The disposition to judge every enterprise by its event, and believe in no wisdom that is not endorsed by success, is apt to grow upon us with years, till we sympathize with nothing for which we cannot take out a policy of assurance.
James Martineau (Hours of Thought I, 87).
If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination. Once begin upon this downward path, you never know where you are to stop. Many a man has dated his ruin from some murder or other that perhaps he thought little of at the time.
De Quincey (Murder, as one of the Fine Arts).
For when the mellow autumn flushed
The thickets, where the chestnut fell,
And in the vales the maple blushed,