Nature never said to me: Do not be poor; still less did she say: Be rich; her cry to me was always: Be independent.

It's easy to be independent when you've got money. But to be independent when you haven't got a thing -- that's the Lord's test.

The price for independence is often isolation and solitude.

Independence I have long considered as the grand blessing of life, the basis of every virtue; and independence I will ever secure by contracting my wants, though I were to live on a barren heath.