Kerri

“One new indulgence was to go out evenings alone. This I worked out carefully in my mind, as not only a right but a duty. Why should a woman be deprived of her only free time, the time allotted to recreation? Why must she be dependent on some man, and thus forced to please him if she wished to go anywhere at night?

A stalwart man once sharply contested my claim to this freedom to go alone. “Any true man,” he said with fervor, “is always ready to go with a woman at night. He is her natural protector.” “Against what?” I inquired. As a matter of fact, the thing a woman is most afraid to meet on a dark street is her natural protector. Singular”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman: An Autobiography

“We all need one another; much and often. Just as every human creature needs a place to be alone in, a sacred, private "home" of his own, so all human creatures need a place to be together in, from the two who can show each other their souls uninterruptedly, to the largest throng that can throb and stir in unison.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Women and Economics

“You only get one life. It's actually your duty to live it as fully as possible.”
― Jojo Moyes, Me Before You

“The church is a sort of hospital for men's souls and as full of quackery as the hospital for their bodies.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden, or Life in the Woods