Quotes About Self-reliance

My mother wanted to be needed, but she never wanted to need anyone else. She would be the one baking cherry pies. She would be the one cleaning gutters and painting ceilings and pulling ivy out of the backyard. This is so often the paradox of truly, astoundingly capable people. They're never quite capable of sitting back and allowing the people around them to be the capable ones.

You will find love. Believe me. But in order to find it, I think you have to prepare yourself for a life alone and be at peace with that. It's a real tightrope walk. I get it. But you won't tell tepid to fuck off if you don't believe in your heart that you will rock it out one way or another.

one of my biggest illusions was that other people were meant to assuage my anxiety by filling some lack that I was responsible for filling myself. If I wanted to give, the giving had to be "for fun and for free." The giving couldn't be out of guilt, nor because I secretly wanted to get something back, nor because I wanted the other person to respond in such a way as to satisfy my longing to be useful. Thérèse

A mother is not a person to lean on, but a person to make leaning unnecessary.

I'll have to figure it out for myself. That's thge problem with life. It's not really a spectator sport.

And she doesn't even ask what I want to do. When

One is the loneliest number. Never put all your eggs in one basket.

Our road trip makes me see that needing help doesn't mean there aren't other places to get it besides home, other people who can provide it besides family, that having limits doesn't mean I cannot—must not, maybe—bewitch and bewilder, range far and wander wide and wild. For home is like black holes—no matter how small, no matter how humble, they capture everything in range and trap it inside. The only way to escape their draw is to be far enough away.

Trusting your inner voice, which is one of the critical steps in developing intuition, is predicated on being truly self-confident.

When in doubt, reinforce your self-trust.

If you didn't fall down, you would never have learned how to pick yourself up.

Most intelligent men and women like to go forth into the world and stalk their own prey, choose their own mirrors of dysfunction . . . .

The only help I need to live, is unprofessional. The only wealth I have to give, is not material. And if you need much more than that, I'm not available.

You can depend on no man, on no friend, but him who can depend on himself.

I had chosen freedom, with all its insecurities, and nothing in the world would make me turn away from it.

The domestic cat seems to have greater confidence in itself than in anyone else.

I was an only child-- and so I became an only man." Joshua Bigg The Tenth Commandment

Sterren realized he would have to rely on his wits -- and those wits were good enough that he knew he would rather not have to rely on them.

It's not a weapon or a woman can make a man, or magery either, or any power, anything but himself.

But one thing she'd learned was that if a girl didn't ask, a girl wouldn't get.

I despise followers of any kind, especially those who follow me.

Any child who cannot do long division by himself does not deserve to smoke.

My beauty comes from having my own style, living my own way and knowing my own mind.

People in Hong Kong depended not on the government but on themselves and their families. They worked hard and tried their luck in business, hawking or making widgets, or buying and selling. The drive to succeed was intense; family and extended family ties were strong. Long before Milton Friedman held up Hong Kong as a model of a free enterprise economy, I had seen the advantage of having little or no social safety net. It spurred Hong Kong's people to strive to succeed.