Quotes & Sayings About Independence And Love

I have an interesting perspective on depending on others. I think it gives people a chance to serve. And I'm not so much big on independence, as I am on interdependence. I'm not talking about co-dependency, I'm talking about giving people the opportunity to practicing love with its sleeves rolled up. — Joni Eareckson Tada

We are bound together by the most powerful of all ties, our fervent love for freedom and independence, which knows no homeland but the human heart. — Gerald R. Ford

The myth of independence from the mother is abandoned in mid- life as women learn new routes around the mother
both the mother without and the mother within. A mid-life daughter may reengage with a mother or put new controls on care and set limits to love. But whatever she does, her child's history is never finished. — Terri E Apter

They tell me that it will be hard to find a man strong enough to love my own strength and independence, and not worry about being Mr. Diana Ross, but I disagree. I know absolutely that that man is somewhere out there. — Diana Ross

Awareness is a choiceless consciousness. Awareness is the capacity to embrace, accept and include both joy and sadness, love and aloneness, light and darkness, male and female qualities and life and death.
Through saying "yes" and accepting both tendencies and including whatever aspect that happens in the moment, we meet our unlimited and boundless inner being. The inner man and woman need to find their own independence and integrity. — Swami Dhyan Giten

Evil is a word we use to describe the absence of Good, just as we use the word darkness to describe the absence of Light or death to describe the absence of Life. Both evil and darkness can only be understood in relation to Light and Good; they do not have any actual existence. I am Light and I am Good. I am Love and there is no darkness in me. Light and Good actually exist. So, removing yourself from me will plunge you into darkness. Declaring independence will result in evil because apart from me, you can only draw upon yourself. That is death because you have separated yourself from me: Life. — Wm. Paul Young

I love you, Maddie, and I am devoted to making your life full of happiness and accomplishments, nurturing your creativity, encouraging your independence and making sure you always know what a gift you are to this world. He kisses her forehead and she smiles up at him happily before admiring her pretty new necklace. — Kristen Proby

We want autonomy for ourselves and safety for those we love. That remains the main problem and paradox for the frail. Many of the things that we want for those we care about are things that we would adamantly oppose for ourselves because they would infringe upon our sense of self. — Atul Gawande

And her work! Oh, the thought of being deprived of that! With only his love in return, his love and his amiable domestic tyranny! — Florence Converse

I didn't know his age or how he liked his tea, I was wearing a terrible coat and I was drunk as a stoat - but this moment felt like it. The one I'd been waiting patiently for since I was a little girl. I'd worked so hard, for so long, at being ok with being single, but all of the things I'd told myself about independence were disappearing rapidly into the cold night. Right now, he felt like the only person who mattered in the whole world. — Lucy Robinson

We women, when we're searching for a meaning to our lives or for the path of knowledge, always identify with one of four classic archetypes.
The Virgin (and I'm not speaking here of a sexual virgin) is the one whose search springs from her complete independence, and everything she learns is the fruit of her ability to face challenges alone.
The Martyr finds her way to self-knowledge through pain, surrender and suffering.
The Saint finds her true reason for living in unconditional love and in her ability to give without asking anything in return.
Finally, the Witch justifies her existence by going in search of complete and limitless pleasure. — Paulo Coelho

What do I lose when I have a praying life? Control. Independence. What do I gain? Friendship with God. A quiet heart. The living work of God in the hearts of those I love. The ability to roll back the tide of evil. Essentially, I lose my kingdom and get his. I move from being an independent player to a dependent lover. I move from being an orphan to a child of God. — Paul E. Miller

There was a basic harmony between Antonia and her mistress [Mrs. Harling]. They had strong, independent natures, both of them. They knew what they liked, and were not always trying to imitate other people. They loved children and animals and music, and rough play, and digging in the earth. They liked to prepare rich, hearty food and to see people eat it; to make up soft white beds and to see youngsters asleep in them. They ridiculed conceited people and were quick to help unfortunate ones. Deep down in each of them there was a kind of hearty joviality, a relish of life, not over-delicate, but very invigorating. I never tried to define it, but I was distinctly conscious of it. I could not imagine Antonia's living for a week in any other house in Black Hawk than the Harlings. — Willa Cather

