What does this quote mean?

“You may give them your love but not your thoughts.”

Care can be generous without requiring another person to inherit every belief or preference.

Source note: The Prophet, “On Children.”

“I must depend on myself as the only constant friend.”

The statement does not deny friendship with others; it names the continuity of one’s relationship with oneself as a reason to cultivate dependable inward resources.

Source note: Woman in the Nineteenth Century; spoken by Fuller’s illustrative figure Miranda while explaining the self-dependence encouraged by her upbringing.

“The soul selects her own society, then shuts the door.”

Dickinson’s compressed image emphasizes selective attention and the right to decide what receives intimate access.

Source note: “The Soul Selects Her Own Society”; capitalization is lightly normalized.

“Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.”

Emerson places inner integrity above conformity, arguing that a person should examine inherited standards rather than surrender judgment merely because they are socially approved.

Source note: Self-Reliance, in the passage beginning with Emerson’s argument for nonconformity.

“That her hand may be given with dignity, she must be able to stand alone.”

A relationship entered from the ability to stand independently can preserve dignity more fully than one made necessary by the inability to exist outside it.

Source note: Woman in the Nineteenth Century; Fuller connects the dignity of freely giving oneself in relationship with the prior ability to stand independently.

“Never free to compromise her self-respect, to seek where she had been shunned.”

The narration marks self-respect as a boundary: rejection does not create an obligation to keep pursuing acceptance at the cost of dignity.

Source note: Shirley; fictional narrative description within the novel’s relationship context. The line describes a character’s restraint and must not be presented as a direct autobiographical maxim by Charlotte Brontë.