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Isolation Quotes

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Isolation Quotes

“The trail to the Assam frontier lies in that direction,” said the Duwa, pointing to the north … I am scared about proceeding further during the rains. I may not be able to recross the rivers and, moreover, I hear that numerous people have died on the trek and their sprawling bodies would be close companions for us all day and every day.” I felt a creepy sensation down my spine but I did not continue the subject just then. I knew that if the Duwa and his villagers decided not to come with us to the frontier we should be in a sorrier plight than ever. Captain Gribble”

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Book:EXTRAORDINARY TRUE STORIES OF SURVIVAL IN BURMA WW2: tens of thousands fled to India from the Japanese Invasion in 1942
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“In the end, I will become the ghost I always feared. When the fire I kindled in my mind reaches my heart, I will start turning everyone I meet to ashes. So, I speak less and less, withdrawing more and more from the outside world. I navigate a realm that seems devoid of other human beings. I have become isolated in my mind, knowing that I will no longer encounter others, even in my thoughts. I love the solitude, so far below, so far away from life...”

MindFearFireLonelinessSolitudeGhostIsolationAshesWithdrawal
Author:Rolf van der Wind
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“Observing the world, rather than engaging with it, meant I didn't have to invest emotionally. If I never got close to anyone, they couldn't leave me. Or it wouldn't hurt if they did. Better to be alone by choice - that was one thing I always had control over. But now I realized I wasn't fooling anyone. The truth was, I wasn't trying my best - I was only living a shell of the life I knew was possible. And I regretted it.”

FearRegretIsolationEmotional Investment
Book:The Collected Regrets of Clover
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“I have found myself leaning heavily on this pain. At first I tried to silence it, thinking it would go and leave me to my agitated content. That it would linger for a season, a firm reminder of the disquiet that lurks and coils below the surface of the stubbornly self-gratifying vision of our lives. Far from going, it became more clear, more precisely located, concrete, an object that occupied space within me, cockroachy, dark and intimate, emitting thick, stinking fumes that reeked of loneliness and terror. When I woke up in the morning, I groped for it, then sighed with plunging recognition as I felt it stirring inside me, alive and well.”

PainFearLonelinessTerrorIsolationBelongingExileOut Of PlaceRefugee Experience
Book:Admiring Silence
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“Work on making yourself a complete being. Though you were born with the physical traits of one sex, you possess the characteristics of both - including those of plants and animals. You were created as a nearly complete universal being, but with flaws. True perfection can only be achieved when one recognizes that they need to combine their oneness with others and nature. Only then is one considered complete.”

LifeHumansWholeTruthSexPeaceNatureBornNaturalWorkPerfectAnimalMankindCreationIdentityBrokenHumanPerfectionUniversalPlantUnityOnenessManFixedBeastIsolationFlawsAnimalsFlawedOneHuman BeingCompletenessCompleteWhole TruthCreatedAnimal KingdomMan And NatureFlawComplete BeingUniversal BeingPhysical TraitsUntiy Of The Forces
Book:Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
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“He accumulates wealth in solitude, thinking: how strong, how secure I am now; and does not see, madman as he is, that the more he accumulates, the more he sinks into suicidal impotence. For he is accustomed to relying only on himself, he has separated his unit from the whole, he has accustomed his soul to not believing in people's help, in people or in mankind, and now only trembles lest his money and his acquired privileges perish. Everywhere now the human mind has begun laughably not to understand that a man's true security lies not in his own solitary effort, but in the general wholeness of humanity. But there must needs come a term to this horrible isolation, and everyone will all at once realize how unnaturally they have separated themselves from one another.”

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Book:The Brothers Karamazov
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“Yet there are times when for no logical reason I feel an almost unbearable sense of isolation. Not only am I divided in myself, my underwater and above-water selves separated, but I feel wrenched away from everybody around me. This is part of being human, this knowing that we are all part of one another, inextricably involved; and at the same time alone, irrevocably alone.”

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Book:The Summer of the Great-Grandmother
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“Our uniqueness implies unique responsibility that we as individuals have in the world. It also implies an unavoidable loneliness. Here Ghandi’s words come to mind: “Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is still the truth.” We are all minorities of one in the sense of our uniqueness and loneliness. But in searching for the truth and the meaning of our lives, we “intercept” with others who are doing the same and our loneliness at least will not have to be experienced as isolation. And in chess too, we “intercept” with others in this common interest that is much like life, where everything we do matters, where we have to participate responsibly, and the more responsible our participation is, the more we feel at home. As such it can have a highly affirmative effect on the person, a sense that the individual gets: “Yes, I belong to this world, I am part of how things get decided, of how things get achieved. I share this with others.”

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Book:Character Education with Chess
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“A change is coming, whether or not I am paying attention. Life is no longer the same. I can feel it in the people around me: the scramble to get away from it, the terror that it might touch us, the urge to stay high and dry. I can feel us calcifying, separating, drawing in. I hope the change brings justice rather than suffering, connection rather than more rancour. I hope we can all rise above the urge for petty revenge. I hope, most of all, that we can learn to soften into this time and into each other. To merge again, somehow. To melt back into the landscapes that hold us, and that are still releasing the wisdom of millennia, quietly, slowly, if only we can learn to listen.”

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Book:Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age
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“Asher Rubin thinks that most people are truly idiots, and that it is human stupidity that is ultimately responsible for introducing sadness into the world. It isn’t a sin or a trait with which human beings are born, but a false view of the world, a mistaken evaluation of what is seen by our eyes. Which is why people perceive every thing in isolation, each object separate from the rest. Real wisdom lies in linking everything together—that’s when the true shape of all of it emerges.”

