Self Defiance Quotes & Sayings

Let it be remembered that most men live in a world of their own, and that in that limited circle alone are they ambitious for distinction and applause. Sir Mulberry's world was peopled with profligates, and he acted accordingly.
Thus, cases of injustice, and oppression, and tyranny, and the most extravagant bigotry, are in constant occurrence among us every day. It is the custom to trumpet forth much wonder and astonishment at the chief actors therein setting at defiance so completely the opinion of the world. But there is no greater fallacy; it is precisely because they do consult the opinion of their own little world that such things take place at all, and strike the great world dumb with amazement. — Charles Dickens

That's not what he meant," Rachel says again, pink flushing her cheeks.
"Actually, I meant-" I start to say, but Willow cuts me off.
"What? It's true. He looks at you like he'd like to dip you in sugar and eat you up. — C.J. Redwine

You dreamed like all mothers do.
Until he began to speak aloud,
Your boy,
calling for justice in the market place,
Demanding integrity and fair play
in the courts and halls of business.
Declaring the Realm of God
Imminent,
Manifest . . .
Jesus leapt into the swelling crowds
like an axe into wood,
Uncompromising and unrelenting
in his passionate call
for peace and justice.
Jesus, your boy,
causing havoc in public,
critiquing and condemning
the status quo,
breaking rule after rule . . .
And with every speech,
with every act of defiance,
with every call to liberation,
with every amazing deed,
Your dreams of peace and liberation,
Your dreams of a secure old age,
Your dreams of grandchildren--
Evaporated. — Edwina Gateley

What is wine? It is the grape present in another form; its essence is there, though the fruit which produced it grew thousands of miles away, and perished years ago. So the object of many a tender thought may be spiritually present, in defiance of space - and fond recollections cherished in defiance of time. — Samuel Lover

He does not want a girl who trifles with Christianity. He wants a woman who is radically given to Christ. He does not want a girl who prays tepid, lukewarm prayers. He wants a woman who lives in defiance of the powers of Hell. He does not want a girl who is self-adorning with the latest fashions and trends. He wants a woman who is adorned with the inner jewelry of Christ-given holiness. He does not want a girl who dishonors and belittles her parents. He wants a woman who honors the authorities God has placed in her life and serves them with charity and gladness. He does not want a girl whose Bible is an accessory to her wardrobe. He wants a woman whose hunger and thirst is to know the Lord, and who diligently feasts upon His Word. He does not want a girl whose tongue is a deceptive weapon of selfishness. He wants a woman whose words drip with the honey of the name of Jesus. — Leslie Ludy

Be yourself, don't take anything from anyone, and never let them take you alive. — Gerard Way

We, too, are shadow and light. We are not supposed to know this, or be all these different facets of humanity, bright and dark. We are raised to be bright and shiny, but there is meaning in the acceptance of our dusky and dappled side, and also in defiance. — Anne Lamott

He held the flag like a banner of defiance. 'You can take our lives but you'll never take our freedom!' he screamed.

Carcer's men looked at one another, puzzled by what sounded like the most badly thought-out war cry in the history of the universe. — Terry Pratchett

The usual touchstone of whether what someone asserts is mere persuasion or at least a subjective conviction, i.e., firm belief, is betting. Often someone pronounces his propositions with such confident and inflexible defiance that he seems to have entirely laid aside all concern for error. A bet disconcerts him. Sometimes he reveals that he is persuaded enough for one ducat but not for ten. For he would happily bet one, but at ten he suddenly becomes aware of what he had not previously noticed, namely that it is quite possible that he has erred. — Immanuel Kant

Why should a deserter take the trouble to light Rutupiae Beacon?" Aquila demanded, and his voice sounded rough in is own ears.
"Maybe in farewell, maybe in defiance. Maybe to hold back the dark for one more night. — Rosemary Sutcliff

The dead shook off their rust of living and seized up steel. Their lips quivered with the defiance of innocents, with manipulations of politicians and their interchangeable dreams, and with the insanity of thugs who don't even know for which parties they commit their atrocities. — Ben Okri

The power of a bold idea uttered publicly in defiance of dominant opinion cannot be easily measured. Those special people who speak out in such a way as to shake up not only the self-assurance of their enemies, but the complacency of their friends, are precious catalysts for change. — Howard Zinn

