Solitary Quotes - Page 2

• It is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be a reason the more for us to do it.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Being Alone, Solitude, Reason

  "Letters to a Young Poet". Book by Rainer Maria Rilke. Letter Seven (May 14, 1904), 1929.

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• Masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice.

  Virginia Woolf

  Thinking, Years, Voice

  Virginia Woolf (2015). “A Room of One's Own (Annotated)”, p.65, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Writing is a solitary occupation. Family, friends, and society are the natural enemies of the writer. He must be alone, uninterrupted, and slightly savage if he is to sustain and complete an undertaking.

  Jessamyn West

  Friendship, Being Alone, Writing

  Jessamyn West (1973). “Hide and Seek: A Continuing Journey”, Harcourt

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• The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, peculiar to myself and to a few other solitary men, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence.

  Tom Wolfe

  Life, Loneliness, Being Alone

  "The American Mercury", p. 467, "The Anatomy of Loneliness", October 1941.

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• We are all sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life.

  Tennessee Williams

  Lonely, Loneliness, Being Alone

  Orpheus Descending act 2, sc. 1 (1958)

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• Writing is a solitary occupation.

  Bernard Cornwell

  Writing, Occupation

  "An Interview with Cape Cod Author Bernard Cornwell". Interview with Christopher Seufert, ezinearticles.com. February 27, 2006.

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• The power of a book lies in its power to turn a solitary act into a shared vision. As long as we have books, we are not alone.

  Laura Bush

  Lying, Book, Long

  "Bringing Out the Best in Everyone You Coach: Use the Enneagram System for Exceptional Results". Book by Ginger Lapid-Bogda, 2009.

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• Composition has almost always been solitary.

  Wendy Carlos

  Composition

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• After reading Howitt's account of the Australian gold-diggings one evening,... I asked myself why I might not be washing some golddaily, though it were only the finest particles,--why I might not sink a shaft down to the gold within me, and work that mine.... At any rate, I might pursue some path, however solitary and narrow and crooked, in which I could walk with love and reverence.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Wisdom, Reading, Solitude

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “Civil Disobedience and Other Essays”, p.81, Courier Corporation

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• Sometimes the solitary voice can be the best one.

  Frank Miller

  Artist, Voice, Sometimes

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• For a solitary animal egoism is a virtue that tends to preserve and improve the species: in any kind of community it becomes a destructive vice.

  Erwin Schrodinger

  Animal, Community, Vices

  Erwin Schrodinger (2012). “What is Life?: With Mind and Matter and Autobiographical Sketches”, p.101, Cambridge University Press

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• The wailing owl screams solitary to the mournful moon.

  David Mallet

  Moon, Owl, Scream

  David Mallet (1759). “Miscellaneous poems”, p.79

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• I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Lonely, Halloween, Fall

  Henry David Thoreau, Laura Ross (2009). “Walden, Or, Life in the Woods: Bold-faced Ideas for Living a Truly Transcendent Life”, p.50, Sterling Publishing Company, Inc.

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• The reveries of two solitary souls prepare the sweetness of loving.

  Gaston Bachelard

  Love, Two, Soul

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• Writing a book is incredibly pleasurable, but very solitary. You have total control, but sometimes that can drive you insane.

  Justin Halpern

  Book, Writing, Insane

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• The virtues, like the Muses, are always seen in groups. A good principle was never found solitary in any breast.

  Gautama Buddha

  Inspiring, Wise, Buddhist

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• True solidarity is only possible among the solitary.

  Jose Bergamin

  Solidarity

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• At a certain level of suffering or injustice no one can do anything for anyone. Pain is solitary.

  Albert Camus

  Pain, Suffering, Levels

  Albert Camus (2012). “Caligula and Three Other Plays”, p.7, Vintage

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• Only a look and a voice; then darkness again and silence.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Voice, Silence, Darkness

  Tales of aWayside Inn pt. 3 "The Theologian's Tale: Elizabeth" pt. 4 (1874)

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• There are days when solitude, for someone my age, is a heady wine that intoxicates you with freedom, others when it is a bitter tonic, and still others when it is a poison that makes you beat your head against the wall.

  Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

  Wall, Being Alone, Wine

  "Freedom". Book by Sidonie Gabrielle Colette, 1908.

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• The interpretation of our reality through patterns not our own, serves only to make us ever more unknown, ever less free, ever more solitary.

  Gabriel Garcia Marquez

  Reality, Literature, Patterns

  Gabriel García Márquez's Nobel Prize acceptance speech on the role of a writer, www.farnamstreetblog.com. 1982.

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• 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.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Art, War, Men

  'Leviathan' (1651) pt. 1, ch. 13

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• The worst vice of the solitary is the worship of his food.

  Cyril Connolly

  Food, Solitude, Vices

  David Pryce-Jones, Cyril Connolly (1983). “Cyril Connolly: journal and memoir”, HarperCollins

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• A solitary, unused to speaking of what he sees and feels, has mental experiences which are at once more intense and less articulate than those of a gregarious man.

  Thomas Mann

  Men, Talking, Intense

  Thomas Mann (2010). “Death in Venice: And Seven Other Stories”, p.24, Vintage

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• He is greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of his own.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Strength, Leadership, Being Strong

  Henry Ward Beecher (1858). “Life thoughts gathered from the extemporaneous discourses of Henry Ward Beecher, by E.D. Procter”, p.33

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