Worth Preserving Quotes & Sayings

The worst of charity is that the lives you are asked to preserve are not worth preserving. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Canada is one of the few places left where the small decencies are observed. If, as a young man, I was scornful of the country because we always seemed so far behind style-setting New York, I now thank God for the cultural lag. Ours, after all, is the good neighbourhood. A society well worth preserving. — Mordecai Richler

If there is one thing in this wonderful world of ours that is worth preserving, defending, and promoting, it is the White Race. — Ben Klassen

I know in this time of great technological advancement, the idea of reading a book seems almost anachronistic, but I think it's worth preserving. — Garth Stein

First impressions are rarely worth preserving. Men typically fall short of our expectations. — Renate Linnenkoper

Hong Kong has been the place where the memory of Tiananmen Square lives on; Hong Kong people have become more and more committed in their resistance to authoritarian government, and also, not surprisingly, committed to safeguarding their culture and heritage as something distinct and worth preserving. — Jess Row

I have to determine whether the joy of craplets is worth preserving. — Howard Stringer

Family connexions were always worth preserving, good company always worth seeking. — Jane Austen

Why should I keep myself so safe?" he asked her, but he was almost asking himself. What is there in my life worth preserving? With a good wife back there in the mountains, serviceable as an old spoon, dry in the heart from having been scared of marriage since she was six? With three children so shy of their father, the Prince of the Arjikis, that they will hardly come near him? With a careworn clan moving here, moving there, going through th same disputes, herding the same herds, as thy have done for five hundred years? And me, with a shallow and undirected mind, no artfulness in word or habit, no especial kindness toward the world? What is there that makes my life worth preserving?
"I love you," said Elphaba.
"So that's that then, and that's it," he answered her and himself. "And I love you. So I promise to be careful. — Gregory Maguire

And I thought, my God, there's an off chance that they will say something that's really worth preserving and there is one way to do that and I knew what it was because I come from television. — James Lipton

The theme to this year's MSLS is "Embracing the Future, Preserving the Past: The Role of Youth in Nation Building". Now, having organised events like this before, I understand the need for a tagline that is sufficiently grand, sufficiently optimistic and sufficiently vague that all the speakers would be able to relate to and support. Everyone wants to "embrace the future" and no one would deny that the youth have a role in nation building.

But the middle part -- "preserving the past" -- needs some attention. It's necessary, surely, to determine which aspects of the past are worth preserving. And this is a very difficult exercise, because one fundamental problem in our country is that the past is so poorly understood -- and not just by much of the youth but by the establishment as well. — Tunku Zain Al-'Abidin Muhriz

The Public School, then, was right to eject a child who did not learn. Because what the child was learning was not merely facts or the basis of a money-making or even useful career. It went much deeper. The child learned that certain things in the culture around him were worth preserving at any cost. His values were fused with some objective human enterprise. And so he himself became a part of the tradition handed down to him; he maintained his heritage during his lifetime and even improved on it. He cared. — Philip K. Dick

Things that change and are lost, that is what's worth preserving. — Christopher Paolini

Analysis of rebellion leads at least to the suspicion that, contrary to the postulates of contemporary thought, a human nature does exist, as the Greeks believed. Why rebel if there is nothing permanent in oneself worth preserving? ... Rebellion, though apparently negative, since it creates nothing, is profoundly positive in that it reveals the part of man which must always be defended. — Albert Camus

The events of my life are too unimportant, and have too little interest for any person not of my immediate family, to render them worth communicating or preserving. — John Marshall

Finally, we might decide that civilisation itself is worth preserving. In that case we have to work out what to save and which people would be needed in a drastically reduced population - weighing the value of scientists and musicians against that of politicians, for example. — Susan Blackmore

Just that I'm not a realist,' he said, and then: 'No, only the romanticist preserves the things worth preserving. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Others, amounting to four novels and a mess of short stories which I did not think worth preserving, I have done my best to eliminate from the record by refusing all requests for permission to reprint them, and I hope I have done a good job of making them hard to unearth. — Leslie Charteris

