Guard Is Up Quotes & Sayings

there is a man blocking our way. Sitting astride a tractor with a big scooping bucket on the front, he yells at us for being on his property. We explain the boats, and he says we can't tie up there, that this is his restaurant. We say there's no room anywhere, that the Coast Guard won't let us leave, that they'll shoot at us if we do. He tells us we better go fucking home and get our guns. He tells us we're at war. — Hugh Howey

... I've always been unique."
"Yes, well, it is no wonder you and Kell attract. Both unique. Both ... a bit ... " Suddenly, conveniently, the language seemed to fail her.
"Mean?" offered Lila.
Calla smiled. "No, no, not mean. Guard up. But tonight," she said, fastening a silver brim-veil into Lila's hair, "you bring his guard down."
Lila smiled, despite herself. "That's the idea. — Victoria Schwab

All of us, have our antenna up for people who might harm us in one way or another, not just people who might hurt us physically, but also for people who might treat us unfairly, take advantage of us, cheat us or fail to do their share. And we react very strongly to be misleading by other people, is part of human nature, to guard against being hurt and exploited. — Mark Leary

How would you open my chest if you had a mind to?"
Bast's expression grew slightly apprehensive. "Your thrice-locked chest, Reshi?"
Kvothe looked at his student, the laughter bubbled up out of him. "My what?" he asked incredulously.
Bast blushed and looked down. "That's just how I think of it," he mumbled.
"As names go ... " Kvothe hesitated, a smile playing around his mouth. "Well it's a little storybook, don't you think?"
"You're the one who made the thing, Reshi," Bast said sullenly. "Three locks and fancy wood and all that. It's not my fault if it sounds storybook."
Kvothe leaned forward and rested an apologetic hand on Bast's knee. "It's a fine name, Bast. Just caught me off my guard is all." He leaned back again. "So. How would you attempt to plunder the thrice-locked chest of Kvothe the Bloodless? — Patrick Rothfuss

Kerry is saying that Bush never showed up for his national guard duty ... and now Bush is on the attack. He's accusing John Kerry of ducking time in the national guard by hiding out in the jungles of Vietnam. — Jay Leno

To watch the progress of such endeavors is the office of a free press. To give us early alarm and put us on our guard against encroachments of power. This then is a right of utmost importance, one for which, instead of yielding it up, we ought rather to spill our blood. — Alexander Hamilton

That's part of Jesus' point, that we all have sin in us. But he was also saying that sin begins and ends with the heart. Actually, that idea runs throughout the entire Bible. As a man 'thinks in his heart, so is he.' 'Out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.' In other words, what is in us is going to come out of us. And 'above all else, guard your heart.' Do you hear that, Zach? Out of everything we do, protecting our hearts is the most important thing.
We've got to guard them especially from anything that could come in and set up a lie about our God. Anything. I mean, even doing my work - and I'm a pastor - could convince me that God needs me in some way. That would be the perfect way for the enemy to set me up to wear myself out and shut myself down. And it would all start with a lie. The devil will try to convince us of anything - he's the father of lies, remember. And that is why we have to guard our hearts so carefully. — Denise Hildreth Jones

We are to count on this fact that we are dead to sin's rule, that we can stand up to it and say no. Therefore we are to guard our bodies so that sin does not reign in us.
So we see that God has made provision for our holiness. Through Christ He has delivered us from sin's reign so that we can now resist sin. But the responsibility for resisting is ours. — Jerry Bridges

You could make an analogy to a security guard who, three weeks prior, was mowing lawns for a living. The second he puts a uniform on and that badge, he's a man. I imagine the majority of us have felt the wrath of the over-zealous security guard guy. Is there something lying dormant in the man, that's waiting to be pumped up with that kind of power? I don't know. Does it reveal him? I don't know. Does it change him? I don't know. — Johnny Depp

MAY 13 Guard Against Pessimism For the Kingdom of God is not a matter of what we eat or drink, but of living a life of goodness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. ROMANS 14:17 NLT I HEARD A STORY ABOUT TWO FARMERS. When the rain fell, one farmer said, "Thank You, Lord, for watering our crops." But the other farmer said, "Yeah, but if the rain keeps up, it's going to rot the roots." When the sun came out, the positive farmer said, "Thank You, Lord, that our crops are getting the vitamins and minerals they need. We'll have a wonderful harvest this year." But the negative farmer said, "Yeah, but if it keeps up, it's going to scorch those plants. We're never going to make a living." Don't you know people who are always focused on the negative? Be sure to guard against their negative attitudes infecting your thinking! Stay focused on the positive things in life. — Joel Osteen

