"Chains," said the Tinker, coming up behind her. "They bind us, whether we want them to or not. But a heart without chains would have nothing to hold it, might simply blow away."

The heart is an infinity of massive chains, chaining little handfuls of air.

The chains that bind us most closely are the ones we have broken.

We forge the chains we wear in life.

Chains, my baby's got me locked up in chains
And they ain't the kind that you can see
Woh these chains of love got a hold on me yeah.

It is the disaster of our entire existence that we live thus away from our soul, and stand in such dread of its slightest movement. Did we but allow it to smile frankly in its silence and its radiance, we should be already living an eternal life. We have only to think for an instant how much it succeeds in accomplishing during those rare moments when we knock off its chains – for it is our custom to enchain it as though it were distraught – what it does in love, for instance, for there we do permit it at times to approach the lattices of external life.

Even that has its reason; it is often better to be in chains than to be free.

Tethered heart, free spirit. — If one tethers one's heart severely and imprisons it, one can give one's spirit many liberties.

It is our duty to fight for our freedom.
It is our duty to win.
We must love each other and support each other.
We have nothing to lose but our chains.

These five links stand out in the chain that binds our will. They hold us, guide us, coerce us — And we rattle them still. ~The Bern Seer~

The whole world yearns after freedom, yet each creature is in love with his chains; this is the first paradox and inextricable knot of our nature.

It is difficult to free people from the chains they revere.

But I was immobilized — less by another’s static imposition than by my own static will. For the enemy had in thrall my power to choose, which he had used to make a chain for binding me. From bad choices an urge arises; and the urge, yielded to, becomes a compulsion; and the compulsion, unresisted, becomes a slavery — each link in this process connected with the others, which is why I call it a chain — and that chain had a tyrannical grip around me. The new will I felt stirring in me, a will to 'give you free worship' and enjoy what I yearned for, my God, my only reliable happiness, could not break away from the will made strong by long dominance. Two wills were mine, old and new, of the flesh, of the spirit, each warring on the other, and between their dissonances was my soul disintegrating.

All of us are chained to Fortune. Some are bound by a loose and golden chain, others by a tight chain of baser metal; but what difference does it make? The same captivity holds all men in its toils.