if life is to be meaningful, for us to be able to engage in long-term projects, and this requires predictability; it is necessary, if life is to be meaningful, for us to be in possession of ourselves and not merelz to be the creations of other people's projects, intentions and desires, and this requires unpredictability. We are thus involved in a world in which we are simultaneously trying to render the rest of society predictable and ourselves unpredictable, to devise generalisations which will capture the behaviour of others and to cast our own behaviour into forms which will elude the generalisations which others frame.
MacIntyre, Alasdair (1981), After virtue. A study in moral theory. Notre Dame, Indiana (University of Notre Dame Press), 99

Risking requires energy and wellness. Aspects such as motivation and commitment are energy sources and their absence energy depleters. Stress can be a positive source when it is channeled into productive energy. Rest and relaxation, exercise, and appropriate diet all reduce stress, improve well-being, and keep you fit for successful risking.
Morscher, Betsy & Schindler-Jones, Barbara, Go for it! Successful risk-taking for women. New York (Warner Books), 1992, 97

Calculated risking is a mandate for a dynamic life.
Morscher, Betsy & Schindler-Jones, Barbara, Go for it! Successful risk-taking for women. New York (Warner Books), 1992, 80

Risking means eagerly looking for chances to bring more joy, purpose, self-esteem, zest, accomplishment, and love into our lives.
Morscher, Betsy & Schindler-Jones, Barbara, Go for it! Successful risk-taking for women. New York (Warner Books), 1992, 19

Successful risk-taking means that you can't play it safe and you can't keep tight control over all eventualities. Courage helps control fear and makes it possible to move through the fear to achieve your goal.
Morscher, Betsy & Schindler-Jones, Barbara, Go for it! Successful risk-taking for women. New York (Warner Books), 1992, 130

But psychologist William James summed it up when he said, "It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all."
Morscher, Betsy & Schindler-Jones, Barbara, Go for it! Successful risk-taking for women. New York (Warner Books), 1992, 29

In the aftermath of your risk-taking, you need to examine what you did and why and decide if it was worth it. No one but you can fully evaluate what went on and what you got out of it. Only you can weigh the outcomes against your needs and best interests.
Morscher, Betsy & Schindler-Jones, Barbara, Go for it! Successful risk-taking for women. New York (Warner Books), 1992, 182

Risking exacts payment, to be sure, but the cost you pay for not risking is even higher. Without taking a risk, it is impossible to experience real love, acquire true power, or gain prestige.
Morscher, Betsy & Schindler-Jones, Barbara, Go for it! Successful risk-taking for women. New York (Warner Books), 1992, 22-23

When you risk you allow yourself to be vulnerable to potential injury or loss. But when you take that chance, you are also opening yourself to the potential of reward. Risking means gambling, when you move from one place or situation or idea to another, that good things will happen, not bad. Risking means venturing out from the safe harbor to the open seas. In fact, the original meaning of risk from the Greek is: to sail around a cliff.
Risking is an invitation to be part of the action called life. It is clear that when you venture out into the unknown, where you cannot completely predict what will happen, you are taking a chance. Yet you cannot grow unless you risk.
Morscher, Betsy & Schindler-Jones, Barbara, Go for it! Successful risk-taking for women. New York (Warner Books), 1992, 20

But even if you risk and fail, you have gained something from the trying that avoidance of risk can never provide.
Morscher, Betsy & Schindler-Jones, Barbara, Go for it! Successful risk-taking for women. New York (Warner Books), 1992, 23

'Avoid allergens,' Mrs Fretwell would chant. She might as well have said avoid life (but most astmatics will do that anyway, without having to be told).
Mount, Ferdinand (1992), Love and asthma. A Novel. London (Minerva), ix

In fact, safety has no place anywhere. Everything that's fun in life is dangerous. Horse races, for instance, are very dangerous. But attempt to design a safe horse and the result is a cow (an appalling animal to watch at the trotters.) And everything that isn't fun is dangerous too. It is impossible to be alive and safe.
O'Rourke, P.J. (1987), Republican Party Reptile. The confessions, adventures, essays and other outrages of P.J. O'Rourke. London (Picador), 41

I mean, so what if some fifty-eight-year-old butt-head gets a load on and starts playing Death Race 2000 in the rush-hour traffic jam? What kind of chance is he taking? He's just waiting around to see what kind of cancer he gets anyway. But if young, talented you, with all of life's possibilities at your fingertips, you and the future Cheryl Tiegs there, so fresh, so beautiful - if the two of you stake your handsome heads on a single roll of the dice in life's game of stop-the-semi - now that's taking chances! Which is why old people rarely risk their lives. It's not because they're chicken - they just have too much dignity to play for small stakes.
O'Rourke, P.J. (1987), Republican Party Reptile. The confessions, adventures, essays and (other) outrages of P.J. O'Rourke. London (Picador), 129

... a risk which has not materialized within the individual's own experience is unlikely to be regarded seriously.
Rose, Geoffrey, The strategy of preventive medicine. Oxford (Oxford University Press), 1992, 22

... a large number of people exposed to a small risk may generate many more cases than a small number exposed to a high risk.
Rose, Geoffrey, The strategy of preventive medicine. Oxford (Oxford University Press), 1992, 24

... the burden of ill health comes more from the many who are exposed to a low inconspicuous risk than from the few who face an obvious problem. This sets a limit to the effectiveness of an individual (high-risk) approach to prevention.
Rose, Geoffrey, The strategy of preventive medicine. Oxford (Oxford University Press), 1992, 27

The danger, when not too dangerous, fascinate.
Sontag, Susan (1993), The volcano lover. A romance. London (Vintage Books), 7

One man's health risk is another man's pleasure.
Taylor, Robert L. (1990), Health fact, health fiction. Getting through the media maze. Dallas, TX (Taylor publishing Company), 37

I've seen too many fuckin' people who are dead before they're alive. They don't want to take a chance. They are B and C personalities, they're happy enough to work in a Laundromat. God bless 'em. But I gotta tell you, there are a lot more rewards out there.
Tyler, Steven (1994), Rolling Stone Interview, RS 694, November 3, 1994, 67

... if you take a risk, two things will happen. People will laugh at you. Or you'll be way ahead of everybody else. And if that's what you're in it for, then you gotta take that risk.
Tyler, Steven (1994), Rolling Stone Interview, RS 694, November 3, 1994, 60

Safe in life, safe in death, the merchant liked to feel.
White, Patrick (1994), Voss. London (Vintage), 349

When a woman marries again it is because she detested her first husband. When a man marries again it is because he adored his first wife. Women try their luck; men risk theirs.
Wilde, Oscar (1993), The picture of Dorian Gray. In: The complete plays, stories, poems, and novels. Bombay (Wilco International), 17-167, here: 136

Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.
Wilde, Oscar (1993), A Woman of No Importance. In: The complete plays, stories, poems, and novels. Bombay (Wilco International), 416-466, here: 449


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