Self Reliance Quotes

“The patient must minister to himself”

“The masses have no habit of self-reliance or original action.”

“Let a stoic open the resources of man, and tell men they are not leaning willows, but can and must detach themselves; that with the exercise of self-trust, new powers shall appear.”

“Stay at home in your mind. Don't recite other people's opinions.”

“. . . it is impossible you should take true root but by the fair weather that you make yourself it is needful that you frame the season of your own harvest.”

“Valor consists in the power of self-recovery, so that a man cannot have his flank turned, cannot be out-generalled, but put him where you will, he stands.”

“A complete man should need no auxiliaries to his personal presence.”

“We must be our own before we can be another's.”

“I think that the heroism which at this day would make on us the impression of Epaminondas and Phocion must be that of a domestic conqueror. He who shall bravely and gracefully subdue this Gorgon of Convention and Fashion, and show men how to lead a clean, handsome and heroic life amid the beggarly elements of our cities and villages; whoso shall teach me how to eat my meat and take my repose and deal with men, without any shame following, will restore the life of man to splendor, and make his own name dear to all history.”

“At times the whole world seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles. Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all knock at once at thy closet door and say,—'Come out unto us.' But keep thy state; come not into their confusion. The power men possess to annoy me I give them by a weak curiosity. No man can come near me but through my act.”

“The characteristic of genuine heroism is its persistency. All men have wandering impulses, fits and starts of generosity. But when you have resolved to be great, abide by yourself, and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the world. The heroic cannot be the common, nor the common the heroic.”

“Be yourself; no base imitator of another, but your best self. There is something which you can do better than another. Listen to the inward voice and bravely obey that. Do the things at which you are great, not what you were never made for.”

“I'll neverBe such a gosling to obey instinct, but standAs is a man were author of himselfAnd knew no other kin.”

“It is not what talents or genius a man has, but how he is to his talents, that constitutes friendship and character. The man thatstands by himself, the universe stands by him also.”

“Our reliance on the physician is a kind of despair of ourselves.”

“though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.”

“Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.”

“It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”

“Let us be poised, wise and our own today.”

“I will not live out of me I will not see with others' eyes My good is good, my evil ill I would be free.”

“The best lightning rod for your protection is your own spine.”

“What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.”

“Who is he that shall control me? Why may not I act and speak and write and think with entire freedom? What am I to the universe, or, the unvierse, what is it to me? Who hath forged the chains of wrong and right, of Opinion and Custom? And must I wear them?”

“Tis better using France than trusting France;Let us be back'd with God, and with the seas,Which He hath given for fence impregnable,And with their helps only defend ourselves;In them, and in ourselves, our safety lies.”

“And so the reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments which protect it, is the want of self-reliance.”