self-sufficiency

Words of the hero: "I am my fate.

I don't want anyone to look to me, not for protection, not for happiness, not for love, not for anything.

In yourself right now is all the place you've got.

for meobedience to another is the decayof self

For it is in your power to retire into yourself whenever you choose.

The denial of assistance is sometimes the greatest assistance. The trick is recognizing when this is the case.

Karou wished she could be the kind of girl who was complete unto herself, comfortable in solitude, serene. But she wasn't. She was lonely, and she feared the missingness within her as if it might expand and... cancel her. She craved a presence beside her, solid. Fingertips light at the nape of her neck and a voice meeting hers in the dark. Someone who would wait with an umbrella to walk her home in the rain, and smile like sunshine when he saw her coming. Who would dance with her on her balcony, keep his promises and know her secrets, and make a tiny world wherever he was, with just her and his arms and his whisper and her trust.

Why ask for your daily bread when you own the bakery?

No soul ever fell away from God without giving up prayer. Prayer is that which establishes contact with Divine Power and opens the invisible resources of heaven. However dark the way, when we pray, temptation can never master us. The first step downward in the average soul is the giving up of the practice of prayer, the breaking of the circuit with divinity, and the proclamation of one__ owns self sufficiency.

They thrived on the rapid turnover of acquaintances, the lack of involvement with others, and the total self-sufficiency of lives which, needing nothing, were never dissapointed.

Self-sufficiency is the enemy of salvation. If you are self-sufficient, you have no need of God. If you have no need of God, you do not seek Him. If you do not seek Him, you will not find Him.

It__ probably not just by chance that I__ alone. It would be very hard for a man to live with me, unless he__ terribly strong. And if he__ stronger than I, I__ the one who can__ live with him. _ I__ neither smart nor stupid, but I don__ think I__ a run-of-the-mill person. I__e been in business without being a businesswoman, I__e loved without being a woman made only for love. The two men I__e loved, I think, will remember me, on earth or in heaven, because men always remember a woman who caused them concern and uneasiness. I__e done my best, in regard to people and to life, without precepts, but with a taste for justice.

Rocky, if I__e learned anything from my train wreck of a marriage, it__ that no one can take care of me better than I can.

So, were every man on earth to become atheist, it could not affect God in any way. He is what He is in Himself without regard to any other. To believe in Him adds nothing to His perfections; to doubt Him takes nothing away.Almighty God, just because He is almighty, needs no support. The picture of a nervous, ingratiating God fawning over men to win their favor is not a pleasant one; yet if we look at the popular conception of God, that is precisely what we see. Twentieth century Christianity has put God on charity. So lofty is our opinion of ourselves that we find it quite easy, not to say enjoyable, to believe that we are necessary to God. But the truth is that God is not greater for our being, nor would He be less if we did not exist.

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.

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.

There are some who want to get married and others who don't. I have never had an impulse to go to the altar. I am a difficult person to lead.

Marriage is a fine institution, but I'm not ready for an institution.