Left Alone Quotes - Page 8

• Well, being the youngest child and frail, I was left alone a great deal of the time.

  Andrew Wyeth

  Children, Loneliness, Frail

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• I am as one who is left alone at a banquet, the lights dead and the flowers faded.

  Edward George, Baron George

  Flower, Light, Solitude

  "The last days of Pompeii". Book by Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1834.

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• Under ordinary circumstances, bad art naturally gets sorted out and disappears. That is how history works when it is left alone to do its job.

  Michael Kimmelman

  Art, Jobs, Ordinary

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• If it were not for the assurance that I have that the Lord is near to us, guiding, directing, the burden would be almost beyond my strength, but because I know that He is there, and that He can be appealed to, and if we have ears to hear attuned to Him, we will never be left alone.

  Harold B. Lee

  Would Be, Ears, Lord

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• Shaw does not merely decorate a proposition, but makes his way from point to point through new and difficult territory. This explains why Shaw must either be taken whole or left alone. He must be disassembled and put together again with nothing left out, under pain of incomprehension; for his politics, his art, and his religion - to say nothing of the shape of his sentences - are unique expressions of this enormously enlarged and yet concentrated consciousness.

  Jacques Barzun

  Art, Pain, Taken

  "Bernard Shaw in Twilight" by Jacques Barzun in "The Kenyon Review", Volume 5, No. 3 (pp. 321-345), Part II, www.jstor.org. Summer 1943.

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• I don't know if anyone has noticed but I only ever write about one thing: being alone. The fear of being alone, the desire to not be alone, the attempts we make to find our person, to keep our person, to convince our person to not leave us alone, the joy of being with our person and thus no longer alone, the devastation of being left alone. The need to hear the words: You are not alone.

  Shonda Rhimes

  Writing, Joy, Desire

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• It is curious how tyrannical the habit of reading is, and what shifts we make to escape thinking. There is no bore we dread being left alone with so much as our own minds.

  James Russell Lowell

  Reading, Thinking, Mind

  James Russell Lowell (1864). “Fireside Travels”, p.124

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• The history of this country was made largely by people who wanted to be left alone. Those who could not thrive when left to themselves never felt at ease in America.

  Eric Hoffer

  Country, America, People

  "Reflections on the Human Condition". Book by Eric Hoffer, Section 53, 1973.

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• Ah, what balance is needed at
  the edges of such an abyss.
  I am left alone on the surface
  of a turning planet. What
  to do but, like Michelangelo's
  Adam, put my hand
  out into unknown space,
  hoping for the reciprocating touch?

  R. S. Thomas

  Hands, Space, Balance

  "Between Here and Now" by R. S. Thomas, ("Threshold", p. 110), 1981.

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• Flyfishing does have its social aspects - on some of our crowded trout streams it can get too social - but esentially it's a solitary, contemplative sport. People are left alone with themselves in beautiful surroundings to try to accomplish something that seems to have genuine value.

  John Gierach

  Beautiful, Sports, Sea

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• When we find ourselves devoid of passion and purpose, the first thing we need to do is stop. But that's not easy. The rest of the world is zooming by at full speed. Left alone with ourselves, without a project to occupy us, we can become nervous and self-critical about what we should be doing and feeling. This can be so uncomfortable that we look for any distraction rather than allowing ourselves the space to be as we are.

  Dawna Markova

  Passion, Self, Space

  Dawna Markova (2000). “I Will Not Die An Unlived Life: Reclaiming Passion and Purpose”, p.15, Conari Press

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• Eventually I knew what hair wanted; it wanted to be itself ... to be left alone by anyone, including me, who did not love it as it was.

  Alice Walker

  Hair, Wanted, Including

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• To be left alone in the wide world with scarcely a friend,--this makes the sadness which, striking its pang into the minds of the young and the affectionate, teaches them too soon to watch and interpret the spirit-signs of their own hearts.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Heart, Sadness, Mind

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• It is a truism that one person who wants something is a hundred times stronger than a hundred who want to be left alone.

  Barbara Ward, Baroness Jackson of Lodsworth

  Want Something, Stronger, That One Person

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• reading is a private act, private even from the person who wrote the book. Once the novel is out there, the author is beside the point. The reader and the book have their own relationship now, and should be left alone to work things out for themselves.

  Ann Patchett

  Book, Reading, Should

  Ann Patchett (2013). “This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage”, p.168, A&C Black

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• the explanation of the ebb and flow of the women's movement ... is partly psychological. During those early post-war years when successes came thick and fast and were almost thrust upon us, the nation was still under the influence of the reconstruction spirit, when everything seemed possible ... A few years later the nation had reached the stage which follows a drinking bout. It was feeling ruefully in its empty pockets. It did not want to part with anything to anybody. Its head ached. Noble sentiments made it feel sick. It wanted only to be left alone.

  Eleanor Rathbone

  War, Drinking, Years

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• Most fruits, if left alone on a tree, eventually do ripen, especially if they're not being yelled at.

  Firoozeh Dumas

  Children, Tree, Fruit

  Firoozeh Dumas (2007). “Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America”, p.72, Random House

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• No one can help me with my work. I think I do best when I am just left alone.

  Raymond Pettibon

  Thinking, Helping, Help Me

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Just because you can watch half-nude women on afternoon television or gay men kissing on the streets of nearly any major city does not mean America is free, as complacent liberals might think, much less too free, as conservatives often suggest. Just because most dissidents are left alone doesn't mean there is no police state, for that would be convenient indeed for the police statists: the idea that people ought not complain so long as they have the right to do so.

  Anthony Gregory

  Mean, Kissing, Gay

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• It appears to be uncertain whether the journey of Mary with her husband was obligatory or voluntary. . . . Women were liable to a capitation tax, if this enrolment also involved taxation. But, apart from any legal necessity, it may easily be imagined that at such a moment Mary would desire not to be left alone. The cruel suspicion of which she had been the subject, and which had almost led to the breaking off of her betrothal (Matt. 1: 19) would make her cling all the more to the protection of her husband.

  Frederic Farrar

  Husband, Journey, Imagination

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• Animals for the most part just need to be left alone.

  Wayne Pacelle

  Animal, Needs, Animal Rights

  "Wayne Pacelle works for the winged, finned and furry" by Carla Hall, www.latimes.com. July 19, 2008.

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• We are men without ambition, and all we want is to be left alone, in peace so that we can try and be happy. So few people will understand this simplicity.

  Upamanyu Chatterjee

  Ambition, Men, People

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• Find your own Calcutta. Find the sick, the suffering and the lonely right there where you are in your own homes and in your own families, in your workplaces and in your schools. You can find Calcutta all over the world, if you have the eyes to see. Everywhere, wherever you go, you find people who are unwanted, unloved, uncared for, just rejected by society completely forgotten, completely left alone.

  Mother Teresa

  Lonely, Home, School

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• Labeling a child's mind as diseased-whether with autism, intellectual disabilities, or transgenderism-may reflect the discomfort that mind gives parents more than any discomfort it causes their child. Much gets corrected that might better have been left alone.

  Andrew Solomon

  Children, Giving, Autism

  Andrew Solomon (2014). “Far From the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity”, p.4, Simon and Schuster

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• There are times when you seek your solitude, and your solitude just wants to be left alone.

  Robert Breault

  Solitude, Want, Left

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