And the end of this paradox is that only when the child is thus free can he have the proper attachment to his parents; only when we allow his independence can he then freely offer us love and respect, without conflict and without resentment. It is the hardest lesson to learn that the goal of parenthood is not to reign forever but to abdicate gracefully at the right time. — Sydney J. Harris

To educate is to give man the keys to the world, which are independence and love, and to give him strength to journey on his own, light of step, a spontaneous and free being. — Jose Marti

O fire, O soul
Give us the spark of God-eternal,
That friend to friend and friend to foe,
One shall we stand before HIM.

And the flame of Jatin,
And the fire of Bhagath,
And the love of the Mahatma in all,
O, lift the flag high,
Lift the flag high,
This is the flag of the Revolution. — Raja Rao

[Girls] study under the paralyzing idea that their acquirements cannot be brought into practical use. They may subserve the purposes of promoting individual domestic pleasure and social enjoyment in conversation, but what are they in comparison with the grand stimulation of independence and self- reliance, of the capability of contributing to the comfort and happiness of those whom they love as their own souls? — Sarah Moore Grimke

I'm in love with this country called "America." I'm a huge fan of America. I'm one of those annoying fans - you know, the ones that read the cd notes and follow you into bathrooms and ask you all kinds of annoying questions about why you didn't live up to that. I'm that kind of fan. I've read the Declaration of Independence, and I've read the Constitution of the United States, and they are some liner notes, dude. — Edward De Bono

I love cats. I love their grace and their elegance. I love their independence and their arrogance, and the way they lie and look at you, summing you up, surely to your detriment, with that unnerving, unwinking, appraising stare. — Joyce Stranger

I wore you on me at all times
Like I now carry my pen.
Unlike your own opinion my
Belongings must have a function.
You bled through the ink of my lines and
To be my subject nursed your thirst.

Was it my fault, or your own, that you forgot
- I do not deal in tender verse. — Mie Hansson

Love between women could take on a new shape in the late nineteenth century because the feminist movement succeeded both in opening new jobs for women, which would allow them independence, and in creating a support group so that they would not feel isolated and outcast when they claimed their independence. ... The wistful desire of Clarissa Harlowe's friend, Miss Howe, "How charmingly might you and I live together," in the eighteenth century could be realised in the last decades of the nineteenth century. If Clarissa Harlowe had lived about a hundred and fifty years later, she could have gotten a job that would have been appropriate for a woman of her class. With the power given to her by independence and the consciousness of a support group, Clarissa as a New Woman might have turned her back on both her family and Lovelace, and gone to live "charmingly" with Miss Howe. Many women did. — Lillian Faderman

I need someone who is willing to watch me brave the ocean and then dare me not to drown. — Colleen Hoover

How he loved and yet
wished to leave you: always both, at once. — Rainer Maria Rilke

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. — Charlotte Bronte

Since I reached the conclusion that the essence of the creative person is being in love with what one is doing, I have had a growing awareness that this characteristic makes possible all the other personality characteristics of the creative person: independence of thought and judgment, honesty, perseverance, curiosity, willingness to take risks and the like. — Ellis Paul Torrance

The grass is often no greener on the other side, so stick it out and see if you can grow up within the relationship. Find happiness and emotional independence within yourself before placing unreasonable and often unexpressed expectations on your spouse. — Malti Bhojwani

A good relationship does not celebrate dependence; it nurtures the spirit of independence. Fall in love with yourself and commit to your goals, dreams and desires, that's the most important relationship you can be in. — Malti Bhojwani

