Quotes About Independence

There must be something besides you to cause the sensation. But peace is independently felt within oneself. It is not dependent upon the outer sensation. It is something that belongs to one, something that is one's own self.

From 18 to 22, I was alone, living in L.A. with a bunch of friends, partying.

Kid, not everything in life can be summed up neatly in a paragraph. No book has all of the answers. Not even the really good ones. You have to find the answers yourself sometimes.

There's nothing you can do, Sirus. No one can do this for me, and no one can swoop in and rescue me every time I'm challenged. I have to do this on my own.

I swallowed hard. It was my life. And it was my choice how I decided to live it.

People can only really bother you if you let them.

the American cowboy was born of Reconstruction and carried all the hallmarks of the strife of the immediate postwar years: he was a hardworking white man who started from nothing, asked for nothing, and could rise on his own. The reality was that about a third of all cowboys were men of color—black or Mexican, and sometimes Indian—and that few rose to prosperity.

Hello there," she said. Then she remembered she hated him and frowned. "What are you doing here?" "Your horse returned without you early this morning. I feared the worst." Her heart stuttered, but she wouldn't give him the satisfaction of gratitude. She huffed. "I didn't need you to come rescue me, you know." "And yet here I am.

She hated feeling helpless. It writhed in her stomach, choking her with thoughts of dancing the rest of her life in the arms of a gentleman who pushed her about and laughed when she stumbled or, worse, didn't even look at her at all. She wondered if she would be able to give the Soul's Curtsy, with all her heart and soul, to anyone, and the thought made her ill.

One more thing, Callie," he called after her. He was stripping off his dirty frock coat, watching her. "What?" "I don't call any man property—you know that we freed all of our slaves." "Yes, you told me." He smiled. "Well, I just want you to know that I do consider a wife a man's property. You'll be mine." "We'll just have to see, won't we?" Callie said sweetly in reply.

But here is what I tell my own daughters, when they start to place all of the magic outside of themselves, when they start to feel like some random dude owns the sun and the moon and the stars: The world has told you lies about how small you are.

I wasn't sure I wanted to spend forever with anyone, least of all myself.

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.

Hold your own space and honor yourself and don't let that space shrink or collapse in the company of indifference. Don't ask indifference to love you. Indifference can go fuck itself. This is your life, and it's going to be big and bright and beautiful.

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.

All children are really orphans. At heart, a child has nothing to do with its parents, its background, its last name, its gender, its family trade. It is a brand-new person, and it is born with the only legacy that all individuals inherit when they open their eyes in this world: the inalienable right to be free.

When you are born and put into your crib, the whole world sticks their heads over the tops of the bars. They give you a name and they have all sorts of different ideas about you. … But your task is to become something much more unique and surprising than anyone your parents could ever imagine you to be. You have to know that the life you have is completely yours.

Parenting is a long lesson in letting go.

God-given right to live as they pleased.

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

You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. —Dr. Seuss

Dinner alone is one of life's pleasures. Certainly cooking for oneself reveals man at his weirdest.