Saving Yourself Quotes

An almost infallible means of saving yourself from the desire of self-destruction is always to have something to do.
Creech, the commentator on Lucretius, marked upon his manuscripts: "N. B. Must hang myself when I have finished." He kept his word with himself that he might have the pleasure of ending like his author. If he had undertaken a commentary upon Ovid he would have lived longer. ~ Voltaire

When you're the sane brother of a schizophrenic identical twin, the tricky thing about saving yourself is the blood it leaves on your hands
the little inconvenience of the look-alike corpse at your feet. And if you're into both survival of the fittest and being your brother's keeper
if you've promised your dying mother
then say so long to sleep and hello to the middle of the night. Grab a book or a beer. Get used to Letterman's gap-toothed smile of the absurd, or the view of the bedroom ceiling, or the indifference of random selection. Take it from a godless insomniac. Take it from the uncrazy twin
the guy who beat the biochemical rap. ~ Wally Lamb

And perhaps you might pretend, afterwards, that it was only a trick and that you just said it to make them stop and didn't really mean it. But that isn't true. At the time when it happens you do mean it. You think there's no other way of saving yourself and you're quite ready to save yourself that way. You want it to happen to the other person. You don't give a damn what they suffer. All you care about is yourself. ~ George Orwell

As a woman, I see myself as a garden, and I see myself as the gardener of myself, I see myself forming and pruning and watering and nourishing all the flowers and trees and vines and leaves in me. There is a world within yourself, that has so much to offer! If only you would walk into it each day! We were not meant to save the world; we were meant to save ourselves! And in saving ourselves, we have saved worlds innumerable. ~ C. JoyBell C.

Dropping cluster bombs from the air is not only less repugnant: it is somehow deemed, by Western people at least, to be morally superior,' says British psychologist Jacqueline Rose. 'Why dying with your victim* should be seen as a greater sin than saving yourself is unclear.'The colonial West had created a two-tier hierarchy that privileged itself at the expense of 'The Rest'. The Enlightenment had preached the equality of all human beings, yet Western policy in the developing world often adopted a double standard so that we failed to treat others as we would wish to be treated. Our focus on the nation seems to have made it hard for us to cultivate the global outlook that we need in our increasingly interrelated world. We must deplore any action that spills innocent blood or sows terror for its own sake. But we must also acknowledge and sincerely mourn the blood that we have shed in pursuit of national interests. Otherwise we can hardly defend ourselves against accusations of maintaining an 'arrogant silence' in the face of others' pain and of creating a world order in which some people's lives are deemed more valuable than others ~ Karen Armstrong

Saving others is always more important than saving yourself. It has to be, or none of us would do any good. ~ David Levithan

If there was one thing I'd learned, it was that you were responsible for your own ship. You had to look after the engine and make sure the plane was in order and ready to be flown. You were in charge of plotting your course. When you were in the pilot's seat, it was your hand on the throttle, no one else's. If your oil ran out or you lost your engine or the engine caught fire and you had to crash, you were the one saving yourself. No one else could do it for you. ~ Jennifer Niven

I said out loud, "Damn you for saving yourself. How come you left me with nothing but to love you and hate you, and that's gonna kill me, and you know it is."
Then I turned round, went back to the cellar room, and picked up the sewing.
Don't think she wasn't in every stitch I worked. She was in the wind and the rain and the creaking from the rocker. She sat on the wall with the birds and stared at me. When darkness fell, she fell with it. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

I'm lost in space and I want to find a way home. Nobody else can get me back to the planet, so I have to do it myself. ~ Susan Vaught

How can we pick and choose which parts of the Bible to follow? One thing is God's will and another is just cultural differences? What if it's all cultural? What if homosexuality or saving yourself for marriage is as outdated as women staying silent in church or Leviticus forbidding tattoos? ~ Trevor D. Richardson

Why do they even call it that, "saving yourself"? Like we need to be rescued from sex? It's not like virgins spend their whole lives engaged in the sacred ceremony of "being saved" from intercourse. ~ Robyn Schneider

