Quotes About Independence

Elizabeth is suddenly reminded that she can walk down that road anytime she wants to. There are better things to be afraid of than a country road bordered with scrub pine and oaks.

She would have to do away with herself in order to have a life of her own.

no one is entitled to anything other than his freedom and the choices he makes.

She had come to believe that if her father had wanted a docile daughter, he should never have allowed her access to the ocean.

In books, no one helped a girl who didn't help herself and every fairy tale ended with the same lessons. Trick your enemy, do what you must, believe in enchantments, save yourself.

You make love what you want it to be, Hannah had told her. You decide. You walk toward it, or you walk away.

It's no good to need someone more than you want them.

Sometimes walking away is the bravest thing you can do. When you get there, you'll know where you are.

In every fairy tale the girl who is saved is the one who rescues herself.

Be cautious, be sure of yourself, be careful of outsiders, beware of women who have the nerve to meet your eyes, who think they're your equals, who do as they please, who please you as well, who will never do as they're told. Maria glanced behind her when they reached the sea.

You can tell just by looking at her that she never backed down or valued anyone's opinion above her own. She always believed that experience was not simply the best teacher, it was the only one

She wore a wide-brimmed black hat and men's trousers, and she carried a satchel of books to ensure that if she should finish one volume she would be handily prepared with the next.

Trust no one, make your own future, love with all your heart.

If a woman doesn't write her own history, there are very few who will.

In books, no one helped a girl who didn't help herself and every fairy tale ended with the same lessons. Trick your energy, do what you must, believe in enchantments, save yourself.

In truth, she didn't care for rules of any sort; rules made little sense to a person who had grown up in a world without compassion or pity, where there was no moral code by which to abide.

I had made the decision to stick with life as I knew it, which meant I was alone. But at least I wasn't dumped or betrayed.

It doesn't matter what people tell you. It doesn't matter what they might say. Sometimes you have to leave home. Sometimes, running away means you're headed in the exact right direction.

The grandiose person is never really free; first, because he is excessively dependent on admiration from others, and second, because his self-respect

If an adult has not developed and mind of his own, then he will find himself at the mercy of the authorities for better or worse, just as an infant finds itself at the mercy of its parents. Saying no to those more powerful will always seem to threatening to him.

Even then Katya remained blind to the fact that as an adult she had ways of escaping her dilemma, that she could have separated from her husband.

Lived in curious but not unhappy isolation…subscribing to magazines nobody around them read, listening to programs on the national radio network which nobody around them listened to…

There is a change coming I think in the lives of girls and women. Yes. But it is up to us to make it come. All women have had up till now has been their connection with men. All we have had. No more lives of our own, really, than domestic animals. He shall hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel force, a little closer than his dog, a little dearer than his horse. Tennyson wrote that. It's true. Was true. You will want to have children, though.

But I hope you will -- use your brains. Use your brains. Don't be distracted. Once you make that mistake, of being -- distracted, over a man, your life will never be your own. You will get the burden, a woman always does.