Put Your Guard Up Quotes & Sayings

Is it really for love he is going to marry you?" She asked.
I was so hurt by her coldness and scepticism that the tears rose to my eyes.
"I am sorry to grieve you," pursued the widow; "but you are so young, and so little acquainted with men, I wished to put you on your guard. It is an old saying that 'all is not gold that glitters;' and in this case I do fear there will be something found to be different to what either you or I expect. — Charlotte Bronte

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

A 1670 revision of the criminal code found yet another use for salt in France. To enforce the law against suicide, it was ordered that the bodies of people who took their own lives be salted, brought before a judge, and sentenced to public display. Nor could the accused escape their day in court by dying in the often miserable conditions of the prisons. They too would be salted and put on trial. Breton historians have discovered that in 1784 in the town of Cornouaille, Maurice LeCorre had died in prison and was ordered salted for trial. But due to some bureaucratic error, the corpse did not get a trial date and was found by a prison guard more than seven years later, not only salted but fermented in beer, at which point it was buried without trial. — Mark Kurlansky

Put a bridle on thy tongue; set a guard before thy lips, lest the words of thine own mouth destroy thy peace ... on much speaking cometh repentance, but in silence is safety. — William Drummond

All my instincts tell me to cover and cherish you fiercely, with each breath, and work harder to make you mine. Each and every time you try and push me away, to put that guard of yours back up, I need to hold on tighter, chase faster. Until my arms are the ones you want to run into. — S.E. Hall

But then again, if you don't put yourself out there, don't let your guard down, don't open yourself up to the chance of love, then you will never have the experience of someone proving to you they are worthy of the gift you're giving them. You won't have a shot at happiness, not real happiness, which comes from sharing your life with someone. — Aurora Rose Reynolds

when they first met. It was just past the end of the third month of training, the midpoint, before they were interrupted again. Spring should have come, but this far north, and in the Low Lands in particular, the only indication of this was a sprinkle of rain mixing with the snow occasionally. Such a storm was passing through toward the end of the daily training session in the tower when a commotion could be heard in the main room down stairs. The sound alone was enough to put Myn on guard. — Joseph R. Lallo

...[M]en are put in a sort of guard-post, from which one must not release one's self or run away... — Socrates

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

The Crocodile The sun of the Macusi people was worried. Every day there were fewer fish in their ponds. He put the crocodile in charge of security. The ponds got emptier. The crocodile, security guard and thief, invented a good story about invisible assailants, but the sun didn't believe it, took a machete, and left the crocodile's body all crisscrossed with cuts. To calm him down, the crocodile offered his beautiful daughter in marriage. "I'll be expecting her," said the sun. As the crocodile had no daughter, he sculpted a woman in the trunk of a wild plum tree. "Here she is," he said, and plunged into the water, looking out of the corner of his eye, the way he always looks. It was the woodpecker who saved his life. Before the sun arrived, the woodpecker pecked at the wooden girl below the belly. Thus she, who was incomplete, was open for the sun to enter. (112) — Eduardo Galeano

I looked at Reth hopefully. "You?"
"Must we really waste more time? Not all of us here are immortal, and I'd think you and Jack would more carefully guard what little you have. We should go immediately to my queen."
"Can you get us in or not?"
He looked at the ceiling, his features dripping with disdain for the entire operation. "I suppose if you were to stand immediately outside her door I could use my sense of where you are to navigate into her room and open the door from the inside."
"That's my pretty faerie boy!"
"If you ever address me like that again, I will make that abomination on your head permanent."
I put my fingers up to the brunette wig, horrified. "You wouldn't."
"I suggest you do not attempt to find out. — Kiersten White

When the Guard convinced you fate was not on our side, you parted ways with me and saw fit to make me suffer,' Percy stated. The pain on Alexi's face worsened, and he opened his mouth to refute her. She put her hands lovingly on his cheeks. 'We survived. Our love survived. And we shall again.'
He stared at her in wonder. 'How did my dear girl grow so brave?'
Percy grinned. 'Didn't you hear? The meek shall inherit the earth. — Leanna Renee Hieber

The Jews are a race and not a religion. My goal was not to persecute the Jews but to enlighten Gentiles to put them on guard. — Julius Streicher

I, as a responsible adult human being, will never concede the power to anyone to regulate my choice of what I put into my body, or where I go with my mind. From the skin inwards is my jurisdiction, is it not? I choose what may or may not cross that border. Here I am the Customs Agent. I am the Coast guard. I am the sole legal and spiritual government of this territory, and only the laws I choose to enact within myself are applicable — Alexander Shulgin

It was unnerving, the way she could go from cool efficiency to sarcastic to sweet within the space of thirty seconds. I found it very manipulative and controlling. It put the other person constantly on-guard. And it was extremely intimidating because you never knew when she was going to snap. I made a mental note to refine these skills within myself. — Augusten Burroughs

