Self Sufficiency Quotes

“I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“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 greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“Marriage is a fine institution, but I'm not ready for an institution.”
― Mae West, The 2,548 Best Things Anybody Ever Said

“My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone.”
― Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

“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, keep his promises and know her secrets, and make a tiny world wherever he was, with just her and his arms and his whisper and her trust.”
― Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke & Bone

“For it is in your power to retire into yourself whenever you choose.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“In yourself right now is all the place you've got.”
― Flannery O'Connor, Wise Blood

“Maybe your country is only a place you make up in your own mind. Something you dream about and sing about. Maybe it's not a place on the map at all, but just a story full of people you meet and places you visit, full of books and films you've been to. I'm not afraid of being homesick and having no language to live in. I don't have to be like anyone else. I'm walking on the wall and nobody can stop me.”
― Hugo Hamilton, The Speckled People: A Memoir of a Half-Irish Childhood

“There are some who want to get married and others who don't. I have never had an impulse to go to the altar. I am a difficult person to lead.”
― Greta Garbo, Greta & Cecil

“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 alone. Hapless you are, however, if life itself so oppresses you that you're forced to become a slave. Hapless you are if, having been born free, with the capacity to be isolated and self-sufficient, poverty should force you to live with others.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“The greatest fine art of the future will be the making of a comfortable living from a small piece of land.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“She might be without country, without nation, but inside her there was still a being that could exist and be free, that could simply say I am without adding a this, or a that, without saying I am Indian, Guyanese, English, or anything else in the world.”
― Sharon Maas, Of Marriageable Age

“Associate with the noblest people you can find; read the best books; live with the mighty; but learn to be happy alone.”
― Saul Bellow, Ravelstein

“I don't want anyone to look to me, not for protection, not for happiness, not for love, not for anything.”
― P.D. James, The Children of Men

“For all those who longed to find a best friend and found it in themselves”
― Sandra Kring, The Book of Bright Ideas

“I declare to you that woman must not depend upon the protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself, and there I take my stand.”
― Susan B. Anthony

“If we take height instead of digging ourselves into a whirlpool of deception or self-sufficiency, we can track down the things we have neglected for so long that can give our lives a rainbow of color and vibrance. ( "The power and the glory" )”
― Erik Pevernagie

“My self is all to me. I don't have any need of you.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, I Lock My Door Upon Myself

“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.”
― Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Lady Audley's Secret

“The opinions of others cannot damage you.”
― Veronica Roth, Divergent

“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.”
― William Nicholson, Shadowlands: A Play

“It was on my fifth birthday that Papa put his hand on my shoulder and said, 'Remember, my son, if you ever need a helping hand, you'll find one at the end of your arm.”
― Sam Levenson

“The fear of abandonment forced me to comply as a child, but I’m not forced to comply anymore. The key people in my life did reject me for telling the truth about my abuse, but I’m not alone. Even if the consequence for telling the truth is rejection from everyone I know, that’s not the same death threat that it was when I was a child. I’m a self-sufficient adult and abandonment no longer means the end of my life.”
― Christina Enevoldsen, The Rescued Soul: The Writing Journey for the Healing of Incest and Family Betrayal

“Go small, go simple, go now”
― larry pardey, Cruising in Seraffyn

“I might be alone, but i'm never lonely.”
― Megan Hart

“Only the self-sufficient stand alone - most people follow the crowd and imitate.”
― Bruce Lee

“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.”
― J.G. Ballard, High-Rise

“It can’t be done for you; it must be done by you.”
― Frank Sonnenberg, Listen to Your Conscience: That's Why You Have One

“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.”
― 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