The guy is a total idiot. Forget him," Luke said, and wiped the lone tear that was running down her cheek. "I promise I won't ever do that to you."
"Please don't make promises if you can't keep them," she said, feeling her guard going up a little.
"I always keep my promises. — Kat Green

There is much to do, pulling people away, right up until the Coast Guard comes and orders us to stop. Scott is dead. My cell phone is dead. My mother must think me dead. So it goes. I pick up the papers that have drifted down on the boat and have become plastered there, these relics from great buildings that no longer stand. The first one I grab is an insurance document. Listen: What I tell you here is true. The first line on the first page I pick up, it begins: In the event of damage to the building ... So it goes. — Hugh Howey

Here's a little bit of good news. The Coast Guard says that BP is now catching up to 630,000 gallons of oil a day. The bad news is that they're capturing it with ducks. — Jimmy Fallon

It is not easy to convey a sense of wonder, let alone resurrection wonder, to another. It's the very nature of wonder to catch us off guard, to circumvent expectations and assumptions. Wonder can't be packaged, and it can't be worked up. It requires some sense of being there and some sense of engagement. — Eugene H. Peterson

You catch any white man off guard in here right now, you catch him off guard and ask him what he is, he doesn't say he's an American. He either tells you he's Irish, or he's Italian, or he's German, if you catch him off guard and he doesn't know what you're up to. And even though he was born here, he'll tell you he's Italian. Well, if he's Italian, you and I are African even though we were born here. — Malcolm X

I think everyone's caught up in these narrow-minded worlds and they think their world exists in the center of the universe. Relationships only happen when it's convenient. You have to walk on eggshells for people because that's about how strong they are these days. And you can't confront people, because if you do, that brittle shell of confidence will crack. So we all become passive cowards that carry a fake smile wherever we go because God forbid you let your guard down long enough for people to see your life isn't perfect. That you have a few flaws. Because who wants to see that? My theory is everybody sucks. So, my conclusion is I don't need anybody. — Katie Kacvinsky

Bad luck alone does not embitter us that badly . . . nor does the feeling that our affairs might have been better managed move us out of range of ordinary disappointment; it is when we recognize that the loss has been caused in great part by others; that it needn't have happened; that there is an enemy out there who has stolen our loaf, soured our wine, infected our book of splendid verse with filthy rhymes; then we are filled with resentment and would hang the villains from that bough we would have lounged in liquorous love beneath had the tree not been cut down by greedy and dim-witted loggers in the pay of the lumber interests. Watch out, then, watch out for us, be on your guard, look sharp, both ways, when we learn--we, in any numbers--when we find who is forcing us--wife, children, Commies, fat cats, Jews--to give up life in order to survive. It is this condition in men that makes them ideal candidates for the Party of the disappointed People. — William H Gass

National Guard soldiers, as you know, give up their jobs, their time with their family, make sacrifices to make sure this country is safe. — Todd Tiahrt

We're not in Khlong Prem Prison yet. So let's assume we're winning.
But inwardly, Anderson wonders. There are too many variables in play, and it makes him nervous. He remembers a time in Missouri when the Grahamites rioted. There had been tension, some small speeches, and then it had simply erupted in field burning. No one had seen the violence coming. Not a single intelligence officer had anticipated the cauldron boiling beneath the surface.
Anderson had ended up perched atop a grain silo, choking on the smoke of HiGro fields going up in sheets of flame, firing steadily at rioters on the ground with a spring rifle he'd salvaged from a slow-moving security guard, and all the while he had wondered how everyone had missed the signs. They lost the facility because of that blindness. And now it is the same. A sudden eruption, and the surprise of realizing that the world he understands is not the one he actually inhabits. — Paolo Bacigalupi

Something Vimes had learned as a young guard drifted up from memory. If you have to look along the shaft of an arrow from the wrong end, if a man has you entirely at his mercy, then hope like hell that man is an evil man. Because the evil like power, power over people, and they want to see you in fear. They want you to know you're going to die. So they'll talk. They'll gloat.
They'll watch you squirm. They'll put off the moment of murder like another man will put off a good cigar.
So hope like hell your captor is an evil man. A good man will kill you with hardly a word. — Terry Pratchett

I am a team player - and that is what you need to be an effective point guard. You gotta see the court, you gotta set up the play, and you gotta let others execute for the most part. I don't throw elbows for the sake of throwing elbows, but if somebody throws one at me and it's necessary to respond in kind, I suppose I can if I have to. — Susan Rice

Pay close attention. Listen carefully. Let's look at what happens when fear is in charge.

