A man spent hours watching a butterfly struggling to emerge from its cocoon. It managed to make a small hole, but its body was too large to get through it. After a long struggle, it appeared to be exhausted and remained absolutely still. The man decided to help the butterfly and, with a pair of scissors, he cut open the cocoon, thus releasing the butterfly. However, the butterfly’s body was very small and wrinkled and its wings were all crumpled. The man continued to watch, hoping that, at any moment, the butterfly would open its wings and fly away. Nothing happened; in fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its brief life dragging around its shrunken body and shrivelled wings, incapable of flight. What the man – out of kindness and his eagerness to help – had failed to understand was that the tight cocoon and the efforts that the butterfly had to make in order to squeeze out of that tiny hole were Nature’s way of training the butterfly and of strengthening its wings. Sometimes, a little extra effort is precisely what prepares us for the next obstacle to be faced. Anyone who refuses to make that effort, or gets the wrong sort of help, is left unprepared to fight the next battle and never manages to fly off to their destiny.

— Paulo Coelho

A marriage of two independent and equally irritable intelligences seems to me reckless to the point of insanity.

— Dorothy L. Sayers

America... goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.

— John Quincy Adams

And even when success comes, as I am sure it will, bear in mind that there are more quiet and enviable joys than to be among the most sought after women at a ball...

— Blanche Wiesen Cook

And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

— Thomas Jefferson

And her work! Oh, the thought of being deprived of that! With only his love in return, his love and his amiable domestic tyranny!

— Florence Converse

And I'm not sure if it's G-d, or fate, or just air masses colliding over water, but I will say this: It feels, finally, like flying.

— Una LaMarche

And I wonder how the leaves clinched to the branches, yet to fall, the survivors feel when they see one of their own perish and realize that they too are to share a similar fate, does this thought cause them to give up selflessly, from confinement to independence or does it instill proportions of both courage and fear making them hold on as long as they can and accept what comes after?

— Chirag Tulsiani

An indoor man eats nothing, except that which is prepared and served by his mother with lots of insults, an outdoor man eats that which he buys, prepares, served and eaten with lots of respect.

— Michael Bassey Johnson

Anxiety, and the physical symptoms it causes, is merely fog along the path of independence and discovery.

— Charles F. Glassman