Preserving Identity Quotes & Sayings

By setting such strong, harsh dichotomies God taught Israel that any assimilation to pagan idolatry is intolerable. It was His way of preserving Israel's spiritual health and posterity. God knew that if these Canaanite children were allowed to live, they would spell the undoing of Israel. The killing of the Canaanite children not only served to prevent assimilation to Canaanite identity but also served as a shattering, tangible illustration of Israel's being set exclusively apart for God. — William Lane Craig

The fundamental principle [of settlement work] remains: that people shall take up their residence in industrial communities, giving what they may have of public spirit, and partaking of the life about them; preserving their identity as individuals and endeavoring to keep the settlement free from the institutional form of philanthropic work ... the relationship is reciprocal ... — Lillian Wald

The thrust here is that Dostoevsky wrote fiction about the stuff that's really important. He wrote fiction about identity, moral value, death, will, sexual vs. spiritual love, greed, freedom, obsession, reason, faith, suicide. And he did it without ever reducing his characters to mouthpieces or his books to tracts. His concern was always what it is to be a human being-that is, how to be an actual person, someone whose life is informed by values and principles, instead of just an especially shrewd kind of self-preserving animal. — David Foster Wallace

Gluttony is mankind's exclusive prerogative. — Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

Alls I'm - or think about the Holocaust. Was the Holocaust a good thing? No way. Does anybody think it was good it happened? No way. But did you ever read Victor Frankl? Victor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning? It's a great, great book. Frankl was in a camp in the Holocaust and the book comes out of that experience, it's about his experience in the human Dark Side and preserving his human identity in the face of the camp's degradation and violence and suffering total ripping away his identity. It's a totally great book and now think about it, if there wasn't a Holocaust there wouldn't be a Man's Search for Meaning. — David Foster Wallace

I arose and spoke substantially as follows: ... I love the government and the constitution of the United States, but I do not love the damned rascals who administer the government. — Brigham Young

Soon after you confront the matter of preserving your identity, another question will occur to you: "Who am I writing for?" It's a fundamental question, and it has a fundamental answer: You are writing for yourself. Don't try to visualize the great mass audience. There is no such audience - every reader is a different person. Don't try to guess what sort of thing editors want to publish or what you think the country is in a mood to read. Editors and readers don't know what they want to read until they read it. Besides, they're always looking for something new. Don't worry about whether the reader will "get it" if you indulge a sudden impulse for humor. If it amuses you in the act of writing, put it in. (It can always be taken out, but only you can put it in.) You are writing primarily to please yourself, and if you go about it with enjoyment you will also entertain the readers who are worth writing for. If you lose the dullards back in the dust, you don't want them anyway. This — William Zinsser

What can't be cured must be endured," said I, — Anne Bronte

Compassion can change a lot of things, including the world. Young people especially need to know that, because they're the future. — Aloe Blacc

We need to go inward instead of outward, and learn to trust our own inner guide, preserving our identity and finding the answers from within. — Jane Fulton Alt

I think this group of people came together in a way that they haven't before in 2007. I'm very optimistic we can do something ... I want to get there, I want to support this. — Sherrod Brown

The gunfight at the O.K. Corral took place on October 26, 1881. It took about thirty seconds to write a chapter in American history that will never be forgotten. — Bill O'Reilly

Somebody who's learning how to ice skate for the first time would need skates, a helmet for head protection and elbow pads, because you do fall quite a bit. — Gerad Adams

Russia will become beacons of hope for the world. — Edgar Cayce

I got my dailies every day, although I couldn't always look at them because I was usually preparing for the next day's shoot, both as an actress and as the director. — Debbie Allen

We're here, there, not here, not there, swirling like specks of dust, claiming for ourselves the rights of the universe. Being important, being nothing, being caught in lives of our own making that we never wanted. Breaking out, trying again, wondering why the past comes with us, wondering how to talk about the past at all. — Jeanette Winterson

The average person is unaware that he or she is living out a negative destiny according to his or her past (childhood) programming, preserving his or her familiar identity, and, in the process, pushing love away. On an unconscious level, many people sense that if they did not push love away, the whole world, as they have experienced it, would be shattered and they would not know who they were. — Robert W. Firestone

My eyes are bright, my hair has come loose from its ribbon, and Stella's scarf is waving around my neck. But that's not what I see when I look at the picture. I see three unlikely friends holding hands. And Ryan, Kenny, and Melanie are standing behind us, rapt.
And in the sky above us, I see a miracle. — Wendy Mass

that concerns itself overmuch with the turning of the world? — Patrick Rothfuss