Quotes About Individuality

When I discover who I am, I'll be free.

And my problem was that I always tried to go in everyone's way but my own.

I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: That I am nobody but myself.

And I knew that it was better to live out one's absurdity than to die for that of others.

I was pulled this way and that for longer than I can remember. And my problem was that I always tried to go in everyone's way but my own. I have also been called one thing and then another while no one really wished to hear what I called myself. So after years of trying to adopt the opinions of others I finally rebelled. I am an invisible man.

I prefer a man who is unskillful, who is an awkward writer, but who has something to say, who is dealing himself one time on every page.

Success in any endeavor depends on the degree to which it is an expression of your true self.

Every man has his own vocation, talent is the call.

The characteristic of genuine heroism is its persistency. All men have wandering impulses, fits and starts of generosity. But when you have resolved to be great, abide by yourself, and do not try to reconcile yourself with the world. The heroic cannot be common, nor the common heroic.

The basis of good manners is self-reliance.

Sanity is very rare: every man almost, and every woman, has a dash of madness.

Accept your genius and say what you think.

Congratulate yourselves if you have done something strange and extravagant and broken the monotony of a decorous age.

If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.

It is easy in the world to live after the worlds opinions; it is easy in solitude to live after your own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

All the thoughts of a turtle are turtle

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in our private heart is for all men - that is genius.

Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members…. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

A man must consider what a rich realm he abdicates when he becomes a conformist.

All the thoughts of a turtle are turtles, and of a rabbit, rabbits.

Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend.

Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke and Bacon were only young men in libraries when they wrote these books.

All that Adam had, all that Caesar could, you have and can do.... Build, therefore, your own world.

Great men or men of great gifts you shall easily find, but symmetrical men never.