Life & Wisdom Quote by George Herbert

Prudence, Herbert warns, is architectural: survival depends on having more than one exit. "The mouse that hath but one hole is quickly taken" looks like homely pest-control wisdom, but its bite is moral and political. In a world of traps, certainty is a liability. One hole means one habit, one plan, one patron, one doctrine you refuse to revise. The predator doesnt need brilliance; it just needs to learn your route.

Herbert, a priest-poet writing in early Stuart England, understood how quickly the ground could shift under a person with a single allegiance. The era was thick with confessional tension, court intrigue, and the quiet surveillance of reputation. For a clergyman navigating faith and power, the proverb doubles as a counsel against both naivete and fanaticism: keep options, keep discretion, keep a second path that preserves conscience when institutions tighten.

The line works because it stages an asymmetry. The mouse is small and ordinary; the danger is systematic. Its fate turns not on heroics but on strategy, suggesting Herbert's larger preoccupation with self-governance. The archaic "hath" lends biblical gravity to a deliberately modest image, smuggling hard counsel into a nursery-rhyme cadence. Its subtext is unsentimental: virtue without flexibility can become self-sabotage. In Herbert's economy, wisdom is not purity of intent but the practiced ability to slip the trap.