Self Protection Quotes

“The best lightning rod for your protection is your own spine.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“No boundary or barrier surrounds the heart of a person that loves their self and others.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“The guarantee of safety in a battering relationship can never be based upon a promise from the perpetrator, no matter how heartfelt. Rather, it must be based upon the self-protective capability of the victim. Until the victim has developed a detailed and realistic contingency plan and has demonstrated her ability to carry it out, she remains in danger of repeated abuse.”
― Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

“Lovers are not snails; they don't have to protrude from their shells and meet each other halfway. Meet me within your own self.”
― Jerzy Kosiński, Steps

“We use our minds not to discover facts but to hide them. One of things the screen hides most effectively is the body, our own body, by which I mean, the ins and outs of it, its interiors. Like a veil thrown over the skin to secure its modesty, the screen partially removes from the mind the inner states of the body, those that constitute the flow of life as it wanders in the journey of each day. (p.28)”
― Antonio R. Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness

“Talent is useful, but always keep your dagger sharp.”
― Amanda Quick, Quicksilver

“My only defense is the acquisition of vocabulary.”
― Margaret Edson, Wit

“Being in a state of denial is a
universally human response to
situations which threaten to
overwhelm. People who were abused
as children sometimes carry their
denial like precious cargo without a
port of destination. It enabled us to
survive our childhood experiences, and often we still live in survival mode decades beyond the actual abuse. We protect ourselves to excess because we learned abruptly and painfully that no one else would.”
― Sarah E. Olson, Becoming One: A Story of Triumph Over Dissociative Identity Disorder

“These times are hard, but I won't walk away jaded, darker, different. I feel. I cry to heal. If you saw me in those moments, maybe you'd think I was a mess. But I don't call it a mess. I call it strength.

Real strength isn't about building walls. Real strength is about staying open, no matter what. It's about taking life—with all the pleasures that fade and all the pain that sticks around for too long—and not shutting down, not closing down, not building up those walls.

Resilience isn't hard, impenetrable, iron. Resilience is flexible, soft, warm.

Stay strong. The real kind of strong. Don't let your automatic mind reflexes make you jump away from pain and towards pleasure. Make choices. See clearly. And never, ever, stop feeling.

Don't go numb. The world, even with all its horror, is too beautiful to miss.”
― Vironika Tugaleva

“I found myself in a pattern of being attracted to people who were somehow unavailable, and what I realized was that I was protecting myself because I equate the idea of connection and love with trauma and death.”
― Zachary Quinto

“I know a little something about fear, honey. I know what a relief it feels like to give into it at first. It’s not hard to persuade yourself that you’re doing the right thing—that you’re making the smart, safe decision. But fear is insidious. It takes anything you’re willing to give it, the parts of your life you don’t mind cutting out, but when you’re not looking, it takes anything else it damn well pleases, too.”
― Andrea Lochen, Imaginary Things

“I'm no expert, but in my limited experience, women aren't born women. They start out as girls. And every girl, from the moment they can dream, imagines the rescue. The knight. The castle. Life in a fairy tale. If you don't believe me, watch boys and girls on a playground. No one teaches us to do this. The kid in us actually believes in things that are too good to be true. Before life convinces us we can't and they're not.

Then life kicks in. Boys become men. Girls become women. For any number of reasons we are wounded and, sadly, wounded people wound people. So many of us grow into doubting, hopeless, callous adults protecting hardened hearts. Medicating the pain. Life isn't what we imagined. Nor are we. And we didn't start out trying to get there. Far from it. But it's who we've become. One day we turn around, and what we once dreamed or hoped is a distant echo. We've forgotten what it sounded like. Once pure and unadulterated, the voice of hope is now muted by all the stuff we've crammed on top of it. And we're okay with that. For some illogical reason, we stand atop the mine shaft of ourselves, shoving stuff into the pipe that is us, telling our very soul, 'Shut up. Not another word.' Why? Because the cry of our heart hurts when unanswered. And the longer it remains unanswered, the deeper the hurt. In self-protection we inhale resignation and exhale indifference.

