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Solitary Quotes

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Solitary Quotes

“Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry... no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

MenArtWarEarthFacesPoorEnemyWorstConditionsSecurityDangerIndustryLettersAccountsEvery ManViolentInventionSolitaryNastyLeviathanViolent DeathSolitary Man
Author:Thomas Hobbes
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“When we are alone on a starlit night, when by chance we see the migrating birds in autumn descending on a grove of junipers to rest and eat; when we see children in a moment when they are really children, when we know love in our own hearts; or when, like the Japanese poet, Basho, we hear an old frog land in a quiet pond with a solitary splash - at such times the awakening, the turning inside out of all values, the "newness," the emptiness and the purity of vision that make themselves evident, all these provide a glimpse of the cosmic dance.”

KnowsLifeHeartChildrenMomentsNightValuesChanceVisionLandPoetQuietBirdAwakeningPurityEmptinessAutumnCosmicSolitaryEvidentGlimpseAwakenedFrogsPondsNewnessDescendingGrove
Author:Thomas Merton
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“For most people, what is so painful about reading is that you read something and you don't have anybody to share it with. In part what the book club opens up is that people can read a book and then have someone else to talk about it with. Then they see that a book can lead to the pleasure of conversation, that the solitary act of reading can actually be a part of the path to communion and community.”

PeopleBookReadingCommunityPleasurePathShareConversationPainfulClubsSolitaryCommunionBook Club
Author:Bell Hooks
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“It's clear to me now that I have been moving toward you and you toward me for a long time. Though neither of us was aware of the other before we met, there was a kind of mindless certainty bumming blithely along beneath our ignorance that ensured we would come together. Like two solitary birds flying the great prairies by celestial reckoning, all of these years and lifetimes we have been moving toward one another.”

YearsKindLongHas BeensTwoTogetherMovingClearIgnoranceMetsLong TimeBirdLifetimeFlyingCertaintySolitaryCountyCelestialMindlessReckoningPrairieBird Flying
Author:Robert James Waller
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“It is clear that we must trust what is difficult; everything alive trusts in it, everything in Nature grows and defends itself any way it can and is spontaneously itself, tries to be itself at all costs and against all opposition. We know little, but that we must trust in what is difficult is a certainty that will never abandon us; it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be one more reason for us to do it.”

KnowsWayTryingLittlesReasonGrowsDifficultClearAliveCostSolitudeCertaintyOppositionAbandonSolitary
Author:Rainer Maria Rilke
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“An isolated person requires correspondence as a means of seeing his ideas as others see them, and thus guarding against the dogmatisms and extravagances of solitary and uncorrected speculation. No man can learn to reason and appraise from a mere perusal of the writing of others. If he live not in the world, where he can observe the public at first hand and be directed toward solid reality by the force of conversation and spoken debate, then he must sharpen his discrimination and regulate his perceptive balance by an equivalent exchange of ideas in epistolary form.”

IfsMenWorldWritingFirstsMeanPersonsIdeasReasonHandsRealityFormForceSeeingBalanceConversationMereDebateDiscriminationIsolatedSolitarySpeculationExtravaganceCorrespondenceDogmatismGuardingAppraise
Author:H. P. Lovecraft
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“Authority is a solvent of humanity: look at any husband, any father of a family,and note the absorption of the person by the persona, the individual by the role. Then multiply the family, and the authority, by some hundreds and see the effect upon a sea-captain, to say nothing of an absolute monarch.Surely man in general is born to be oppressed or solitary, if he is to be fully human; unless it so happens that he is immune to the poison.”

IfsMenHumansLooksPersonsHappensHumanityFatherIndividualBornRolesSeaEffectsHusbandAuthorityAbsolutesNotesPoisonSolitaryCaptainsOppressedPersonaImmuneMonarchsAbsorption
Author:Patrick O'Brian
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“His brow is seamed with line and scar; His cheek is red and dark as wine; The fires as of a Northern star Beneath his cap of sable shine. His right hand, bared of leathern glove, Hangs open like an iron gin, You stoop to see his pulses move, To hear the blood sweep out and in. He looks some king, so solitary In earnest thought he seems to stand, As if across a lonely sea He gazed impatient of the land. Out of the noisy centuries The foolish and the fearful fade; Yet burn unquenched these warrior eyes, Time hath not dimmed, nor death dismayed.”

IfsLooksHandsSeemsEyeMovingStarsLinesDarkFireBloodSeaLandCenturyKingsRedLonelyWineShiningFoolishWarriorIronScarFearfulFadesCheeksSolitaryEarnestPulseImpatientCapsGlovesBrowsNoisyGinStoopsDismayedNorthern Star
Book:Collected Poems, 1901-1918
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“They, looking back, all the eastern side beheld Of Paradise, so late their happy seat, Waved over by that flaming brand, the gate With dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms: Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon; The world was all before them, where to choose Their place of rest, and Providence their guide; They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow, Through Eden took their solitary way.”

