I'm not alone, I'm free. I no longer have to be a credit, I don't have to be a symbol to anybody; I don't have to be a first to anybody.
Interpretation
This quote expresses the liberation that comes from personal independence and self-identity.
Lena Horne's quote highlights the importance of freedom from societal expectations and the pressures to conform or achieve certain statuses. It suggests that true freedom lies in being authentic to oneself, rather than being defined by external labels or the achievements recognized by others.
In practice
This quote is perfect for a motivational speech about personal growth and self-acceptance.
It's not the load that breaks you down, it's the way you carry it. Carry it by the comfortable handles of gratitude for what's positive and that it is not worse, rather than the uncomfortable edges of bitterness for the negatives and that it is not better.
I was unique in that I was a kind of black that white people could accept. I was their daydream. I had the worst kind of acceptance because it was never for how great I was or what I contributed. It was because of the way I looked.
I'm still learning, you know. At 80, I feel there is a lot I don't know.
My identity is very clear to me now, I am a black woman.
In my early days I was a sepia Hedy Lamarr. Now I'm black and a woman, singing my own way.
Your talk," I said, "is surely the handiwork of wisdom because not one word of it do I understand.
Great grief prays with great earnestness. Prayer is not a collection of balanced phrases; it is the pouring out of the soul. What is love if it be not fiery? What are prayers if the heart be not ablaze? They are the battles of the soul. In them men wrestle with principalities and powers... _x000D_ ”The prayer that prevails is not the work of lips and fingertips. It is the cry of a broken heart and the travail of a stricken soul.
One should not wish to enjoy where one does not give joy.
It was getting hard to keep all the things I didn't know inside me.
The offer of certainty, the offer of complete security, the offer of an impermeable faith that can’t give way, is an offer of something not worth having. I want to live my life taking the risk all the time that I don’t know anything like enough yet; that I haven’t understood enough; that I can’t know enough; that I’m always hungrily operating on the margins of a potentially great harvest of future knowledge and wisdom. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
My brother was my first guru who introduced me to spiritualism at a very young age. He later even enrolled me into Ramakrishna Mission.
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