harm Quotes

″Not causing harm requires staying awake. Part of being awake is slowing down enough to notice what we say and do. The more we witness our emotional chain reactions and understand how they work, the easier it is to refrain. It becomes a way of life to stay awake, slow down, and notice.″

″Not causing harm obviously includes not killing or robbing or lying to people. It also includes not being aggressive - not being aggressive with our actions, our speech, or our minds. Learning not to cause harm to ourselves or others is a basic Buddhist teaching on the healing power of nonaggression.″

″The most fundamental aggression to ourselves, the most fundamental harm we can do to ourselves, is to remain ignorant by not having the courage and the respect to look at ourselves honestly and gently.″

“I open up a paper clip and scratch it across the inside of my left wrist. Pitiful. If a suicide attempt is a cry for help, then what is this? A whimper, a peep? I draw little windowcracks of blood, etching line after line until it stops hurting. It looks like I arm-wrestled a rosebush.”

“Things done at the wrong time may turn out to be not worth doing at all - simply a waste of time - or even harmful.”

“And I am sure it is never sadness—a proper, straight natural response to loss—that does people harm, but all the other things, all the resentment, dismay, doubt and self-pity with it.”

“The hands of society are harsh, and this man was a striking sample of its handiwork. He was a beast.”

“You’re asking yourself, can I give this child the best possible upbringing and keep her out of harm’s way her whole life long? The answer is no, you can’t. But nobody else can either. Not a state home, that’s for sure . . . The best they can do is turn their heads while the kids learn to pick locks and snort hootch, and then try to keep them out of jail. Nobody can protect a child from the world. That’s why it’s the wrong thing to ask, if you’re really trying to make a decision.”

“That’s all I want—to do no harm. ”

“All too often women believe it is a sign of commitment, an expression of love, to endure unkindness or cruelty, to forgive and forget. In actuality, when we love rightly we know that the healthy, loving response to cruelty and abuse is putting ourselves out of harm’s way.”

“Fear is caused by whatever we feel has great power of destroying or of harming us in ways that tend to cause us great pain.”

“Besides the crime which consists in violating the law, and varying from the right rule of reason, whereby a man so far becomes degenerate, and declares himself to quit the principles of human nature, and to be a noxious creature, there is commonly injury done to some person or other, and some other man receives damage by his transgression: in which case he who hath received any damage, has, besides the right of punishment common to him with other men, a particular right to seek reparation from him that has done it: and any other person, who finds it just, may also join with him that is injured, and assist him in recovering from the offender so much as may make satisfaction for the harm he has suffered.”

“What business had you to pull me down out of the water, and throw me to the bottom of the air? I never did you any harm.”

″‘A Finder of Occasions?’ I asked, and the stranger replied, ‘Someone who lies in wait until the opportunity is afforded to do harm or wreak havoc...without leaving a trace behind.‘”

“Nothing can harm you as much as your own thoughts unguarded.”

″ ‘We will have to shut you up where you can’t do any more harm.’ They took him away and shut him in prison.”

“Those that can heal can harm; those that can cure can kill.”

“I see the Master as a man having terrible choices to make; whatever he chooses will do harm, but maybe if he does the right thing, a little less harm will come about than if he chooses wrong. God preserve me from having to make that sort of choice.”

“Your honors, I am able by secret magic to enchant all creatures living beneath the sun that creep or swim or fly or run. What I can do most wizards can’t. Chiefly I reserve my charm for creatures that’ll do you harm - the mole and toad, the newt and viper - and people call me the Pied Piper,”

“We cannot protect the young from harm. Pain must and will come.”

“Man Alan,” said I, “ye are neither very wise nor very Christian to blow off so many words of anger. They will do the man ye call the Fox no harm, and yourself no good. Tell me your tale plainly out. What did he next?” ” ‘And that’s a good observe, David,’ said Alan. ‘Troth and indeed, they will do him no harm; the more’s the pity! And barring that about Christianity (of which my opinion is quite otherwise, or I would be nae Christian), I am much of your mind.’ ‘Opinion here or opinion there,’ said I, ‘it’s a kent thing that Christianity forbids revenge.’ ‘Ay’ said he, ‘it’s well seen it was a Campbell taught ye! It would be a convenient world for them and their sort, if there was no such a thing as a lad and a gun behind a heather bush!’ ”

“You are young, but you are strong and powerful above your years, and can better protect them then I could. I see darker days yet coming- but it is His will, and who shall doubt that that is right? I pray you not to make your birth and lineage known as yet- it can do no good, and it may do harm-”

“But mind maidens, he must not see you, or know that you are here. He is but a savage now, and like the beasts which perish; and from the beasts which perish he must learn. So you must not play with him, or speak to him, or let him see you: but only keep him from being harmed.”

“Catherine used to boast that she stood between you and bodily harm: she meant that certain persons would not hurt you for fear of offending her.”

But I loved Catherine too; and her brother requires attendance, which, for her sake, I shall supply. Now that she’s dead, I see her in Hindley: Hindley has exactly her eyes, if you had not tried to gouge them out, and made them black and red; and her—

“What are you talking?—I won’t give you money,” she added, as she followed him to the door, “because you’ll drink it up, and do yourself harm.”