Preserve Life Quotes & Sayings

They have had their moment of freedom. Webley has only been a guest star. Now it's back to the cages and the rationalized forms of death - death in the service of the one species cursed with the knowledge that it will die ... . "I would set you free, if I knew how. But it isn't free out here. All the animals, the plants, the minerals, even other kinds of men, are being broken and reassembled every day, to preserve an elite few, who are the loudest to theorize on freedom, but the least free of all. I can't even give you hope that it will be different someday - that They'll come out, and forget death, and lose Their technology's elaborate terror, and stop using every form of life without mercy to keep what haunts men down to a tolerable level - and be like you instead, simply here, simply alive ... .." The guest star retires down the corridors. — Thomas Pynchon

The reason why life may be judged to be trivial although at certain moments it seems to us so beautiful is that we form our judgment, ordinarily, not on the evidence of life itself but of those quite different images which preserve nothing of life-and therefore we judge it disparagingly. — Marcel Proust

The experiences of camp life show that man does have a choice of action. There were enough examples, often of a heroic nature, which proved that apathy could be overcome, irritability suppressed. Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress. — Viktor E. Frankl

7 i Though I walk in the midst of trouble, you j preserve my life; you k stretch out your hand against the wrath of my enemies, and your l right hand delivers me. 8 The LORD will m fulfill his purpose for me; — Anonymous

Breaking this truth into fragments for our better understanding, it would seem that there is within each of us an enemy which we tolerate at our peril. Jesus called it "life" and "self," or as we would say, the self-life. Its chief characteristic is its possessiveness: the words "gain" and "profit" suggest this. To allow this enemy to live is in the end to lose everything. To repudiate it and give up all for Christ's sake is to lose nothing at last, but to preserve everything unto life eternal. And possibly also a hint is given here as to the only effective way to destroy this foe: it is by the Cross. "Let him take up his cross and follow me. — A.W. Tozer

There are two things in life that a sage must preserve at every sacrifice, the coats of his stomach and the enamel of his teeth. Some evils admit of consolations, but there are no comforters for dyspepsia and the toothache. — Henry Bulwer, 1st Baron Dalling And Bulwer

Honor all living things, for we are of the stag, and the salmon, and the bee; so destroy not life, save it be to preserve your own. — Scott Cunningham

I came from Paris in the Spring of 1884, and was brought in intimate contact with him [Thomas Edison]. We experimented day and night, holidays not excepted. His existence was made up of alternate periods of work and sleep in the laboratory. He had no hobby, cared for no sport or amusement of any kind and lived in utter disregard of the most elementary rules of hygiene. There can be no doubt that, if he had not married later a woman of exceptional intelligence, who made it the one object of her life to preserve him, he would have died many years ago from consequences of sheer neglect. So great and uncontrollable was his passion for work. — Nikola Tesla

9 Rescue me from my enemies, LORD; I run to you to hide me. 10 Teach me to do your will, for you are my God. May your gracious Spirit lead me forward on a firm footing. 11 For the glory of your name, O LORD, preserve my life. Because of your faithfulness, bring me out of this distress. 12 In your unfailing love, silence all my enemies and destroy all my foes, — Anonymous

Life is a system of relations rather than a positive and independent existence; and he who would be happy himself and make others happy must carefully preserve these relations. He cannot stand apart in surly and haughty egoism; let him learn that he is as much dependent on others as others are on him. — George Augustus Henry Sala

The woe of mortality makes humans God-like. It is because we know that we must die that we are so busy making life. It is because we are aware of mortality that we preserve the past and create the future. Mortality is ours without asking
but immortality is something we must build ourselves. Immortality is not a mere absence of death; it is defiance and denial of death. It is 'meaningful' only because there is death, that implacable reality which is to be defied. — Zygmunt Bauman

In all the events of life, we ought still to preserve our scepticism. If we believe that fire warms, or water refreshes, it is only because it costs us too much pains to think otherwise. — David Hume

I've never wanted to spare myself because I feel there are people who are no longer around and died for this struggle. What right do I have to hold back, to rest, to preserve my health, to have time with my family, when there are other people who are no longer alive - when they sacrificed what is precious: namely life itself. — Chris Hani

