Quotes About Independence

Das schönste an einer Freundschaft ist,' sagte sie, 'zu tun, wozu man Lust hat, ohne mit dem anderen reden zu müssen.

Es war herrlich, frei zu sein, ihr Zuhause verlassen zu können, allmählich Dinge herauszufinden über Menschen, die nicht zur Familie gehörten. Alles kann passieren, dachte sie, wirklich alles! Und ich will auch, dass es passiert - was immer es ist.

Power is the ability not to have to please

Imogen," he said with forced patience, "you have plenty of occupations of your own, and you don't care to do the things that give a great deal of pleasure to me – when I have time to do them. You don't want to fish or shoot and you can't drive my car, which would be a help to me sometimes. Am I to understand that you object to my having the companionship of another woman who can do these things?

You have my best wishes, Mr. Douglas; still I cannot consent to be your wife. I shall become Mrs. President, or I am the victim of false prophets, but it will not be as Mrs. Douglas.

Recently abandoned women can be complicated.

the man was right: It was time for me to find out what I really wanted—not what my husband wanted, not what I thought my children needed, not what my parents expected, not what society said was good or bad. It was time for me to step boldly into the fullness of life, with all of its dangers and all of its promises. Remaining tight in a bud had become a kind of death. The time had come to blossom.

Some of us aren't meant to belong. Some of us have to turn the world upside down and shake the hell out of it until we make our own place in it.

Ellen chopped the wood at the woodpile in the yard and she carried water from an old well in the rear of the pasture. She was afraid to pass beyond the ways allotted to her by her labours, and so the region beyond the pond stood off as a picture, unexplored

Single people eat sadly--they cobble together things left from shopping trips based on dreams of all the meals they'd fix for themselves, all the ways they'd treat themselves to something grand; those dreams, for me, died by the next day and, despite my best hopes, I wanted only canned hash and apples.

It was tempting to believe that if you made yourself small and light, beneath notice, you might be allowed to persist nearly anywhere. But meek women were tossed out and forgotten: that was something she had learned from Bertha Truitt herself. What women needed to do was take up space. Become unbudgeable.

My parents disapproved of very little that I did. They didn't approve, either: Whatever opinions they had about what I did, they kept to themselves. They believed my life was my own business. This, I understand now, is a great gift, though a gift that comes without kvelling.

She counted on herself to withstand everything. And yet, who said she had to? What would happen if she broke down now and then?

You see, the work of maintaining your life with your own skills was never counted in hours. The days were long and arduous, but there was no wishing them to go by.

She had an internal clock set to her mother's hunger for news, but sometimes it felt good to ignore it.

Empress of the Universe would be way too much work. I'd have to wear fancy clothes, probably including lady shoes with pointed toes, and could no longer slouch into the study in PJs and slippers. Someone would (avert!) straighten my desk. Someone would reorganize my yarn stash...in fact, they'd assign someone else to knit my socks, thus depriving me of an excuse to rest my brain while pretending to accomplish something useful.

Free of the demands, the judgments, and the petty tyrannies of others.

What happened to the days of the hero rescuing the damsel in distress?" Not that I could envisage Heather as a damsel in distress. "Those days are long gone, Brendan. Nowadays, the damsel takes care of herself, and on occasion she might even rescue the hero, if she feels he deserves it." "I'm screwed, then.

It's a dangerous thing to want everyone's approval, Gabriella. You must be willing to stand firm and take the risk of being misunderstood. We must find our approval at the feet of our Master.

Then, when those amateur experts share their advice, you can smile, say "Oh, really?" and then go about your business, with quiet confidence, in your own way.

No woman really wants a man to carry her off; she only wants him to want to do it.

I disapprove of matrimony as a matter of principle.... Why should any independent, intelligent female choose to subject herself to the whims and tyrannies of a husband? I assure you, I have yet to meet a man as sensible as myself! (Amelia Peabody)

I only have one tip on how to help someone else live a better life. Get a life of your own and show them how it's done!

If my level of happiness depends on something else changing, I'm enslaved for a lifetime. If my level of happiness depends on ME changing, I am free for-evermore!