Solitary Quotes - Page 4

• I really like the collaboration of doing movies and television. But I like the sort of solitary work of doing music.

  Zooey Deschanel

  Collaboration, Television

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• The most solitary I ever felt was when I was living in New York. I used to live in Enrico Caruso's old apartment, and I had a special staircase that took me up to the roof. There was nobody up there.

  Robert Duvall

  New York, Special, Used

  "HuffPost Interview: Robert Duvall and Sissy Spacek, Get Low". Interview with Marshall Fine, www.huffingtonpost.com. July 30, 2010.

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• The solitary ascent of the Dru had the immediate effect of expanding the horizons of my ideas about mountaineering. It made me aware of possibilities well in advance of the times, which were characterized by very restricted methods. This was how the superb pyramid of K2 surfaced once more in the list of my projects. But I chose K2 as a way for giving concrete form to my new concept of mountaineering: to climb the second highest mountain in the world solo, alpine style, and without oxygen.

  Walter Bonatti

  Oxygen, Ideas, Pyramids

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• He could have had his choice of any woman in the district. And he chose solitude. Not solitude – that sounds too peaceful. More like solitary confinement.

  Suzanne Collins

  Choices, Peaceful, Solitude

  Suzanne Collins (2010). “Catching Fire (The Second Book of the Hunger Games)”, p.46, Scholastic Inc.

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• I like the idea of being a sculptor. Just me alone, making something - that solitary existence.

  Ewan McGregor

  Ideas, Existence, Sculptors

  "Return of the Jedi: Ewan McGregor" by Devin Gordon, www.gq.com. January 3, 2012.

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• As a very small child I found recorded noise and the solitary singer beneath the spotlight so dramatic and so brave... walking the plank... willingly... It was sink or swim. The very notion of standing there, alone, I found beautiful.

  Steven Morrissey

  Beautiful, Children, Brave

  "Morrissey interview: Big mouth strikes again". Interview with Simon Armitage, www.theguardian.com. September 3, 2010.

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• Everything I write tends to turn into a superhero team, even if I didn't mean for it to. I always start off wanting to be solitary, because a) it's simpler, and b) that isolation is something that I relate to as a storyteller. And then no matter what, I always end up with a team.

  Joss Whedon

  Team, Writing, Mean

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• He is outside of everything, and alien everywhere. He is an aesthetic solitary. His beautiful, light imagination is the wing that on the autumn evening just brushes the dusky window.

  Henry James

  Beautiful, Fall, Autumn

  Henry James, Leon Edel (1956). “The American Essays”, p.23, Princeton University Press

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• I always take a close look at those who lose themselves in self portraits. They are solitary souls, prone to introspection, who have really grappled with their existence.

  Young-Ha Kim

  Self, Soul, Portraits

  Young-ha Kim (2007). “I Have the Right to Destroy Myself”, p.7, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• what sets wilderness apart in the modern day is not that it's dangerous (it's almost certainly safer than any town or road) or that it's solitary (you can, so they say, be alone in a crowded room) or full of exotic animals (there are more at the zoo). it's that five miles out in the woods you can't buy anything.

  Bill McKibben

  Zoos, Animal, Exotic

  Bill McKibben (2014). “The Age of Missing Information”, p.124, Random House

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• Reading was my first solitary vice (and led to all others). I read while I ate, I read in the loo, I read in the bath. When I was supposed to be sleeping, I was reading.

  Germaine Greer

  Reading, Sleep, Vices

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• Nicholas Temelcoff is famous on the bridge, a daredevil. He is given all the difficult jobs and he takes them. He descends into the air with no fear. He is a solitary. He assembles ropes, brushes the tackle and pulley at his waist, and falls off the bridge like a diver over the edge of a boat.

  Michael Ondaatje

  Jobs, Fall, Air

  Michael Ondaatje (2017). “In the Skin of a Lion: Picador Classic”, p.28, Pan Macmillan

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• Reflection must be reserved for solitary hours; whenever she was alone, she gave way to it as the greatest relief; and not a day went by without a solitary walk, in which she might indulge in all the delight of unpleasant recollections.