One real danger in love relationships is that most people secretly believe that they must control the love object in order to feel safe in loving and being loved. The cause of this is simple - children are made to feel that they must "give themselves up" if they are to be loved. Thus, for most humans the act of surrender has meant the loss of autonomy or worse - loss of one's own mind.
Surrender is neither control nor morbid dependency and cannot be made contingent upon giving away one's "soul"; nonetheless, the person surrendering opens completely to the moment, and runs the risk of being deeply hurt. Sadly, in our society this is not uncommon and frequently serves to harden or embitter a person toward life in general. Or, on the other had being deeply hurt in the act of surrender can lead to angry and painful "cries for help." When this occurs there is an insatiable and wrathful desire to be cared for as a child is cared for and the horrid fear of loss of independence. — Christopher S. Hyatt

Jo couldn't even lose her heart in a decorous manner, but sternly tried to quench her feelings, and failing to do so, led a somewhat agitated life. She was mortally afraid of being laughed at for surrendering, after her many and vehement declarations of independence. — Louisa May Alcott

If we mean by love the passionate affirmation and active relatedness to the esssence of a particular person, if we mean by it the union with another person on the basis of the independence and integrity of the two persons involved, then masochism and love are opposites. Love is based on equality and freedom. If it is based on subordination and loss of integrity of one partner, it is masochistic dependence regardless of how the relationship is rationalized. Sadism also appears frequently under the disguise of love. To rule over another person, if one can claim that to rule him is for that person's own sake, frequently appears as an expression of love, but the essential factor is the enjoyment of domination. — Erich Fromm

there's nothing to
discuss
there's nothing to
remember
there's nothing to
forget

it's sad
and
it's not
sad

seems the
most sensible
thing
a person can
do
is
sit
with drink in
hand
as the walls
wave
their goodbye
smiles

one comes through
it
all
with a certain
amount of
efficiency and
bravery
then
leaves

some accept
the possibility of
God
to help them
get
through

others
take it
staight on

and to these

I drink
tonight. — Charles Bukowski

I work hard, I make my own living and I love it. I like having financial independence. — Salma Hayek

Evil is the word that discribes the abscense of God , simply the same as the word darkness discribes the abscense of light , and the word death the abscense of life .Evil and darkness can only be understood in their relations with the good and the light, because in fact they don't exist .I'm the light and I am God . I am love and in Me there's no darkness . The light and good really exist .That's why when U avoid Me , you fall into the darkness .Showing independence leads to evil , cause without Me you can only rely on your self . That's death because you are walking away from Me , The life . — Wm. Paul Young

Our culture values independence and isolation far too much, it seems to me
we have a hard time making ourselves part of things, of making ourselves responsible to others, and trusting others to be there for us. Sure, there's pain involved if we get hurt, but there's far more pain in isolation. I love community because God gave us other people to live with, not to pull away from, and I learn so much from others that I can't imagine my life without the learning I've gained from getting to know other people. — Tom Walsh

Under the urge of nature and according to the laws of development, though not understood by the adult, the child is obliged to be serious about two fundamental things ... the first is the love of activity ... The second fundamental thing is independence. — Maria Montessori

I like living at home: I've been making films since I was 12, when I played Sam in 'Love Actually', and if you spend as much time away on set as I have done, you get your independence young, so it's nice to come back home. — Thomas Brodie-Sangster

Despite progress witnessed elsewhere in the matters of heart, parents in this part of the world hadn't quite come around to letting their adult offspring choose their lovers. — Pawan Mishra

New Hampshire is one of the birthplaces of American freedom and independence - a place with a love and a passion for liberty. — Marsha Blackburn

In teaching me independence of thought, they had given me the greatest gift an adult can give to a child besides love, and they had given me that also. — Bryce Courtenay

It's probably not just by chance that I'm alone. It would be very hard for a man to live with me, unless he's terribly strong. And if he's stronger than I, I'm the one who can't live with him. ... I'm neither smart nor stupid, but I don't think I'm a run-of-the-mill person. I've been in business without being a businesswoman, I've loved without being a woman made only for love. The two men I've loved, I think, will remember me, on earth or in heaven, because men always remember a woman who caused them concern and uneasiness. I've done my best, in regard to people and to life, without precepts, but with a taste for justice. — Coco Chanel