With fear in charge, you can never fully relax, let your guard down, be your true self. You can't open up because you are afraid of how people will respond if they were to meet the real you. When fear is in charge, you simply cannot take that chance. Fear will not allow honesty, fear despises spontaneity, and fear refuses to believe in you. Fear may mean well, but it ruins everything by overprotecting you, insisting that you stay hidden and keep a low profile, that your time is coming....sometime later.

Fear is bold, but insists that you be timid. Take a chance and there will be hell to pay: fear will call on its dear friend, shame, to meet you on the other side of your risk taking, to tell you what you should not have done. Fear will trip you, tackle you, smother you, do whatever it takes to cause you to hesitate, to stop you. In this way fear is fearless. — Thom Rutledge

The German citizen is a soldier, and the policeman is his officer. The policeman directs him where in the street to walk, and how fast to walk. At the end of each bridge stands a policeman to tell the German how to cross it. Were there no policeman there, he would probably sit down and wait till the river had passed by. At the railway station the policeman locks him up in the waiting-room, where he can do no harm to himself. When the proper time arrives, he fetches him out and hands him over to the guard of the train, who is only a policeman in another uniform. The guard tells him where to sit in the train, and when to get out, and sees that he does get out. In Germany you take no responsibility upon yourself whatever. Everything is done for you, and done well. — Jerome K. Jerome

The moment you frame your own awareness within a second level of self -consciousness is the moment your mind is most up for grabs ... You're safe because you have an ironic distance from the coercive techniques I'm employing. All of them that is, except this one. Are you on your guard yet? Does it feel good? Of course not. — Douglas Rushkoff

THE DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILY RULES 1. Control or Chaos. One must be in control of all interactions, feelings and personal behavior at all times - control is the major defense strategy for shame. In the less-than-human shameless marriage, both parents may be cocaine addicts or addicted in other ways. They may be dishonest criminals. The children experience chaos, as well as secrecy rules that guard their family's behavior. 2. Perfectionism or Anomie. Always be right in everything you do. The perfectionist rule always involves an imposed measurement. The fear and avoidance of the negative is the organizing principle of life. The members live according to an externalized image. No one ever measures up. In the less-than-human family, there are no rules - the children have no structure to guide them. — John Bradshaw

The essential factor of military success is speed, that is taking advantage of others' unpreparedness or lack of foresight, their failure to catch up, going by routes they do not expect, attacking where they are not on guard. This you cannot accomplish with hesitation. — Sun Tzu

What they are planning for us; sex, religion, money in the New World Order. Which is more corrupt? The liberal media or the multi-national corporations? Why truly big money wants your children to try drugs, even while they campaign to discourage these evils. How the brilliant scientists have come up with the proven methods to destroy your family. All you have to do is let your guard down. — Hans Von Seeckt

Your friend's poetry is terrible," he said.
Clary blinked, caught momentarily off guard. "What?"
"I said his poetry was terrible. It sounds like he ate a dictionary and started vomiting up words at random. — Cassandra Clare

This vulgar grace is indiscriminate compassion. It works without asking anything of us. It's not cheap. It's free, and as such will always be a banana peel for the Orthodox foot and a fairy tale for the grown-up sensibility. Grace is sufficient even though we huff and puff with all our might to try to find something or someone it cannot cover. Grace is enough. He is enough. Jesus is enough.
John, the disciple Jesus loved, ended his first letter with this line: "Children, be on your guard against false gods." In other words, steer clear of any God you can comprehend. Abba will's love cannot be comprehended. I'll say it again: Abba's love cannot be comprehended. — Brennan Manning

I never thought I'd be a role model this early. It caught me off-guard, but it says a lot about how I was brought up, what my values have been, and how my parents raised me. It's very flattering that being myself is enough to be a role model. — Danica Patrick

Pierre had for the first time experienced that strange and fascinating feeling in the Slobodsky palace, when he suddenly felt that wealth and power and life, all that men build up and guard with such effort ,is only worth anything through the joy with which it can all be cast away. — Leo Tolstoy

When you are getting on in years it is nice to sit by the fire and drink a cup of tea and listen to the school bell sounding dinner, call-over, prep., and lights out. Chips always wound up the clock after that last bell; then he put the wire guard in front of the fire, turned out the gas, and carried a detective novel to bed. Rarely did he read more than a page of it before sleep came swiftly and peacefully, more like a mystic intensifying of perception than any changeful entrance into another world. For his days and nights were equally full of dreaming. — James Hilton