As masculine self-consciousness grows stronger, the stage of matriarchy is followed by that of division. Symptomatic of this transition period is the twin-brother motif in mythology, which expresses the mutual affinity of opposites. This division turns destructively against itself in self-mutilation and suicide. As we saw, in uroboric and matriarchal castration the will of the Great Mother was paramount. But the centroversion tendency which underlies the ego-hero's struggle for self-preservation and which first takes the form of anxiety, advances beyond the passive, narcissistic stage and turns into resistance, defiance, and aggression directed against the Great Mother, as illustrated mythologically in the story of Hippolytus. — Erich Neumann

The willingness to undertake such action cannot be based on certainties, but on those possibilities glimpsed in a reading of history different from the customary painful recounting of human cruelties. In such a reading we can find not only war but resistance to war, not only injustice but rebellion against injustice, not only selfishness but self-sacrifice, not only silence in the fact of tyranny but defiance, not only callousness but compassion.
Human beings show a broad spectrum of qualities, but it is the worst of these that are usually emphasized, and the result, too often, is to dishearten us, diminish our spirit. And yet, historically, that spirit refuses to surrender. — Howard Zinn

Life, especially human life, was an act of defiance. It was never meant to be, and yet it existed in an incredible number of places across a near-infinite number of solar systems. — Matt Haig

Until the end of the nineteenth century these undergraduates never numbered more than a few thousand. Entirely on their own, however, and in
defiance of the most integrated absolutism of the time, they aspired to liberate and provisionally did
contribute to the liberation of forty million muzhiks. Almost all of them paid for this liberation by suicide,
execution, prison, or madness. The entire history of Russian terrorism can be summed up in the struggle
of a handful of intellectuals to
abolish tyranny, against a background of a silent populace. Their debilitated victory was finally betrayed.
But by their sacrifice and even by their most extreme negations they gave substance to a new standard of
values, a new virtue, which even today has not ceased to oppose tyranny and to give aid to the cause of
true liberation. — Albert Camus

The human creature, humiliated and offended in ways that are inconceivable to the mind and heart, defies the blind and deaf divinity. — Francoise Mauriac

Now there's something for you to think about. If you don't know that you can't do something, isn't there a remote possibility that you'll go ahead and do it anyway in absolute defiance of physical law? That might be one of the drawbacks of education. If you don't know that you can't pick yourself up by the scruff of the neck and hold yourself at arm's length, maybe you can. — David Eddings

Defining your own truth and then living according to it ... changes your sense of self and sets you free; it makes you fearless -- or at least more courageous -- with every significant person in your life. When you're not so insecure, there are things -- offhand cruelties, insensitivities large and small -- you don't tolerate, things you don't have to deny.... Once you are the one who determines the meaning of your life, nobody can gainsay it. This act of self-assertive defiance immunizes you -- at least to a certain extent -- from ever allowing someone else to control your destiny ever again. — Jeanne Safer

In War: Resolution,
In Defeat: Defiance,
In Victory: Magnanimity
In Peace: Good Will. — Winston S. Churchill

Radicals often suspect beauty of corruption. Uptight fuckers though they sometimes are, they're right in one thing: art alone cannot change the world. Pens can't take on swords, let alone Predator drones. But as disappointment and violence spread, the antidote is a generosity that the best art can still inspire.

Art is hope against cynicism, creation against entropy. To make art is an act of both love and defiance. Though I'm a cynic, I believe these things are all we have. — Molly Crabapple

Many displayed in their nudity traces of their past: scars of knife thrusts in the belly, starbursts of guns hot wounds, ridges of the razor cuts of love, Caesarean sections sewn up by butchers. Some of them had their young children with them during the day, those unfortunate fruits of youthful defiance or carelessness, and they took off their children's clothes as soon as they were brought in so they would not feel different in that paradise of nudity. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I have no desires, save the desire to express myself in defiance of all the world's muteness. — Vladimir Nabokov

The cigarette represents a simple pleasure coupled with self-destruction and defiance of death. Melodrama — Benjamin Doolin

Prayer is subversive activity. It involves a more or less open act of defiance against any claim by the current regime ... [As we pray,] slowly but surely, not culture, not family, not government, not job, not even the tyrannous self can stand against the quiet power and creative influence of God's sovereignty. — Eugene H. Peterson

'What have you done?' I whispered.
She swallowed, and the guilt in her eyes was extinguished by a flare of defiance.
'This,' she said, 'is my ticket to outer space.' — Kenneth Oppel

