Quotes about Self-preservation

And so our reclamation project has been, for me, less a matter of idealism or morality than a kind of self-preservation. A destructive history, once it is understood as such, is a nearly insupportable burden. Understanding it is a disease of understanding, depleting the sense of efficacy and paralyzing effort, unless it finds healing work." Excerpt From The World-Ending Fire Wendell Berry This material may be protected by copyright.

The power of hiding ourselves from one another is mercifully given, for men are wild beasts, and would devour one another but for this protection.

You may keep your beauty and your health, unless you destroy them yourself, or discourage them to stay with you, by using them ill.

And this is the final meaning of work: the extension of human consciousness. The lesser meaning of work is the achieving of self-preservation.

It is ingrained in all living creatures, first of all, to preserve their own safety, to guard against what is harmful, to strive for what is advantageous.

If others neither have goods we want nor can perform services we need, we make sure that they are at a safe distance and close ourselves off from them so that their emaciated and tortured bodies can make no inordinate claims on us.

they are listed in the approximate order of their importance and greatest usefulness: The motive of self-preservation The motive of financial gain The motive of love The motive of sexuality The motive of desire for power and fame The motive of fear The motive of revenge The motive of freedom (of body and mind) The motive of desire to create or build in thought or in material

A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one of the highest virtues of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to written law would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the end to the means.

We have the wolf by the ears; and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.

To me, Herod symbolizes the terrible destruction that fearful people can leave in their wake if their fear is unacknowledged, if they have power but can only use it in furtive, pathetic, and futile attempts at self-preservation.

Oh, Adam's sons, how cleverly you defend yourselves against all that might do you good!

Sometimes I want to bury myself in bed, and I don't want anyone to know anything about me, and I don't want anyone to judge me.