#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.”

“No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution; the only wrong is what is against it.”

“The gentleman is a man of truth, lord of his own actions, and expressing that lordship in his behavior, not in any manner dependent and servile either on persons, or opinions, or possessions.”

“What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness.”

“I love learning, but hate being taught.”

“Listen. Make a way for yourself inside yourself. Stop looking in the other way of looking.”

“Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world.”

“Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.”

“Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony.”

“When some external event raises your spirits and you think good days are preparing for you, do not believe it. It can never be so. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.”

“A man cannot free himself by any self-denying ordinances, neither by water nor potatoes, nor by violent possibilities, by refusing to swear, refusing to pay taxes, by going to jail, or by taking another man's crops or squatting on his land. By none of these ways can he free himself; no, nor by paying his debts with money; only by obedience to his own genius.”

“And truly it demands something godlike in him who cast off the common motives of humanity and ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster.”

“The wise and just man will always feel that he stands on his own feet; that he imparts strength to the state, not receives security from it; and if all went down, he and such as he would quite easily combine in a new and better constitution.”

“What I must do is all that concerns me, not what people think. This rule,equally arduous in actual and intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. 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.”

“Each philosopher, each bard, each actor has only done for me, as by a delegate, what one day I can do for myself.”

“A man or woman is seldom happy unless he or she is sustaining him or herself and making a contribution to others.”

“These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of everyone of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.”

“Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.”

“We are such lovers of self-reliance, that we excuse in a man many sins, if he will show us a complete satisfaction in his position, which asks no leave to be, of mine, or any man's good opinion.”

“I shun father and mother and wife and brother when my genius calls me. I would write on the lintels of the door-post, Whim. I hope that it is somewhat better than whim at last, but we cannot spend the day in explanation.”

“I am sure of this, that by going much alone a man will get more of a noble courage in thought and word than from all the wisdom that is in books.”

“I've always believed that parents are not for leaning upon, but rather exist to make leaning unnecessary.”

“Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, Which we ascribe to Heaven.”

“When I was asked to make the film, I decided that it was like taking on a new career at the age of sixty-eight. I've never acted before. And taking direction is not something I'm very good at. I've always known who I am and what I was going to do, and I've always just done it.”

“I look on that man as happy, who, when there is question of success, looks into his work for a reply.”

“Opportunity is in the person, not the job.”