Quotes About Individuality

I have nothing to declare except my genius.

Every woman is a rebel.

How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being

I may not agree with you, but I will defend to the death your right to make an ass of yourself.

The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.

I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world.

If you want to be a grocer, or a general, or a politician, or a judge, you will invariably become it; that is your punishment. If you never know what you want to be, if you live what some might call the dynamic life but what I will call the artistic life, if each day you are unsure of who you are and what you know you will never become anything, and that is your reward.

The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly - that is what each of us is here for.

I won't tell you that the world matters nothing, or the world's voice, or the voice of society. They matter a good deal. They matter far too much. But there are moments when one has to choose between living one's own life, fully, entirely, completely—or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands. You have that moment now. Choose!

Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets.

A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.

Conformity is the last refuge of the unimaginitive

Love is a gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and everybody else.

I think it's very healthy to spend time alone. You need to know how to be alone and not be defined by another person.

One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art.

I am one of those who are made for exceptions, not for laws.

Now produce your explanation and pray make it improbable.

I can't help detesting my relations. I suppose it comes from the fact that none of us can stand other people having the same faults as ourselves.

Art only begins where Imitation ends.

Now art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic.

I am the only person I would like to know thoroughly

To disagree with three-fourths of the British public is one of the first requisites of sanity.

It's tragic how few people ever 'possess their souls' before they die. 'Nothing is more rare in any man', says Emerson, 'than an act of his own.' It is quite true. Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their life is a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

Is insincerity such a terrible thing? I think not. It is merely a method by which we can multiply our personalities.