The world will not be free of me who will establish religion secretly and openly in order that the proofs of God are not obliterated. They will be few in number but they will be great in honour. They will be lost openly, but their pictures will reign in hearts. God will preserve His religion through them. They will leave the religion for their successors and they will plant it in the hearts of the young. The real nature of knowledge will be disclosed with their help. They will get good news from the life of sure faith. They will make easy what the rich think difficult and they will make clear what the heedless think obscure. They will keep company with the world witht their bodies, but their souls will be kept hanging in lofty places. They are servants of God among His people, His trustees and deputies on the earth. Then he wept and said: How eager I am to meet them. — Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali

The National Government will regard it as its first and foremost duty to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and cooperation. It will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built. It regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national life. — Adolf Hitler

By this point Viviane Lavender had loved Jack Griffith for twelve years, which was far more than half of her life. If she thought of her love as a commodity and were to, say, eat it, it would fill 4,745 cherry pies. If she were to preserve it, she would need 23,725 glass jars and labels and a basement spanning the length of Pinnacle Lane.
If she were to drink it, she'd drown. — Leslye Walton

It is a harder and a nobler task to preserve detachment in a crowd than in a cell; the little daily sacrifices of family life are often a greater trial than self-imposed mortifications. — William Ralph Inge

And it's still unclear to me why a person has abilities that they do not want to have, why a person feels things that person doesn't want to feel and why that person doesn't feel things that person does want to feel, and why a person falls out of love when being in love was such a good thing to be in, and why a person makes loud and clumsy attempts at midnight to kill the life one could reasonably expect that person to want to preserve. — Catherine Lacey

Emily mostly perceived her habit to write down notes as being one of the ways she could use to preserve moments of life. — Sahara Sanders

For as long as I can remember, I have loved snow and ice. As a result, I have spent most of my life exploring the Arctic region. These journeys have brought such joy and beauty to my life that I have dedicated myself to helping preserve these wonderful frozen places. More than ever before, I am driven to share my passion for the Arctic, a region whose health and stability have far-reaching consequences for us all. — Lonnie Dupre

Should a man,
to preserve his life, pay everything that gives life colour,
scent
and excitement? Can one accept a life of digestion,
respiration, muscular
and brain activity-and nothing
more? 'Become a walking blueprint? Is this not an
exorbitant price? Is it not a mockery? Should one pay? Seven years in the army and seven years in the camp,twice seven years twice that mythical or biblical term,then to be deprived of the ability to tell what is a man and what is a woman
is not a price extortionate? — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Normally, to decide whether we are alive we do not look outside of ourselves to find out if we are nourishing and generating life. We look into ourselves to find out how strong and healthy and vital we are. But the notion of the seed that dies demands an extraordinary redirection of the sense of life. Now to know if anyone is alive, we do not look at them; look beyond them to the mode of their expenditures and the life that they nourish and preserve beyond themselves. — Arthur C. McGill

The members of the family were like pillars in a Renaissance cloister, he thought, individually contributing to the whole design. Together they formed something stronger and more beautiful than anything they could achieve on their own. Then, at the end of their lives, the least they might be able to say was that they had understood what it was to take part in something greater than themselves. They had known love. They would defend it against anything that came after it; taking risks in order to care for each other in the face of an indifferent world, working as hard as they could to nurture, preserve and protect what they had found and made. Such a love was too precious to put in jeopardy. It was life itself. — James Runcie

My special cause, the one that alerts my interest and quickens the pace of my life, is to preserve the wildflowers and native plants that define the regions of our land-to encourage and promote their use in appropriate areas, and thus help pass on to generation in waiting the quiet jobs and satisfactions I have known since my childhood. — Lady Bird Johnson

No doubt, some of the champions of local government hoped to preserve such unsavory local customs as slavery or the local rule of a small group of privileged men, but many of the defenders of local government argued honestly that the states presented the best hope of securing liberty. Liberty, in the eighteenth century, meant not simply liberty from some intrusive outside power. It meant the active exercise of control over one's life, the possession of power in one's own hands. It meant government small enough and close enough to home to be directly accountable and responsive. It meant self-government, not government handed over to some remote rulers. Strictly understood, the principle of local self-government meant a share of power more or less equal to everyone else's share of power, a citizenry more or less equal in wealth and status, not one dominated by one small group or another; that is to say, it meant democracy — Charles L. Mee Jr.