Abandonment is at the core of addictions. Abandonment causes deep shame. Abandonment by betrayal is worse than mindless neglect. Betrayal is purposeful and self-serving. If severe enough, it is traumatic. What moves betrayal into the realm of trauma is fear and terror. If the wound is deep enough, and the terror big enough, your bodily systems shift to an alarm state. You never feel safe. You're always on full-alert, just waiting for the hurt to begin again. In that state of readiness, you're unaware that part of you has died. You are grieving. Like everyone who has loss, you have shock and disbelief, fear, loneliness and sadness. Yet you are unaware of these feelings because your guard is up. In your readiness, you abandon yourself. Yes, another abandonment. — Patrick J. Carnes

I picked up Pandora's jar. The spirit of Hope fluttered inside, trying to warm the cold container.
"Hestia," I said, "I give this to you as an offering."
The goddess tilted her head. "I am the least of the gods. Why would
you trust me with this?"
"You're the last Olympian," I said. "And the most important."
"And why is that, Percy Jackson?"
"Because Hope survives best at the hearth," I said. "Guard it for me,
and I won't be tempted to give up again. — Rick Riordan

You move on. You move back. On because you're always getting older, back because there's always a set of habits and routines to catch you and suck you back in when your guard is down. — Mike Carey

If you don't keep and guard and mature your force, and above all, have time and quiet to perfect your work, you will be writing things not much better than you did five years ago ... you must write to the human heart, the great consciousness that all humanity goes to make up. Otherwise what might be strength in a writer is only crudeness, and what might be insight is only observation; sentimemnt falls to sentimentality - you can write about life, but never write life itself. — Sarah Orne Jewett

That Bhagavad Gita instruction to be unattached to the fruits of your actions is the key. If you are a parent raising a child, don't get attached to the act of raising the child. That doesn't mean you're not a loving, active parent. Your job is to love and nurture, feed and clothe, take care and guard the safety of the child, and guide him or her with your moral compass. But how the child turns out is how the child turns out. Ultimately he or she is not your child; who they turn out to be is up to God and their own karma. Your — Ram Dass

Is not literature meant to speak of our being a thousand different kinds of things, at times creating even this diversity? If literature gives up this purpose, this duty, it renounces all claim to legitimacy. I am Hungarian. I am Slovene. I am Serbian. You do not need literature for sentences like that. A bureaucrat will do, and a rubber stamp. A border guard. An Army. — Peter Esterhazy

Marius saw in Bonaparte the dazzling spectre which will always rise upon the frontier, and which will guard the future. Despot but dictator; a despot resulting from a republic and summing up a revolution. Napoleon became for him the man-people as Jesus Christ is the man-God. — Victor Hugo

My name should not be made prominent. It is my ideas that I want to see realized. The disciples of all the prophets have always inextricably mixed up the ideas of the Master with person, and at last killed the ideas for the person. The disciples of Sri Ramakrishna must guard against doing the same thing. Work for the idea, not the person. — Swami Vivekananda

I'm always on guard around most people. They do not realize how exhausting that is to keep up. That is why afterwards I really need my space. — Tina J. Richardson

To be a righteous woman during the winding up scenes on this earth, before the second coming of our Savior, is an especially noble calling ... She has been placed here to help to enrich, to protect, and to guard the home
which is society's basic and most noble institution. — Spencer W. Kimball

Shall I tell her? Shall I be a kind and merciful narrator and take our girl aside? Shall I touch her new, red heart and make her understand that she is no longer one of the tribe of heartless children, nor even the owner of the wild and infant heart of thirteen-year-old girls and boys? Oh, September! Hearts, once you have them locked up in your chest, are a fantastic heap of tender and terrible wonders - but they must be trained. Beatrice could have told her all about it. A heart can learn ever so many tricks, and what sort of beast it becomes depends greatly upon whether it has been taught to sit up or to lie down, to speak or to beg, to roll over or to sound alarm, to guard or to attack, to find or to stay. But the trick most folk are so awfully fond of learning, the absolute second they've got hold of a heart, is to pretend they don't have one at all. It is the very first danger of the hearted. Shall I give fair warning, as neither you nor I was given? — Catherynne M Valente

A King Inside Who Listens

There are many people with their eyes open
whose hearts are shut. What do they see?
Matter.

But someone whose love is alert,
even if the eyes go to sleep,
he or she will be waking up thousands of others.

If you are not one of those light-filled lovers,
restrain your desire-body's intensity.
Put limits on how much you eat
and how long you lie down.

But if you are awake here in the chest,
sleep long and soundly.

Your spirit will be out roaming and working,
even on the seventh level.