The ruler of each clan was called a chief, who was really the chief man of his family. Each clan was divided into branches who had chieftains over them. The members of the clan claimed consanguinity to the chief. The idea never entered into the mind of a Highlander that the chief was anything more than the head of the clan. The relation he sustained was subordinate to the will of the people. Sometimes his sway was unlimited, but necessarily paternal. The tribesmen were strongly attached to the person of their chief. He stood in the light of a protector, who must defend them and right their wrongs. They rallied to his support, and in defense they had a contempt for danger. The sway of the chief was of such a nature as to cultivate an imperishable love of independence, which was probably strengthened by an exceptional hardiness of character. — John Patterson MacLean

When you become an adult you just make that transition and you're right ... it's fun and exciting to be an adult and exciting to have independence, but once you're out from under the cover of your family's protection and love, you sort of have to take a step back and come to terms with the fact that you won't really ever have that again in the same way. You'll never be a kid again. — Fernando Torres

Shooting Willoughby carrying Marianne up the path ... Male strength
the desire to be cradled again? ... I'd love someone to pick me up and carry me off. Frightening. Lindsay assures me I'd start to fidget after a while. She's such a comfort. — Emma Thompson

In marriage, we might say, we lose our independence in order to gain new freedom, so if we give ourselves to our God, our True Love, we will become more free than we can imagine. We will be free from fears, insecurity, and shame. We will be free to forgive, to love others, to face suffering in a way we could not before. — Timothy Keller

The love of solitude, when cultivated in the morn of life, elevates the mind to a noble independence, but to acquire the advantages which solitude is capable of affording, the mind must not be impelled to it by melancholy and discontent, but by a real distaste to the idle pleasures of the world, a rational contempt for the deceitful joys of life, and just apprehensions of being corrupted and seduced by its insinuating and destructive gayeties. — Johann Georg Ritter Von Zimmermann

I didn't want to be the woman who gave herself over willingly to the first man to notice her. I didn't want to be the stupid girl in every novel who loved without question and entered relationships that didn't make sense. — Destinee Hardwick

I wanted both things: strength in my independence and also this new desire. This felt like the beginning of a new kind of love. — Aspen Matis

The pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, an almost fanatical love of justice and the desire for personal independence
these are the features of the Jewish tradition which make me thank my stars that I belong to it. — Albert Einstein

Independence isn't all it's cracked up to be, you know. What country could be more independent than Russia? And in Russia now there isn't a squeak or a pinpoint of light. I have nowhere to publish. The Contemporary has stuck its head up out of harm's way. So I've stopped quarrelling with the world. I sat in this chair the first morning I woke up in this house ... and for the first time ... for a long time, there was silence. I didn't have to talk or think or move, nothing was expected of me, I knew nobody and nobody knew where i was, everything was behind me, all the moving from place to place, the quarrels and celebrations, the desperate concerns of health and happiness, love, death, printer's errors, picnics ruined by rain, the endless tumult of life ... and I just sat quiet and alone all day, looking at the tops of trees on Primrose Hill through the mist. — Tom Stoppard

Being a writer is something I love to do, plus I get independence. It's a great job for a woman because she can work at home and always be there for the children. — Anne Mather

If you're waiting for me to declare my undying love for you, I can't do that yet, blood-bond or no blood-bond. If you think I'm the swoony type of heroine you find in romance novels, who'll fall into your arms just because you saved me from an alternate reality or whatever, get ready to leave empty handed, because I don't want to be caught. — Dianna Hardy

When a child reaches adolescence, there is very apt to be a conflict between parents and child, since the latter considers himself to be by now quite capable of managing his own affairs, while the former are filled with parental solicitude, which is often a disguise for love of power. Parents consider, usually, that the various moral problems which arise in adolescence are peculiarly their province. The opinions they express, however, are so dogmatic that the young seldom confide in them, and usually go their own way in secret. — Bertrand Russell

You have to love a nation that celebrates its independence every July 4, not with a parade of guns, tanks, and soldiers who file by the White House in a show of strength and muscle, but with family picnics where kids throw Frisbees, the potato salad gets iffy, and the flies die from happiness. You may think you have overeaten, but it is patriotism. — Erma Bombeck

