Quotes About Individuality

God is like a mirror. The mirror never changes, but everybody who looks at it sees something different.

I wonder whether there is such a thing as a sense of individuality. Is it all a facade, covering a deep need to belong? Are we simply pack animals desperately trying to pretend we are not?

There is none more conformist than one who flaunts his individuality.

I thought every person should live for art, not just me, and furthermore, why would I want to be normal? Why would I want to be stupid like everyone else?

I try to live without interfering in the lives of others because I have no wish for them to interfere in mine.

How does the old cliché go? When every Arab girl stood in line waiting for God to hand out the desperate-to-get-married gene, I must have been somewhere else, probably lost in a book.

Henri Matisse once said, "It has bothered me all my life that I do not paint like everybody else.

Mine is a face that would have trouble launching a canoe.

From my village I see as much of the universe as you can see from earth, So my village is as big as any other land For I am the size of what I see, Not the size of my height. —Fernando Pessoa as Alberto Caeiro, The Keeper of Sheep

Of course I received various permutations of the "Who will want to marry you if you read so much?" lecture, but I also had to endure the chilly "Don't try to be so different from normal people." Different from normal people? When I first heard that, I was sorely offended. I thought every person should live for art, not just me, and furthermore, why would I want to be normal? Why would I want to be stupid like everyone else?

I'd read through the whole thing twice, and I used to go on and on: Marcel, the spectacular writer, my idol, and so forth. I used to blather endlessly about why I adored him, how he, the desperate socialite and party hopper, the inveterate pleaser, was actually the outsider par excellence, how he could be amid all the people he'd always dreamed of befriending yet remain alone in the universe, the loneliest speck of all.

Never wear clothes that are bigger than you are unless you intend to grow into them. If you want to wear a great suit, either you believe it belongs to you or you'll look like you're thirteen and wearing your mother's clothes. Doesn't that make sense? It's the same in life. Never live a life too big for you. You either grow bigger to encompass it or shrink it to fit you.

I'm not stupid, romantic, or a busy Russian novelist.

Look at the way things are now. Just a set of crab in barrel and all of a sudden one crab just appear with a jacket and tie and telling everybody that he is not a crab any more. Ridiculous little place with ridiculous little people.

The tendency in modern civilization is to make the world uniform... Let the mind be universal. The individual should not be sacrifice

If no one responds to your call, then go your own way alone.

I have read in books that we are called 'caged birds'. I cannot speak for others, but I had so much in this cage of mine that there was not room for it in the universe- at least that is what I then felt.

those in this world who have the courage to try and solve in their own lives new problems of life are the ones who raise society to greatness! Those who merely live according to rule do not advance society, they only carry it along.

When man was being made, the Creator was a schoolmaster— His bag full of commandments and principles; but when He came to woman, He resigned His headmastership and turned artist, with only His brush and paint-box.

The fact is, those who are like everyone else arouse no hatred unless there is a reason. But when a resplendent inner self pierces the grossness that envelops it, some, quite irrationally, extend it heartfelt adoration; others, just as irrationally, try heart and soul to insult it.

WE, the rustling leaves, have a voice that answers the storms, but who are you so silent?" "I am a mere flower.

I confess that a man, who is not within his place in the common society, can be guilty, but it's certain that no human being, like the sword, can stay always in his scabbard.

They who from birth have had no other

Everyone's nature is not alike. Because you have found your convictions within yourself and can take refuge in your own strength, you fail to realize the predicament of others.