Quotes About Individuality

We see things not as they are, but as we are. Because it is the 'I' behind the 'eye' that does the seeing.

There's a rare few that are able to drift through life without being owned by someone.

The poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, experienced this realization early in life: "Since boyhood, by repeating my own name silently, an intense awareness of individuality came, then seemed to dissolve and fade away into boundless being, and this was not a confused state, but clear and sure, utterly beyond words, where death was an almost laughable impossibility.

at that moment, the sum of the crowd's IQ was far below that of its most modest single member. Mobs have passions, not brains.

We thought we were special, opening our perceptions, honing our empathy, spilling that cauldron of shared pain onto the dance floor of language and then trying to make a minuet out of all that chaotic hurt. It doesn't matter a damn bit. We're no avatars, no sons of god or man. We're only us, scribbling our conceits alone, reading alone, and dying alone.

Forcing school children to recite a national pledge doesn't sound very American to me," said James. "No," agreed Holmes. "It sounds German. Very German.

In the end, it doesn't matter a damn bit. We thought we were special, opening our perceptions, honing our empathy, spilling that cauldron of shared pain onto the dance floor of language and then trying to make a minuet out of all that chaotic hurt. It doesn't matter a damn bit. We're no avatars, no sons of god or man. We're only us, scribbling our conceits alone, reading alone, and dying alone. Goddamn it hurts.

Among us we represent islands of time as well as separate oceans of perspective.

Among us we represent islands of time as well as separate oceans of perspective. Or perhaps more aptly put, each of us may hold a piece to a puzzle no one else has been able to solve since humankind first landed on Hyperion.

In the end, it doesn't matter a damn bit. We thought we were special, opening our perceptions, honing our empathy, spilling that cauldron of shared pain onto the dance floor of language and then trying to make a minuet out of all that chaotic hurt. It doesn't matter a damn bit. We're no avatars, no sons of god or man. We're only us, scribbling our conceits alone, reading alone, and dying alone.

said the bald little androgyny.

the sum of the crowd's IQ was far below that of its most modest single member. Mobs have passions, not brains.

Si un escritor se pone muy enfermo, todo se detiene. Si se muere, su negocio se acaba para siempre. En este sentido, la carrera de un escritor popular se parece más a la de un famoso actor, pero hasta el actor más famoso tiene un suplente. Un escritor no. Nadie puede sustituirle. Su voz personal lo es todo. Y esto es especialmente cierto en el caso de una escritor popular que ya está en proceso de ser publicado por entregas en una revista de tirada nacional.

As a flame blown out by the wind Goes to rest and cannot be defined So the wise man freed from individuality Goes to rest and cannot be defined. Gone beyond all images— Gone beyond the power of words.

There has never been another you. With no effort on your part you were born to be something very special and set apart. What you are going to do in appreciation of that gift is a decision only you can make.

Sometimes I think I have organized the inner crowd. For a brief, breathtaking moment, I feel completely whole. I understand that I am composed of many selves that make up a single chorus. To listen to the music this chorus makes, to recognize it as music, as something noble, varied, patterned, sublime--that is the work of a lifetime.

Sometimes I think I have organized the inner crowd. For a brief, breathtaking moment, I feel completely whole. I understand that I am comprised of many selves that make up a single chorus. To listen to the music this chorus makes, to recognize it as music, as something noble, varied, patterned, beautiful — that is the work of a lifetime.

It's possible to grow up in the wrong house, on the wrong street, in the wrong town, in the wrong part of the country. It's possible to go to the wrong school. To have the wrong dad. To be pushed to do the wrong things. But it is also possible to survive all these psychic indignities if you have one, maybe two people who recognize you for who you are.

What if I had always known that the reason I looked different and felt different was in fact because I was different? It would be easy to fantasize that this would have been better. But we can never know what lies at the heart of the path not taken.

He isn't trying to transform himself into something different; he's trying to transform someone different back into himself.

And those who were against the regime felt that music was like a kind of oxygen, because this was the one place where they could really be free. And those musicians who were in favor of the regime were only too proud that such a wonderful institution existed under such a regime.

Unless you somehow have a foot outside of your culture, the culture will swallow you whole.

was called Robinson Kreutznaer; but, by the usual corruption of words in England, we are now called - nay we call ourselves and write our name - Crusoe; and so my companions

Steve Jobs gave a heartfelt talk to a graduating class at Stanford University. His advice: "Don't let the voice of others' opinions drown out your inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become."3