Self Containment Quotes

“I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.”
― Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays

“For it is in your power to retire into yourself whenever you choose.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“In yourself right now is all the place you've got.”
― Flannery O'Connor, Wise Blood

“I am the Cat who walks by himself, and all places are alike to me.”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Cat That Walked by Himself: And Other Stories

“Maybe your country is only a place you make up in your own mind. Something you dream about and sing about. Maybe it's not a place on the map at all, but just a story full of people you meet and places you visit, full of books and films you've been to. I'm not afraid of being homesick and having no language to live in. I don't have to be like anyone else. I'm walking on the wall and nobody can stop me.”
― Hugo Hamilton, The Speckled People: A Memoir of a Half-Irish Childhood

“She might be without country, without nation, but inside her there was still a being that could exist and be free, that could simply say I am without adding a this, or a that, without saying I am Indian, Guyanese, English, or anything else in the world.”
― Sharon Maas, Of Marriageable Age

“Phoebe Marks was a person who never lost her individuality. Silent and self-contained, she seemed to hold herself within herself, and take no colour from the outer world.”
― Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Lady Audley's Secret

“You yearn to stay in this in-between place, where the beauty of the times you have freshly bade farewell to is still alive and vivid in your mind – almost real – and the reality of your new circumstances has yet to fully sink in. You listen to the familiar melodies that had accompanied you on your journey, and allow the music to evoke landscapes and scenes in your mind. The songs caress your sub-consciousness and fill your being with an airy joy. You are both here and elsewhere. Or perhaps you are everywhere and nowhere.”
― Agnes Chew, The Desire for Elsewhere

“She found that the whole world could be contained in one place because that place was herself. Nothing had prepared her for this.”
― Jeanette Winterson, The World and Other Places: Stories

“Moments later, I was climbing nervously into the back of the car. The driver wore the archetypal expression of an antagonist. No words were exchanged beyond the brief lines uttered to this nameless stranger, whose inclinations remained unclear. The car sped along empty roads and traversed dingy alleyways. Music blared from its speakers. I did not remember exhaling throughout the entire journey.”
― Agnes Chew, The Desire for Elsewhere

“It is important to know when to tune out of people, and when to tune into yourself.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, Stamerenophobia

“A self needed to spill out sometimes, a body should show evidence of what the hell went on inside it.”
― Ben Marcus, Leaving the Sea: Stories

“Nature has a relish for knowing secrets and hearing news. It wishes to appear abroad and to have sense experiences. It wishes to be known and to do things for which it will be praised and admired. But grace does not care to hear news or curious matters, because all this arises from the old corruption of man, since there is nothing new, nothing lasting on earth.”
― Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