Quotes About Independence

For nonconformity the world will whip you with its displeasure.

Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one's self?

Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood. -Is it so bad, then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood...

It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

When I go into the garden with a spade and dig a bed I feel such an exhilaration and health that I discover that I have been defrauding myself all this time in letting others do for me what I should have done with my own hands.

Let us even bid our dearest friends farewell, and defy them, saying, Who are you? Unhand me: I will be dependent no more. Ah! seest thou not, O brother, that thus we part only to meet again on a higher platform, and only be more each other's, because we are more our own?

Insist upon yourself. Be original.

The faith that stands on authority is not faith.

I am sure of this, that by going much alone a man will get more of a noble courage in thought and word than from all the wisdom that is in books.

For what avail the plough or sail, or land or life, if freedom fail?

Ralph Waldo Emerson "Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail." ? Ralph Waldo Emerson

Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instruments. Books are for the scholar's idle times. When he can read God directly, the hour is too precious to be wasted in other men's transcripts of their readings.

And truly it demands something godlike in him who has cast off the common motives of humanity, and has ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster. High be his heart, faithful his will, clear his sight, that he may in good earnest be doctrine, society, law, to himself, that a simple purpose may be to him as strong as iron necessity is to others!

Let me admonish you, first of all, to go alone; to refuse the good models, even those most sacred in the imagination of men, and dare to love God without mediator or veil.

My life is for itself and not for a spectacle.

Every man's Reason is sufficient for his guidance, if used.

None believeth in the soul of man, but only in some man or person old and departed. Ah me! no man goeth alone. All men go in flocks to this saint or that poet, avoiding the God who seeth in secret. They cannot see in secret; they love to be blind in public. They think society is wiser than their soul, and know not that one soul, and their soul, is wiser than the whole world.

When private men shall act with original views, the lustre will be transferred from the actions of kings to those of gentlemen.

Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all knock at once at thy closet door, and say, 'Come out unto us.' But keep thy state; come not into their confusion. The power men possess to annoy me, I give them by a weak curiosity. No man can come near me but through my act. "What we love that we have, but by desire we bereave ourselves of the love.

Outside, among your fellows, among strangers, you must perceive appearances, a hundred things you cannot do; but inside, the terrible freedom!

For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure.

I hate quotations. Tell me what you know...

A man must consider what rich realms he abdicates when he becomes a conformist

Why should the way I feel depend on the thoughts in someone else's head?