Quotes about Individuality

For beyond the difficulty of communicating oneself, there is the supreme difficulty of being oneself.

It would be a thousand pities if women wrote like men, or lived like men, or looked like men, for if two sexes are quite inadequate, considering the vastness and variety of the world, how should we manage with one only?

Freedom and fullness of expression are of the essence of the art.

With a brain working and a body working one could keep step with the crowd and never be found out for the hollow machine, lacking the essential thing, that one was conscious of being.

This soul, or life within us, by no means agrees with the life outside us. If one has the courage to ask her what she thinks, she is always saying the very opposite to what other people say.

To be myself (I note) I need the illumination of other people's eyes, and therefore cannot be entirely sure what is my self.

when I ask you to earn money and have a room of your own, I am asking you to live in the presence of reality, an invigorating life, it would appear, whether one can impart it or not.

There was in Lily a thread of something; a flare of something; something of her own Mrs. Ramsay liked very much indeed, but no man would, she feared. [...] He was not in love of course; it was one of those unclassified affections of which there are so many.

She was writing for everybody, for nobody, for our age, for her own...

You are you. That is what consoles me for the lack of many things.

Upon the obstinate irrepressible conviction which makes youth so intolerably disagreeable—I am what I am, and intend to be it.

When I rummage in my own mind I find no noble sentiments about being companions and equals and influencing the world to higher ends. I find myself saying briefly and prosaically that it is much more important to be oneself than anything else.