Nothing more exhilarating ... than saving yourself by the simple act of waking. ~ Junot Diaz

Weren't you wearing a purity ring when we got here? Aren't you supposed to be saving yourself?" Shanti asked.
"Yeah," Mary Lou answered. "And then I thought, for what? You save leftovers. My sex is not a leftover, and it is not a Christmas present. ~ Libba Bray

Stop being the victim with the delusion that you're saving yourself. It's okay to let someone save you. ~ Shantaye Brown

Don't let hollow heroes distract you from saving yourself. ~ Nikki Rowe

On the brink of sleep I have a gloomy thought: that saving yourself is only pushing yourself even deeper into the trap rather than getting out. Dying is the only way out. ~ Erri De Luca

If you're the kind of person who has no guts, you just give up every time life pushes you. If you're that kind of person, you'll live all your life playing it safe, doing the right things, saving yourself for something that never happens. Then, you die a boring old man. ~ Robert T. Kiyosaki

Sometimes they threaten you with something - something you can't stand up to, can't even think about. And then you say, "Don't do it to me, do it to somebody else, do it to So-and-so." And perhaps you might pretend, afterwards, that it was only a trick and that you just said it to make them stop and didn't mean it. But that isn't true. At the time when it happens you do mean it. You think there's no other way of saving yourself, and you're quite ready to save yourself that way. You WANT it to happen to the other person. You don't give a damn what they suffer. All you care is yourself. ~ George Orwell

The wedding is the chief ceremony of the middle-class mythology, and it functions as the official entrée of the spouses to their middle-class status. This is the real meaning of saving up to get married. The young couple struggles to set up an image of comfortable life which they will be forced to live up to in the years that follow. ~ Germaine Greer

We cannot be secure by limiting our liberties, as some of our political leaders are demanding, but only by expanding themWe should take our example not from the military and political leaders shouting 'retaliate' and 'war' but from the doctors and nurses and firemen and policemen who have been saving lives in the midst of mayhem, whose first thoughts are not violence, but healing, and not vengeance, but compassion. ~ Howard Zinn

On a dangerous seacoast where shipwrecks often occur, there was once a crude little life-saving station. The building was just a hut, and there was only one boat. But the few devoted members kept a constant watch over the sea, and with no thought for themselves went out day and night tirelessly searching for the lost. Some of those who were saved, and various others in the surrounding area, wanted to become associated with the station and give their time and money and effort for the support of its work. New boats were bought and new crews trained. The little life-saving station grew.
Some of the members of the life-saving were unhappy that the building was so crude and poorly equipped. They felt that a more comfortable place should be provided as the first refuge of those saved from the sea. They replaced the emergency cots with beds and put better furniture in the enlarged building.
Now the life-saving station became a popular gathering place for its members, and they decorated it as sort of a club. Fewer members were now interested in going to sea on life-saving missions, so they hired lifeboat crews to do this work. The life-saving motif still prevailed in this club`s decoration, and there was a liturgical lifeboat in the room where the club initiations were held.
About this time a large ship was wrecked off the coast, and the hired crews brought in boatloads of cold, wet and half-drowned people. They were dirty and sick and some had black skin and some ha ~ Ross Paterson

Almost always, things are exactly as they appear. People are continually looking at the painful or boring parts of life with the half-hidden expectation that there is more going on beneath the surface, some deeper meaning that will eventually be unveiled; we're waiting for the saving grace, the shocking reveal. But almost always things just are what they are, almost always there's no glittering one hidden under the dirt. ~ Ben H. Winters

It was shocking to realize how many low-income Americans don't have savings accounts. ~ Dan Ariely

You know that this vignette and that vignette belong side by side, you know that a certain turn of phrase you've been saving will probably work best within a given section of the narrative. As in a jazz performance, writing lives or dies by what's produced in that moment. But that moment is attended by long preparation. ~ Teju Cole