Muhammad says, I close my eyes and rest in sleep,
but my love never needs rest.

The guard at the gate drowses.
The king stays awake.

You have a king inside who listens
for what delights the soul.

That king's wakefulness
cannot be described in a poem. — Jalaluddin Rumi

Virtue is not a mushroom, that springeth up of itself in one night when we are asleep, or regard it not; but a delicate plant, that groweth slowly and tenderly, needing much pains to cultivate it, much care to guard it, much time to mature it, in our untoward soil, in this world's unkindly weather. — Isaac Barrow

The real struggle is in your own mind. You must know you are going to win before you start the fight. You have to see it, smell it, and believe it utterly. It is a form of confidence, but you must guard against overconfidence. You have to be flexible - able to adapt in an instant and never allow yourself to give up. Without this, nothing else is possible. — Michael J. Sullivan

Most people guard against going into the fire and so end up in it. Those who love the water of pleasure and make it their devotion are cheated with this reversal. The trickery goes further. The voice of the fire tells the truth, sayin I am not fire. I am fountainhead. Come into me and don't mind the sparks. If you are a friend of the presence, fire is your water. — Rumi

About every six to eight months, I run into a man who astounds me sexually, but between escapades, I'm celibate, which I don't think is any big deal. After two unsuccessful marriages, I find myself keeping my guard up, along with my underpants. — Sue Grafton

What we should do, I suggest, is to give up the idea of ultimate sources of knowledge, and admit that all knowledge is human; that it is mixed with our errors, our prejudices, our dreams, and our hopes; that all we can do is to grope for truth even though it be beyond our reach. We may admit that our groping is often inspired, but we must be on our guard against the belief, however deeply felt, that our inspiration carries any authority, divine or otherwise. If we thus admit that there is no authority beyond the reach of criticism to be found within the whole province of our knowledge, however far it may have penetrated into the unknown, then we can retain, without danger, the idea that truth is beyond human authority. And we must retain it. For without this idea there can be no objective standards of inquiry; no criticism of our conjectures; no groping for the unknown; no quest for knowledge. — Karl Popper

By the time you get to year six, there's never a break ... and you get tired. There's always a crisis. It wears you down. This has been a White House that hasn't really had much change at all. There is a fatigue factor that builds up. You sometimes don't see the crisis approaching. You're not as on guard as you once were. — Ed Rollins

But when something like Angelina's murder happens," the doctor told him (Decker), "it's human nature to assume a bunker mentality. Let's shore up our defenses and put up our guard so that when something like this happens again -- when, not if -- we won't be blindsided. Problem is, we become so risk averse, we cut ourselves off from the potentially dangerous things that could bring great happiness and joy. We stop taking chances, and without those sometimes risky chances, there's no way we can win big. Our best case scenario become losing not /too/ badly. /At least no one died/ becomes our mantra. Yes, we're trapped here in this prison that we've made, where we can't possibly be happy, but at least we're not devastated by our loss and our grief. — Suzanne Brockmann

Shafiul's English, it must be said, is limited (although as one wag pointed out, not as limited as his interrogators' Bengali). So when he was asked whether he had deliberately tried to disrupt Trott's elongated guard-taking procedure by aborting his own run-up, he insisted there had been no plan. Pushed moments later on whether [Jamie] Siddons had spoken to the team about the need to disrupt Trott's elongated guard-taking process, Shafiul nodded jubilantly. We were left none the wiser. — Lawrence Booth

Centralized sounds good ... but the reality is that the National Guard and Army don't have the kind of ties with local organizations that ultimately deliver lots of service, your nonprofits, churches, humanitarian organizations. Those types of linkages get built up over time, in local communities. — Peter May

Okay, okay. Just tell me this." His tone alone was enough to put me on guard. I knew he was up to no good. "Are your cheeks the only place blood is flowing, or is it also moving south? — Cardeno C.

It is amazing, is it not, Darcy, how a violent storm can rise up out of calm, idle waters so unexpectedly? I am always surprised, but never caught off guard. We can be travelling through what we think are tranquil waters, believing everything is going exactly as planned, heading in the exact direction we want, when in the blink of an eye, everything around us is jostled, tossed around, and completely shaken up. When it has passed, we are not at all where we thought we would be when we first set out. — Kara Louise

This is my hall. And I do not
"
She was cut off as a sharp spear of fire shot out of Arosh's fingers. Livia pulled a guard in front of her, who immediately turned to ash.
"Shut up, woman. I am speaking. — Elizabeth Hunter

