The concept of progress acts as a protective mechanism to shield us from the terrors of the future.
One time I saw a tiny Joshua tree sapling growing not too far from the old tree. I wanted to dig it up and replant it near our house. I told Mom that I would protect it from the wind and water it every day so that it could grow nice and tall and straight. Mom frowned at me. "You'd be destroying what makes it special," she said. "It's the Joshua tree's struggle that gives it its beauty.
Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.
It would take battalions of angels to protect us from our dreaded dangers, though in a long lifetime few of the dangers come to anything.
Our constitution protects aliens, drunks and U.S. Senators.
Never raise your hand to your children; it leaves your midsection unprotected.
If you can break down those walls you’ve spent so many years building to protect yourself, you can achieve anything.
As Mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality.
I could feel the warmth of his presence as if a soft blanket had been wrapped around my soul, around my heart. It held me and protected me. It sheltered me and I knew I wasn’t alone anymore.
If anyone had been paying attention to the signs, they would have realized that air turns white when things are about to change, that paper cuts mean there's more to what's written on the page than meets the eye, and that birds are always out to protect you from things you don't see.