Such an act [testifying for an accused prison guard of the Shah's regime] can only be accomplished by someone who is engrossed in literature, has learned that every individual has different dimensions to his personality ... Those who judge must take all aspects of an individual's personality into account. It is only through literature that one can put oneself in someone else's shoes and understand the other's different and contradictory sides and refrain from becoming too ruthless. Outside the sphere of literature only one aspect of individuals is revealed. But if you understand their different dimensions you cannot easily murder them ... If we have learned this one lesson from Dr. A our society would have been in a much better shape today. — Azar Nafisi

I sighed and put Slayer between the front seats. "Stay here. Guard the car."
Saiman shut the door. "Is the sword sentient?"
"No. But I like to pretend it is. — Ilona Andrews

The American servicemen and women of the Guard and Reserve leave their jobs, their spouses and their children to wear the uniform that defends our country. This selfless commitment should be honored by businesses across Massachusetts as we work to ensure they are treated fairly while they balance their employment responsibilities and obligations to the armed services. No business should ever put the bottom line ahead of America's front line. — Mitt Romney

There is no place for fear, Ailith," Niero said, easily reading it in our faces. "Guard against it. The presence of fear denies the power of the Maker and invites the enemy to use it for his own purposes. And where the Maker sends us, we are to go in complete trust. We have been called." He put out his hand, using the leading phrase our trainer had always used. We all placed our hands atop his. "And we shall answer," we said as one. — Lisa Tawn Bergren

Woman is a misbegotten man and has a faulty and defective nature in comparison to his. Therefore she is unsure in herself. What she cannot get, she seeks to obtain through lying and diabolical deceptions. And so, to put it briefly, one must be on one's guard with every woman, as if she were a poisonous snake and the horned devil ... Thus in evil and perverse doings woman is cleverer, that is, slyer, than man. Her feelings drive woman toward every evil, just as reason impels man toward all good. — Albertus Magnus

I couldn't be happier that President Bush has stood up for having served in the National Guard, because I can finally put an end to all those who questioned my motives for enlisting in the Army Reserve at the height of the Vietnam War. — Larry David

What I am afraid of is ... Gandhi. He has brains and always tried to put me in the wrong. I have to be on guard and alert all the time. — Muhammad Ali Jinnah

I actually shivered at the insincerity that gripped me as I spoke these words: their falseness was shameful. I was sure my coolness would return. I'd just been caught with my guard down. But at the moment I was in shambles. Walking along the deck (adopting my old casual swagger), I jollied up the troops with small talk, put on a frozen grin, and kept murmuring to myself with rhythmic fatuity: You love the marine Corps, it's a terrific war, you love the Marine Corps, it's a terrific war ... — William Styron

Even if falling for him was not a choice. I thought that you had to put yourself out there to fall in love, but sometimes it just dropped on you, even when your guard was up. The difference was that I decided to act on my feelings. — Stephanie Witter

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

She looked for her guard, then back up at him. "No men?" "Ravishment of one's wife does not need an audience," he informed her. "Ravishment," she said, turning the word over on her tongue and seemingly considering its significance. "Unless I have interrupted your thoughts upon something else," he said reluctantly. She put her arms around his neck and stretched herself against him. "As it happens, I was just walking along the beach thinking about you." That was enough for him. He wrapped his arms around her purposefully. "Wouldn't you like to hear what I was thinking?" she asked. "Nay, I would not." "They were good thoughts, if you're interested." "Later," he said, bending his head to kiss her. — Lynn Kurland

So I put it out of its misery, if it really was miserable, and tried not to think about it. That was another thing they taught us at Willow Creek: don't write their eulogy, don't try to imagine who they used to be, how they came to be here, how they came to be this. I know, who doesn't do that, right? Who doesn't look at one of those things and just naturally start to wonder? It's like reading the last page of a book ... your imagination just naturally spinning. And that's when you get distracted, get sloppy, let your guard down and end up leaving someone else to wonder what happened to you. — Max Brooks

The Stoics define wisdom to be conducted by reason, and folly nothing else but the being hurried by passion, lest our life should otherwise have been too dull and inactive, that creator, who out of clay first tempered and made us up, put into the composition of our humanity more than a pound of passions to an ounce of reason; and reason he confined within the narrow cells of the brain, whereas he left passions the whole body to
range in.
Farther, he set up two sturdy champions to stand
perpetually on guard, that reason might make no assault,
surprise, nor inroad ; anger, which keeps its station in
the fortress of the heart ; and lust, which like the signs
Virgo and Scorpio, rules the appetites and passions. — Desiderius Erasmus

