“Different people have different duties assigned them by Nature; Nature has given one the power or the desire to do this, the other that. Each bird must sing with his own throat.”

And what if I did run my ship aground; oh, still it was splendid to sail it!

The man-at-arms is the only man.

The younger generation will come knocking at my door.

It’s such sport with these heroes of finance: they are like beads on a string – when one slips off, all the rest follow.

To crave for happiness in this world is simply to be possessed by a spirit of revolt. What right have we to happiness?

The starving poet business is no good nowadays.

In great memories there lies the seed of growth.

The greatest victory is defeat.

The majority is never right. Never, I tell you! That’s one of these lies in society that no free and intelligent man can help rebelling against. Who are the people that make up the biggest proportion of the population — the intelligent ones or the fools?

Money brings you food, but not appetite; medicine, but not health; acquaintances, but not friends.

To die in agony upon a cross Does not create a martyr; he must first Will his own execution.

I’m plotting revolution against this lie that the majority has a monopoly of the truth. What are these truths that always bring the majority rallying round? Truths so elderly they are practically senile. And when a truth is as old as that, gentlemen, you can hardly tell it from a lie.

The strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone.

I go to scale the Future’s possibilities! Farewell!

That is the accursed thing about small surroundings — they make the soul small.

Home life ceases to be free and beautiful as soon as it is founded on borrowing and debt.

I’m an independent woman and a feminist.

Charity is injurious unless it helps the recipient to become independent of it.

Dear self, Even on your worst days, you are okay.

A gardener who cultivates his own garden with his own hands, unites in his own person the three different characters, of landlord, farmer, and labourer. His produce, therefore, should pay him the rent of the first, the profit of the second, and the wages of the third.

To be an individual is the hardest thing in the world, because nobody likes you to be an individual. Everybody wants to kill your individuality and to make a sheep out of you. Nobody wants you to be on your own.

Fear is in almost all cases a wretched instrument of government, and ought in particular never to be employed against any order of men who have the smallest pretensions to independency.

I am more interested in the woman I aspire to be, as opposed to the things I desire to have. By the time I am her, I’ll already have everything she could possibly want and need.

On the show [the Voice] I obviously wasn’t allowed [singing my own original music], because it’s not that type of show. I think it’s really cool that I get to do my own thing now.