A certain man drewa bowat a venture, and smote the king of Israel between the joints of the harness.

-Bible (Old Testament)
Kings 22:34.

And so each venture Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate With shabby equipment always deteriorating In the general mess of imprecision of feeling, Undisciplined squads of emotion.

-Eliot,T(homas) S(tearns)
  Four Quartets,'East Coker', pt.5.

   None wise dares hopeless venture.

-Euripides
Helena, l.811 (translated by A S  Way,1959).

Respectability is a very good thing in its way, but it does not rise superior to all considerations. I would not for a moment venture to hint that it was a matter of taste; but I think I will go as far as this: that if a position is admittedly unkind, uncomfortable, unnecessary, and superfluously useless, although it were as respectableasthe Church of England, the sooner a man is out of it, the better for himself, and all concerned.

-Stevenson, Robert Louis
  An InlandVoyage,'At Maubeuge'.