Becca pressed her face against his shoulder again, and he knew he wasn´t going anywhere.
"You keep saving me", she said.
"Yeah, well." He stroked the hair down her back.
"I think we might be close to breaking even on that. ~ Brigid Kemmerer

The judge punishes lawbreakers as a burning house injures its occupants. A person may be burned to death while robbing a home or saving a friend. Similarly, from a moral point of view, the judge's work is good or evil, depending on whether the laws he enforces are good or evil. ~ Thomas Szasz

This isn't a story about how some guy finally saves me from myself.
I'm my own hero here; I do the saving. ~ Kerry Cohen

In the Deep South, God is a cotton king,
Trussed up in plantation whites and powdered over smooth
with a little bit of talcum from Momma's compact.
He's the Georgia dust that gets on everything, in everything,
Caking the soles of bare feet
sifting through cracks in church pews,
and catching in your lover's eyelashes.

In the Deep South, the Devil is a beautiful boy
who swears and cheats at billiards on Sunday.
He is the one who reaches up your skirt,
pulls out the prayers your were saving for someday
and lights them on fire with his tongue.
He will sing hymns while feasting on your forfeit heart,
call you blessed while peeling away dignity like stockings,
then drag you out in front of the church to be stoned.

In the Deep South, the Holy Spirit is an old woman
with hands brown and gnarled as the nuts she boils
and a voice soft and dark as the Appalachian sky.
She is the swamp kingdom matriarch children are sent to
when sins need to be wished away like warts,
the presence of whom straightens the spines of wayward souls
and coaxes a "Yes Ma'am" from the devil's own.

In the Deep South, Jesus is a mixed-race child
with drops of destiny mingled into his blood
and the names of the saints tattooed along his spine.
He has his mother's bearing, one that wears suffering nobly,
and baleful eyes that speak of the sins of his forefathers.
S.T. Gibson

Don't live like a CEO when you're still a sandwich artist. ~ Sophia Amoruso

When a man says to me, "I have the intensest love of nature," at once I know that he has none. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Then all was quiet save only for the low voices of those that talked together, ... , and saving, also, for the mellow snoring of Friar Tuck, who enjoyed his sleep with a noise as of one sawing soft wood very slowly. ~ Howard Pyle

I hope," she said, "that you didn't stay out of some foolish romantical notion."
He looked down, staring at the tumbled bedclothes. "Such as?"
"Saving my life."
He looked up again with a grimace. "Naturally not. I usually throw my houseguests off the cliff. ~ Laura Kinsale

The revival of consumers saving their money for retirement - rather than expecting their homes to provide the cushion - added with 'move down' buyers will depress real-estate prices. ~ David I. Rozenberg

Save money on the big, boring stuff so that you have something left over for life's little pleasures. ~ Elisabeth Leamy

All things are transient. Buddha says it is so, and Hock Seng, who didn't believe in or care about karma or the truths of the dharma when he was young, has come in his old age to understand his grandmother's religion and its painful truths. Suffering is his lot. Attachment is the source of his suffering. And yet he cannot stop himself from saving and preparing and striving to preserve himself in this life which has turned out so poorly.
How is it that I sinned to earn this bitter fate? Saw my clan whittled by red machetes? Saw my businesses burned and my clipper ships sunk? He closes his eyes, forcing memories away. Regret is suffering. ~ Paolo Bacigalupi

Put your financial life on autopilot as a form of 'forced' saving. ~ Suze Orman

You can never find a Christian who has acquired this valuable knowledge, this saving knowledge, by any process but the everlasting and all-sufficient 'people say.' ~ Mark Twain

She'd led her father to believe she was undecided in her profession when in actuality she quickly became one of Beckett's most trusted enforcers. ~ Debra Anastasia

I don't find acting to be a particularly noble way to make a living. I'm not saving anybody's life, I'm not a teacher, I'm not working for UNICEF. I don't think I'm some big deal. ~ Ellen Pompeo