We must remember when we speak of the "negativism" of the toddler that this is also the child who is intoxicated with the discoveries of the second year, a joyful child who is firmly bound to his parents and his new-found world through ties of love. The so-called negativism is one of the aspects of this development, but under ordinary circumstances it does not become anarchy. It's a kind of declaration of independence, but there is no intention to unseat the government. — Selma Fraiberg

But as a Scot with a lifelong love of Scotland and the arts, I believe the opportunity of independence is too good to miss. Simply put there is no more creative an act than creating a new nation. — Sean Connery

Respect, thus, implies the absence of exploitation. I want the loved person to grow and unfold for his own sake, and in his own ways, and not for the purpose of serving me. If I love the other person, I feel one with him or her, but with him as he is, not as I need him to be as an object for my use. It is clear that respect is possible only if I have achieved independence; if I can stand and walk without needing crutches, without — Erich Fromm

My wife knows that I thrive on independence, and whatever girls live with me must know that, too. They must realize I have a certain respect for my wife and love for my children, and my work comes pretty much ahead of all that. — Don Ho

The Vietnamese people deeply love independence, freedom and peace. But in the face of United States aggression they have risen up, united as one man. — Ho Chi Minh

But a girl's love is not a woman's love; above all, it is not a modern woman's love. I, at thirty, cannot accept your views, adopt your methods, and believe your heresies, as you might be able to teach me to do if I were eighteen, - and if I loved you. I have found out my own life-truths, and they do not accord with yours. — Florence Converse

There's a difference between compromising your independence and compromising yourself. Love's about giving up a little dependence, darling. But that doesn't mean you have to stop being you. — Hester Browne

I love indie record stores, man. I love anything that's about independence and preserving the brand of good music. — Raheem Devaughn

I love man as my fellow; but his scepter, real, or usurped, extends not to me, unless the reason of an individual demands my homage; and even then the submission is to reason, and not to man. — Mary Wollstonecraft

A formal period in life where there isn't the worry of another person's dramas and insecurities can be of great advantage, especially when used for growing into the full and wholesome beings we intended to be when choosing to come to this material manifestation.
"Even after ending a long relationship or a marriage, it seems normal to have some alone-time to reflect, meditate, explore areas of interest, find meaning in one's suffering and try to placate the void felt in the heart before attempting to enter into new relationships, otherwise the same old mistakes will surely re-emerge.
"Once we're at the stage of life where we can stand our own silence, where we've made peace with our past, where we've accepted and grown from its lessons, and we would like to share our independence without becoming dependent on someone else for love and affection, then we can choose to commit to a two bodied intimate relationship. — Nityananda Das

It was nice of her to want to believe the best about me. People tend to do that with the strangers they're fucking. If she wanted to think that apathy and independence were the same thing, good for her. Maybe she was right. — Paul Neilan

It is not love that is to blame. But each of us has resistance to the very love we desire. We also have resistance to the space and independence we need. So we go back and forth, not letting ourselves have one or the other. It all boils down to this: Are you willing to have your relationships be a pathway to fully revealing yourself and your potential? If you answer is Yes, real intimacy can be yours on a daily basis. — Gay Hendricks

I love your independence, I love that you don't swoon, I love that you'll fight me with your last breath if you think I'm wrong, and if I ever have to catch you, I swear I'll make sure you're standing on your feet as quickly as you can manage it. — Dianna Hardy

True love transcends the unworthy object, and dwells and broods on the eternal, and when the poor interposed mask crumbles, it is not sad, but feels rid of so much earth, and feels its independency the surer. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Degrees of ability vary, but the basic principle remains the same: the degree of a man's independence, initiative and personal love for his work determines his talent as a worker and his worth as a man. Independence is the only gauge of human virtue and value. What a man is and makes of himself; not what he has or hasn't done for others. There is no substitute for personal dignity. There is no standard of personal dignity except independence. — Ayn Rand