I do not think men are good at all. I have seen enough to know that humans are a wicked race from their very birth. Selfishness defines us. Greed and lust motivate us. And even the best man who ever lived would lie to preserve his own life or beliefs. No, mankind is far from being essentially good. It takes exceptional individuals to change the world, to make a difference. Give the average person a choice, and he will make life miserable for others if only it will make his own life easier. — Brondt Kamffer

To live is to fight, to preserve life is to fight everything that man stands for. — Patrick Ness

True, man cannot escape death. But for the present he is alive; and life, not death, takes hold of him ... It is mans innate nature that he seeks to preserve and to strengthen his life, that he is discontented and aims at removing uneasiness, that he is in search of what may be called happiness. — Ludwig Von Mises

As far as we know, we're the only intelligent, technological civilization ever to develop, in the entire universe. There's complex life all over the place, but we're still basically unique. We have a fucking duty to preserve that. At all costs." Laurence — Charlie Jane Anders

The desire for my "rights" in order to preserve my individuality (rather than allowing God the full right to take over my life and to perfect my personality) has to be stripped away. I have to learn to persevere in the race He has set before me, drawing strength only from Him, and not relying at all on what I may consider any natural abilities I may have. I have to let God take from me even that strength which I thought I had in order that He may more fully reveal His own strength: in order that He may continue in me the work of conforming me to the image of His Son. — Helen Roseveare

In choosing candidates for this challenging way of life, she emphasised intelligence and good judgment ("GOD PRESERVE US FROM STUPID NUNS !! )

. It was her conviction that intelligent people can better be aware of their faults and, at the same time, see the need to be guided. — St Teresa Of Avila

In the life cycle of a theory, it starts off simple and then gets fancier and fancier, as brainy thinkers mount objections and the theory's proponents develop more subtle, complex, and well-defended theory to stave them off. Then it dies. Actually, before it dies, it lives in a special preserve for theories too complicated to survive in the wild, called a university. — Eric Kaplan

To preserve an unclouded capacity for the enjoyment of life is an unusual moral and psychological achievement. Contrary to popular belief, it is not the prerogative of mindlessness, but the exact opposite: It is the reward of self-esteem. — Nathaniel Branden

If I could have chosen a flag back then, it would have been embroidered with a portrait of Malcolm X, dressed in a business suit, his tie dangling, one hand parting a window shade, the other holding a rifle. The portrait communicated everything I wanted to be - controlled, intelligent, and beyond the fear. I would buy tapes of Malcolm's speeches - "Message to the Grassroots," "The Ballot or the Bullet" - down at Everyone's Place, a black bookstore on North Avenue, and play them on my Walkman. Here was all the angst I felt before the heroes of February, distilled and quotable. "Don't give up your life, preserve your life," he would say. "And if you got to give it up, make it even-steven." This was not boasting - it was a declaration of equality rooted not in better angels or the intangible spirit but in the sanctity of the black body. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

I SIT and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all oppression and shame;
I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men, at anguish with themselves, remorseful after deeds done;
I see, in low life, the mother misused by her children, dying, neglected, gaunt, desperate;
I see the wife misused by her husband - I see the treacherous seducer of young women;
I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love, attempted to be hid - I see these sights on the earth; 5
I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny - I see martyrs and prisoners;
I observe a famine at sea - I observe the sailors casting lots who shall be kill'd, to preserve the lives of the rest;
I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon laborers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like;
All these - All the meanness and agony without end, I sitting, look out upon,
See, hear, and am silent. — Walt Whitman

Apparently there is no profit in the unique, or not enough to make it worthwhile to preserve. Ultimately it drains the life out of us, and existentialism starts to make more and more sense. — Lewis Black

Novelty is indeed necessary to preserve eagerness and alacrity; but art and nature have stores inexhaustible by human intellects, and every moment produces something new to him who has quickened his faculties by diligent observation. — Samuel Johnson

Reason's biological function is to preserve and promote life and to postpone its extinction as long as possible. Thinking and acting are not contrary to nature; they are, rather, the foremost features of man's nature. The most appropriate description of man as differentiated from nonhuman beings is: a being purposively struggling against the forces adverse to his life. — Ludwig Von Mises