The Olympic Games are for 'the youth of the world,' but they're organized and scored by countries. It's no surprise that countries treat them as vehicles of national pride, and assume that their people will be most interested in their own athletes. So anybody who was saving up to write an angry letter, blog post, or op-ed about NBC's chauvinistic coverage: don't bother! They're actually more above-the-fray than most. Also, their coverage is not shown anywhere except America - I know, it's because I can't get it that I'm watching Women's Air Pistol - so can't ruffle feathers elsewhere. ~ James Fallows

It's like you have a plan and someone comes along and makes you want to change it all, but you still like your first plan, no matter how fantastic the second one makes you feel. ~ Melina Marchetta

Even if they didn't win the battle, even if she couldn't save these kids, Angel knew, as she'd always known, that Max was their only chance at saving the world. ~ James Patterson

What have you done to my dairy?" he said. "What happened to the Black Hole of Calcutta I was saving for the setting of the Gothic horror play I was going to write one of these days? Where are all my beautiful spiders? Where are my gloomy corners, where ghoulies might lurk? What have you done with the six inches of dirt on the floor? That was good dirt. I was saving it. ~ Loretta Chase

The thing about 'Watchmen' that people should know is that when it came out there was absolutely nothing like it. Up until then, comics were about the same thing: a guy in tights fighting another guy in tights and saving the girl - that was it. ~ Gerard Way

The white woman across the aisle from me says 'Look,
look at all the history, that house
on the hill there is over two hundred years old, '
as she points out the window past me

into what she has been taught. I have learned
little more about American history during my few days
back East than what I expected and far less
of what we should all know of the tribal stories

whose architecture is 15,000 years older
than the corners of the house that sits
museumed on the hill. 'Walden Pond, '
the woman on the train asks, 'Did you see Walden Pond? '

and I don't have a cruel enough heart to break
her own by telling her there are five Walden Ponds
on my little reservation out West
and at least a hundred more surrounding Spokane,

the city I pretended to call my home. 'Listen, '
I could have told her. 'I don't give a shit
about Walden. I know the Indians were living stories
around that pond before Walden's grandparents were born

and before his grandparents' grandparents were born.
I'm tired of hearing about Don-fucking-Henley saving it, too,
because that's redundant. If Don Henley's brothers and sisters
and mothers and father hadn't come here in the first place

then nothing would need to be saved.'
But I didn't say a word to the woman about Walden
Pond because she smiled so much and seemed delighted
that I thought to b ~ Sherman Alexie

No investment on earth is so safe, so sure, so certain to enrich its owners as undeveloped realty. I always advise my friends to place their savings in realty near a growing city. There is no such savings bank anywhere. ~ Grover Cleveland

I need you to save the others."
"What others?" she asked desperately.
"The other drüskelle. Swear to me you'll at least try to help them, to make them see."
"We'll go together, Matthias. We'll be spies. Genya will tailor us and we'll go to Fjerda together. I'll wear all the ugly knitted vests you want."
"Go home to Ravka, Nina. Be free, as you were meant to be. Be a warrior, as you always have been. Just save some mercy for my people. There has to be a Fjerda worth saving. Promise me."
"I promise." The words were more sob than sound. ~ Leigh Bardugo

So what did you do?" I repeated.
"I hit Sophie on the back of the head with a universal remote. This thing was huge. It's like a cell phone from the '90s."
"You were supposed to get rid of Avari without hurting the host!"
"Yeah, I didn't get that memo. Maybe next time you should be a little more specific when you boss me around while I'm saving your ass. Though, frankly, this whiny little shrew is lucky she only has one bump, 'cause she's had this coming for a while."
-Kaylee and Tod ~ Rachel Vincent

Whenever A annoys or injures B on the pretense of saving or improving X, A is a scoundrel. ~ H.L. Mencken

I must assert in the most unqualified way that it is primarily and mainly for the sake of saving the soul that I seek the salvation of the body. ~ William Booth

Help means ruin and saving means slaying. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

The Holy Scripture is the only sufficient, certain, and infallible rule of all saving knowledge, faith, and obedience, although the light of nature, and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God, as to leave men inexcusable; yet are they not sufficient to give that knowledge of God and his will which is necessary unto salvation. ~ Various