To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity and trust. — Henry David Thoreau

Separation of function is not to be despised, but neither should it be exalted. Separation is not an unbreakable law, but a convenience for overcoming inadequate human abilities, whether in science or engineering. As D'Arcy Thompson, one of the spiritual fathers of the general systems movement, said: As we analyze a thing into its parts or into its properties, we tend to magnify these, to exaggerate their apparent independence, and to hide from ourselves (at least for a time) the essential integrity and individuality of the composite whole. We divided the body into its organs, the skeleton into its bones, as in very much the same fashion we make a subjective analysis of the mind, according to the teaching of psychology, into component factors: but we know very well that judgement and knowledge, courage or gentleness, love or fear, have no separate existence, but are somehow mere manifestations, or imaginary coefficients, of a most complex integral.10 The — Gerald M. Weinberg

Our quest for safe harbor begins when we acknowledge our need to give up the independence and self-reliance of the orphan heart and humble ourselves willingly to be fathered and mothered by other men and women who have been there before, people who know how to find their way through the storms and the gales of life and who know where safe harbor lies. Safe harbor - the heart and love of the Father, along with all the riches and resources of His Kingdom - is our inheritance when we enter in with a heart of sons and daughters. Whose son are you? Whose daughter are you? Remember - no sonship, no inheritance. — Jack Frost

Love-based parenting elevates the importance of the relationship to the highest position. No homework assignment, no chore, and no social etiquette is ever more important than the parent-child relationship. Maintaining connectedness and attunement, thereby sustaining the balance of love of self and love of child, is the primal outcome of every interaction the parent has with the child. When this is achieved, the other less significant items will take care of themselves. The ultimate challenge in reaching this goal is that children both want and need autonomy (independence), yet they are biologically engineered to be in relationships and to belong (dependence). This clash between the two is compounded by American culture where there is a powerful emphasis on the individual rather than — Heather T. Forbes

Norbu rejects the Western stereotype of Tibetans as an innately nonviolent people, a romantic notion which he thinks gratifies many Western people discontented with the aggressive selfishness of their societies but obscures the political aspirations of the Tibetan peoples and the variety of means available to them to achieve independence. In 1989, he published a book about one of the Khampa warriors of eastern Tibet, who fought the invading Chinese Army in 1950 and then initiated the bloody revolt against Chinese rule that eventually led to the Dalai Lama's departure for India.
"We are ordinary Tibetans," Norbu told PBS. "We drink; we eat; we feel passion; we love our wives and kids. If someone sort of messes around with them, even if they're an army, you pick up your rifle. — Pankaj Mishra

She didn't need anyone. At Wheeler, even when she stood out with her pink hair and quilter army-surplus jacket and combat bots, she did this without apology. It was a great irony that the very fact of a relationship with her would diminish her appeal, that the moment she came to love me back and depend on me as much as I depended on her, she would no longer be a truly independent spirit. No way in hell was I going to be the one to take that quality away from her. — Jodi Picoult

Why do farmers farm, given their economic adversities on top of the many frustrations and difficulties normal to farming? And always the answer is: "Love. They must do it for love." Farmers farm for the love of farming. They love to watch and nurture the growth of plants. They love to live in the presence of animals. They love to work outdoors. They love the weather, maybe even when it is making them miserable. They love to live where they work and to work where they live. If the scale of their farming is small enough, they like to work in the company of their children and with the help of their children. They love the measure of independence that farm life can still provide. I have an idea that a lot of farmers have gone to a lot of trouble merely to be self-employed to live at least a part of their lives without a boss. — Wendell Berry

Dancing, at its best, is independence and intimacy in balance. — Donna Goddard

You were born together, and together you shall be for evermore ... But let there be spaces in your togetherness ... Love one another, but make not a bond of love. Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not of the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. — Kahlil Gibran

