One of my new favorite websites is InCharacter.org, the site of a magazine by the same name plus the subtitle, "a journal of everyday virtues". I discerned from the Past Issues page that it got started in Fall 2004, and by briefly scanning the dates of other issues, one might believe that it comes out three times a year, winter, spring, and fall. But, no. It appears that some falls winters and springs don't matter enough to merit their own issue, so it comes out sporadically every several months and is dated simply by whatever season it happens to be published in.The content of this magazine is amazing. Each issue has a theme, much like O, the Oprah Magazine, except that all the themes are virtues. Here's a complete list: Thrift, Purpose, Creativity, Loyalty, Modesty, Generosity, Justice, Self-Reliance, Honesty, Compassion, Forgiveness, Courage, Grit, and then the most current issue (Fall 2009) has the theme of Wisdom. The articles are well-written, extremely interesting, and the site is designed beautifully.
On to the Self-Reliance Quotes!
"Degrees of ability vary, but the basic principle remains the same: the degree of a man’s independence, initiative and personal love for his work determines his talent as a worker and his worth as a man. Independence is the only gauge of human virtue and value. What a man is and makes of himself; not what he has or hasn’t done for others. There is no substitute for personal dignity. There is no standard of personal dignity except independence."
—Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead
"People, people who need people are the luckiest people in the world."
—Barbra Streisand, “People” (written by Bob Merrill)
"It takes a time like this for you to find out how sore your heart has been, and moreover, all the while you thought you were going around idle terribly hard work was taking place. Hard, hard work, excavation and digging, mining, moling through tunnels, heaving, pushing, moving rock, working, working, working, working, working, panting, hauling, hoisting. And none of this work is seen from the outside. It’s internally done. It happens because you are powerless and unable to get anywhere, to obtain justice or have requital, and therefore in yourself you labor, you wage and combat, settle scores, remember insults, fight, reply, deny, blab, denounce, triumph, outwit, overcome, vindicate, cry, persist, absolve, die and rise again. All by yourself! Where is everybody? Inside your breast and skin, the entire cast."
—Saul Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March
"The proverb warns that “you should not bite the hand that feeds you.” But maybe you should, if it prevents you from feeding yourself."
—Thomas Szasz
"There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried....
Live no longer to the expectation of these deceived and deceiving people with whom we converse. Say to them, O father, O mother, O wife, O brother, O friend, I have lived with you after appearances hitherto. Henceforward I am the truth’s. Be it known unto you that henceforward I obey no law less than the eternal law. I will have no covenants but proximities. I shall endeavour to nourish my parents, to support my family, to be the chaste husband of one wife — but these relations I must fill after a new and unprecedented way. I appeal from your customs. I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should. I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever only rejoices me, and the heart appoints. If you are noble, I will love you; if you are not, I will not hurt you and myself by hypocritical attentions. If you are true, but not in the same truth with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own. I do this not selfishly, but humbly and truly. It is alike your interest, and mine, and all men’s, however long we have dwelt in lies, to live in truth. Does this sound harsh to-day? You will soon love what is dictated by your nature as well as mine, and, if we follow the truth, it will bring us out safe at last....Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him. No man yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person has exhibited it. Where is the master who could have taught Shakespeare? Where is the master who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington, or Bacon, or Newton? Every great man is a unique. The Scipionism of Scipio is precisely that part he could not borrow. Shakespeare will never be made by the study of Shakespeare. Do that which is assigned you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much. There is at this moment for you an utterance brave and grand as that of the colossal chisel of Phidias, or trowel of the Egyptians, or the pen of Moses, or Dante, but different from all these."
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance”
"The fact is that liberty, in any true sense, is a concept that lies quite beyond the reach of the inferior man’s mind. And no wonder, for genuine liberty demands of its votaries a quality he lacks completely, and that is courage. The man who loves it must be willing to fight for it; blood, said Jefferson, is its natural manure. Liberty means self-reliance, it means resolution, it means the capacity for doing without ... the average man doesn’t want to be free. He wants to be safe."
—H.L. Mencken
"If there is no wind, row. "
—Latin proverb
"There is an inverse relationship between reliance on the state and self-reliance."
— William F. Buckley Jr.
"I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours."
—Henry David Thoreau
"The shoes on my feet
I’ve bought it
The clothes I’m wearing
I’ve bought it
The rock I’m rockin’
I’ve bought it
’Cause I depend on me"
—Destiny’s Child, “Independent Women”
"What is the best thing for a stream? It is to keep moving. If it stops, it stagnates. So the best thing for a man is that which keeps the currents going — the physical, the moral, and the intellectual currents. Hence the secret of happiness is — something to do; some congenial work. Take away the occupation of all men, and what a wretched world it would be! Few persons realize how much of their happiness is dependent upon their work, upon the fact that they are kept busy and not left to feed upon themselves. Happiness comes most to persons who seek her least, and think least about it. It is not an object to be sought; it is a state to be induced. It must follow and not lead. It must overtake you, and not you overtake it. How important is health to happiness, yet the best promoter of health is something to do. Blessed is the man who has some congenial work, some occupation in which he can put his heart, and which affords a complete outlet to all the forces there are in him."
—John Burroughs
"We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same."
—Carlos Castañeda
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