But then I grew up, experienced some life, and I understood that when you merely switch from being a prisoner to being a guard, no one is freed, not even yourself. — Lisa Crystal Carver

Do you have a boyfriend?"
That was a little too personal, wasn't it?
"I.." I was caught off guard.
"Is that a yes, or a no?" He raised an eyebrow in curiosity as he stared deeply into my eyes.
If I looked deep enough, I thought, maybe I could find what I was looking for.
"No," I whispered.
He put a hand to his ear. "What was that? I didn't quite hear you?" I had the feeling he had heard it loud and clear, but was messing with me.
"No," I said with one quick look at him and then I lowered my eyes toward the table.
He smiled at my response. "Good," he replied.
Was I flirting? Was he?
I looked back up to try to understand his answer. "And do you, Mr Kaden?"
"Do I what?" He was definitely playing with me now. "Do I have a boyfriend? No. I don't."
I laughed and couldn't help but smile in the process. — Jennifer Whitfield

Fiction seems to be more effective at changing beliefs than nonfiction, which is designed to persuade through argument and evidence. Studies show that when we read nonfiction, we read with our shields up. We are critical and skeptical. But when we are absorbed in a story, we drop our intellectual guard. We are moved emotionally, and this seems to make us rubbery and easy to shape. — Jonathan Gottschall

If your guard is up, let it down. If you've constructed a defensive wall to protect yourself and keep all the bad guys out, don't forget who that wall also prevents from getting in - the good guys. — Brendon Burchard

When words don't add up in love, it is because of six possible reasons:
1. They are afraid to tell you the truth because you will leave them.
2. They enjoy being a liar or playing people because of ego reasons and/or control.
3. They don't know the truth themselves.
4. They are undecided.
5. They refuse to let their guard down and be vulnerable because you or someone else have hurt them tremendously.
6. You are not being told all the information because of a break down in communication. — Shannon L. Alder

I respect the media. But periodically things come up. Like the guy in Toronto [CP24 Interview]. This is what I run into, also. Everybody that helps you is not necessarily your friend. And everybody that fights you is not necessarily your enemy. So you always have to be on guard. — Mike Tyson

Remember what I told you.
Pick up the food. Get him drunk. Wait until his guard is lowered, complain about it being too hot, and begin stripping. — Em Wolf

Too many of us move through our lives with our true selves buried below layers of repressed emotion. With so much energy channeled toward sustaining the repression, there is little left over for the deeper questions. The consequences of our evasion are profound. Our stockpiles toxify into a cache of weapons that turn inward against the self: quick fix, long suffering. As Rumi said, "Most people guard against the fire, and so end up in it." This is the power of then. If we don't deal with our stuff, it deals with us. — Jeff Brown

Yet this perhaps is what love does, or the memory of it; it sucks the life from the living, glorying body and leaves it, when love has gone, a shred, a simulacrum - dross, to be swept up from the factory floor, pitiful and dusty, useless ... Do all men and women feel love before they die? This force, this source of light, that lies before the sun; glances off mountains and lakes, blinding and dazzling, on a Sunday afternoon; so brilliant you have to guard your soul, fold your arms to shield your heart from the very memory of it. — Fay Weldon

Many people are too quick to trust someone in the name of forgiveness and not make sure that the other is producing "fruit in keeping with repentance" (Luke 3:8). To continue to open yourself up emotionally to an abusive or addicted person without seeing true change is foolish. Forgive, but guard your heart until you see sustained — Henry Cloud

Terrell is weeping soundlessly, and despite the guard's objection, he raises his hand up to the glass. Geraldine mimics him, lining her fingers up with his. It's lonely to think that one little sheet of glass could create such a thick distance between them, but all the same, regardless of what he's done, he's still one of the closest friends she has. — Rebecca McNutt

When you accept somebody's offer for help, whether it's in the form of food, crash space, money, or love, you have to trust the help offered. You can't accept things halfway and walk through the door with your guard up. When you openly, radically trust people, they not only take care of you, they become your allies, your family. Sometimes people will prove themselves untrustworthy. When that happens, the correct response is not: Fuck! I knew I couldn't trust anybody! The correct response is: Some people just suck. Moving right along. — Amanda Palmer

It is an old and wise caution, that when our neighbor's house is on fire, we ought to take care of our own. For tho', blessed be God, I live in a government where liberty is well understood, and freely enjoy'd; yet experience has shown us all that bad precedent in one government is soon set up for an authority in another; and therefore I cannot but think it mine, and every honest man's duty that we ought at the same time to be upon our guard against power, wherever we apprehend that it may affect ourselves or our fellow subjects.
I should think it my duty, if required, to go to the utmost part of the land, where my service could be of any use in assisting to quench the flame of prosecutions upon informations, set on foot by the government, to deprive a people of their right to remonstrating (and complaining too) of the arbitrary attempts of men in power. — Andrew Hamilton