Doubt has become the veritable wellspring of my creative process and my philosophic explorations. It has equipped me with the temerity and wherewithal to question certain truths deemed 'fundamental' by my betters. Defiance has made me stubborn - possibly even arrogant - enough to shrug off rejection and all fears thereof, no matter how lacerating to the self-esteem these could be. It has given me the will to seek only to satisfy myself. — Ashim Shanker

There was an old belief that in the embers
Of all things their primordial form exists,
And cunning alchemists
Could re-create the rose with all its members
From its own ashes, but without the bloom,
Without the lost perfume
Ah me! what wonder-working, occult science
Can from the ashes in our hearts once more
The rose of youth restore?
What craft of alchemy can bid defiance
To time and change, and for a single hour
Renew this phantom-flower? — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

libido, or concupiscence, a tending toward certain things in defiance of rational restraint. — Fulton J. Sheen

Serpine: Well, Skulduggery? Where is that tired old defiance - the taunting, the goading? Where are the endless heroic clinches? Aren't you going to look me in the eye and tell me to do my worst?
Skulduggery: Actually, I was going to ask that you go easy on me. I'm feeling kind of tender today
Serpine: This is your one chance. Tell me where the key is
Skulduggery:OK
Serpine: Really?
Skulduggery: No, only joking. Do your worst. — Derek Landy

We secured peace for our country for one and a half years, as well as an opportunity of preparing our forces for defense if fascist Germany risked attacking our country in defiance of the pact. This was a definite gain to our country and a loss for fascist Germany. — Joseph Stalin

People want what they want. Sometimes you just have to walk in defiance of it and just be yourself. — Meryl Streep

The charm of Ronald Reagan is not just that he kept telling us screwy things, it was that he believed them all. No wonder we trusted him, he never lied to us ... His stubbornness, even defiance, in the face of facts ('stupid things,' he once called them in a memorable slip) was nothing short of splendid ... This is the man who proved that ignorance is no handicap to the presidency. — Molly Ivins

As a democratic Socialist profoundly committed to the rule of law, I could not condone, let alone encourage, defiance of the law. — Anthony Crosland

The rebel, dismissed as impractical and zealous, is chronically misunderstood. Those cursed with timidity, fear, or blindness and those who are slaves to opportunism call for moderation and patience. They distort the language of religion, spirituality, compromise, generosity, and compassion to justify cooperation with systems of power that are bent on our destruction. The rebel is deaf to these critiques. The rebel hears only his or her inner voice, which demands steadfast defiance. Self-promotion, positions of influence, the adulation of the public, and the awards and prominent positions that come with bowing before authority mean nothing to the rebel, who understands that virtue is not rewarded. The rebel expects nothing and gets nothing. But for the rebel, to refuse to struggle, to refuse to rebel, is to commit spiritual and moral suicide. — Chris Hedges

3. The child is allowed to experience and express ordinary impulses, such as jealousy, rage, sexuality and defiance, because the parents have not disowned these feelings in themselves. 4. The child does not have to please the parent and can develop his own needs at his own developmental pace. 5. The child can depend on and use his parents because they are separate from him. 6. The parents' independence and good boundaries allow the child to separate self and object representation. 7. Because the child is allowed to display ambivalent feelings, he can learn to regard himself and the caregiver as "both good and bad," rather than splitting off certain parts as good and certain parts as bad. 8. The beginning of true object love is possible because the parents love the child as a separate object. — John Bradshaw

The political superstition is still holding sway over the hearts and minds of the masses, but the true lovers of liberty will have no more to do with it. Instead, they believe with Stirner that man has as much liberty as he is willing to take. Anarchism therefore stands for direct action, the open defiance of, and resistance to, all laws and restrictions, economic, social, and moral. But defiance and resistance are illegal. Therein lies the salvation of man. Everything illegal necessitates integrity, self-reliance, and courage. In short, it calls for free, independent spirits, for men who are men, and who have a bone in their backs which you cannot pass your hand through. — Emma Goldman

Defying the Dark One no matter the length of his shadow. We will live, that defiance said. We will love and we will hope. — Robert Jordan

As for my own part I care not for death, for all men are mortal; and though I be a woman yet I have as good a courage answerable to my place as ever my father had. I am your anointed Queen. I will never be by violence constrained to do anything. I thank God I am indeed endowed with such qualities that if I were turned out of the realm in my petticoat I were able to live in any place in Christendom. — Elizabeth I

