Literary notes about Precaution (AI summary)
The term “precaution” has been employed in literature with remarkable versatility, often serving as both a literal and metaphorical device. In some works, it reflects practical measures taken to forestall danger or mishap—as in the detailed safety routines of characters in adventure narratives [1][2] or the subtle, everyday acts of self-preservation in domestic settings [3][4]. In other texts, authors use “precaution” in an ironic tone, suggesting that excessive care can itself become a vice or even a trap, as seen in Emerson’s musings [5] or in the skeptical commentary of characters in novels by Dumas and Dickens [6][7]. Beyond its material function, the word frequently carries philosophical or symbolic weights, denoting the human tendency to both mitigate risk and reveal inner insecurities, a duality that recurs in works spanning from Rousseau’s discourses [8][9] to the strategic worlds of military treatises [10]. Overall, “precaution” emerges as a multifaceted concept that enriches narrative tension and deepens character insight across a broad literary spectrum.
- I dressed myself rapidly—and then taking the precaution to please my uncle, of wrapping myself in one of the coverlets, I rushed out of the grotto.
— from A Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne - Consequently, Captain Nemo took every desired precaution in crossing it.
— from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas: An Underwater Tour of the World by Jules Verne - She had had the precaution to furnish her basket with some slices of bread and meat, and here they made their frugal breakfast.
— from The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens - She always travels with her own sheets; an excellent precaution.
— from Emma by Jane Austen - Yet it seems to me that with every precaution you take against such an evil you put yourself into the power of the evil.
— from Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson by Ralph Waldo Emerson - 'Not his merit that he don't cheat me,' was Mr Fledgeby's commentary delivered with a wink, 'but my precaution.'
— from Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens - As a further precaution they had bound his hands.
— from Twenty years after by Alexandre Dumas and Auguste Maquet - In spite of every precaution pleasures are destroyed by possession, and love above all others.
— from Emile by Jean-Jacques Rousseau - So much precaution proves but too evidently the need for it.
— from The Social Contract & Discourses by Jean-Jacques Rousseau - The only essential precaution to be observed is, not to allow the enemy to anticipate the army on this line of retreat.
— from The Art of War by baron de Antoine Henri Jomini
