Quotes About Self-preservation

What good is it to throw yourself in front of a steamroller out of moral principles and then be crushed flat like a sock emptied of its foot? Better to fade into the crowd, the piously praising, unctuous, hate-mongering crowd. Better to hurl rocks than to have them hurled at you. Or better for your chances of staying alive.

Keep steady, I told myself. Don't share too much about yourself, it will be used against you. Listen carefully. Save all clues. Don't show fear.

For present purposes he's shortened the name. He's only Snowman. He's kept the abominable to himself, his own secret hair shirt.

if you want people to leave you alone you should act crazy.

How long do you expect me to wait while you cauterize your senses, one after another turning yourself to an impervious glass tower?

You go shake your foundations, Will. I think it's about time I saved myself.

Photographing expresses human desire to preserve passing time. It is like a man struggling with time that elapses, and in general - a desire to preserve oneself.

There is only room in the lifeboat of your life for one, and you always choose yourself, and turn your parents into whatever it takes to keep you afloat.

but i've slammed the door to my inner self; if he ever wants to force the lock again, he'll have to use a harder crowbar!

thinking about A. J. Muste, who during the Vietnam War stood in front of the White House night after night with a candle. One rainy night, a reporter asked him, "Mr. Muste, do you really think you are going to change the policies of this country by standing out here alone at night with a candle?" "Oh," Muste replied, "I don't do it to change the country, I do it so the country won't change me.

Man is wise to fear: it sharpens the sense of self-preservation.

Without law, who will protect the mother and child who are tomorrow's strength? Who will protect the geniuses of the mind, the inventor, the artist who enriches the world but has not the power of money or physical ability to defend himself? Who will protect the wise who are old, and might fall victim to the powerful and foolish? Indeed who will protect the strong from themselves?

I will give you a little hint," Emma said with a wry smile. "A whore's trick, but a good one. It's a part that you're playing, like a grand actress on the stage. It isn't you. It has nothing to do with you. You're simply using your body in service to something necessary. You can smile and flirt and dance and pretend you're someone entirely different, and it won't matter. You, the real you, will still be safe inside.

Too bad he took a tumble out that window when he was too drunk to know what he was doing, she said, cheerfully callous. It'll be a cold day in hell before I ever let a man near me again.

it's closeness that does you in. Never get too close to people, son.

In short, I always vowed, one way or another, not to change. Not me. I needed the fierceness of vowing because I could scarcely help but notice..that it was mighty unlikely.

I'm here to learn. And what you have taught me is to avoid love as long as possible.

The partition between love and anger is thin. I suppose it's a need to protect the self from further wounding that makes people scream at the one they love.

must say, if ever I do come across a man who seems to feel for me at all, I immediately assume he's actually quite shallow-hearted, so I have no need to expose myself to potential embarrassment.

He probably ate girls like her for breakfast. They all did. They all had. She had no intention of being eaten for breakfast, ever again. Her naughty brain took that thought, twirled it around and had a party with it.

If that's how you'd rather remember it. But I did not mean that as a reproach. I do not, in truth, think less of you for having the common sense to abandon a ship once waves began to break over the bow. Nor, after sixteen years shut away from the sun, am I likely to find tears to spare for Henry Plantagenet.

Each species of intelligent life in the galaxy learned to limit its perceptions of the world it inhabited in order to preserve itself from insanity, then petrified those few chosen sensations into language. Once a child was brought up in a language system, it was impossible for her to hold a concept that couldn't be framed in that language.

Everyone wanted to call her sweetheart. But she only danced for me. That's how it was. She told me that every other step was just for me." "But that's only half of the dance," I said. "Yeah," my father said. "She was keeping the rest for herself. Nobody can give everything away. It ain't healthy.

Honestly? I don't want people around me for two reasons – they ultimately betray you or they die on you. Either way, you're screwed and you spend all your time obsessing on why you didn't see it coming. Or that you did something or didn't do something to cause it. No offense, but I don't like to be hurt and I'd rather just avoid it.(Ravyn)