Quotes About Individuality

That man's best works should be such bungling imitations of Nature's infinite perfection, matters not much; but that he should make himself an imitation, this is the fact which Nature moans over, and deprecates beseechingly. Be spontaneous, be truthful, be free, and thus be individuals! is the song she sings through warbling birds, and whispering pines, and roaring waves, and screeching winds.

Why don't you like the foods I like?" he asks sometimes. "Why don't you like the foods I make?" I answer.

We know we are very special. Yet we keep trying to find out in what way: not this way, not that way, then what way?

If you want to be original, don't labor to be original. Rather, work on yourself, your mind, and then say what you think. This was Stendhal's advice. Actually, he said: "If you want to be witty, work on your character and say what you think on every occasion.

We know we are very special," Davis writes in "Special": "Yet we keep trying to find out in what way: not this way, not that way, then what way?" (from James Wood's review of the FSG "Collected Stories of Lydia Davis")

Nature made us individuals, as she did the flowers and the pebbles; but we are afraid to be peculiar, and so our society resembles a bag of marbles, or a string of mold candles. Why should we all dress after the same fashion? The frost never paints my windows twice alike.

Yours for the unshackled exercise of every faculty by every human being.

Mas não quero resposta, quero ficar só. Gosto muito das pessoas mas essa necessidade voraz que às vezes me vem de me libertar de todos. Enriqueço na solidão: fico inteligente, graciosa e não esta feia ressentida que me olha do fundo do espelho. Ouço duzentas e noventa e nove vezes o mesmo disco, lembro poesias, dou piruetas, sonho, invento, abro todos os portões e quando vejo a alegria está instalada em mim.

Mais tarde descobri que não gosta nem de poesia nem de música. Ainda assim, liguei o toca-discos e dei-lhe os patrícios, Bethânia, Caetano. E se não dei televisão é porque acho aquilo o fim. Embora esteja pensando numa mas só para ver os filmes antigos. E os longas-metragens de vampiros e monstros.

People can portray me anyway they want because I don't give a damn. I am what I am. And until those people touch me close enough, they'll never know who I am. If they don't want to see me in this interview or a newspaper article, and say "what's the matter with this guy?" Let'em say it. But don't you analyze me and don't you tell me what I am until you get close enough to understand what I am. Then you can make an analysis of me, but don't you dare do it until then.

I have a repugnance to be known and understood by everybody. I do not like to have my feelings or my thoughts every one's property.

Each nature requires its own education. The training which will help the man of undue self-esteem, will hurt the man who has too little. A chief end of life is to grow aright; and no man can grow aright.

It seems unfortunate that strong people are usually so disagreeable and overbearing that no one cares for them. In fact, to be different from your fellow creatures is always a misfortune. The Growleywogs knew that they were disliked and avoided by every one, so they had become surly and unsociable even among themselves.

My mom didn't want me to go to college. She didn't want me to read - when I read, I may as well have been holding a pineapple.

You may be a lady but you are still the man!

What is it that remains essentially you?

Simply following the herd is not going to work. In a way that past generations simply didn't have to do, each one of us will need to think about who we are and how we construct our life and how this reflects our identity and values.

You have a contribution to make and unique gifts to offer. It's time to stop listening to the voices that tells you that you're not good enough, won't make it, or don't have anything to offer.

Our daughters aren't the same people we are, nor are they extensions of ourselves. They are unique individuals in God's eyes, responsible to Him for the choices they make, not to their mothers.

I would sooner become a spinster than spend a lifetime with a boring, unimaginative man.

Today Rosa's little one will take his first step in outgrowing his mother. Children are their own persons; they are not part of us.

I think people who try to run their marriages according to other people's expectations are insane. It is quite hard enough to keep a marriage together till death do you part- which I think should be the aim, even if it can't always succeed- without trying to do it to please other people. A good marriage is whatever suits the participants, and our marriage suited us fine.

Cool isn't for sale at the bondage store. You make it up yourself, pull it outta your asshole, your own unique brand that starts when you're born, and when you die, it's gone.

You and me," she says, "we're two sides of the same coin. Gender's a box you turn inside out, tear up, and sew a gown out of." She says most people are bored and hateful because they can't fuck with the box. They think prison's protection. They take what they're served and think they like it, but deep down they want to be something else, and they'll kill anyone sewing gowns they're afraid to wear.