#Independence

"There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me."

"I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself."

"When I discover who I am, I’ll be free."

"Don't be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth."

"I'd rather die my way than live yours."

"Rule your mind or it will rule you."

"I do not think, sir, you have any right to command me, merely because you are older than I, or because you have seen more of the world than I have; your claim to superiority depends on the use you have made of your time and experience."

"How wrong is it for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to create it herself?"

"She tried to act as though it were nothing to go to the library alone. But her happiness betrayed her. Her smile could not be restrained, and it spread from her tightly pressed mouth, to her round cheeks, almost to the hair ribbons tied in perky bows over her ears."

"I'm single because I was born that way."

"Most men claim to desire driven, independent and confident women. Yet when confronted with such a creature reverence often evolves into resent. For just like women, men need to be needed."

"Where there are two on point of independently distinguished purposes, you will find one infinite journey whose path is blazed with the guiding light of wisdom."

"I am not an angel,' I asserted; 'and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself. Mr. Rochester, you must neither expect nor exact anything celestial of me - for you will not get it, any more than I shall get it of you: which I do not at all anticipate."

"A tragic irony of life is that we so often achieve success or financial independence after the chief reason for which we sought it has passed away."

"To me it seems that too many young women of this time share the same creed. 'Live, laugh, love, be nothing but happy, experience everything, et cetera et cetera.' How monotonous, how useless this becomes. What about the honors of Joan of Arc, Beauvoir, Stowe, Xena, Princess Leia, or women that would truly fight for something other than just their own emotions?"

"We need to help people to discover the true meaning of love. Love is generally confused with dependence. Those of us who have grown in true love know that we can love only in proportion to our capacity for independence."

"Single” is an opportunity to live life on your own terms and not apologize."

"If you learn to really sit with loneliness and embrace it for the gift that it is…an opportunity to get to know YOU, to learn how strong you really are, to depend on no one but YOU for your happiness…you will realize that a little loneliness goes a LONG way in creating a richer, deeper, more vibrant and colorful YOU."

"People have only as much liberty as they have the intelligence to want and the courage to take."

"If we thought more for ourselves we would have very many more bad books and very many more good ones."