#depend

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 Brontë

#expectations #gender #honesty #independence #influence

LEONATO Well, then, go you into hell? BEATRICE No, but to the gate; and there will the devil meet me, like an old cuckold, with horns on his head, and say 'Get you to heaven, Beatrice, get you to heaven; here's no place for you maids:' so deliver I up my apes, and away to Saint Peter for the heavens; he shows me where the bachelors sit, and there live we as merry as the day is long. ↗

— William Shakespeare

#empowerment #freedom #happiness #heaven #husbands

I am anchored on a resolve you cannot shake. My heart, my conscience shall dispose of my hand -- they only. Know this at last. ↗

— Charlotte Brontë

#conscience #courtship #dignity #empowerment #feminism

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe. -John Muir, naturalist, explorer, and writer (1838-1914) ↗

— John Muir

#environment #inspirational #interdependency #life #marvel

It's about personal development. It's about creating your own character and pushing it to the limit. It's about pushing yourself so far out of your own and everybody else's idea of who you are and what you're capable of, that you no longer believe in limits. It's about reaching beyond your so-called potential, because your potential is never where you or anyone else expects it to be, not even close. It's about being able to say with the last breath of your life “I used all my potential and all my talents and pushed myself to the limit. I could not have fought any harder. ↗

— Charlotte Eriksson

#character-development #fighting-spirit #goals #independent #inspiration

Men do monstrous things but if you call a man a monster you have absolved yourself of blame. You don't have to think that you might ever do these things. I don't think that's true ↗

— Patrick Ness

#men

My kids are growing up and it's hard to accept they are their own person and they're independent. ↗

— Ray Romano

#growing #growing up #hard #independent #kids

We need to help people to discover the true meaning of love. Love is generally confused with dependence. Those of us who have grown in true love know that we can love only in proportion to our capacity for independence. ↗

— Fred Rogers

#inspirational #love #inspirational

People say, "What’s it like to be a minority of one, or a kick-bag for the Internet?" It washes off me like jizz off a porn star’s face. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#independent-thought #inspirational #inspirational

If no one had ever challenged religious authority, there’d be no democracy, no public schools, women’s rights, improvements to science and medicine, evolution of slavery and no laws against child abuse or spousal abuse. I was afraid to challenge my religious beliefs because that was the basis of creation—mine anyway. I was afraid to question the Bible or anything in it, and when I did, that’s when I became involved with PFLAG and realized that my son was a perfectly normal human being and there was nothing for God to heal because Bobby was perfect just the way he was. ↗

— Mary Griffith

#gay-rights #independent-thought #inspirational #religion #inspirational