Quotes About Individuality

Because he knew in his very bones that there could be no reason, nor any special purpose, for a Divinity. Mankind had made it all up out of whole cloth because, at bottom, everyone was afraid of the dark, afraid of ultimate extinction, afraid to face the fact that individual lives meant nothing in the grand scheme of a vast and utterly indifferent cosmos.

If we do not put effort into creating our original thoughts, then ready-made pseudo-thoughts, trite words and phrases, come automatically to mind and carry us along with them, resulting in "thinking almost entirely without thoughts." (Steiner).

Difference for the sake of difference is as empty an achievement as slavishly following the commercial imperative. Write only what you believe.

We cannot ask which is more important, structure or character, because structure is character; character is structure.

There is no such thing as a portable story. An honest story is at home in one, and only one, place and time.

If you do what everyone else does, you'll wind up having what everyone else has.

Here was a man who had not gone along with the crowd. He was a man who did his own thinking and detested the words, "We have to do it this way because that's the way everyone else does it." He also hated the word "can't." If you wanted him to do something, just say, "I don't think you can do it.

As messed up as my life was at times, I greatly appreciated my own unique life.

Se dice por ahí que la mayoría de la gente le tiene más miedo a hablar en público que a la misma muerte, y según los psiquiatras, el miedo a hablar en público es provocado por el temor a la exclusión social, a sobresalir, a la crítica, a hacer el ridículo, a no pertenecer. El miedo a ser distinto es lo que inhibe a la gente y le impide buscar nuevas formas para resolver sus problemas.

A veces la vida se pone difícil cuando tu perfil no coincide con el de todos los demás.

Twain broke with the tradition of asking "Who Am I?" and its species-wide variant "Who Is Man?" on the grounds that a "who-question" is a leading question. It predisposes us to expect the answer to be a sentient being, not unlike ourselves, "whom" we're trying to characterize.

I feel how little it concerns me, everything that's called the world, and how grand and exciting what I privately call the world is to me.

He gave such a vulnerable impression. He resembled the leaf that a little boy strikes down from its branch with a stick, because its singularity makes it conspicuous.

I'm not here to write, I'm here to be mad.

Las naturalezas creativas no son especulativas. Eso las distingue de los imitadores.

I already said loud and clear that today I'm apparently a little hmm hmm and la-di-da and okay a bit hoo-hoo and maybe also a little wee-oo wee-oo. Is that so terrible?

I don't want to go running down some career path—supposedly such a grand enterprise. What's so grand about it: people acquiring crooked backs at an early age from stooping at undersized desks, wrinkled hands, pale faces, mutilated workday trousers, trembling legs, fat bellies, sour stomachs, bald spots upon their skulls, bitter, snappish, leathery, faded, insipid eyes, ravaged brows and the consciousness of having been conscientious fools. No thank you!

For the first time, he began calling himself Barack. Partly because a beautiful, older girl told him it was a great name. But also because he now felt that it was a great name, too, a name that belonged to him.

If two partners in a relationship work on their own levels of differentiation, their relationship will automatically improve. If even one of the partners works to raise his or her level of differentiation, the relationship will do better over the long term.

The central dilemma in managing the individuality/togetherness force for each person is how to keep the focus on one's own life and life direction but still stay in open, clear communication with the other significant people in that life.

The real problem is, to some degree, that the partners in a difficult relations are "no-selfs." Too much of each self has been absorbed into the relationship.

If a boy can't have a good teacher, give him a psychological cripple or an exotic failure to deal with; don't just give him a bad, dull teacher. This is where the private schools score over state-run schools; they can accommodate a few cultured madmen on the staff without having to offer explanations.

Be not another if thou canst be thyself.

I had schooled myself since the war-days never to speak of my enthusiasms; when other people did not share them, which was usual, I was hurt and my pleasure diminished; why was I always excited about things other people did not care about? But I could not hold in.