Margaret Atwood writes: "As with all knowledge, once you knew it, you couldn't imagine how it was that you hadn't known it before. Like stage magic, knowledge before you knew it took place before your very eyes, but you were looking elsewhere." Nearing death, John Updike reflects on A life poured into words - apparent waste intended to preserve the thing consumed. — James Gleick

For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. — John Milton

I still preserve those relics of past sufferings and experience, like pillars of witness set up in travelling through the valve of life, to mark particular occurrences. The footsteps are obliterated now; the face of the country may be changed; but the pillar is still there, to remind me how all things were when it was reared. — Anne Bronte

Psalm 119:37 Turn my eyes away from worthless things; preserve my life according to your word. — Bible. New International Version

I pray God may preserve your health and life many years. — Junipero Serra

I took action as governor to preserve the sanctity of life. — Mitt Romney

My mission in life is to preserve craftsmanship. — Waris Ahluwalia

Let the fellowship of Christ examine itself and see whether it has given any token of the love of Christ to the victim of the world's contumely and contempt, any token of that love of Christ which seeks to preserve, support and protect life. Otherwise however liturgically correct our services are, and however devout our prayer, however brave our testimony, they will profit us nothing, nay rather, they must needs testify against us that we have as a Church ceased to follow our Lord. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

We made a sacred covenant to follow the Creator's life plan at all times, which includes the responsibility of taking care of this land and life for His divine purpose. We have never made treaties with any foreign nation, including the United States, but for many centuries we have honored this Sacred Agreement. Our goals are not to gain political control, monetary wealth nor military power, but rather to pray and to promote the welfare of all living beings and to preserve the world in a natural way. — Thomas Banyacya

Why not smile and preserve, why not let the light summon, why not spread the love, the love we all deserve — Ipsit Bibhudarshi

It's only physical, she reminded herself. Just lust. Some kind of twisted, mutual escape valve. And those physical things, with no love or respect or loyalty to bind and preserve them, had a short shelf life. They were limited-time offers. Three months, tops. — Jess Riley

That immense framework and planking of concepts to which the needy man clings his whole life long in order to preserve himself is nothing but a scaffolding and toy for the most audacious feats of the liberated intellect. And when it smashes this framework to pieces, throws it into confusion, and puts it back together in an ironic fashion, pairing the most alien things and separating the closest, it is demonstrating that it has no need of these makeshifts of indigence and that it will now be guided by intuitions rather than by concepts. There is no regular path which leads from these intuitions into the land of ghostly schemata, the land of abstractions. There exists no word for these intuitions; when man sees them he grows dumb, or else he speaks only in forbidden metaphors and in unheard - of combinations of concepts. He does this so that by shattering and mocking the old conceptual barriers he may at least correspond creatively to the impression of the powerful present intuition. — Friedrich Nietzsche

For it can never be that war shall preserve life, and peace destroy it. — Thomas Hobbes

Nor need we fear that this philosophy, while it endeavors to limit our inquiries to common life, should ever undermine the reasonings of common life, and carry its doubts so far as to destroy all action, as well as speculation. Nature will always maintain her rights, and prevail in the end over any abstract reasoning whatsoever. Though we should conclude, for instance, as in the foregoing section, that, in all reasonings from experience, there is a step taken by the mind which is not supported by any argument or process of the understanding; there is no danger that these reasonings, on which almost all knowledge depends, will ever be affected by such a discovery. If the mind be not engaged by argument to make this step, it must be induced by some other principle of equal weight and authority; and that principle will preserve its influence as long as human nature remains the same. What that principle is may well be worth the pains of inquiry. — John Locke

Common sense and every material reality insisted upon the unification of human life throughout the planet and the socialisation of its elementary needs, and pitted against that was the fact that every authority, every institution, every established way of thinking and living was framed to preserve the advantages of the ruling and possessing minority and the separate sovereignty of the militant states that had been evolved within the vanished circumstances of the past. — H.G.Wells

The deepest problems of modern life derive from the claim of the individual to preserve the autonomy and individuality of his existence in the face of overwhelming social forces, of historical heritage, of external culture, and of the technique of life. — Georg Simmel