WorldWayHandsFacesSidesNaturalStepsTearsArmsLateGuidesWanderBrandsParadiseSeatsGatesSolitaryProvidenceLooking BackEasternEdenHand In HandFiery
Author:John Milton
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“Songs and smells will bring you back to a moment in time more than anything else. It's amazing how much can be conjured with a few notes of a song or a solitary whiff of a room. A song you didn't even pay attention to at the time, a place that you didn't even know had a particular smell. I wonder what will someday bring back Dex and our few months together. Maybe the sound of Dido's voice. Maybe the scent of the Aveda shampoo I've been using all summer.”

KnowsMomentsTogetherSongSoundVoiceRoomsPayAttentionWonderParticularMonthsSummerNotesSmellPay AttentionSomedaySolitaryScentMoments In TimeShampooDido
Author:Emily Giffin
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“The photographer is an armed version of the solitary walker reconnoitering, stalking, cruising the urban inferno, the voyeuristic stroller who discovers the city as a landscape of voluptuous extremes. Adept of the joys of watching, connoisseur of empathy, the flâneur finds the world 'picturesque.”

WorldJoyCitiesEmpathyPhotographerExtremesVersionsLandscapeSolitaryUrbanStalkingWalkersInfernoAdeptConnoisseurPicturesqueVoluptuousStrollers
Book:On photography
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“Great ideas, it has been said, come into the world as gently as doves. Perhaps then, if we listen attentively, we shall hear amid the uproar of empires and nations, a faint flutter of wings, the gentle stirring of life and hope. Some will say that this hope lies in a nation; others in a man. I believe rather that it is awakened, revived, nourished, by millions of solitary individuals whose and works every day negate frontiers and the crudest implications of history.”

IfsMenWorldBelieveHas BeensSaidIdeasLyingIndividualI BelieveNationsMillionsWingsGentleEmpiresSolitaryFrontiersImplicationsAwakenedGreat IdeaDoveStirring
Author:Albert Camus
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“I think the act of reading imbues the reader with a sensitivity toward the outside world that people who don't read can sometimes lack. I know it seems like a contradiction in terms; after all reading is such a solitary, internalizing act that it appears to represent a disengagement from day-to-day life. But reading, and particularly the reading of fiction, encourages us to view the world in new and challenging ways...It allows us to inhabit the consciousness of another which is a precursor to empathy, and empathy is, for me, one of the marks of a decent human being.”

PeopleThinkingKnowsWorldWayHumansSometimesSeemsReadingTermChallengesHuman BeingsViewsConsciousnessFictionReaderEmpathyMarkDecentContradictionSolitaryDay To DaySensitivityOutside WorldDay LifeDay To Day LifePrecursorDisengagementInternalizing
Book:The Book of Lost Things: A Novel
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“The solitary and thoughtful stroller finds a singular intoxication in this universal communion. The man who loves to lose himself in a crowd enjoys feverish delights that the egoist locked up in himself as in a box, and the slothful man like a mollusk in his shell, will be eternally deprived of. He adopts as his own all the occupations, all the joys and all the sorrows that chance offers.”

MenJoyEnjoyLosesChanceSorrowOffersUniversalCrowdsBoxesDelightThoughtfulOccupationLockedSolitaryShellsCommunionIntrovertDeprivedIntoxicationLocked UpStrollersMollusks
Author:Charles Baudelaire
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“...solitary like a pool at evening, far distant, seen from a train window, vanishing so quickly that the pool, pale in the evening, is scarcely robbed of its solitude, though once seen. *** Here sitting on the world, she thought, for she could not shake herself free from the sense that everything this morning was happening for the first time, perhaps for the last time, as a traveller, even though he is half asleep, knows, looking out of the train window, that he must look now, for he will never see that town, or that mule-cart, or that woman at work in the fields, again.”

KnowsWorldFirstsLooksLastsHalfMorningFieldsSolitudeHappeningsSittingFirst TimeWindowTownsTrainEveningShakesPoolSolitaryPaleLast TimeTravellerCartsVanishingMules
Author:Virginia Woolf
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“At the enchanted metropolitan twilight I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others -- poor young clerks who loitered in front of windows waiting until it was time for a solitary restaurant dinner -- young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life.”

SometimesMomentsYoungNightFeltWaitingPoorFrontsLonelinessWindowDinnerRestaurantsTwilightSolitaryHauntingDuskEnchantedClerksPoignantMetropolitan
Book:The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald: Novels, Short Stories, Poetry, Articles, Letters, Plays & Screenplays: From the author of The Great Gatsby, The Side of Paradise, Tender Is the Night, The Beautiful and Damned, The Love of the Last Tycoon, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and many other notable works
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“It’s important that someone celebrate our existence," she objected amiably. "People are the only mirror we have to see ourselves in. The domain of all meaning. All virtue, all evil, are contained only in people. There is none in the universe at large. Solitary confinement is a punishment in every human culture.”

