 Pearl (and Hester), from The Scarlet Letter  Huck (and Jim), from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn | "Trust thyself....The nonchalance of boys...is the healthy attitude of human nature....independent, irresponsible....But the man is, as it were, clapped into jail by his consciousness...Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion." |  |
 | "truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it,--else it is none. The doctrine of hatred must be preached as the counteraction of the doctrine of love when that pules and whines. I shun father and mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls me. I would write on the lintels of the door-post, Whim. I hope it is somewhat better than whim at last, but we cannot spend the day in explanation. Expect me not to show cause why I seek or why I exclude company." |
 Jim, from Huckleberry Finn  Ahab, from Moby Dick |
 | "Prayer looks abroad and asks for some foreign addition to come through some foreign virtue, and loses itself in endless mazes of natural and supernatural, and mediatorial and miraculous. Prayer that craves a particular commodity,--any thing less than all good,--is vicious....prayer as a means to effect a private end is meanness and theft. It supposes dualism and not unity in nature and consciousness. As soon as the man is at one with God, he will not beg. He will then see prayer in all action.... Another sort of false prayers are our regrets. Discontent is the want of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will." |
 Little Eva (with Topsy), from Uncle Tom's Cabin  Pip, from Moby-Dick |
 Governess (with Miles), from Turn of the Screw  Dimmesdale, from The Scarlet Letter | "Men do what is called a good action, as some piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiation of daily non-appearance on parade. Their works are done as an apology or extenuation of their living in the world....Their virtues are penances. I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is for itself and not for a spectacle....The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is, that it scatters your force....Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself." |  |
 | "He who travels to be amused, or to get somewhat which he does not carry, travels away from himself....He carries ruins to ruins....Travelling is a fool's paradise....the rage of travelling is a symptom of a deeper unsoundness affecting the whole intellectual action. The intellect is vagabond, and our system of education fosters restlessness. Our minds travel when our bodies are forced to stay at home. We imitate; and what is imitation but the travelling of the mind?...Insist on yourself; never imitate." |  Uncle Tom, from Uncle Tom's Cabin  Hester (with Dimmesdale!), from The Scarlet Letter |
 Miles, from Turn of the Screw  Ishamel, from Moby Dick | A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds....Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day....Is it so bad...to be misunderstood?...Who is the Trustee? What is the aboriginal Self, on which a universal reliance may be grounded?...The inquiry leads us to that source...which we call Spontaneity or Instinct. We denote this primary wisdom as Intuition, whilst all later teachings are tuitions. |  |