I was resolved to sustain and preserve in my college the bite of the mind, the chance to stand face to face with truth, the good life lived in a small, various, highly articulate and democratic society. — Virginia Gildersleeve

We might not return from this voyage. None of us. We might all lay down our lives when we reach the end, and not ever know whether our sacrifice changed anything for the better."
"It will be for the better," Magiano replies. "We cannot just die, not without trying. Not without fighting."
"Do you really believe that?" I ask. "Why are we doing this, anyway? To preserve my own life, and yours - but what has the world ever done for us in order to deserve our sacrifice?"
Magiano's brows furrow for a moment, then he leans in closer. "We exist because this world exists. It's a responsibility of ours, whether or not anyone will remember it." He nods at me. "And they will. Because we will return and make sure of it. — Marie Lu

We may thus conclude that the kilt is a purely modern costume, first designed, and first worn, by an English Quaker industrialist, and that it was bestowed by him on the Highlanders in order not to preserve their traditional way of life but to ease its transformation: to bring them out of the heather and into the factory. — Eric Hobsbawm

As attention to the warning of the physical senses will preserve the health of our body, so attention to the warnings of our inner senses will forewarn and forearm against the influences that are hostile to spiritual life. — F.B. Meyer

No matter; God wants Man, whom he has created and in whose heart he has so profoundly entrenched a love for life, to do all he can to preserve an existence that is sometimes so painful, but always so dear to him. — Alexandre Dumas

Ivanov: You only qualified last year, my dear friend, you're still young and confident, but I am thirty-five. I have the right to give you some advice. Don't marry a Jew or a psychopath or a bluestocking but choose yourself someone ordinary, someone a shade of grey, with no bright colour and no superfluous noises. In general, construct your whole life on a conventional pattern. The greyer, the more monotonous the background, the better. My dear fellow, don't do
battle against thousands all on your own, don't tilt against windmills, don't beat your head against walls ... And may
God preserve you from all kinds of rational farming, newfangled schools, fiery speeches ... Shut yourself in your shell and do your little God-given business ... It's snugger, healthier and more honest. — Anton Chekhov

We don't think a sustainable society need be stagnant, boring, uniform, or rigid. It need not be, and probably could not be, centrally controlled or authoritarian. It could be a world that has the time, the resources, and the will to correct its mistakes, to innovate, to preserve the fertility of its planetary ecosystems. It could focus on mindfully increasing quality of life rather than on mindlessly expanding material consumption and the physical capital stock. — Donella H. Meadows

Intensity of life is only possible at the expense of self. But there is nothing members of the bourgeoisie value more highly than self, albeit only at a rudimentary stage of development. Thus, at the expense of intensity, they manage to preserve their selves and make them secure. Instead of possession by God, an easy conscience is the reward they reap; instead of desire, contentment; instead of liberty, cosiness; instead of life-threatening heat, an agreeable temperature. — Hermann Hesse

We have reason. It is the entire meaning and purpose of Shangri-La. It came to me in a vision long, long ago. I foresaw a time when man exalting in the technique of murder, would rage so hotly over the world, that every book, every treasure would be doomed to destruction. This vision was so vivid and so moving that I determined to gather together all things of beauty and culture that I could and preserve them here against the doom toward which the world is rushing. Look at the world today. Is there anything more pitiful? What madness there is! What blindness! A scurrying mass of bewildered humanity crashing headlong against each other. The time must come, my friend, when brutality and the lust for power must perish by its own sword. For when that day comes, the world must begin to look for a new life. And it is our hope that they may find it here. — James Hilton

General George C. Marshall's words, making "sacrifices today in order that we may enjoy security and peace tomorrow" (qtd. in Neumann 1953, 549).9 The claim was either a mistake or a lie, however, because the U.S. government did not need to go to war, not even in the world wars, to preserve its people's essential liberties and their way of life. Neither Kaiser Wilhelm's forces nor Hitler's - and certainly not Japan's - had the capacity to deprive Americans of their liberties, to "take over the country," to "destroy our way of life," or to do anything of the sort. This country has always contained persecuted minorities, and it still does, but since 1789 the only government on earth that has had the power to crush the American people's liberties across the board has been the government of the United States. U.S. participation in World War I was — Robert Higgs

