Similar to it's a long lane that has no turning, this obsolete phrase means 'it is rare for people to maintain a particular position, practice, etc., indefinitely'. The implication, despite the optimistic sound of these words, is that people inevitably do turn, and so don't (figuratively and literally) run all that far in a single direction.

This obsolete phrase has the current English equivalent walk before you run; it indicates that 'it is as well to master elementary things before attempting anything more difficult'.

This sounds like the practice of a dictator, but this rare and now obsolete phrase was actually used in reference to hunting dogs: it meant 'to run directly forward, rather than following a scent'.

If you run the chapter through, you might be reading something over quickly – but previously you'd have been doing something rather more heated: it once meant 'to go over an old quarrel again', although again, it is now obsolete.

A smuggler could be said to run the cutter. This chiefly Scottish phrase, now rare, originated in the idea of a smuggler evading a revenue cutter (cutter in the sense of a coastal patrol boat). This broadened to smuggling more generally, or any comparable activity, such as seeking to obtain drink illegally.

This phrase is used to refer to something that may be easily or readily perceived or understood, and relates to the Biblical book of Habakkuk: 'Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it'; this has been glossed as 'write it in great letters, that he that runs may read it'.