[Murphy Shepherd]”
― Charles Martin, The Letter Keeper

“...in my own perilous position, and above all, in the remarkable game that I saw Silver now engaged upon-keeping the mutineers together with one hand, and grasping, with the other, after every means, possible and impossible, to make his peace and save his miserable life.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island

“If my life experience had taught me anything, it's this: the wounds of the past carry a lot of weight when it comes to walking into one's future, and if anything can rob you of now, it's yesterday. We are really good at taking the pain of our past and projecting it into our future because it's what we know, and yet our past has almost nothing to do with our future other than being connected by seconds. That's it. So we face a choice. Either shine a light on yesterday and expose it, or forfeit the joy of now and the hope of tomorrow. I realize this is easier said than done, but left untreated, experiential pain becomes a fortress in our gut that houses a lie spoken by fear. And behind that fear is an idol of our own making. One we carve by hand when we, as self-made people, worship our own creator: us. As if we can do anything to protect ourselves. Maybe it's articulated in the statement, 'I'll let you in, but only so far. And under no circumstances will I let you down there. That's the basement. That's off limits. We don't go there.' We raise a finger. 'Touch that doorknob and I'm gone.'

This whole thing is a cyclical downward spiral. We can't protect us. Fear would suggest we can, but fear is a liar. Always has been.

[Murphy Shepherd]”
― Charles Martin, The Letter Keeper

“How in the world are we supposed to engage life when we spend all of our life building walls to protect ourselves from the very thing that we say we want to engage? The answer is, I think, understanding that God doesn’t need walls but we need Him.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“The architect of the walls around me is the fear within me. And if I have foolishly granted this architect full license to build whatever it pleases in whatever manner it pleases, I will find that I have confused safety with imprisonment.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Any refuge that I create is something akin to a cardboard box in the rain. The harder the rain, the more boxes I go through.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“The truth is, I was never a nihilist at all. I just wore nihilism like a shield to protect my unrelenting tragic optimism.”
― Sean Norris, Heaven and Hurricanes

“Pain touches everyone differently. Some people suffer from a genetic defect that weakens and kills their pain neurons. People who are unable to register physical pain usually die young because they lack an essential survival monitor that tells them how to protect themselves.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“The one thing that will help in almost any New York City situation is to simply appear crazier than anyone else around.”
― A.D. Aliwat, In Limbo

“When we give away our boundaries, we give away our life.”
― W. Allen Morris, All In: How to Risk Everything for Everything that Matters

“Like her harshness was a kind of coat she wrapped tightly round herself so nobody could see what was underneath.”
― Hazel Prior, How the Penguins Saved Veronica

“Dear Superwoman, be on guard all the time. Be careful of what you let into your heart and what you give from your heart. You have one heart after all.”
― Gift Gugu Mona, Woman of Virtue: Power-Filled Quotes for a Powerful Woman

“What are you protecting yourself from? Will you sell your life for fear's price?”
― Laurence Galian, 666: Connection with Crowley

“All of these things make a buffer, and I say I like to keep my buffer broad.”
― Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

“Andrew [Haswell Green]...thought of his impending travel on the brig. Of Samuel Tilden. Of why the friendship had vanished, the errors he must have made, too many signs of affection, or of desperation, neediness, the most appalling of all impressions to make on a fellow man. His only available course now was to put distance between his failures and his future, tighten the stranglehold on his feelings, and harden his heart protectively against the pain of further great mistakes.”
― Jonathan Lee, The Great Mistake

“If a child doesn't have a secure and stable relationship after a parent leaves, she keeps her feelings inside because it's not safe to put them out there. Later on the child thinks, 'I'm not going to trust you.' Her future attachments get compromised, because she never worked through the attachments she did have. All she had to do was protect herself, and part of that protection was not to attach to anyone.”
― Therese A. Rando, Treatment of Complicated Mourning

“I am thinking of getting a conceal carry permit for my ‘Risky’ neighborhood walks. I was attacked by an aggressive dog in the street that bit my ankle. I was getting ready to give it a big kick to its head when it ran off. If I had a gun, I would have shot it. Now that dogs are killing people, it has elevated the need for self-protection.”
― Steven Magee

“...a life laid down is better than the one picked up.

--MacTHOMAS POCKETS”
― Charles Martin, The Last Exchange

“Pessimism ain't the fucking antidote, don't get me wrong. But a healthy dose of it does a lot of good.”
― Duncan Ralston, Dead Men Walking: a Novelette