PeopleHumansImportantMotivationalCultureUniverseEvilExistenceVirtueMirrorsPunishmentCelebrateSolitaryDomainConfinementSolitary Confinement
Book:Mirror Dance
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“When it comes to girls (and in Colin's case, it so often did), everyone has a type. Colin Singleton's type was not physical but linguistic: he liked Katherines. And not Katies or Kats or Kitties or Cathys or Rynns or Trinas or Kays or Kates or, god forbid, Catherines. K-A-T-H-E-R-I-N-E. He had dated 19 girls. All of them had been named Katherine. And all of them- every single solitary one- had dumped him.”

GirlCasesTypeSolitaryKateKatieDumpedKittiesColin Singleton
Book:An Abundance of Katherines
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“And, what's more, this 'precious' body, the very same that is hooted and honked at, demeaned both in daily life as well as in ever existing form of media, harrassed, molested, raped, and, if all that wasn't enough, is forever poked and prodded and weighed and constantly wrong for eating too much, eating too little, a million details which all point to the solitary girl, to EVERY solitary girl, and say: Destroy yourself.”

IfsWellsLittlesEnoughBodyFormGirlMillionsForeverToo MuchMediaEatingDetailsDaily LifeSolitaryAnorexia
Author:Emilie Autumn
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“We all have secret lives. The life of excretion; the world of inappropriate sexual fantasies; our real hopes, our terror of death; our experience of shame; the world of pain; and our dreams. No one else knows these lives. Consciousness is solitary. Each person lives in that bubble universe that rests under the skull, alone.”

KnowsWorldPersonsRealDreamPainUniverseSecretConsciousnessFantasyShameTerrorLive LifeBubblesSolitaryOur DreamsSkullsInappropriateSecret Life
Book:Galileo's Dream
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“You don't believe that your friend could ever do anything great. You despise yourself in secret, even – no, especially – when you stand on your dignity; and since you despise yourself, you are unable to respect your friend. You can't bring yourself to believe that anyone you have sat at table with, or shared a house with, is capable of great achievement. That is why all great men have been solitary. It is hard to think in your company, little man. One can only think 'about' you, or 'for your benefit', not 'with' you, for you stifle all big, generous ideas.”

ThinkingMenBelieveLittlesHas BeensIdeasHardBigsHouseSecretCompanyAchievementBenefitsCapableDignityTablesDon't BelieveGenerousSatGreat MenDespiseSolitaryGreat AchievementLittle Man
Author:Wilhelm Reich
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“And again there are no words. Words exist that can, used by a poet, achieve a dim monochrome of the body's love, but beyond that they fail clumsily. My love flowed out to her, hers back to me. Mine stroked and soothed. Hers caressed. The distance - and the difference - between us dwindled and vanished. We could meet, mingle, and blend. Neither one of us existed any more; for a time there was a single being that was both. There was escape from the solitary cell; a brief symbiosis, sharing all the word.”

BodyUsedDifferencesFailingAchieveMinesPoetDistanceCellsSolitarySymbiosisMonochrome
Author:John Wyndham
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“Hateful day when I received life!' I exclaimed in agony. 'Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust? God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very resemlance. Satan had his companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am solitary and abhorred.' - Frankenstein”

MenMadeBeautifulFormTypeDevilFellowsCreatorMonstersPityAdmireSatanCompanionDisgustingSolitaryAgonyHatefulHideousFilthyAlluringFrankenstein NovelGods And Monsters
Book:Frankenstein - The Modern Prometheus
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“Anyway, solitary people interest me. There are so many different ways of being solitary.' 'I know just what you mean,' said X. 'I know exactly what you're going to say. Different kinds of solitude. Enforced solitude and voluntary solitude.' 'Quite,' said Viktoria. 'There's no need to go into it further. But when people understand one another without speaking, it can often leave them with very little to talk about, don't you think?”

PeopleThinkingKnowsWayNeedsKindMeanLittlesSaidDifferentInterestSolitudeDifferent WaysDifferent KindsSolitary
Author:Tove Jansson
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“IMPORTANT Book reading is a solitary and sedentary pursuit, and those who do are cautioned that a book should be used as an integral part of a well-rounded life, including a daily regimen of rigorous physical exercise, rewarding personal relationships, and sensible low-fat diet. A book should not be used a as a substitute or an excuse.”

ShouldWellsImportantBookUsedReadingExerciseLowsIncludingExcusePursuitFatsDietsSubstitutesSensibleSolitaryBook ReadingPersonal RelationshipsPhysical ExerciseWell RoundedSedentary
Author:Garrison Keillor
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