As a young cavalry officer out of St-Cyr, de Mun first became acquainted with the lives and problems of the poor through the charitable work of the Society of St-Vincent de Paul in his garrison town. During the Commune, as an aide to General Galliffet, who commanded the battalion that fired on the insurgent Communards, he saw a dying man brought in on a litter. The guard said he was an "insurgent," whereupon the man, raising himself up, cried with his last strength, "No, it is you who are the insurgents!" and died. In the force of that cry directed at himself, his uniform, his family, his Church, de Mun had recognized the reason for civil war and vowed himself to heal the cleavage. He blamed the Commune on "the apathy of the bourgeois class and the ferocious hatred for society of the working class." The responsible ones, he had been told by one of the St. Vincent brothers, were "you, the rich, the great, the happy ones of life who pass by the people without seeing them." To — Barbara W. Tuchman

Foresee all the attacks and all the onslaughts of Fortune long before they hit me. She falls heavily on those to whom she is unexpected; the man who is always expecting her easily withstands her. For an enemy's arrival too scatters those whom it catches off guard; but those who have prepared in advance for the coming conflict, being properly drawn up and equipped, easily withstand the first onslaught, which is the most violent. — Seneca.

(It's a weird thing, depression. Even now, writing this with a good distance of fourteen years from my lowest point, I haven't fully escaped. You get over it, but at the same time you never get over it. It comes back in flashes, when you are tired or anxious or have been eating the wrong stuff, and catches you off guard. I woke up with it a few days ago, in fact. I felt its dark wisps around my head, that ominous life-is-fear feeling. But then, after a morning with the best five- and six-year-olds in the world, it subsided. it is now an aside. Something to put brackets around. Life lesson: the way out is never through yourself.) — Matt Haig

He is my brother," I said. "I cannot desert him."
"You can go to your own death," William said. "Or you can survive this, bring up your children, and guard Anne's little girl who will be shamed and bastardized and motherless by the end of this week. You can wait out this reign and see what comes next. See what the future holds for the Princess Elizabeth, defend our son Henry against those who will want to set him up as the king's heir or even worse-flaunt him as a pretender. You owe it to your children to protect them. — Philippa Gregory

Honestly, I'm one of the ones who is least like my character, just because I like to make people laugh and have a good time-and be kind of fun and silly. Jake is very composed, has his guard up, and is a bit damaged. [But] Cory Monteith is pretty much like Finn. I think they both kind of have that goofy sense of humor. Cory is so hilarious in his everyday life, just like Finn is. — Jacob Artist

I was playing a defensive guard in 'My All American' who is a really fast runner, so a lot of my training was running. I wasn't too worried about bulking up because he was supposed to be on the small side. — Finn Wittrock

Our main difference from chimps and gorillas is that over the last 3 million years or so, we have been shaped less and less by nature, and more and more by culture. We have become experimental creatures of our own making. This experiment has never been tried before. And we, its unwitting authors, have never controlled it. The experiment is now moving very quickly and on a colossal scale. Since the early 1900s, the world's population has multiplied by four and its economy - a rough measure of the human load on nature - by more than forty. We have reached a stage where we must bring the experiment under rational control, and guard against present and potential dangers. It's entirely up to us. If we fail - if we blow up or degrade the biosphere so it can no longer sustain us - nature will merely shrug and conclude that letting apes run the laboratory was fun for a while but in the end a bad idea. — Ronald Wright

As soon as a manhas his guard up. he will not fall in love or get attached the only way he'll get attached is if you lower his guard first. — Sherry Argov

Be ruthless about protecting writing days, i.e., do not cave in to endless requests to have "essential" and "long overdue" meetings on those days. The funny thing is that, although writing has been my actual job for several years now, I still seem to have to fight for time in which to do it. Some people do not seem to grasp that I still have to sit down in peace and write the books, apparently believing that they pop up like mushrooms without my connivance. I must therefore guard the time allotted to writing as a Hungarian Horntail guards its firstborn egg. — J.K. Rowling

And you are going to get her far away from here. Keep her hidden." She planted her hands on her hips. "And here we were just keeping her holed up in a tiny little house in a completely random mining sector. Why didn't it ever occur to us to try and keep her hidden?" Kinney's face was unreadable for a long moment before he asked, "You understand sarcasm?" "Of course I understand sarcasm," she spat. "It's not like it's theoretical physics, is it?" The guard's jaw worked for a moment, before he shook his head and turned away. — Marissa Meyer

