Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Patricia Highsmith

Quote by Patricia Highsmith

Work

Nothing That Meets the Eye: The Uncollected Stories of Patricia Highsmith

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Patricia Highsmith
Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith was an American novelist renowned for her psychological thrillers. Her works often delve into the darker aspects of human nature, particularly themes of loneliness and fear. Her most famous works include 'The Price of Salt' and 'The Glass House'. more

You May Also Like

“Whenever one speaks of lonely people one takes too much for granted. One thinks people all know what they're dealing with. No, they do not. They've never seen a lonely person, they've simply hated him without knowing him. They've been his neighbours who've used him up, they were the voices in the next room who tempted him. They roused things up against him, getting them to make a din and drown him out. Children ganged up against him when he was a tender child, and at every stage of his growing up he grew hostile to grown-ups . They tracked him to his hiding-place like an animal of chase and throughout his long youth there was no closed season. And when he didn't allow himself to be worn out so that he got away they yelled about what came forth from him and called it ugly and were suspicious of it. And as he didn't stop they grew more obvious and gobbled up his food and breathed up his air and spat into his poverty so that he himself became disgusted at it. They brought him into disrepute as if he were a contagion and threw stones at him to speed his departure. And they were right to follow their age-old instinct: because he really was their enemy. But then when he didn't look up they had second thoughts. They suspected that in all of this they had acted as he had willed them to act; they had strengthened him in his solitude and had helped him separate himself from them for ever.”

SorrowSolitudeAnxietyLonersMobbing
Author:Rainer Maria Rilke
Create image

“You must always see your loneliness as an opportunity to meet something good unexpected, something new unknown before, something interesting not happened yet!”

LonelinessSolitudeMehmet Murat Ildan QuotesTurkish LiteratureTurkish QuotesTurkish WritersMehmet Murat Ildan QuotationsIldan Wise SayingsTurkish Wisdom WordsTurkish PlaywrightsTurkish QuotationsTurkish AuthorsIldan WisdomIldan WordsLoneliness QuotesSolitude QuotesLoneliness Of LifeSolitude QuotationsLoneliness Quotations
Author:Mehmet Murat Ildan
Create image

“It is not good for man to be kept perforce at all times in the presence of his species. A world from which solitude is extirpated is a very poor ideal. Solitude, in the sense of being often alone, is essential to any depth of meditation or of character; and solitude in the presence of natural beauty and grandeur, is the cradle of thoughts and aspirations which are not only good for the individual, but which society could ill do without. Nor is there much satisfaction in contemplating the world with nothing left to the spontaneous activity of nature...scarcely a place left where a wild shrub or flower could grow without being eradicated as a weed in the same of improved agriculture. If the earth must lose that great portion of its pleasantness which it owes to things that the unlimited increase of wealth and population would extirpate from it, for the mere support of a larger, but not a better or happier population, I sincerely hope, for the sake of posterity, that they will be content to be stationary...”

NatureSolitudeWildernessConservationPreservationOutdoorsEnvironmental History
Author:John Stuart Mills
Create image

“The question haunted me, and the real answer came, as answers often do, not in the canyon but at an unlikely time and in an unexpected place, flying over the canyon at thirty thousand feet on my way to be a grandmother. My mind on other things, intending only to glance out, the exquisite smallness and delicacy of the river took me completely by surprise. In the hazy light of early morning, the canyon lay shrouded, the river flecked with glints of silver, reduced to a thin line of memory, blurred by a sudden realization that clouded my vision. The astonishing sense of connection with that river and canyon caught me completely unaware, and in a breath I understood the intense, protective loyalty so many people feel for the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. It has to do with truth and beauty and love of this earth, the artifacts of a lifetime and the descant of a canyon wren at dawn.”

EarthNatureBeautySolitudeWildernessArizonaEnvironmental ProtectionGrand CanyonNature WritingCanyonColorado RiverLove Of EarthEarthiestPreservation Of The Wild
Book:Downcanyon: A Naturalist Explores the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon
Create image