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Book:The Books of Jacob
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“Was this what I wanted, the rest of my days being laid out for me? A life not of my choosing. Would I be able to live it out here, in this isolation, six months on an island, the days unfolding one into another, a series of Russian dolls, diminishing in their intensity and diminishing me as well. Would I be diminished? Or was this what I needed, to live here undisturbed for the rest of my life and never have to interact with the fractiousness of city living ever again?”

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Book:More Things in Heaven and Earth
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“It's sad that in a world of billions, people can still feel isolated and alone. Sometimes all it takes to brighten up someone's day is a smile or kind word, or the generous actions of a complete stranger. Small things, the tiny details, these are the things that matter in life — the little glint in the eye, curve of a lip, nod of a head, wave of a hand — such minuscule movements have huge ripple effects.”

SadnessLonelinessSadLonelySmilePopulationStrangerGenerosityIsolationIsolatedGood DeedsMake A DifferenceLonely PeopleRipple EffectMinuscule
Author:Shaun Hick
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“The world had changed its attire last spring and what it was wearing now was a perfect fit to what it was deep inside: a controlling old slag who didn't care about anyone’s wishes and ignored everyone who won't live by her rules. Tom was finished with that cunt: the world behind the fogged up windows. He used to live in one of his own: a dirty, but well-protected world that no one had ever entered and everyone who even tried was to get shot before they made it over the threshold. ~ As the moon began to rust”

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Author:Sima B. Moussavian
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“Living with Justin in his childhood home, my love and I had formed an island—a nation-state of two, sleepy and safe. We had only planned to stay with his family for a few weeks after the wedding—three months had passed. Days in our private culture were peaceful, smooth as a frozen lake, our souls stilled. This life with my in-laws was a comfortable hibernation, easy.”

HomeChildhoodComfortableSafetyIsolationInertiaSleepySeparatenessIslandHibernation
Book:Your Blue Is Not My Blue: A Missing Person Memoir
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“I may have smiled to myself as I watched the familiar pattern of the town pass, the bus cruising through shade to sunshine. I'd grown up in this place, had the knowledge of it so deep in me that I didn't even know most street names, navigating instead by landmarks, visual or memorial. The corner where my mother had twisted her ankle in a mauve pantsuit. The copse of trees that always looked vaguely attended by evil. The drugstore with its torn awning. Through the window of that unfamiliar bus, the burr of old carpet under my legs, my hometown seemed scrubbed clean of my presence. It was easy to leave it behind.”

HomeLossIdentityIsolationComing Of AgeAdolescence
Book:The Girls
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“She said, "Daddy thinks that all the world's magic is almost evolved out." I thought of Roebuck Lake, its swamps and sloughs and loblollies and breaks of cypress and cane, its sunken treetops and stobs and bream beds and sleepy gar rolling over and over and over, its baptizing pools and bridges and mussels and mosquitoes and turkey vultures and, now in the drought, the gray flaking mud-flats and logs crowded with turtles and sometimes a fat snake yawning its tame old cottony mouth like a well-fed dog in a pen. I said, "Is that what the freak show is?" She said, "Dirty miracles.”

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Book:The All-Girl Football Team
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“I looked back at the boy and his father. The man was holding him close now, his arms wrapped tightly around him as if to shield him from the cold. Their laughter echoed down the street–bright and fleeting, and full of something I hadn’t felt in years. I wondered if that boy would grow up to feel the same sting of disappointment I did, if his father would one day become a stranger too.”

PhilosophyLossGriefFamilyRelationshipEmotionalIsolationExistentialismLiterary Fiction
Author:Sasha Harding
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“It wasn't the first time I had relied on her in our strange, undefined 'relationship.' Late-night texts, spontaneous meet-ups, testing boundaries—most of the time, she did bite. But this? This felt different. It wasn't just curiosity or intrigue anymore. I wasn't just waiting to see how far I could push her. I needed her. I wanted her in a way I couldn't fully explain, in a way that went far beyond anything I'd felt before.”

PhilosophyLossGriefFamilyRelationshipEmotionalIsolationExistentialismLiterary Fiction
Author:Sasha Harding
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“The rest of the evening unfolded in a gentle, unspoken rhythm. We didn’t rush through anything. We didn’t need to. There was comfort in the quiet moments between us. I didn’t feel the need to fill the space with words, and neither did she. I didn’t have to be anywhere or do anything right now. For once, I was just... here. And that was enough. The world outside continued to spin, I let myself sink into the moment, the steady rhythm of her breathing, and for once, I didn’t have to wonder if I was doing the right thing. I just had to believe it.”

PhilosophyLossGriefFamilyRelationshipEmotionalIsolationExistentialismLiterary Fiction
Author:Sasha Harding
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“I deliberate on whether the morning would bring a golden sun, melting the thick snow at the foot of the house, turning ice to rivulets down the stone steps. Or if winter would keep its hold, the chill climbing steadily up the windows, pressing cold fingers against the glass, trying to find its way inside. I wondered if the frost would cling to the dubstep or if it had already settled within.”

PhilosophyLossGriefFamilyRelationshipEmotionalIsolationExistentialismLiterary Fiction
Author:Sasha Harding
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“I love you."The words slipped from my lips into the cold air—small, fragile, real. Her breath hitched, the first real reaction I'd received from her all evening. My heart hammered in my chest, as I waited. Half of me was hoping she'd say it back, but the other half was terrified that I had said it too soon. Perhaps I had—perhaps I had ruined something. But there was no doubt in my mind. If there was one thing I was certain of in this world, it was that I loved her. Completely. Undeniably.”

PhilosophyLossGriefFamilyRelationshipEmotionalIsolationExistentialismLiterary Fiction
Author:Sasha Harding
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