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Invisible Man

Ralph Ellison

Top 10 Best Quotes

“What and how much had I lost by trying to do only what was expected of me instead of what I myself had wished to do?”

“When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.”

“Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.”

“The world is a possibility if only you'll discover it.”

“I am an invisible man. No I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allen Poe: Nor am I one of your Hollywood movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids, and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, simply because people refuse to see me.”

“I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves or figments of their imagination, indeed, everything and anything except me.”

“I was never more hated than when I tried to be honest. Or when, even as just now I've tried to articulate exactly what I felt to be the truth. No one was satisfied”

“Power doesn't have to show off. Power is confident, self-assuring, self-starting and self-stopping, self-warming and self-justifying. When you have it, you know it.”

“And my problem was that I always tried to go in everyone's way but my own.”

“I remember that I'm invisible and walk softly so as not awake the sleeping ones. Sometimes it is best not to awaken them; there are few things in the world as dangerous as sleepwalkers.”

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Book Keywords:

humanity, inspriational-quotes, inspirational, defeat, identity, self-discovery, control, life, self-awareness, independence, freedom

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