You know what, Abigail? You're right - it is selfish. But there's nothing inherently immature about making a selfish choice. It is hard to put what you know is right for you first, when you know people you love don't respect your choices. It is hard to say 'what I want is worthy.' It is hard to say 'I know myself and what I need, even if everyone else thinks otherwise.' Don't tell me this is immature when it took me months of thinking about it every damn day to make this choice. — Dahlia Adler

Singlehood is about finding and committing to the love of your life. I'm talking about the literal love of your life. Being in a place of self-sufficiency, strength, independence, comfort, confidence, and happiness is what matters. No relationship, no matter how seemingly perfect and compatible you are, can give you these things. You have to find them within. You have to bring them to your relationship. Because in the end, you don't have to be alone to be single. And being single doesn't mean that you are alone. — Elisa Lorello

To love oneself is to struggle to rediscover and maintain your uniqueness — Leo Buscaglia

See with your own eyes, hear with your own ears, think your own thoughts, say what you must say, do what you must do, love all that you can and stand on your own two feet. — Paul Palnik

There are certain phrases potent to make my blood boil
improper influence! What old woman's cackle is that?"
"Are you a young lady?"
"I am a thousand times better: I am an honest woman, and as such I will be treated. — Charlotte Bronte

It often occurs that pride and selfishness are muddled with strength and independence. They are neither equal nor similar; in fact, they are polar opposites. A coward may be so cowardly that he masks his weakness with some false personification of power. He is afraid to love and to be loved because love tends to strip bare all emotional barricades. Without love, strength and independence are prone to losing every bit of their worth; they become nothing more than a fearful, intimidated, empty tent lost somewhere in the desert of self. — Criss Jami

I learned what education was expected to do for an individual. Before going there I had a good deal of the then rather prevalent idea among our people that to secure an education meant to have a good, easy time, free from all necessity for manual labor. At Hampton I not only learned that it was not a disgrace to labor, but learned to love labor, not alone for its financial value, but for labor's own sake and for the independence and self-reliance which the ability to do something which the world wants done brings. At that institution I got my first taste of what it meant to live a life of unselfishness, my first knowledge of the fact that the happiest individuals are those who do the most to make others useful and happy. — Booker T. Washington

He had to learn that not giving at the right time was more compassionate than giving at the wrong time, and that fostering independence was more loving than taking care of people who could otherwise take care of themselves. He even had to learn that expressing his own needs, anger, resentments and expectations was every bit as necessary to the mental health of his family as his self-sacrifice, and therefore that love must be manifested in confrontation as much as in beatific acceptance. Gradually coming to realize how he infantilized his family, he began to make — M. Scott Peck

I've written this book to explore and illuminate the lives, values, and experiences of just such people, and to offer a glimpse at how we raise our kids with love, optimism, and a predilection for independence of thought, how we foster a practical, this-worldly morality based on empathy, how we employ self-reliance in the face of life's difficulties, how we handle and accept death as best we can, how and why we do or do not engage in a plethora of rituals and traditions, how we create various forms of community while still maintaining our proclivity for autonomy, and what it means for us to experience awe in the midst of this world, this time, this life. — Phil Zuckerman

I've always loved strong women, which is lucky for me because once you're over about twenty-five there is no other kind. Women blow my mind. The stuff that routinely gets done to them would make most men curl up and die, but women turn to steel and keep on coming. Any man who claims he's not into strong women is fooling himself mindless; he's into strong women who know how to pout prettily and put on baby voices, and who will end up keeping his balls in her makeup bags. — Tana French

I have urged on woman independence of man, not that I do not think the sexes mutually needed by one another, but because in woman this fact has led to an excessive devotion, which has cooled love, degraded marriage and prevented it her sex from being what it should be to itself or the other. I wish woman to live, first for God's sake. Then she will not take what is not fit for her from a sense of weakness and poverty. Then if she finds what she needs in man embodied, she will know how to love and be worthy of being loved. — Margaret Fuller

She was feeling more vulnerable and alone than she had felt in years. And incredibly frightened. For all her fiercely held independence, she still desperately craved solace. A secret desire to be held, protected. Loved? No, that was going to far. Love was a manipulation. A lie. Lust was more honest. Lust only messed with your body not your mind. — Elise Title