It is by a mathematical point only that we are wise, as the sailor or fugitive slave keeps the polestar in his eye; but that is sufficient guidance for all our life. We may not arrive at our port within a calculable period, but we would preserve the true course. — Henry David Thoreau

I am aware that for decades there has been exploration of options and concrete plans and investments being made to look at life on another planet. We must not stop exploring. At the same time let's preserve and enhance the life we already have on earth. Join the green revolution, plant trees, stop soil erosion, reduce carbon emissions into the atmosphere and promote recycling of waste. Become aware, create awareness, act responsibly and lead by example. — Archibald Marwizi

To affirm life is to deepen, to make more inward, and to exalt the will-to-life. At the same time the man who has become a thinking being feels a compulsion to give every will-to-live the same reverence for life that he gives to his own. He experiences that other life as his own. He accepts as being good: to preserve life, to raise to its highest value life which is capable of development; and as being evil: to destroy life, to injure life, to repress life which is capable of development. This is the absolute, fundamental principle of the moral, and it is a necessity of thought. — Albert Schweitzer

Memory is a capricious and arbitrary creature. You never can tell what pebble she will pick up from the shore of life to keep among her treasures, or what inconspicuous flower of the field she will preserve as the symbol of "thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." ... And yet I do not doubt that the most Important things are always the best remembered. — Henry Van Dyke

The elemental fact, present in our consciousness every moment of our existence, is: I am life that wills to live, in the midst of life that wills to live ... The essence of the humane spirit is: Preserve life, promote life, help life to achieve its highest destiny. The essence of Evil is: Destroy life, harm life, hamper the development of life — Albert Schweitzer

Only a handful of Germans in the Reich had the slightest conception of the eternal and merciless struggle for the German language, German schools, and a German way of life. Only today, when the same deplorable misery is forced on many millions of Germans from the Reich, who under foreign rule dream of their common fatherland and strive, amid their longing, at least to preserve their holy right to their mother tongue, do wider circles understand what it means to be forced to fight for one's nationality. — Adolf Hitler

We often think that the ideal stance is to give up one's life for a dream: nothing could be further from the truth. In order to achieve our dream, we need to preserve our life and we must, therefore, know how to avoid those things that threaten us. The more we plan our steps, the more chance there is that we will go wrong, because we are failing to take into consideration four things: other people, life's teachings, passion and calm. The more we feel we are in control of things, the farther off we are from controlling anything. — Paulo Coelho

There is a profound difference between fighting to avoid death and fighting in order to live. Men who fight to avoid death preserve their dignity and one and all - men, women and children - defend it jealously, tenaciously, fiercely ... When men fight to avoid death they cling with a tenacity born of desperation to all that constitutes the living and eternal part of human life, the essence, the noblest and purest element of life: dignity, pride, freedom of conscience. They fight to save their souls. But after the liberation men had to fight in order to live ... It is a humiliating, horrible thing, a shameful necessity, a fight for life. Only for life. Only to save one's skin. — Curzio Malaparte

She turns to me sharply. "To live _is_ to fight," she snaps. "To preserve life is to fight _everything_ that man stands for." She takes an angry huff of air. "And now her, too, with all the bombs. I fight them every time I bandage the blackened eye of a woman, every time I remove shrapnel from a bomb victim."
Her voice has raised but she lowers it again. "That's my war," she says. "That's the war I'm fighting. — Patrick Ness

Position yourself to succeed by doing the other things in your life that rejuvenate you. You can create little islands of time away from your novel that will help preserve your balance. Exhaustion will affect both your writing's quality and your productivity. — Jeff VanderMeer

How, in such an alien and inhuman world, can so powerless a creature as man preserve his aspirations untarnished? A strange mystery it is that nature, omnipotent but blind, in the revolutions of her secular hurryings through the abysses of space, has brought forth at last a child, subject still to her power, but gifted with sight, with knowledge of good and evil, with the capacity of judging all the works of his unthinking mother. In spite of death, the mark and seal of the parental control, man is yet free, during his brief years, to examine, to criticize, to know, and in imagination to create. To him alone, in the world with which he is aquainted, this freedom belongs; and in this lies his superiority to the resistless forces that control his outward life. — Bertrand Russell

