Independence Quotes

Believe in yourself. You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you stop to look fear in the face… You must do that which you think you cannot do…

The Big Message parts of this soaked right in. I read it quickly to proofread, slowly for understanding, then again to let it steep like tea… and again after stirring in a little milk of understanding and the sweet sugar of how poetry feels in the mouth…

When you give in to the automatic fear reaction, it makes you focus on your weaknesses, which only reinforces your fear. But when you take the path of the intellect and spirit, you naturally begin to focus on your…

I’ll invent a secret scroll lost by Egyptians
and reveal its content: the directions
to your house, recipes for forgiveness.
History says my ventricles are stone alleys…

The most sublime act is to set another before you.
If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.
Folly is the cloke of knavery.
Shame is Pride’s cloke…

There is a musical idea in every form. See, hear, how sharp, loud, and clear-ringing are the tones of the sky-piercing peaks and spires; and how deep and smooth and massive those of the swelling domes and round-backed ridge-waves; and how quickly the multitude of small features in a landscape suggest hurrying trills and…

He insisted on meticulous, time-consuming, financially impractical printmaking techniques, moreso as he aged and felt the art had matured – later work demanded more from both artist and reader. Blake lived hand-to-mouth, content to be doing good work. He made art until…

Of course they don’t go to the bottom of it, or they would see if they never came for a cab it would be no use your standing there; but people don’t always like to go to the bottom of things; it may not be convenient to do it; but if you Sunday drivers…

…and unless a writer is quite ruthless with these amiable footlers, they will drag him down with them. More dangerous are those who are not charming – the trapped foxes who bite the hand that would set them free and the worst of all the Kibitzers, the…

Endure the pain it causes, and try to sing without it. For those near you are distant, you say. That shows it is beginning to dawn around you; there is an expanse opening about you. And when your nearness becomes distant, then you have already expanded far: to be…

[Following her.] Yes; you have the courage. There may be six months of pain, of disgrace even, but when you no longer bear his name, when you bear mine, all will be well. Margaret, my love, my wife that shall be some day – yes…

You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days.

Ay, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God…