Yet, emotionally I could not bring myself to accept either his presence, or his reality. My problem was not a religious problem. God could certainly create as many variations of intelligent humans as he wanted. Presumably God put humans here on this earth, and all non-humans on some other far-away planet orbiting some other far-away star. My problem was a scientific problem. For the Tall White guard to be standing there in the hot sun, for real, would mean that everything I had been taught about Einstein and the Theory of Relativity was simply incorrect. — Charles James Hall

(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

Even though there will be times when I'll need to protect myself - there will definitely be times when I'll have to put up my guard just to monitor what comes in and out of my life - there's a grace there ... no pun intended! — Grace Gealey

As it usually happened after an engagement, a heavy sadness was coming down over his spirits. To some degree it was the prodigious contrastbetween two modes of life: in violent hand-to-hand fighting threr was no room for time, reflexion, enmity or even pain unless it was disabling; everything moved with extreme speed, cut and parry with a reflex as fast as a sword-thrust, eyes automatically keeping watch on three or four men within reach, arm lunging at the first hint of a lowered guard, a cry to warn a friend, a roar to put an enemy off his stroke; and all this in an extraordinarily vivid state of mind, a kind of fierce exaltation, an intense living in the most immediate present. — Patrick O'Brian

If someone liked me, I waited until she was off guard, and then I told her I didn't want to be her friend any more. I watched the confusion and upset. The tears. Then I ran off, triumphantly in control, and very fast the triumph and the control leaked away, and then I cried and cried, because I had put myself on the outside again, on the doorstep again, where I didn't want to be. — Jeanette Winterson

If, however, I am allowed to think that you and yours feel an interest in my fate and actions, it may be the means - it may put me on my guard - at least, it may be something to live for. — Jane Austen

I'm not a maiden. You took that." "And I would again," he growled. "I'd steal you away and keep you in a castle far from here. Far from any other man. I'd guard you jealously and every night come to your bed and put my cock into your cunny and fuck you until dawn. — Elizabeth Hoyt

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.

You've got to be in a place where you can put your guard down. I've got a long list of things I consider to be selling out. But amongst that list, one of them is when you make art without putting your guard down. — Devendra Banhart

If devils exist, their first aim is to give you an anesthetic
to put you off your guard. Only if that fails, do you become aware of them. — C.S. Lewis

Met two young guys from the Oregon National Guard ... The lieutenant told me about their temporary barracks in an old neighborhood high school. He told me that he was disgusted that kids ever went to school there, and that in Oregon the place would have been bulldozed and rebuilt so that kids could have a proper place to learn. He seemed troubled that all of this was happening in America. He realized that many of the problems he was seeing in New Orleans existed before the storm, and he wanted to know why people had put up with it and why they hadn't voted out of office the people who had let this happen. I told him I didn't know, but maybe we could change things in New Orleans in the future. He seemed hopeful. I felt less certain. — Billy Sothern

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

You must study the Masters but guard the original style that beats within your soul and put to sword those who would try to steal it. — El Greco

I define a nose, as follows, - intreating only beforehand, and beseeching my readers, both male and female, of what age, complexion, and condition soever, for the love of God and their own souls, to guard against the temptations and suggestions of the devil, and suffer him by no art or wile to put any other ideas into their minds, than what I put into my definition. - For by the word Nose, throughout all this long chapter of noses, and in every other part of my work, where the word Nose occurs, - I declare, by that word I mean a Nose, and nothing more, or less. — Laurence Sterne

There is only a policeman in front of something you have need for and don't have access to, so you put a guard there ... But if orange trees and apple trees grew all over the place, you couldn't sell them. — Jacque Fresco

Ed Koch will never 'rest in peace.' That was not his way. He was always nervously squirming, while making others squirm as well. Comfort was not his goal. He understood that to be a proud and assertive Jew meant never being able to leave a sigh of relief and say, 'It's over, we are at peace, we can now put down our guard and relax.' — Alan Dershowitz

We ought to be very cautious in the prosecution of magic and heresy. The attempt to put down these two crimes may be extremely perilous to liberty, and may be the origin of a number of petty acts of tyranny if the legislator be not on his guard; for as such an accusation does not bear directly on the overt acts of a citizen, but refers to the idea we entertain of his character. — Baron De Montesquieu

Only certain portions of the line had to undergo carnage in the French style, but knowledge of it was all-pervasive. Everything the 19th River Guard knew came from quiet meetings in the communications trenches, conversations with sleepless, bitter infantrymen who had been transferred up from the fiercer fighting in the south. If some of the River Guard were on the edge, many of the regular infantry had gone over it long before. Especially disturbing to the naval contingent were reports from down below that Italian troops now were shot quite casually for disciplinary reasons, and that the Italian generals, like their French counterparts, were executing men in decimations for crimes they had not committed. Men with families were pulled from the ranks along with equally mystified adolescents and put to death for acts attributed to others whom they had never seen. — Mark Helprin