Perhaps, with enough time in these walls, one could become resigned to things never getting better, or even changing all that much. Or maybe a person eventually lost hope that there was anything worth preserving at all. — Hugh Howey

Self-preservation isn't worth it if you can't live with the self you're preserving — David Levithan

The most devastating indictment of the president's proposal is that it threatens to destroy virtually everything about American health care that's worth preserving. Under the plan's layers of regulation and oversight, even seeing a doctor whenever you like will be no easy matter: access to physicians will be carefully regulated by gatekeepers; referrals to specialists will be strongly discouraged; second opinions will be almost unheard of; and the availability of new drugs will be limited. — William Kristol

The fact that the movement was carried on by women who, for the most part, had no money of their own and were totally inexperienced in organization, and that they won their fight in about two generations, makes a story often dramatic and always worth preserving. — Florence Ellinwood Allen

How frail and ephemeral is the material substance of letters, which makes their very survival so hazardous. Print has a permanence of its own, though it may not be much worth preserving, but a letter! Conveyed by uncertain transportation, over which the sender has no control; committed to a single individual who may be careless or inappreciative; left to the mercy of future generations, of families maybe anxious to suppress the past, of the accidents of removals and house-cleanings, or of mere ignorance. How often it has been by the veriest chance that they have survived at all. — Elizabeth Drew

The world may need fixing, but it's worth preserving. — Rick Riordan

Story is a fragile and ephemeral thing on its own, a thing that is easily effaced or disappeared or destroyed, and it is worth preserving. — Doug Dorst

Preservation of the past has been one of humankind's chief preoccupations for centuries, although I am not convinced much of it is worth preserving. — Chris Flynn

No system of criminal justice can, or should, survive if it comes to depend for its continued effectiveness on the citizens' abdication through unawareness of their constitutional rights. No system worth preserving should have to fear that if an accused is permitted to consult with a lawyer, he will become aware of, and exercise, these rights. — Arthur Goldberg

The picture is all he feels about it, all he thinks worth preserving of it, all he invests it with. If all the qualities which a painter took from the model for his picture were really taken, no person could be painted twice. — Lucian Freud

The first law of nature is self-preservation. Cut off that which may harm you. But if it is worth preserving, and is meaningful, nourish it and have no regrets. Ultimately, this is true living and love of self ... from within. — T.F. Hodge

The public library system of the United States is worth preserving. — Henry Rollins

To Lawren Harris art was almost a mission. He believed that a country which ignored the arts left no record of itself worth preserving. — A. Y. Jackson

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

If the institutions of parliamentary democracy are worth preserving, the duty to explain them to the people they are meant to serve becomes vitally important. — John Allen Fraser

If you want to know whether you have written anything worth preserving, sing it to yourself without any accompaniment. — Joseph Haydn

If being premenstrual is "innocence," does that make those of us with periods guilty? And this really gets to the heart of the matter: These concerns aren't about lost innocence; they're about lost girlhood. The virginity movement doesn't want women to be adults.

Despite the movement's protestations about how this focus on innocence or preserving virginity is just a way of protecting girls, the truth is, it isn't a way to desexualize them. It simply positions their sexuality as "good" - worth talking about, protecting, and valuing - and women's sexuality, adult sexuality, as bad and wrong. The (perhaps) unintended consequences of this focus is that girl's sexuality is sexualized and fetishized even further. — Jessica Valenti

There is nothing left worth preserving in the notions of unseen powers, controlling human destiny, to which obedience and worship are due. — John Dewey

The word "jealousy" is often used as if it were synonymous with envy; but I think the distinction worth preserving. Jealousy is predominantly concerned with the fear of loss of something one possesses, envy with the wish to own something another possesses. Othello suffers from the fear that he has lost Desdemona's love. Iago suffers from envy of the position held by Cassio, to which he feels entitled. — Anthony Storr