The leader personifies the certitude of the creed and the defiance and grandeur of power. He articulates and justifies the resentment damned up in the souls of the frustrated. He kindles the vision of a breath-taking future so as to justify the sacrifice of a transitory present. He stages a world of make-believe so indispensable for the realization of self-sacrifice and united action. — Eric Hoffer

Unconditional love also includes - the ardent desire to be abused: at that point it is a defiance directed against itself, and out of its devotion the very wish for self-annihilation finally arises: "Drown in this sea! — Friedrich Nietzsche

My life's been too much of a self-created vocation. And there are times when I think I've done everything in the name of defiance. — Anne Rice

I'm deeper than the shit I'm in and I don't really give a damn. — Iggy Pop

None of it could be reduced to something as simple as invader and invaded. Baru saw in the city what she felt in herself. The two-faced allegiances, the fearful monitoring of self and surroundings, the whimpering need to please somehow kneeling alongside marrow-deep defiance. One eye set on a future of glittering wealthy subservience, the other turned to a receding and irretrievable freedom. The liquor of empire, alluring and corrosive at once, saturating everything, every old division of sex and race and history, remaking it all with the promise and the threat of power. — Seth Dickinson

Fabulous. If you possess it, you don't need to ask what it is. When you attempt to delineate it, you move away from it. Fabulous is one of those words that provide a measure of the degree to which a person or event manifests a particular oppressed subculture's most distinctive, invigorating features. What are the salient features of fabulousness? Irony. Tragic History. Defiance. Gender-fuck. Glitter. Drama. It is not butch. It is not hot. The cathexis surrounding fabulousness is not necessarily erotic. The fabulous is not delineated by age or beauty. It is raw materials reworked into illusion. To be truly fabulous, one must completely triumph over tragedy, age, and physical insufficiencies. The fabulous is the rapturous embrace of difference, the discovering of self not in that which has rejected you but in that which makes you unlike, the dislike, the other. — Tony Kushner

I like to joke that I probably hold the world record for rejection letters. Yes, the truth is that I was fed up of being rejected repeatedly, and self-publication was an act of defiance at traditional publishing. But life works in strange ways. — Ashwin Sanghi

And this brings us to our final type of man: the one who asserts himself out of defiance of his own weakness, who tries to be a god unto himself, the master of his fate, a self-created man. He will not be merely the pawn of others, of society; he will not be a passive sufferer and secret dreamer, nursing his own inner flame in oblivion. He will plunge into life,
into the distractions of great undertakings, he will become a restless spirit ... which wants to forget ... Or he will seek forgetfulness in sensuality, perhaps in debauchery ...
At its extreme, defiant self-creation can become demonic, a passion which Kierkegaard calls "demoniac rage," an attack on all of life for what it has dared to do to one, a revolt against existence itself. — Ernest Becker

We judge of others for the most part by their good opinion of themselves; yet nothing gives such offense or creates so many enemies, as that extreme self-complacency or superciliousness of manner, which appears to set the opinion of every one else at defiance. — William Hazlitt

What possessed them, these young girls with a talent for self-immolation? Is it what they do to show that girls too have courage, that they can do more than weep and moan, that they too can face death with panache? And where does the urge come from? Does it begin with defiance, and if so, of what? Of the great leaden suffocating order of things, the great spike-wheeled chariot, the blind tyrants, the blind gods? Are these girls reckless enough or arrogant enough to think that they can stop such things in their tracks by offering themselves up on some theoretical alter, or is it a kind of testifying? Admirable enough, if you admire obsession. Courageous enough, too. But completely useless. — Margaret Atwood

The anchor of meaning resides in an abyss, deeper than the reach of despair. Yet the abyss is not not infinite; its bottom may suddenly be discovered within the confines of a human heart or under the debris of might doubts. This may be the vocation of man: to say "Amen" to being and to the Author of being; to live in defiance of absurdity, notwithstanding futility and defeat; to attain faith in God even in spite of God. — Abraham Joshua Heschel

With the aurora borealis flaming coldly overhead, or the stars leaping in the frost dance, and the land numb and frozen under its pall of snow, this song of the huskies might have been the defiance of life, only it was pitched in minor key, with long-drawn wailings and half-sobs, and was more the pleading of life, the articulate travail of existence. It was an old song, old as the breed itself - one of the first songs of the younger world in a day when songs were sad. It was invested with the woe of unnumbered generations, this plaint by which Buck was so strangely stirred. When he moaned and sobbed, it was with the pain of living that was of old the pain of his wild fathers, and the fear and mystery of the cold and dark that was to them fear and mystery. — Jack London