Rock and Roll is still asking people like me to live up to the old guard's concept of what success is but it doesn't mean anything. — Billy Corgan

We thought we'd seen it all. The real horror of war is always waiting for you at home. It's waiting, I tell you. We were so damned happy when we got back. We'd made it. We survived. But it's always waiting. Waiting. You let down your guard. And there it is. You can't ever let up. Give up. — James Anderson

I felt an angry flush colour my face. "I was in the middle of training. I don't need your help."
"I'm the best swordsman in the Royal Guard," he said without arrogance, and I knew it was true. "Don't you want to learn from the best?"
"I was learning from second best, which is quite alright with me." I thrust my chin up in the air haughtily, running my eyes down the length of his body with a look of distaste. "Why don't you return to your mistress, Captain? I've heard she enjoys a bit of swordplay."
Wolfe laughed. — Samantha Young

Living as a couple never means that each gets half. You must take turns at giving more than getting. It's not the same as a bow to the other whether to dine out rather than in, or which one gets massaged that evening with oil of calendula; there are seasons in the life of a couple that function, I think, a little like a night watch. One stands guard, often for a long time, providing the serenity in which the other can work at something. Usually that something is sinewy and full of spines. One goes inside the dark place while the other one stays outside, holding up the moon. — Marlena De Blasi

As you swallow the cow's tongue, think for a moment about how strange and holy that is, to devour the tongue of another. To steal from it all its power to speak, to low at the moon, to call to its calf. To be worthy of such food you must guard your own words carefully, speaking only the wise and clever ones, lest your tongue end up likewise, on the plate of a rich man. — Catherynne M Valente

Give up pride for good during the holidays. This is where I've been especially stubborn. As I walk more and more in this path of Christianity, I see that letting my guard down and admitting that I don't want to be alone is far better than dealing with me, myself and I, who always seem to want to keep up appearances. — Monica Johnson

Your greatest contribution to God's Kingdom work - and to defeating the Enemy's efforts against this Kingdom - is to keep up your daily devotions; live a clean, honest, humble, Spirit-filled life; trust God to guard and protect you morally, physically, and spiritually; and openly witness for Jesus Christ. Don't be a pawn of the devil, but a servant of Christ. — Billy Graham

When what we see catches us off guard, and when we write it as realistically and openly as possible, it offers hope. You look around and say, Wow, there's that same mockingbird; there's that woman in the red hat again. The woman in the red hat is about hope because she's in it up to her neck, too, yet every day she puts on that crazy red hat and walks to town. — Anne Lamott

Fifty men will accompany you, fighting under your command."
"I can't take them,' said Beckram. "Haverness only has leave for a hundred men. I believe I'm the eighty-fifth."
"You'll take them," said Duraugh, standing up. "The Blue Guard's mottos is 'We fight as one." You will only be one. — Patricia Briggs

Cameron threw her hands up in frustration. "What is this so-called 'look'?" Whatever it was, she was going to have to start taking extreme measures to guard against it.
Amy grinned. "You know the Tom and Jerry cartoon where Tom hasn't eaten for days and he imagines Jerry looking like a ham? Kind of like that. — Julie James

...philosophy permits man to interrogate himself about what he says and about what one says to oneself in thinking. No longer to let oneself be swayed or intoxicated by the rhythm of words and the generality that they designate, but to open oneself to the uniqueness of the unique in the real, that is to say, to the uniqueness of the other. That is to say, in the final analysis, to love. To speak truly, not as one sings; to awaken; to sober up; to undo one's refrain. Already the philosopher Alain taught us to be on guard against everything that in our purportedly lucid civilization comes to us from the "merchants of sleep." Philosophy as insomnia, as a new awakening at the heart of the self-evidence which already marks the awakening, but which is still or always a dream. — Emmanue Levinas

He must be always on his guard and devote every minute and module of life to the decoding of the undulation of things. The very air he exhales is indexed and filed away. If only the interest he provokes were limited to his immediate surroundings, but, alas, it is not! With distance, the torrents of wild scandal increase in volume and volubility. The silhouettes of his blood corpuscles, magnified a million times, flit over vast plains; and still farther away, great mountains of unbearable solidity and height sum up, in terms of granite and groaning firs, the ultimate truth of his being. — Vladimir Nabokov

Man was made to lead with his chin; he is worth knowing only with his guard down, his head up and his heart rampant on his sleeve. — Robert Farrar Capon