The Authority has said: Dream! But in truth , they mete out our destinies in tiny rations; they've said how far we can go, how long, and where. Aspirations are useless, because to aspire, is to reach. Dream, they say, but not too big. Laugh, they say, but not too loudly . Love, they say, but not too hard. When you find you cannot contain yourself any longer and you imagine things beyond the walls they've built for you, constructed to imprison your desires, and when your heart is filled with impossible things, then, I say, you have achieved true independence. Our Anarchy is not simply a battle of flesh and blood; it is a war of the mind. The time is always now to declare your freedom! — Logan Keys

Later, her first intense, serious love affair, yes then she'd lost something more tangible, if undefinable: her heart? her independence? her control of, definition of, self? That first true loss, the furious bafflement of it. And never again quite so assured, confident. — Joyce Carol Oates

I could never, I knew then, lose myself "in love." Margery had accused me of coldness, and she was right, but she was also wrong: For me, for always, the paramount organ of passion was the mind. Unnatural, unbalanced, perhaps, but it was true: Without intellect, there could be no love. — Laurie R. King

It's too late," she whispered.
He whirled her around. "Don't say that! We are no better than animals if we cannot learn from our mistakes and move forward."
She lifted her chin. "It isn't that. I don't want to marry you anymore." And she didn't, she realized ...
He paled and whispered, "You're just saying that."
"I mean what I say, Robert. I don't want to marry you."
"You're angry," he reasoned. "You're angry, and you want to hurt me, and you have every right to feel that way."
"I'm not angry." She paused. "Well, yes, I am, but that's not why I'm refusing you."
He crossed his arms. "Why, then? Why won't you even listen to me?"
"Because I'm happy now! Is that so difficult for you to understand? I like my position and I love my independence. — Julia Quinn

Money usually represents so much more than dollars and cents. It is tied up with our deepest emotional needs: for love, power, security, independence, control, self-worth. — Olivia Mellan

Women want men, careers, money, children, friends, luxury, comfort, independence, freedom, respect, love, and a three-dollar pantyhose that won't run. — Phyllis Diller

The Declaration of Independence has established certain moral confines, and governs in a manner consistent with the spirit under which our nation was founded: Love God; love thy neighbor as thyself. — Jeremiah Denton

The church works best not as a power center, rather as a countercultural community - in the world but not of it - that shows others how to live the most fulfilled and meaningful life on earth. In modern society that means rejecting the false gods of independence, success, and pleasure and replacing them with love for God and neighbor. — Philip Yancey

The religionists are the enemies of liberty, and the friends of liberty attack religion; the high-minded and the noble advocate bondage, and the meanest and most servile preach independence; honest and enlightened citizens are opposed to all progress, whilst men without patriotism and without principle put themselves forward as the apostles of civilization and intelligence. Has such been the fate of the centuries which have preceded our own? and has man always inhabited a world like the present, where all things are out of their natural connections, where virtue is without genius, and genius without honor; where the love of order is confounded with a taste for oppression, and the holy rites of freedom with a contempt of law; where the light thrown by conscience on human actions is dim, and where nothing seems to be any longer forbidden or allowed, honorable or shameful, false or true? — Alexis De Tocqueville

Self-government is our right," [Roger Casement] declared. "A thing born in us at birth; a thing no more to be doled out to us or withheld from us by another people than the right to life itself - than the right to feel the sun or smell the flowers, or to love our kind ... Where men must beg with bated breath for leave to subsist in their own land, to think their own thoughts, to sing their own songs, to garner the fruits of their own labours ... then surely it is braver, a saner and a truer thing, to be a rebel ... than tamely to accept it as the natural lot of men. — Adam Hochschild

Think long and hard whether you have reached that mature stage of selflessness for this one you think you love so much. The love you enjoy will be the best thing that ever happened to you, but it will cost you your independence.... The responsibility of marriage and family demands time, and when we cheat on that, we rob ourselves of the investment returns. — Ravi Zacharias