Quotes About Self-reliance

She stuck with a different theory: I needed to be more pushy with them. Did she give up on her dreams? No, she worked hard for what she wanted. Did I expect anybody to look out for Damon if he wouldn't look out for himself? Life is what you make it! Here's where Miss Barks didn't grow up: foster care. She had no clue how people can be living right on the edge of what's doable. If you push too hard, you can barrel yourself over a damn cliff.

My grandmother had no use for anything in the line of boys or men. Any of them that stands up to make his water, was how she put it. Bad news for me.

I feared not, and grew accustomed to walking alone.

What a revelation, that I could carry my own parcel like any woman here!

I'll lead you to the river of knowledge. You can catch your own damn fish.

I told him I wasn't going to live like my mom did, letting everybody tell her she was worthless. I'd stayed alive so far by standing on my own feet, and wasn't about to give that up now.

But you could run out of gas on boyish, that was the thing. A message that should be engraved in every woman's wedding band.

the minute they put down the teething ring and found the Internet, you were useless as a source of anything but shoes and a winter coat.

make money. To keep myself

to her days and made every hour of punishing toil totally irrelevant. It was this blind belief, this absolute faith in herself and her future, that often put a lively spring into her step, brought an occasional smile to her normally solemn young face, and sustained her at all times.

as isolated and alone as if I'd been abandoned on the Patagonian ice cap and left to fend for myself.

Seriously protecting yourself calls for the annihilation of ties with society, ties that most people need the way they need oxygen.

so that what is left of what we have subjugated might determine its own life.

I believe that we are who we choose to be. Nobody is going to come and save you. You've got to save yourself. Nobody is going to give you anything. You've got to go out and fight for it. Nobody knows what you want except you, and nobody will be as sorry as you if you don't get it. So don't give up your dreams.

She ran her own train. She didn't feel she had to get married, she wore her hair and makeup the way she wanted to, she furnished her home the way she wanted to, she did everything the way she wanted to.

The more we are allowed to be the masters of our fates, the more we expect ourselves to be.

Our heightened individualism means that, not only do we expect perfection in all things, but we expect to produce this perfection ourselves.

Those who value freedom of choice and movement will tend to stay away from entangling relationships;

You cannot friend a hawk, they said, unless you are half a hawk yourself, alone and only a sojourner in the land, without friends or the need of them. The hawk pays no coinage to love or morals.

She had grown up knowing you cared for the one who had fallen and couldn't get up. She had also grown up knowing you ate no shit - not about your hosses, your size, your line of work, or your sexual preferences. Once you started eating shit, it had a way of becoming your regular diet.

he travels fastest who travels alone.

The master competes with no one so, no one can compete with her.

But borrowing strength builds weakness.

Interdependence is a choice only independent people can make. Dependent people cannot choose to become interdependent. They don't have the character to do it; they don't own enough of themselves.