Quotes about Individuality

Books are not written about proper children. They would be so dull nobody would read them.

It was really dreadful to be different from other people...and yet rather wonderful, too, as if you were a being strayed from another star.

Well, I don't want to be anyone but myself, even if I go uncomforted by diamonds all my life," declared Anne. "I'm quite content to be Anne of Green Gables, with my string of pearl beads. I know Matthew gave me as much love with them as ever went with Madame the Pink Lady's jewels.

If you please, Great-Aunt Nancy, said Emily deliberately, I don't like to be told I look like other people. I look just like myself.

Occasionally she would come to church, stalking unconcernedly up the aisle to a prominent seat. She never put on hat or shoes on such occasions, but when she wanted to be especially grand she powdered face, arms and legs with flour!

It was really dreadful to be so different from other people . . . and yet rather wonderful, too, as if you were a being strayed from another star. Hazel would not have been one of the common herd for anything . . . no matter what she suffered by reason of her differentness.

So far, the ordinary observer; an extraordinary observer might have seen that the chin was very pointed and pronounced; that the big eyes were full of spirit and vivacity; that the mouth was sweet-lipped and expressive; that the forehead was broad and full; in short, our discerning extraordinary observer might have concluded that no commonplace soul inhabited the body of this stray woman-child of whom shy Matthew Cuthbert was so ludicrously afraid.

I don't want them cured!" Emily was getting angrier and angrier all the time under the table. "I like my faults better than I do your — your—" she fumbled mentally for a word — then triumphantly recalled a phrase of her father's—"your abominable virtues!")

if I wasn't ME who'd I be?

It really was dreadful to be so different from other people... and yet rather wonderful, too, as if you were being strayed from another star.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.

When I began in 1960, individuality wasn't an accepted thing to look for; it was about species-specific behaviour. But animal behaviour is not hard science. There's room for intuition.