What is preserve?

Famous quotes containing the word preserve:

    The President has paid dear for his White House. It has commonly cost him all his peace, and the best of his manly attributes. To preserve for a short time so conspicuous an appearance before the world, he is content to eat dust before the real masters who stand erect behind the throne.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    In almost all climes the tortoise and the frog are among the precursors and heralds of this season, and birds fly with song and glancing plumage, and plants spring and bloom, and winds blow, to correct this slight oscillation of the poles and preserve the equilibrium of nature.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    The worst of charity is, that the lives you are asked to preserve are not worth preserving.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)