Thomas Jefferson had rather serious concerns about the fate of the democratic experiment.28 He feared the rise of a new form of absolutism that was more ominous than the British rule overthrown in the American Revolution. He distinguished in his later years between what he called "aristocrats and democrats."29 And then he went on to say, "I hope we shall ... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial and bid defiance to the laws of our country."30 He also wrote, "I sincerely believe ... that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies."31 That's the kind of quote from a Founding Father you don't see too much. — Noam Chomsky

He would enter silently and wake Magdalyn roughly. He loved Magdalyn's scream. He would beat her savagely and acuse her of plotting against him.
If she begged and swore it wasn't true like most frightened women would, he'd throw her off the balcony. If she cursed him, he would bang her, matching her defiance with an equal degree of brutality, and she would live another day. Before he left, he would hold her tenderly in his arms and whisper that he was sorry, that he loved her. Decent women always wanted to see something good in him. He shivered in anticipation. — Brent Weeks

The wind howled in defiance as viscous clouds suffocated the moon, taking the night as their own. — J.D. Barker

In defiance of all the tortue, of all the might, of all the malice of the world, the liberal man will ever be rich; for God's providence is his estate, God's wisdom and power are his defence, God's love and favor are his reward, and God's word is his security. — Isaac Barrow

Toughness found fertile soil in the hearts of Palestinians, and the grains of resistance embedded themselves in their skin. Endurance evolved as a hallmark of refugee society. But the price they paid was the subduing of tender vulnerability. They learned to celebrate martyrdom. Only martyrdom offered freedom. Only in death were they at last invulnerable to Israel. Martyrdom became the ultimate defiance of Israeli occupation. — Susan Abulhawa

The stunt team were great on 'Defiance.' They were there, every day. — Stephanie Leonidas

I abhor the supreme folly of those who blame the disciples of nature in defiance of those masters who were themselves her pupils — Leonardo Da Vinci

This isn't going to be pretty. Rules will be broken. Friendships will be tested. And huge risks will be taken. But they're small prices to pay for true love and freedom, right? — Lisi Harrison

Dare to dream, for in the daring there is defiance to live beyond your circumstances — Su Williams

I know how stupid people can be. I've played in front of 5,000 people that bought a ticket to my concert, and some guy who's bought a ticket decides he's going to throw a bottle at my head. That's a simple act of stupidity. That's not even defiance. — Billy Corgan

When you create something new, you're breaking tradition - which is an act of defiance. — Steven Strogatz

At that point I ought to have gone away, but a strange sensation rose up in me, a sort of defiance of fate, a desire to challenge it, to put out my tongue at it. I laid down the largest stake allowe-four thousand gulden-and lost it. Then, getting hot, I pulled out all I had left, staked it on the same number, and lost again, after which I walked away from the table as though I were stunned. I could not even grasp what had happened to me. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

Look, cell phone geolocation data shows very few clustering anomalies for this hour and climate. And that's holding up pretty much across all major metro areas. It's gone down six percentage points since news of the Karachi workshop hit the Web, and it's trending downward. If people are protesting, they aren't doing it in the streets." He circled his finger over a few clusters of dots. "Some potential protest knots in Portland and Austin, but defiance-related tag cloud groupings in social media put us within the three-sigma rule - meaning roughly sixty-eight percent of the values lie within one standard deviation of the mean. — Daniel Suarez

This was a vagrant of sixty-five, who was going to prison for not playing the flute; or, in other words, for begging in the streets, and doing noting for his livelihood. In the next cell, was another man, who was going to the same prison for hawking tin saucepans without a licence; thereby doing something for his living, in defiance of the Stamp-office. — Charles Dickens

The majority of South Africans, black and white, recognize that apartheid has no future. It has to be ended by our own decisive mass action in order to build peace and security. The mass campaign of defiance and other actions of our organization and people can only culminate in the establishment of democracy. — Nelson Mandela

Like the Israelites, you and I have been promised spiritual ground for great and abiding victory on a turf where our enemy stands in defiance. If you're not presently occupying your Promised Land, rest assured the devil is. Are you going to stand by and let him get away with that? God has given you land, Beloved, but He's calling you to go forth and take it. Your enemy is standing on your God-given ground, just daring you to take possession of it. Are you going to let him have it? Or are you going to claim your inheritance? Possession is the law of the Promised Land. — Beth Moore

I don't want them to think that we dress like savages,' she replied, with a scorn that Pocahontas might have resented; and he was struck again by the religious reverence of even the most unworldly American women for the social advantages of dress.

