Quotes About Individuality

People define themselves aesthetically at a very young age.

There's the beautiful people and then there's the rest of us.

I believe that any great work of art is, in itself, a form of resistance against a sense of powerlessness.

Parent is not the same as mother or father, Adult means something quite different from a grownup, and Child is not the same as a little person.

By nature all men are equal in liberty, but not in other endowments.

In like manner humanity understood is only in this or that man; but that humanity be apprehended without conditions of individuality, that is, that it be abstracted and consequently considered as universal, occurs to humanity inasmuch as it is brought under the consideration of the intellect, in which there is a likeness of the specific nature, but not of the principles of individuality.

The difference between one man and another is not mere ability . . . it is energy.

All human beings must perform according to their nature.

I did not want to be anything, and naturally I did not want to turn myself into a mere profession: all I ever wanted was to be myself.

The thinking man always finds himself in a gigantic orphanage in which people are continually proving to him that he has no parents.

It is the common wonder of all men, how among so many millions of faces, there should be none alike.

There are mystically in our faces certain characters which carry in them the motto of our souls, wherein he that cannot read A, B, C may read our natures.

I will go on adventuring, changing, opening my mind & my eyes, refusing to be stamped & stereotyped. The thing is to free ones self; to let it find its dimensions, not be impeded. (Diary 4: 187)

The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity. The believing man is the original man; whatsoever he believes, he believes it for himself, not for another.

Battles, in these ages, are transacted by mechanism; with the slightest possible development of human individuality or spontaneity; men now even die, and kill one another, in an artificial manner.

Originality is a thing we constantly clamour for, and constantly quarrel with.

The merit of originality is not novelty, it is sincerity. The believing man is the original man.

Find a man whose words paint you a likeness, you have found a man worth something; mark his manner of doing it, as very characteristic of him.

Know thyself': long enough has that poor 'self' of thine tormented thee; thou wilt never get to 'know' it, I believe! Think it not thy business, this knowing of thyself; thou art an unknowable individual: know what thou canst work at; and work at it, like a Hercules! That will be thy better plan.

Sartre'?n "Varolu? özden önce gelir" deyi?i insanlar?n, mesela bir elbise ask?s?n?n ki gibi önceden belirlenmi? bir özü bulunmad??? anlam?na gelir. Yani bizler belirlenmemi?izdir ve kendimizi yeniden yaratmakta özgürüzdür.

Kendimizi sadece sabit kimlikli nesneler olarak görürsek Olmay? b?rak?r?z. Ve kendimizi nesneler olarak görmenin yollar?ndan biri toplumsal rollerle özde?le?mektir. Bu kimliklenmeye Sartre mauvaise foi, yani kötü inanç der.

Again and again Someone in the crowd wakes up. He has no ground in the crowd And he emerges according to much broader laws. He carries strange customs with him and demands room for bold gestures. The future speaks ruthlessly through him. —Rainer Maria Rilke (Über Kunst, 1899)

Solitude, though it may be silent as light, is like light, the mightiest of agencies; for solitude is essential to man. All men come into this world alone and leave it alone.

You never know how your kids are going to turn out. You can raise them with all the best intentions, and then they're own people, and they have their own inner conflicts. You just hope you've given them some good stuff to navigate with.