Solitary Quotes - Page 15

• From whence, then, could arise the solitary and strange conceit that the Almighty, who had millions of worlds equally dependant on His protection, should quit the care of all the rest, and come to die in our world, because, they say, one man and one woman had eaten an apple?

  Thomas Paine

  Men, Our World, Apples

  Thomas Paine (1852). “The Age of Reason: Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology”, p.60

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• [He] would drive his sculling boat through mile after mile, in a silent brutal programe of conditioning - he would work all alone, at first light, punishing himself without mercy. His was the private dignity of the lone athlete, with a grim purpose, fighting a solitary war with himself, toward a goal only he can see.

  Daniel Topolski

  War, Athlete, Fighting

  Daniel Topolski, Patrick Robinson (2013). “True Blue: The Oxford Boat Race Mutiny”, p.32, Random House

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• He [Zampano] probably would of insisted on corrections and edits, he was his own harshest critic, but I've come to believe errors, especially written errors, are often the only markers left by a solitary life: to sacrifice them is to lose the angels of personality, the riddle of a soul. In this case a very old soul. A very old riddle.

  Mark Z. Danielewski

  Believe, Angel, Sacrifice

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• The grey nurse resumed her knitting as Peter Walsh, on the hot seat beside her, began snoring. In her grey dress, moving her hands indefatigably yet quietly, she seemed like the champion of the rights of sleepers, like one of those spectral presences which rise in twilight in woods made of sky and branches. The solitary traveler, haunter of lanes, disturber of ferns, and devastator of hemlock plants, looking up, suddenly sees the giant figure at the end of the ride.

  Virginia Woolf

  Twilight, Moving, Knitting

  Virginia Woolf (2012). “Mrs. Dalloway - Broadview Edition”, p.56, Broadview Press

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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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• The man who follows Christ in solitary mourning is greater than he who praises Christ amid the congregation of men.

  Isaac of Nineveh

  Christian, Men, Mourning

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• Despite my solitary life, I have found infinite joy in books and writing, and am by far too much interested in the affairs of the world to quit the scene before Nature shall claim me.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Book, Writing, Solitary Life

  H.P. Lovecraft (2008). “Necronomicon: The Best Weird Tales of H.P. Lovecraft”, p.549, Hachette UK

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• It's all still there in heart and soul. The walk, the hills, the sky, the solitary pain and pleasure-they will grow larger, sweeter, lovelier in the days and years to come.

  Edward Abbey

  Pain, Heart, Journey

  Edward Abbey (1984). “Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside”, p.49, Macmillan

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• A smoke in times of rest is a great companion to the solitary soldier.

  Che Guevara

  Soldier, Companion, Smoke

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• Solitary confinement has been used extensively, it always has. I was in prison for 44 years; it was a normal part of life - the practice of it. They put you in solitary confinement for disciplinary reasons, they put you in solitary confinement to protect you from violence or whatever, and they also put you in solitary confinement just to show you who has got the power ... It's not something new; it's just something that nobody really cared about in the past.

  Wilbert Rideau

  Past, Years, Practice

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• Get a single, solitary thought in your mind, and that thought - the precious love of Jesus. Go and live it out, and come what may, you will be respected though abused. They may say you are an enthusiast, a fanatic, a fool, but those names from the world are titles of praise and glory. The world does not take the trouble to nickname a man unless he is worth it. It will not give you any censure unless it trembles at you.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Jesus, Men, Names

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• As President, I was able to save with the stroke of the pen a hundred million acres of wilderness area in Alaska. This is the kind of thing that is is gratifying to a President, but to be on a solitary stream with good friends, with a fly rod in your hand, and to have a successfull or even an unsuccessful day-they're all successful-is an even greater delight.

  Jimmy Carter

  Successful, Good Friend, Hands

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• I suppose I'd had, by the standards of that pre-permissive time, a good deal of sex for my age. Girls, or a certain kind of girl, liked me; I had a car-not so common among undergraduates in those days-and I had some money. I wasn't ugly; and even more important, I had my loneliness, which, as every cad knows, is a deadly weapon with women. My 'technique' was to make a show of unpredictability, cynicism, and indifference. Then, like a conjurer with his white rabbit, I produced the solitary heart.

  John Fowles

  Girl, Sex, Loneliness

  John Fowles (1965). “The Magus”

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• I was drawn to be very solitary as a scholar. I lived a very quiet life, aloof, with my books, with my walks in nature, meditating, and of course with my teacher.

  Frederick Lenz

  Teacher, Book, Rama

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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.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Mean, Ideas, Extravagance

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• Genuine love not only respects the individuality of the other but actually cultivates it, even at the risk of separation or loss. The ultimate goal of life remains the spiritual growth of the individual, the solitary journey to peaks that can be climbed only alone.

  M. Scott Peck

  Spiritual, Loss, Journey

  M. Scott Peck (2003). “The Road Less Traveled, Timeless Edition: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth”, Touchstone

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• With no companion but the constant Muse, Who sought me when I needed her ah, when Did I not need her, solitary else?

  Richard Henry Stoddard

  Needs, Muse, Poet

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• In a Western or a thriller there is often room for reflection upon the coercive necessities; even, occasionally, some attempt to pose other possibilities. In the horror movies there is finally a Hobbesian state of nature: 'continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short'.

  Andrew Tudor

  Reflection, Men, Hollywood

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• To garden is a solitary act.

  Michelle Cliff

  Garden, Gardening

  Michelle Cliff (1980). “Claiming an Identity They Taught Me to Despise”

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• 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.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Depression, Exercise, Night

  Edgar Allan Poe (2006). “The Portable Edgar Allan Poe”, p.488, Penguin

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• Well, it's true that I've never been solitary, although I spend a lot of time alone. I've never felt lonely or been shy.

  Richard E. Grant

  Lonely, Shy, Alone Time

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• I like weeding, but I tend to think of it as a solitary activity.

  Roy Blount, Jr.

  Weed, Thinking, Activity

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• I would have been content with any job however thankless, in any quarter however remote, if I had a chance of making a corner of the desert blossom and the solitary place glad.

  John Buchan

  Jobs, Work, Would Be

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• The vain being is the really solitary being.

  Berthold Auerbach

  Vanity, Vain

  Berthold Auerbach (1874). “On the heights: a novel”, p.463

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• I'm consumed by the chill of solitary.

  Alanis Morissette

  Sadness, Chill, Consumed

  Song: All I Really Want, Album: Jagged Little Pill, 1995

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