Quotes about Individuality

Man is physically as well as metaphysically a thing of shreds and patches, borrowed unequally from good and bad ancestors, and a misfit from the start.

A man must consider what rich realms he abdicates when he becomes a conformist

Why should the way I feel depend on the thoughts in someone else's head?

It is better to be the thorn in the side of your friend than his echo

Good bye, proud world! I'm going home; Thou art not my friend, and I'm not thine

The young man reveres men of genius, because, to speak truly, they are more himself than he is.

No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature

But now we are a mob. Man does not stand in awe of man, nor is his genius admonished to stay at home, to put itself in communication with the internal ocean, but it goes abroad to beg a cup of water of the urns of other men.

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.—'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.'—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.

We are all wise. The difference between persons is not in wisdom but in art. I knew, in an academical club, a person who always deferred to me; who, seeing my whim for writing, fancied that my experiences had somewhat superior; whilst I saw that his experiences were as good as mine. Give them to me and I would make the same use of them.

But it is a cold, lifeless business when you go to the shops to buy something, which does not represent your life and talent, but a goldsmith's.

Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a