“Forewarned, forearmed, is sheer nonsense.”
"That a Burnt Child often Dreads the Fire".
Sketches from Life (1846)
Context: Forewarned, forearmed, is sheer nonsense. Who is so indefatigable a scribbler as your abundantly damned author? Which of our orators speak so long and so often as he whom nobody listens to? What actors are so constantly before the public as those whom the town will not go to see? Who so easy to deceive as the dupe who has been taken in all his days? The gamester is a legitimate child of that frail couple, Flesh and Blood; he loses a fourth of what he is worth at the first throw—esteems himself lucky if he loses less today than he did yesterday—goes on staking and forfeiting hour by hour—and parts with his last guinea by exactly the same turn of the dice which lost him his first. Experience leaves fools as foolish as ever.