  Jane Austen

  Reflection, Indulge In, Relief

  Jane Austen (1946). “PRIDE AND PREJUDICE”, p.128, PDFreeBooks.org

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• Fortunate are the nations that can build wooden houses. Because wood breathes, transforms, deteriorates, like us. It is also important to have flowers and plants where we live, because they breathe, too. Contemplating a flower for three seconds can be a captivating solitary journey back to original geometry, which is always revitalizing.

  Henryk Skolimowski

  Flower, Journey, House

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• "The flowers have appeared in our land: the time of pruning is come: the voice of the turtle-dove is heard in our land." When the soul, like the solitary turtle-dove, retires and recollects itself in meditation to converse with God, then the flowers, that is, good desires, appear; then comes the time of pruning, that is, the correction of faults that are discovered in mental prayer.

  Alphonsus Liguori

  Prayer, Flower, Turtles

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• I sat, a solitary man, In a crowded London shop, An open book and empty cup On the marble table-top. While on the shop and street I gazed My body of a sudden blazed; And twenty minutes more or less It seemed, so great my happiness, That I was blessed and could bless.

  William Butler Yeats

  Book, Blessed, Men

  William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.255, Simon and Schuster

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• I have always shook with fright before human beings. Unable as I was to feel the least particle of confidence in my ability to speak and act like a human being, I kept my solitary agonies locked in my breast. I kept my melancholy and my agitation hidden, careful lest any trace should be left exposed. I feigned an innocent optimism; I gradually perfected myself in the role of the farcical eccentric.

  Osamu Dazai

  Agony, Optimism, Agitation

  Osamu Dazai (1973). “No Longer Human”, p.28, New Directions Publishing

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• That is what marks out the warrior: the knowledge that willpower and courage are not the same thing. Courage can attract fear and adulation, but willpower requires patience and commitment. Men and women with immense willpower are generally solitary types and give off a kind of coolness. Many people mistakenly think that (they) are cold (people) when nothing could be further from the truth.

  Paulo Coelho

  Commitment, Warrior, Thinking

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• That I am totally devoid of sympathy for, or interest in, the world of groups is directly attributable to the fact that my two greatest needs and desires - smoking cigarettes and plotting revenge - are basically solitary pursuits.

  Fran Lebowitz

  Revenge, Being Alone, Two

  Fran Lebowitz (2011). “The Fran Lebowitz Reader”, p.77, Vintage

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• The man who is unable to people his solitude is equally unable to be alone in a bustling crowd. The poet enjoys the incomparable privilege of being able to be himself or some one else, as he chooses. [...] The solitary and thoughtful stroller finds a singular intoxication in this universal communion. [...] What men call love is a very small, restricted, feeble thing compared with this ineffable orgy, this divine prostitution of the soul giving itself entire...to the unexpected as it comes along, the stranger as he passes.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Men, Thoughtful, Love Is

  Charles Baudelaire, “Crowds”

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• During the days I felt myself slipping into a kind of madness. Solitary confinement has an astonishing effect on the mind. The trip was to stay calm and keep myself occupied. I spent hours working out how to break free. But trying to escape would have been instant suicide.

  Tahir Shah

  Suicide, Work Out, Mind

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• Solitary. But not in the sense of being alone. Not solitary in the way Thoreau was, for example, exiling himself in order to find out where he was; not solitary in the way Jonah was, praying for deliverance in the belly of the whale. Solitary in the sense of retreat. In the sense of not having to see himself, of not having to see himself being seen by anyone else.

  Paul Auster

  Order, Whales, Example

  Paul Auster (2007). “The Invention of Solitude”, p.34, Penguin

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• No one can sum up all God is able to accomplish through one solitary life, wholly yielded, adjusted, and obedient to Him.

  Dwight L. Moody

  God, Solitary Life, Able

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• A solitary maple on a woodside flames in single scarlet, recalls nothing so much as the daughter of a noble house dressed for a fancy ball, with the whole family gathered around to admire her before she goes.

  Henry James

  Daughter, Fall, Autumn

  Henry James (1993). “Collected Travel Writings: Great Britain and America”, p.370, Library of America

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• Again and again I am brought up against it, and again and again I resist it: I don't want to believe it, even though it is almost palpable: the vast majority lack an intellectual conscience; indeed, it often seems to me that to demand such a thing is to be in the most populous cities as solitary as in the desert.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Believe, Cities, Intellectual

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