If you look at the play very closely, this is a thirdhand report of what a wonderful hero Macbeth is for saving Scotland. And in the next scene, he's planning to murder Duncan, and you never really know why or what's behind Macbeth. ~ David Hewson

Galen slides into his desk, unsettled by the way the sturdy blond boy talking to Emma casually rests his arm on the back of her seat.
"Good morning," Galen says, leaning over to wrap his arms around her, nearly pulling her from the chair. He even rests his cheek against hers for good measure. "Good morning...er, Mark, isn't it?" he says, careful to keep his voice pleasant. Still, he glances meaningfully at the masculine arm still lining the back of Emma's seat, almost touching her.
To his credit-and safety-Mark eases the offending limb back to his own desk, offering Emma a lazy smile full of strikingly white teeth. "You and Forza, huh? Did you clear that with his groupies?"
She laughs and gently pries Galen's arms off her. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the eruption of pink spreading like spilled paint over her face. She's not used to dating him yet. Until about ten minutes ago, he wasn't used to it either. Now though, with the way Mark eyes her like a tasty shellfish, playing the role of Emma's boyfriend feels all too natural.
The bell rings, saving Emma from a reply and saving Mark thousands of dollars in hospital bills. Emma shoots Galen a withering look, which he deflects with that he hopes is an enchanting grin. He measures his success by the way her blush deepens but stops short when he notices the dark circles under her eyes.
She didn't sleep last night. Not that he thought she would. She'd been quiet on the flight home from Destin two n ~ Anna Banks

I've lived on the equator all my life and we never had to change clocks. Now they're telling me time goes forward an hour after midnight? What is this, Narnia? ~ Joyce Rachelle

You don't speak much, do you?" ter Borcht said, circling him slowly.
Fittingly, Fang said nothing.
Vhy do you let a girl be de leader?" ter Borcht asked, a calculating look in his eye.
She's the tough one," Fang said.
Dang right, I thought proudly.
Is dere anysing special about you?" asked ter Borcht. "Anysing vorth saving?"
Fang pretended to think, gazing up at the ceiling. "Besides my fashion sense? I play a mean harmonica. ~ James Patterson

Health care is a far more serious, immediate and destructive problem than social security ... The upfront investment needed to fund system wide [health care] reform ... would be far offset by the savings. ~ Henry Simmons

I think the essence of [Kurt] Vonnegut's humanism lay in his emphasis on human kindness as, so to speak, our saving grace. ~ Michael Dirda

People should take every opportunity they can to save money because it really adds up, and the best way I know to do that is to make your savings automatic. ~ David Bach

It is important to gain knowledge, yes, but any advantage we will have in the eternal life to come will be a knowledge, I am sure, of those saving principles upon which our eternal life will depend. ~ Henry D. Taylor

I have one thing that I'm saving for my son. It's a 1965 Chevy Impala Super Sport. It's a beautiful sea-foam green color. It's like a teal green, white interior, and it's just a gorgeous car. ~ CeeLo Green

who is actually delusional? Who is actually following Jesus: fundamentalist Christians rejecting gay men and lesbians' right to marry, or atheist humanists treating men and women with love and dignity? Fact-based, enlightened atheists sometimes treat people like shit, and delusional fundamentalists sometimes miss a book event in order to help a lonely hotel maid. Labels don't mean anything. Who cares about labels when someone is slapping you in the face? Who cares about labels when someone is saving you from drowning? ~ Frank Schaeffer

Isi is fast becoming my universe. We share the common denominator of completely understanding each other; and being able to feel the sincere perceptive acceptance of our individual composition. It is a connection I can't believe I was willing to live without. But with the experience now well within my reach, I'm salivating to secure it with both hands and hold onto it; like an oxygen mask delivering me life saving breaths, while I navigate the cavernous depths of an ocean of emotion.
~Silas Tayte, Fake.~ ~ Criss Copp