#self-determination

"You are mistaken, Mr. Darcy, if you suppose that the mode of your declaration affected me in any other way, than as it spared the concern which I might have felt in refusing you, had you behaved in a more gentlemanlike manner."(Elizabeth Bennett)"

"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."

"If you end up with a boring miserable life because you listened to your mom, your dad, your teacher, your priest, or some guy on television telling you how to do your shit, then you deserve it."

"New Year - a new chapter, new verse, or just the same old story ? Ultimately we write it. The choice is ours."

"Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power."

"To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's."

"You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them."

"Risk anything! Care no more for the opinion of others ... Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth."(Journal entry, 14 October 1922)"

"You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world...but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices."

"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."

"Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim."

"You don't need anybody to tell you who you are or what you are. You are what you are!"

"If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door"

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves."

"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."

"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."

"She might be without country, without nation, but inside her there was still a being that could exist and be free, that could simply say I am without adding a this, or a that, without saying I am Indian, Guyanese, English, or anything else in the world."

"Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands."

"Oh the places you'll go! There is fun to be done! There are points to be scored. There are games to be won. And the magical things you can do with that ball will make you the winning-est winner of all."

"Inside us there is something that has no name, that something is what we are."