“It's not the fall that kills you; it's the sudden stop at the end.”
“Nothing I accept about myself can be used against me to diminish me.”
Source: Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
The Cancer Journals, Special Edition, Aunt Lute Books, San Francisco, CA, 1997, p. 13.
“I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.”
(1981) Audre Lorde, “The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism”
“You are what you believe yourself to be.”
Source: The Witch of Portobello (2007), p. 152.
Context: You are what you believe yourself to be.
Don't be like those people who believe in "positive thinking" and tell themselves that they're loved and strong and capable. You don't need to do that because you know it already. And when you doubt it — which happens, I think, quite often at this stage of evolution — do as I suggested. Instead of trying to prove that you're better than you think, just laugh. Laugh at your worries and insecurities. View your anxieties with humor. It will be difficult at first, but you'll gradually get used to it. Now go back and meet all those people who think you know everything. Convince yourself that they're right, because we all know everything, it's merely a question of believing.
Believe.
“If it's not important for you, then it's not important for me.”
2021
“I have other duties equally sacred … Duties to myself.”
Nora Helmer, Act III
Variant translation: I have another duty equally sacred … My duty to myself.
A Doll's House (1879)
“Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting!”
Variant: Today is your day, your mountain is waiting. So get on your way.
I Can Read With My Eyes Shut! (1978)
“UNLESS someone like you
cares a whole awful lot,
nothing is going to get better.
It's not.”
Source: The Lorax (1972)
“He who makes a beast out of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.”
“Those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind.”
Bernard Baruch in response to a question by Igor Cassini as to how he handled the seating arrangements at his dinner parties, as quoted in Shake Well Before Using: A New Collection of Impressions and Anecdotes Mostly Humorous (1948) by Bennett Cerf, p. 249; the full response was "I never bother about that. Those who matter don't mind, and those who mind don't matter." This anecdote is also quoted online at Chiasmus.com http://www.chiasmus.com/archive/msg00241.html. It has also become part of a larger expression, which has been commonly attributed to Dr. Seuss, even in print, but without citation of a specific work: "Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind."
Misattributed
Variant: Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.
“How to make God laugh? Tell Him your plans.”
Source: The Other Side of the Story
