#Independence

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

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

"I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives."

"I wanted to be an independent woman, a woman who could pay for her bills, a woman who could run her own life - and I became that woman."

"Where we choose to be, where we choose to be--we have the power to determine that in our lives. We cannot reel time backward or forward, but we can take ourselves to the place that defines our being."

"A wise parent humors the desire for independent action, so as to become the friend and advisor when his absolute rule shall cease."

"Being brave enough to be alone frees you up to invite people into your life because you want them and not because you need them."

"If you truly want to be respected by people you love, you must prove to them that you can survive without them."

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

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

"Then, one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...you give them a piece of you. They don't ask for it. They do something dumb one day like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore."

"Unlike a drop of water which loses its identity when it joins the ocean, man does not lose his being in the society in which he lives. Man's life is independent. He is born not for the development of the society alone, but for the development of his self."

"LEONATOWell, then, go you into hell?BEATRICENo, but to the gate; and there will the devil meet me, like an old cuckold, with horns on his head, and say 'Get you to heaven, Beatrice, get you to heaven; here's no place for you maids:' so deliver I up my apes, and away to Saint Peter for the heavens; he shows me where the bachelors sit, and there live we as merry as the day is long."

"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."

"He saw in happiness the seeds of independence, and in independence the seeds of revolt."

"My soul, be satisfied with flowers,With fruit, with weeds even; but gather themIn the one garden you may call your own."

"LEONATOWell, niece, I hope to see you one day fitted with a husband.BEATRICENot till God make men of some other metal than earth. Would it not grieve a woman to be overmastered with a pierce of valiant dust? to make an account of her life to a clod of wayward marl? No, uncle, I'll none: Adam's sons are my brethren; and, truly, I hold it a sin to match in my kindred."