Quotes About Individuality

What soul would hesitate to turn the universe upside down in order to be a little more itself?

You have made yourself an island of time, you are a time that has become detached from that vast Time in which your indefinite duration has the subsistence and eternity of a smoke-ring.

Men differ by what they show, and have in common what they hide.

J'ai connu un être bizarre qui croyait tout ce qu'il lisait dans un certain journal, et rien de ce qu'il lisait dans un autre. C'était un original ; enfermé depuis.

A man is infinitely more complicated than his thoughts.

s Morgens ben ik het liefst alleen, ik wil een paar uur voor mezelf. Later op de dag heb ik behoefte aan anderen. Een week teruggetrokken leven, in mijn eentje, doet mij erg veel deugd. Maar aan het einde van zo'n week kan ik meestal niet snel genoeg bij mijn geliefden zijn. De wankeling tussen het verlangen om samen te vallen met de ander en te verdwijnen in hem of haar enerzijds, en het verlangen naar autonomie en dus naar scheiding van hem of haar anderzijds, zit ingebakken in wie wij zijn.

Ce n'était ni le Diable ni le bon Dieu, c'était Arthur Rimbaud, c'est-à-dire un très grand poète.

J' étais prétentieux, disait l'un de mes professeurs ; farfelu, disaient mes camarades, à l'exception de mon ami Claude Laurent (car j'aimais et aimerai l'amitié et aurai toujours des amis). Il m'a donc fallu apprendre à devenir indifférent à l'opinion d'autrui.

Be neither a conformist or a rebel, for they are really the same thing. Find your own path, and stay on it

I'm happily single.

I was thinking how hard it is to be ugly, how hard it is to be an outsider, how it turns people cruel and bitter and mean. Richard is sort of super ugly, but even if you're just not what everyone else is, it makes you act in ways that you wouldn't if you were like everyone else.

You can pick your friends. You can pick your nose...but you can't pick your friends' noses. Well, I didn't get to pick my parents. I am glad that I have them, though. I just wish that I wouldn't have to spend the rest of my life picking one of them and not the other. - Amber Brown

I is what I is.

My mother said, neutrally, that other children in the neighborhood were able to amuse themselves; they didn't seem to need adults to be involved with their pastimes. With a disinclined air, she taught me how to play solitaire.

Everybody's intrigued by someone comfortable in their own skin because most of us aren't.

Not everyone out in a storm wants to be saved

Proper learning isn't just useful in society, Beryl. It can be wonderfully yours, a thing to have and keep just for you.

And that's when he finally tells me his name is Ernest. I'm thinking of giving it away, though. Ernest is so dull, and Hemingway? Who wants a Hemingway?

Some people feel out of place when they're young, not because anything's wrong with them, but because there's something special that sets them apart. Something they haven't figured out yet.

They'd scared me and had me thinking about what it meant to be really strong, on my own terms—not just fit and brown from the sun, not just flexible and accommodating.

We can only go to the limits of ourselves—I've learned that if nothing else. Anything more and we give too much away. Then we're not good for anyone. - Beryl Markham

Don't be difficult, Denys," Nell chided. "All women like a little flattery from time to time." "What if they didn't? What if they simply liked themselves and no one needed to bend backwards to flatter them? Wouldn't it all be simpler then?

You need to learn to live with yourself, not others," he went on. "That's the difficult part. When you learn to accept your own nature, it will start to feel peaceful, not frantic.

All women like a little flattery from time to time." "What if they didn't? What if they simply liked themselves and no one needed to bend backwards to flatter them? Wouldn't it all be simpler then?" "We're only talking about compliments, Denys," Berkeley said. "Don't be so dramatic.