I listen with attention to the judgement of all men; but so far as I can remember, I have followed none but my own

I care not so much what I am to others as what I am to myself. I will be rich by myself, and not by borrowing.

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.

Every one rushes elsewhere and into the future, because no one wants to face one's own inner self.

Did I know myself less, I might perhaps venture to handle something or other to the bottom, and to be deceived in my own inability; but sprinkling here one word and there another, patterns cut from several
pieces and scattered without design and without engaging myself too far, I am not responsible for them, or obliged to keep close to my subject, without varying at my own liberty and pleasure, and giving up myself to doubt and uncertainty, and to my
own governing method, ignorance.

Only a weak person needed someone else around all the time.