Quotes on Reliance

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men that is genius.

Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

The highest manifestation of life consists in this: that a being governs its own actions. A thing which is always subject to the direction of another is somewhat of a dead thing.

Brokenness involves removing inappropriate pride and self-reliance and building healthy God-reliance.

I have tried 99 times and have failed, but on the 100th time came success.

In most books, the I, of first person, is omitted; in this it will be retained; that, in respect to egotism, is the main difference.

We commonly do not remember that it is, after all, always the first person that is speaking.

The best help that benevolence and philanthropy can give is that which induces everybody to help himself.

There are no fixtures in nature. The universe is fluid and volatile. Permanence is but a word of degrees.

He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.

Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear.

A man must consider what a blindman's-buff is this game of conformity.

My brethren, do you believe in the Holy Ghost?...Have we such a reliance upon the Holy Ghost? Do we believe that, at this moment, He can clothe us with power, even as He did the apostles at Pentecost? Do we believe that, under our preaching, by His energy a thousand might be born in a day?

Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in our bosoms.

Our dreams have to be bigger. Our ambitions higher. Our commitment deeper. And our efforts greater. This is my dream for Reliance and for India.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day.

The relations of the soul to the divine spirit are so pure, that it is profane to seek to interpose helps.

At the bottom no one in life can help anyone else in life; this one experiences over and over in every conflict and every perplexity: that one is alone. That isn't as bad as it may first appear; and again it is the best thing in life that each should have everything in himself; his fate, his future, his whole expanse and world.

And so the reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments which protect it, is the want of self-reliance.

But do your work, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself.

My life is for itself and not for a spectacle.