>>>"I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction."
>
>How about John Donne's "No man is an island?" (you may recognize another famous misquotation as well:)
>
>No man is an island,
>Entire of itself,
>Every man is a piece of the continent,
>A part of the main.
>If a clod be washed away by the sea,
>Europe is the less.
>As well as if a promontory were.
>As well as if a manor of thy friend's
>Or of thine own were:
>Any man's death diminishes me,
>Because I am involved in mankind,
>And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
>It tolls for thee.


Or William Henley:

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.