“The solitary side of our nature demands leisure for reflection upon subjects on which the dash and whirl of daily business, so long as its clouds rise thick about us, forbid the intellect to fasten itself.” LongSidesSubjectsDemandReflectionCloudsIntellectLeisureThickSolitarySelf ReflectionDaily Business Book:Short Studies on Great Subjects Source: Short Studies on Great Subjects
“I am excessively slothful, and wonderfully industrious-by fits. There are epochs when any kind of mental exercise is torture, and when nothing yields me pleasure but the solitary communion with the 'mountains & the woods'-the 'altars' of Byron. I have thus rambled and dreamed away whole months, and awake, at last, to a sort of mania for composition. Then I scribble all day, and read all night, so long as the disease endures.” KindLongWholeLastsNightPleasureMonthsFitExerciseMountainDiseaseDepressionEndureWoodsAwakeTortureYieldSolitaryCompositionCommunionAll NightAltarsIndustriousManiaByronScribbles Book:The Portable Edgar Allan Poe Source: The Portable Edgar Allan Poe
“It was from America that the plain ideas that men ought to mind their business, and that the nation is responsible to Heaven for the acts of the State, - ideas long locked in the breast of solitary thinkers, and hidden among Latin folios, - burst forth like a conqueror upon the world they were destined to transform, under the title of the Rights of Man... and the principle gained ground, that a nation can never abandon its fate to an authority it cannot control.” MenWorldMindLongIdeasStatesAmericaHeavenNationsPrinciplesFateRightsOughtAuthorityResponsibleTitlesBreastsAbandonLatinThinkerLockedSolitaryDestinedConqueror Author:Lord Acton
“Canada, having few indigenous prejudices, has been compelled to import them from elsewhere, duty-free, and it is the rare Canadian who is not shaken, at some time in the year, by "old, unhappy, far-off things / And battles long ago", like Wordsworth's solitary reaper. We are a nation of immigrants, and not happy in our minds.” YearsMindLongHas BeensNationsDutyBattlePrejudiceUnhappyCanadaImmigrantsElsewhereSolitaryLong AgoCompelledIndigenousNot HappyImportsReaperWordsworth Author:Robertson Davies