Quotes about self-sufficiency

Saul Bellow - Ravelstein

Associate with the noblest people you can find read the best books live with the mighty but learn to be happy alone.

Charles Bukowski - Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit

for meobedience to another is the decayof self

Laini Taylor - Daughter of Smoke & Bone

Karou wished she could be the kind of girl who was complete unto herself, comfortable in solitude, serene. But she wasn't. She was lonely, and she feared the missingness within her as if it might expand and... cancel her. She craved a presence beside her, solid. Fingertips light at the nape of her neck and a voice meeting hers in the dark. Someone who would wait with an umbrella to walk her home in the rain, and smile like sunshine when he saw her coming. Who would dance with her on her balcony,

Randy Alcorn - Possessions and Eternity

Why ask for your daily bread when you own the bakery?

Zhuangzi - The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu

If you'd called me an ox, I'd have said I was an ox; if you'd called me a horse, I'd have said I was a horse. If the reality is there and you refuse to accept the name men give it, you'll only lay yourself open to double harassment.

J.R.R. Tolkien - The Two Towers

You could call her perilous because she was so strong in herself.

C.S. Lewis - The Problem of Pain

I call this a Divine Humility because it is a poor thing to strike our colors to God when the ship is going down under us; a poor thing to come to him as a last resort, to offer up 'our own' when it is no longer worth keeping. If God were proud He would hardly have us on such terms: but He is not proud, He stoops to conquer, He will have us even though we have shown that we prefer everything else to him, and come to him because there is 'nothing better' now to be had. The same humility is shown

Megan Hart -

I might be alone, but i'm never lonely.

Marty Rubin -

A breath, to keep one going, must be one's own.

Patti Digh - What I Wish For You: Simple Wisdom For A Happy Life

Equip yourself for your own needs.

Wendell Berry - The Hidden Wound

The essential cultural discrimination is not between having and not having or haves and have-nots, but between the superfluous and the indispensable. Wisdom, it seems to me, is always poised upon the knowledge of minimums; it might be thought to be the art of minimums. Granting the frailty, and no doubt the impermanence, of modern technology as a human contrivance, the man who can keep a fire in a stove or on a hearth is not only more durable, but wiser, closer to the meaning of fire, than the m

Fernando Pessoa - The Book of Disquiet

Freedom is the possibility of isolation. You are free if you can withdraw from people, not having to seek them out for the sake of money, company, love, glory or curiosity, none of which can thrive in silence and solitude. If you can't live alone, you were born a slave. You may have all the splendours of the mind and the soul, in which case you're a noble slave, or an intelligent servant, but you're not free. And you can't hold this up as your own tragedy, for your birth is a tragedy of Fate alo

Kris Rafferty -

Most people spend their lives vulnerable, relying on the rest of the world to not take advantage of it.

Marty Rubin -

If the light's not in you, you're in the dark.

E.M. Forster - Howards End

…But so few of us think clearly about our own private incomes, and admit that independent thoughts are in nine cases out of ten the result of independent means.

Veronica Roth - Divergent

The opinions of others cannot damage you.

Marty Rubin -

Words of the hero: "I am my fate.

James MacDonald -

We must rip the foundations out from under all the bastions of human reasoning that say, "I don't need God!" We must demolish every non-God story of life. We must pulverize every God-is-not-good life narrative.

Mary Elizabeth Braddon - Lady Audley's Secret

Phoebe Marks was a person who never lost her individuality. Silent and self-contained, she seemed to hold herself within herself, and take no colour from the outer world.

Ashton Applewhite - This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism

The myth of self-sufficiency demands optimism without end, downplays life’s challenges, and shames us when, inevitably, we fall short.

Sandra Kring - The Book of Bright Ideas

For all those who longed to find a best friend and found it in themselves

Dorothy Canfield Fisher -

This time Elizabeth Ann didn't answer, because she herself didn't know what the matter was. But I do, and I'll tell you. The matter was that never before had she known what she was doing in school. She had always thought she was there to pass from one grade to another, and she was ever so startled to get a little glimpse of the fact that she was there to learn how to read and write and cipher and generally use her mind, so she could take care of herself when she came to be grown up. Of course, s

Johnnie Dent Jr. -

You cannot want more for people than they want for themselves.

Cody Lundin - When All Hell Breaks Loose: Stuff You Need to Survive When Disaster Strikes

Over the years, Americans in particular have been all too willing to squander their hard-earned independence and freedom for the illusion of feeling safe under someone else's authority. The concept of self-sufficiency has been undermined in value over a scant few generations. The vast majority of the population seems to look down their noses upon self-reliance as some quaint dusty relic, entertained only by the hyperparanoid or those hopelessly incapable of fitting into mainstream society.

William Nicholson - Shadowlands

Self-sufficiency is the enemy of salvation. If you are self-sufficient, you have no need of God. If you have no need of God, you do not seek Him. If you do not seek Him, you will not find Him.

P.D. James - The Children of Men

I don't want anyone to look to me, not for protection, not for happiness, not for love, not for anything.

A.W. Tozer - The Knowledge of the Holy

So, were every man on earth to become atheist, it could not affect God in any way. He is what He is in Himself without regard to any other. To believe in Him adds nothing to His perfections; to doubt Him takes nothing away.Almighty God, just because He is almighty, needs no support. The picture of a nervous, ingratiating God fawning over men to win their favor is not a pleasant one; yet if we look at the popular conception of God, that is precisely what we see. Twentieth century Christianity has

J.G. Ballard - High-Rise

They thrived on the rapid turnover of acquaintances, the lack of involvement with others, and the total self-sufficiency of lives which, needing nothing, were never dissapointed.

Sharon Salzberg - Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection

Our can-do culture has made many of us believe that we should always be self-sufficient. Somewhere along the way, we also got the message that asking for help is a sign of weakness. We often forget that we’re interdependent creatures whose very existence depends on the kindness of others, including—with a bow to Tennessee Williams—strangers.

Mae West - 548 Best Things Anybody Ever Said

Marriage is a fine institution, but I'm not ready for an institution.

Keith Stewart - It's a Long Road to a Tomato: Tales of an Organic Farmer Who Quit the Big City for the (Not So) Simple Life

At this point in history, our society tends to elevate and reward the specialist...This concentrated focus has brought some benefits...It may also be a modern malady. Specialization, when taken too far and allowed to define who and what we are, becomes limiting. It robs us of our wholeness and our self-sufficiency. It misses the big picture and confines us to a narrow zoom. And it leaves us at the mercy of experts.

Starr Ambrose - Thieves Like Us

Rocky, if I’ve learned anything from my train wreck of a marriage, it’s that no one can take care of me better than I can.

Fulton J. Sheen - Characters of the Passion: Lessons on Faith and Trust

No soul ever fell away from God without giving up prayer. Prayer is that which establishes contact with Divine Power and opens the invisible resources of heaven. However dark the way, when we pray, temptation can never master us. The first step downward in the average soul is the giving up of the practice of prayer, the breaking of the circuit with divinity, and the proclamation of one’s owns self sufficiency.