When we as a nation, strive in vain to preserve the beauty of our national life, forgetting our biblical roots, we are doomed. — Richard Halverson

It is an odd thing that you can easily get millions of pounds for weapons to destroy life, but it is exceedingly difficult to get thousands for weapons to preserve it. — James Harpole

Those who love life do not read. Nor do they go to the movies, actually. No matter what might be said, access to the artistic universe is more or less entirely the preserve of those who are a little fed up with the world. — Michel Houellebecq

The power of an idea is never to be underestimated. Many a thought has survived long after its host has ceased to be. It is the power of an idea that no shield can defend against, nor sword divide, nor poison infect. As such, we must aspire to create ideas, rather than preserve life. In a sense, this is how we achieve true immortality and live on past our time. — A.J. Darkholme

The most savage and voracious animal never kills to increase his wealth, or open a way to grandeur. It slays to satisfy his hunger, or in a natural defense of his own life, or of those whom he is prompted by instinct to preserve. — Mary Collyer

Tengo knew that time could become deformed as it moved forward. Time itself was uniform in composition, but once consumed, it took on a deformed shape. One period of time might be terribly heavy and long, while another could be light and short. Occasionally the order of things could be reversed, and in the worst cases order itself could vanish entirely. Sometimes things that should not be there at all might be added onto time. By adjusting time this way to suit their own purposes, people probably adjusted the meaning of their existences. In other words, by adding such operations to time, they were able - but just barely - to preserve their own sanity. Surely, if a person had to accept the time through which he had just passed uniformly in the given order, his nerves could not bear the strain. Such a life, Tengo felt, would be sheer torture. — Haruki Murakami

Mortals lie. Mortals steal. Mortals cheat. Such is the way of all sapient life. No species is exempt, no culture free of these sins. And yet me and my own strive to avoid such things, in spite of our admittedly devastating goals. Why? Because it gives us pleasure to know that no matter who we murder, maim, and harm, we still maintain the moral high ground. We do not lie. We do not steal. We do not cheat. We just kill and kill and kill. Without malice, without ill-will, we deal death and destruction equally to all. The world shall rebel, and the heavens shall shatter before us. And it will happen without us resorting to the petty tactics of those who seek to preserve this worthless existence." The — Ian Rodgers

You have to appreciate life before you want to preserve it," she said.
"And it's the survivors who maintain the most light and poignant hold upon the beauties of living. Women know this more often than men because birth is the reflection of death. — Frank Herbert

Writing is a futile attempt to preserve what disappears moment by moment. All that remains of my mother is what I remember and what I have written for and about her. Eventually that is all that will remain of [my husband] and me. Writing sometimes feels frivolous and sometimes sacred, but memory is one of my strongest muses. I serve her with my words. So long as people read, those we love survive however evanescently. As do we writers, saying with our life's work, Remember. Remember us. Remember me. — Marge Piercy

Forget what you learned about poetry in school. (That it's complex, opaque, a problem to be solved in 1500 words by tomorrow.) Poetry is the last preserve of honest speech and the outspoken heart. It holds the cadence of common life. It has a passion for truth and justice and liberty; it is a buoy to people in ordinary trouble: to a friend whose life has gone skidding into the meridian, who has been struck by bad news, who is frying eggs and hash browns and has whiny child clinging to his pant leg. — Garrison Keillor

Peace does not dwell in outward things but within the soul; we may preserve it in the midst of the bitterest pain, if our will remains firm and submissive. Peace in this life springs from acquiescence to, not an exemption from, suffering. — Francois Fenelon

So my pleasure in addressing you will keep pace with the joy in my heart at the glad news of the complete conversion of your people. 'I have sent some small presents, which will not appear small to you, since you will receive them with the blessing of the blessed Apostle Peter. May Almighty God continue to perfect you in His grace, prolong your life for many years, and after this life receive you among the citizens of your heavenly home. May the grace of heaven preserve Your Majesty in safety. 'Dated the twenty-second day of June, in the nineteenth year of our most pious lord and Emperor Maurice Tiberius Augustus, and the eighteenth after his Consulship: the fourth indiction. — Bede

