Flannery O'Connor Quotes

My goal was to be able to be alone without food, sugar, phone, men, TV, anything and to feel O.K. about myself.

I don't lack confidence. I don't sweat. I don't want to get too Zen on you, but I have to run my own race.

Never make your home in a place. Make a home for yourself inside your own head. You'll find what you need to furnish it - memory, friends you can trust, love of learning, and other such things. That way it will go with you wherever you journey.

You have to empower yourself.

I wish neither to possess nor to be possessed. I no longer covet 'paradise'. More important, I no longer fear 'hell'. The medicine for my suffering I had within me from the very beginning but I did not take it. My ailment came from within myself, but I did not observe it, until this moment. Now I see that I will never find the light unless, like the candle, I am my own fuel, consuming myself.

No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.

In time, she learned to develop her own opinion of the people that she worked for, and she got stronger. Think she's now much stronger. In the beginning she wanted to believe she was strong but sometimes she faltered.

It doesn't matter what people think of me. I've lived my life.

The secret to happiness is freedom... And the secret to freedom is courage.

I was always looking outside myself for strength and confidence but it comes from within. It is there all the time.

There is no real security except for whatever you build inside yourself.

Sometimes people look to others for answers they can find within themselves. I don't really want the responsibility of being the guy they look to.

I'm good where I am at this moment.

When you're constantly looking for things from other people, you're not looking within yourself.

It's up to you to be responsible for how you feel if you're not happy. Your happiness lies in your hands. You can't rely on a man to make you happy or complete you. That starts with you.

In solitude the mind gains strength and learns to lean upon itself.

Self-actualized people are independent of the good opinion of others.

For me, a happy ending is not everything works out just right and there is a big bow, it's more coming to a place where a person has a clear vision of his or her own life in a way that enables them to kind of throw down their crutches and walk.

It took me 36 years to be able to be by myself and like it.

I don't live in France; I live in myself.

You come to a point in your life when you really don't care what people think about you, you just care what you think about yourself.

A pencil and rubber are of more use to thought than a battalion of assistants. To happiness the same applies as to truth: one does not have it, but is in it.

All I need is my brains, my eyes and my personality, for better or for worse.

You're just left with yourself all the time, whatever you do anyway. You've got to get down to your own God in your own temple. It's all down to you, mate.

By philosophy the mind of man comes to itself, and from henceforth rests on itself without foreign aid, and is completely master of itself, as the dancer of his feet, or the boxer of his hands.