Empowerment Quotes

“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.”
― Coco Chanel

“Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim.”
― Nora Ephron

“When a man gives his opinion, he's a man. When a woman gives her opinion, she's a bitch.”
― Bette Davis

“I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives.”
― Jane Austen, Persuasion

“There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“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

“Don't be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.”
― Rumi, The Essential Rumi

“It’s probably not just by chance that I’m alone. It would be very hard for a man to live with me, unless he’s terribly strong. And if he’s stronger than I, I’m the one who can’t live with him. … I’m neither smart nor stupid, but I don’t think I’m a run-of-the-mill person. I’ve been in business without being a businesswoman, I’ve loved without being a woman made only for love. The two men I’ve loved, I think, will remember me, on earth or in heaven, because men always remember a woman who caused them concern and uneasiness. I’ve done my best, in regard to people and to life, without precepts, but with a taste for justice.”
― Coco Chanel

“You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.”
― Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon

“A girl should be two things: who and what she wants.”
― Coco Chanel, Gospel According to Coco Chanel: Life Lessons From The World's Most Elegant Woman

“I do not think, sir, you have any right to command me, merely because you are older than I, or because you have seen more of the world than I have; your claim to superiority depends on the use you have made of your time and experience.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“It's not always necessary to be strong, but to feel strong.”
― Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild

“Incredible change happens in your life when you decide to take control of what you do have power over instead of craving control over what you don't.”
― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

“I hate men who are afraid of women's strength.”
― Anaïs Nin, Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love": The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1931-1932

“Believe in your infinite potential. Your only limitations are those you set upon yourself.”
― Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart

“As long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking.”
― Virginia Woolf, Orlando

“Happiness is not the absence of problems, it's the ability to deal with them.”
― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

“I am not an angel,' I asserted; 'and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself. Mr. Rochester, you must neither expect nor exact anything celestial of me - for you will not get it, any more than I shall get it of you: which I do not at all anticipate.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“In youth, it was a way I had,
To do my best to please.
And change, with every passing lad
To suit his theories.

But now I know the things I know
And do the things I do,
And if you do not like me so,
To hell, my love, with you.”
― Dorothy Parker, The Complete Poems of Dorothy Parker

“I'm single because I was born that way.”
― Mae West

“Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere.”
― Mae West, The Wit and Wisdom of Mae West

“She is free in her wildness, she is a wanderess, a drop of free water. She knows nothing of borders and cares nothing for rules or customs. 'Time' for her isn’t something to fight against. Her life flows clean, with passion, like fresh water.”
― Roman Payne

“Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“She was free in her wildness. She was a wanderess, a drop of free water. She belonged to no man and to no city”
― Roman Payne, The Wanderess

“I do not wish them [women] to have power over men; but over themselves.”
― Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

“Keep your best wishes, close to your heart and watch what happens”
― Tony DeLiso, Legacy: The Power Within: The Power Within

“Marriage is a fine institution, but I'm not ready for an institution.”
― Mae West, The 2,548 Best Things Anybody Ever Said

“A woman knows very well that, though a wit sends her his poems, praises her judgment, solicits her criticism, and drinks her tea, this by no means signifies that he respects her opinions, admires her understanding, or will refuse, though the rapier is denied him, to run through the body with his pen.”
― Virginia Woolf, Orlando

“The history of men's opposition to women's emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own