Self Preservation Quotes

“Certain motherfuckers think they can fuck with my shit, but you can't kill the Rooster. You might can fuck him up some times, but, bitch, nobody kills the motherfucking Rooster. You know what I'm saying?”
― David Sedaris, Me Talk Pretty One Day

“A strong man cannot help a weaker unless the weaker is willing to be helped, and even then the weak man must become strong of himself; he must, by his own efforts, develop the strength which he admires in another. None but himself can alter his condition.”
― James Allen, As a Man Thinketh

“I am an extremely sincere individual. I am sincere, to a fault. One of the many things that I have come to realize, to learn, is that sincerity must be reserved and given only to those who deserve it. And one must save one's emotions, channeling them only to the people who are worthy of it. One must not throw one's pearls to the pigs.”
― C. JoyBell C.

“Keep in mind, Eragon, that no one thinks himself a villain, and few make decisions they think are wrong. A person may dislike his choice, but he will stand by it because, even in the worst circumstances, he believes that it was the best option available to him at the time.”
― Christopher Paolini

“As you go about your daily life, you will encounter many lemons. Sour expressions, sour attitudes, sour auras! The good thing is that if you don't want to be a lemon, you don't have to be! Just don't let those lemons rub themselves all over you! And you don't even have to save them! Let lemons be lemons! One of the most important things that I have ever learned, is that I don't have to save people.”
― C. JoyBell C.

“After a traumatic experience, the human system of self-preservation seems to go onto permanent alert, as if the danger might return at any moment.”
― Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

“It dawns on you one day... how precious your life is and how not okay it is for anyone, ever, to cause you any amount of suffering, ever. Then the next time you step out the door you look at everyone and you’re thinking, “My life is precious and you’re not allowed to hurt me.”
― C. JoyBell C.

“When you're surrounded by stupidity, self-preservation isn't a sin.”
― Meljean Brook, Riveted

“Memories are meant to serve you, not enslave you.”
― A.J. Darkholme, Rise of the Morningstar

“She must protect herself. There would be no one to do it for her. A plan started to prick up its ears inside her, slowly, but getting stronger.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There

“...the human being to lack that second skin we call egoism has not yet been born, it lasts much longer than the other one, that bleeds so readily.”
― José Saramago, Blindness

“Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey 'people.' People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war. If it is held that the instinct for preserving the species should always be obeyed at the expense of other instincts, whence do we derive this rule of precedence? To listen to that instinct speaking in its own case and deciding in its own favour would be rather simple minded. Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of all the rest. By the very act of listening to one rather than to others we have already prejudged the case. If we did not bring to the examination of our instincts a knowledge of their comparative dignity we could never learn it from them. And that knowledge cannot itself be instinctive: the judge cannot be one of the parties judged: or, if he is, the decision is worthless and there is no ground for placing preservation of the species above self-preservation or sexual appetite.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

“Where's your sense of adventure?

It died under mysterious circumstances. My sense of self-preservation found the body, but assures me it has an airtight alibi.
-Captain Tagon & Captain Andreyasn”
― Howard Tayler, Resident Mad Scientist

“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

“Secrets and lies… Everyone in the world deals with these every day of their lives.
To protect themselves. To protect someone else. It is all in the way that you look at the
situation.”
― Lacey Thorn

“She's Devine.
She's Magic.
And she didn't have to wait for anyone to tell her in order for her to believe that about herself.
And that's what made her so magically beautiful.”
― C.R. Bittar

“Every man's his own friend, my dear," replied Fagin, with his most insinuating grin. "He hasn't as good a one as himself anywhere."
Except sometimes," replied Morris Bolter, assuming the air of a man of the world. "Some people are nobody's enemies but their own, yer know."
Don't believe that!" said the Jew. "When a man's his own enemy, it's only because he's too much his own friend; not because he's careful for everybody but himself. Pooh! Pooh! There ain't such a thing in nature.”
― Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist

“She’d survived the Drowned Cities because she wasn’t anything like Mouse. When the bullets started flying and warlords started making examples of peacekeeper collaborators, Mahlia had kept her head down, instead of standing up like Mouse. She’d looked out for herself, first. And because of that, she’d survived.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, The Drowned Cities

“That level of responsibility drastically conflicts with my belief in self-preservation by inactivity.”
― C.L. Allen, I Am Become Zombie

“Save your shaming for the girl, Doctor. If I cared for human approval, I would have been dead long ago.” He turned and started wading into the swamp. “Time is passing. I, for one, have no intention of remaining here for your betrayer to bring back the soldiers and their guns.”
― Paolo Bacigalupi, The Drowned Cities

“She seemed almost to have a perverse impulse to make anyone who cared about her regret it, to find the thing that would most appall those people and then do that until they had to run away as a matter of self-preservation.”
― Joe Hill, NOS4A2

“...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

“Me avergüenza sentir miedo, incluso en sueños, porque eso me revela que aún deseo estar vivo. El instinto de supervivencia es lo más humillante de todo.”
― Rafael Balanzá, Los asesinos lentos

“I denied myself happiness, denied myself love and passion and devotion, out of fear of losing. Out of fear of being abandoned again.”
― Milena McKay, A Whisper of Solace

“Child, it's a very bad thing for a woman to face the worst that can happen to her, because after she's faced the worst she can't ever really fear anything again. And it's very bad for a woman not to be afraid of something... ...that's been fifty years ago, as I said, and since that time I've never been afraid of anything or anybody because I'd known the worst that could happen to me. And that lack of fear has gotten me into a lot of trouble and cost me a lot of happiness. God intended women to be timid and frightened creatures and there's something unnatural about a woman who isn't afraid... Scarlett, always save something to fear - even as you save something to love...”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

“Child, it's a very bad thing for a woman to face the worst that can happen to her, because after she's faced the worst she can't ever really fear anything again. And it's very bad for a woman not to be afraid of something . . . that's been fifty years ago, as I said, and since that time I've never been afraid of anything or anybody because I'd known the worst that could happen to me. And that lack of fear has gotten me into a lot of trouble and cost me a lot of happiness. God intended women to be timid and frightened creatures and there's something unnatural about a woman who isn't afraid... Scarlett, always save something to fear - even as you save something to love...”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

“It can all end in a moment. Take for yourself now what tomorrow might not give you.”
― Guillermo del Toro, Falling Down

“It is a law, doubtless, but a law neither more nor less normal than that of destruction even self-destruction. Is it possible that the normal law of humanity is contained in this sentiment of self preservation?”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot

“Hammer the Poles until they despair of living [...] I have all the sympathy in the world for their situation, but if we want to exist we have no choice but to wipe them out: wolves are only what God made them, but we shoot them all the same when we can get at them.”
― Otto von Bismarck, Bismarck's Speeches and Letters

“Why is it that people are always trying to kill you?' His voice was low, on the edge of something deadly. 'You need to be more careful.'

'How is this my fault?'

'You have no sense of self-preservation.' Archer took another angry step. 'If someone labelled a bottle poison, you would drink it. You take warnings as invitations. You can seem to stay away from all the things that will hurt you.'

Like me.”
― Stephanie Garber, A Curse for True Love