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Loners Quotes

Browse 36 quotes about Loners.

Loners Quotes

“I should have written you a letter, it was too late to make the deaths of my brothers an excuse. Since they died, I wrote a book; why not a letter? A mysterious but truthful answer is that while I can gear myself up to do a novel, letters, real-life communications, are too much for me. I used to rattle them off easily enough; why is the challenge of writing to friends and acquaintances too much for me now? Because I have become such a solitary, and not in the Aristotelian sense: not a beast, not a god. Rather, a loner troubled by longings, incapable of finding a suitable language and despairing at the impossibility of composing messages in a playable key--as if I no longer understood the codes used by the estimable people who wanted to hear from me and would have so much to reply if only the impediments were taken away.”

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Author:Saul Bellow
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“To a loner it hardly seems possible-not even plausible- that millions could agree on what God likes and dislikes and whether pork or beef is verboten. How, we muse, can millions nod in unison approving the validity of liturgy? How can the unseen move so many strangers in the exact same way? Those millions-nonloners, of course- would say it moves them alike because it is real. They would say the unanimity by which it moves them proves it is real. Loners cannot help but suspect something else afoot, something pedestrian. We know nonloners learn by imitation. We know they shore up their self-esteem through imitation, through securing a sense of belonging. Nonloners thrive on this, so why would it not tint their view of heaven? Among nonloners, religion fends off loneliness, one of their greatest fears, both within the soul and without.”

GodReligionFaithLonelinessSelf EsteemImitationLonerMassesLoners
Book:Party of One: The Loner's Manifesto
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“As he walked away, he had one question in his head. How was it possible, in the age of global communication, when all cultural, linguistic, geographical, and economic borders had been erased from the face of the earth, that this vast new realm had only created a multitude of loners, infinite numbers of lonely people in communication with one another, yes, but still in a state of utter solitude?”

LonelinessSolitudeSocial MediaLonersSmart PhoneGlobal Communication
Author:Andrea Camilleri
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“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.”

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Author:Rainer Maria Rilke
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“There you are wrong … I know love not lust. When I love, it is done with my soul involved. As for loners, there are two worlds of loners. One, those who are alone and confused and get into evil; and two, those who are alone and productive. The latter group I belong to. I need to be away from the crowd, to think and find solutions to nagging problems around me. Being on my own enables me to think and see clearly the solutions to the many problems plaguing our world. I wish everyone could have some quality time to themselves and this world in no time would be a better place for all to live in.”

LoveLustWorld ProblemsLoners
Book:Gamblers Make Better Lovers
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“The man who is too isolated grows timid, abstracted, a little odd: He stumbles along amid realities like a sailor who has just come off his ship; he has lost the sense of the human lot; he seems to look on you as if you were a "proposition" to be inserted in a syllogism, or an example to be put down in a notebook.”

IsolationSocial LifeIntellectualismIntellectual LifeLoners
Book:The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods
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“Since that night a couple of weeks ago when Valerie had stayed with him, they had barely separated. The stories of Rabbit’s Revenge droned on and on talking of the impending doom of the planet and the international scientific community’s various attempts to determine a course of action to prevent it. For Jeremy, however, each passing day left him feeling more and more certain he was missing something. It was just a nagging little sensation that lingered like an itch on the back of his neck. With Valerie now firmly implanted in his life, it was a wonder he even thought about it at all, but during his quiet moments and when he awoke in the mornings or even during his more intense workouts, the sensation crept back up on him. It seemed to center around the experience of having his life pass before his eyes, but beyond that it was just nebulous. And annoying.”

HurtDramaSurvivalTenseEnvironmentalismColoradoLonersAction FictionMan Made DisastersSuspense Thrillers
Book:The Mayan Legacy
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“Friends are a strange, volatile, contradictory, yet sticky phenomenon. They are made, crafted, shaped, molded, created by focused effort and intent. And yet, true friendship, once recognized, in its essence is effortless. Best friends are formed by time. Everyone is someone's friend, even when they think they are all alone. If the friendship is not working, your heart will know. It's when you start being less than perfectly honest and perfectly earnest in your dealings. And it's when the things you do together no longer feel right. However, sometimes it takes more effort to make it work after all. Stick around long enough to become someone's best friend.”

FriendshipLonelinessFriendsLonelyAloneFriendBest FriendsBest FriendLonerLoners
Book:The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration
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