1. Always wait between books for the springs to fill up and flow over. 2. Always preserve within a wild sanctuary, an inaccessible valley of reveries. 3. Always, and as far as it is possible, endeavor to touch life on every side; but keep the central vision of the mind, the inmost light, untouched and untouchable. — Ellen Glasgow

I feel the only thing you can do about life is to preserve it, by art if you're an artist, by children if you're not. — Philip Larkin

Empty Spaces

I wanted to feel less.
To not be burdened by emotion,
To not feel sadness,
To not know loss.
I envied the inanimate,
The trees that stand proudly in winter,
Not missing their leaves.
I wanted to be weightless,
To not experience limitation.
I didn't want time to pass,
The blur of days, months, years.
It moved too quickly,
I wanted to grasp on,
Hold it.
It eluded me,
Intangible,
Like light.
I wanted to preserve life before you were gone.
I didn't want to know grief.

But the pain kept me connected.
It meant that I loved you,
It meant that I would always be a little broken,
It meant that our love filled all of the empty spaces.
It meant that you would be with me... forever. — Jacqueline Simon Gunn

Jesus' commandment never wishes to destroy life, but rather to preserve, strengthen, and heal life. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Pets are humanizing. They remind us we have an obligation and responsibility to preserve and nurture and care for all life. — James Cromwell

Within each of us an enemy which we tolerate at our peril. Jesus called it "life" and "self," or as we would say, the self-life. Its chief characteristic is its possessiveness: the words "gain" and "profit" suggest this. To allow this enemy to live is in the end to lose everything. To repudiate it and give up all for Christ's sake is to lose nothing at last, but to preserve everything unto life eternal. And possibly also a hint is given here as to the only effective way to destroy this foe: it is by the Cross. "Let him take up his cross and follow me." The — A.W. Tozer

It is a common teaching of the Saints that one of the principal means of leading a good and exemplary life is certainly modesty and the mortification of the eyes. Just as there is nothing better than modesty to preserve devotion in a soul and to edify one's neighbor, so too, there is nothing worse than immodesty and licentious glances to expose a person to the danger of becoming lax and loose in morals. — Alphonsus Rodriguez

Come! Let us lay a lance in rest,
And tilt at windmills under a wild sky!
For who would live so petty and unblest
That dare not tilt at something ere he die;
Rather than, screened by safe majority,
Preserve his little life to little end,
And never raise a rebel cry! — John Galsworthy

Once more he became silent, staring before him with sombre eyes. Following his gaze, I saw that he was looking at an enlarged photograph of my Uncle Tom in some sort of Masonic uniform which stood on the mantlepiece. I've tried to reason with Aunt Dahlia about this photograph for years, placing before her two alternative suggestions: (a) To burn the beastly thing; or (b) if she must preserve it, to shove me in another room when I come to stay. But she declines to accede. She says it's good for me. A useful discipline, she maintains, teaching me that there is a darker side to life and that we were not put into this world for pleasure only. — P.G. Wodehouse

Political parties were established in European public life partly as an inheritance from the Terror, and partly under the influence of British practice. The mere fact that they exist today is not in itself a sufficient reason for us to preserve them. The only legitimate reason for preserving anything is its goodness. The evils of political parties are all too evident; therefore, the problem that should be examined is this: do they contain enough good to compensate for their evils and make their preservation desirable? — Simone Weil

We labor to preserve the life of the body, but ultimately life and death are out of our hands. If the patient lives awhile longer, a certain kind of good will result. If God ordains that this is the time to die, another kind of good will result. — Michael D. O'Brien

I try to preserve whatever balance society has between public and personal life. I never try to eat on the subway. I never try to listen to loud music on the subway. — Alex Karpovsky

I would like to forget the image of the ship's crane at Southampton docks when it lifted into the sky the three wooden trunks which held all that my family owned. There is only one memory I want to preserve. It is Maria, who is also Zama, sipping condensed milk on the steps of the doep at night. The African nights were warm. The stars were bright. I loved Maria but I'm not sure she loved me back. Politics and poverty had separated her from her own children and she was exhausted by the white children in her care, by everyone and everything in her care. At the end of the day, away from the people who stole her life's energy and made her tired, she had found a place to rest, momentarily, from myths about her character and her purpose in life." (from "Things I Don't Want to Know" by Deborah Levy) — Deborah Levy