'It's their armour,' he thought, 'their defence against the unknown, and their defiance of it.' And he understood for the first time the earnestness with which May, who was incapable of tying a ribbon in her hair to charm him, had gone through the solemn rite of selecting and ordering her extensive wardrobe. — Edith Wharton

As the boys screamed and hauled off handfuls of mulch, Olivier had slowly, deliberately, gently taken Gabri's hand and held it before gracefully lifting it to his lips. The boys had watched, momentarily stunned, as Olivier had kissed Gabri's manure-stained hand with his manure-stained lips. The boys had seemed petrified by this act of love and defiance. But just for a moment. Their hatred triumphed and soon their attack had re-doubled. — Louise Penny

I live on an island called Ireland where most of the music is shite. I grew up listening to "Danny Boy"; I grew up hating Danny Boy, and all his siblings and his granny. "The pipes, the pipes are caw-haw-hawing." Anything with pipes or fiddles or even - forgive me, Paul - banjos, I detested. Songs of loss, of love, of going across the sea; songs of defiance and rebellion - I vomited on all of them. — Roddy Doyle

But they have preserved an aspect of the American persona that is uniquely vital to the health of this republic. Among many other things, those dirtbag river runners uphold the virtue of disobedience: the principle that in a free society, defiance for its own sake sometimes carries value and meaning, if only because power in all of its forms - commercial, governmental, and moral - should not always and without question be handed what it demands. — Kevin Fedarko

Charlie Chaplin said something to the effect that humor is an act of defiance, that we must laugh in the face of our helplessness in the forces of nature or go insane. And where is he now? Dead. — Doug Stanhope

America is an unlikely place - a country built on defiance of the odds; on a belief in the impossible. And I remind you of this because as you set out to live your own stories of success and achievement, it's now your turn to help keep it this way. — Barack Obama

I don't know, it is a very quiet rebellion. [ ... ] I don't get angry. I sit quietly in the corner and say 'no'. — Bobbie Ann Mason

To Radu, my brother, I do not acknowledge your new title, nor Mehmed's. Tell the lying coward I send no congratulations. He sent none to me when I took my throne in spite of him. You did not choose right. Tell Mehmed Wallachia is mine. With all defiance, Lada Dracul, Prince of Wallachia — Kiersten White

He can make even the act of putting on his dressing gown appear as a gesture of defiance. — Vincent Tilsley

Fear is a strange soil. It grows obedience like corn, which grow in straight lines to make weeding easier. But sometimes it grows the potatoes of defiance, which flourish underground. — Terry Pratchett

Well, do as you think best. That's every man's right and duty. But for me, I pledge you now I will not surrender one grain of my rights. What I took, I took and by God, I'll keep it, too. Take her home tomorrow, Archie, and never look back to watch what I do, for you know it before. I would not give him one knigh who had confided himself to me and none other, much less you. Only over my dead body," said Hotspur hardily, eye to eye with the friend he had made under Homildon Hill, "will King Henry ever claim you as his prisoner. — Edith Pargeter

Parents who are cowed by temper tantrums and screaming defiance are only inviting more of the same. Young children become more cooperative with parents who confidently assert the reasons for their demands and enforce reasonable rules. Even if there are a few rough spots, relationships between parents and young children run more smoothly when the parent, rather than the child, is in control. — Sandra Scarr

Is constructive criticism really constructive? Not really. You can't make a child better by pointing out what you think is wrong with him or her. Criticism either crushes spirit or elicits defensiveness. Constructive criticism is an interesting combination of words. "Construct" means "to build." "Criticism" means "to tear down" It creates defiance and anger as well. — H. Norman Wright

No one observed and beheld me, I observed and beheld myself; the invisible current went out and it came back to me. I came to love myself out of defiance, out of despair, because there was nothing else. Such a love will do, but it will only do, it is not the best kind; it has the taste of something left out on a shelf too long that has turned rancid, and when eaten makes the stomach turn. It will do, it will do, but only because there is nothing else to take its place; it is not to be recommended. — Jamaica Kincaid

The old Ivy feared parental reaction from each tiny act of defiance. But the new Ivy says, "Fuck 'em all!" a sentiment that Rachel will surely appreciate. My new motto? Be who you are and own that shit-because only with true self-acceptance comes peace and joy. — B.L. Berry