Quotes About Self-sufficiency

We are all primary numbers divisible only by ourselves.

What happened to perfectly capable kids who'd been so bombarded with help that they felt helpless to do anything on their own? Or the kids who'd been so driven at home, they'd never had to find their own drive? It couldn't be good, she thought.

The best way to keep from being a victim is to write your own terms." It

I live alone, with cats, books, pictures, fresh vegetables to cook, the garden, the hens to feed.

One way to protect yourself is by not needing or wanting anything. If you expect nothing, you cannot be disappointed. And, if you don't want or need anything, you can avoid abusive reactions to your needs.

Never let a man be responsible for your happiness.

To pursue the thing she needed to do, Virginia Woolf wrote, "a woman must have money and a room of her own. ...." I needed money and a backpack.

cloth bundles, chickens, and baskets.

Solitary and farouche people don't have relationships; they are quite unrelatable.

If I am truly to become an autonomous woman, then I must take over that role of being my own guardian...I not only have to become my own husband, but I need to be my own father, too.

Famously, Gloria Steinem once advised women that they should strive to become like the men they had always wanted to marry. What I've only recently realized is that I not only have to become my own husband, but I need to be my own father, too.

Anyhow, the golden rule in my family is this: If you're supporting yourself financially and you're not bothering anyone else, then you're free to do whatever you want with your life.

I was not rescued by a prince; I was the administrator of my own rescue

Would it make a difference if I were bothered? I have some other skills not usually seen in ladies: swimming, as I told you, and how to shoot a gun. I can bargain down a butcher to within an inch of his life. I know how to make soap and how to put a bill collector off. I can do mending but not embroidery, can drive a cart but not ride a horse, know how to grow cabbages and carrots and even make them into a nice soup, but I haven't the least idea how to trellis roses.

Besides, there are things you have to do for yourself, even if everyone else thinks you're crazy.

My advice is, the next time you see someone you think you need to rescue, walk quickly away on the far side of the street.

The cat required far less attendance than a human child, which is one of the reasons why spinster ladies prefer felines to babies.

Its best to turn to no one, to seek to please no one, as if there were only oneself in the world. The pleasure of others is a by-product after all, and if ever the whispering voices are allowed to crowd out the one voice, the result is this...a sort of high-pitched silliness, a terrible silliness.

Lotty, who never wanted anything of anybody, but was complete in herself and respected other people's completeness?

But what if you are the only resting point you know of? What if you are absolute zero? What if only you can catch yourself?

I don't want anyone feeling sorry for me. About anything. Don't apologize unless you have done something wrong. It is nasty to feel sorry for anyone for any reason because it pushes her away.

I mean, if I were a rich kid with stable, self-sufficient parents whom I thought I could trust to attend to themselves and to me, and I were heading for a tailspin, I might feel free to let myself free-fall, knowing that someone else would provide a bottom upon which I might eventually bottom out. But what if you are the only resting point you know of? What if you are absolute zero? What if only you can catch yourself?

If they were to get out—they had to get themselves out.

Not to have a thing is less humiliating than to beg it.