Solitary Quotes - Page 5

• A man is known by the books he reads, by the company he keeps, by the praise he gives, by his dress, by his tastes, by his distastes, by the stories he tells, by his gait, by the notion of his eye, by the look of his house, of his chamber; for nothing on earth is solitary but every thing hath affinities infinite.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Book, Eye, Men

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• A flowerless room is a soulless room, to my way of thinking; but even a solitary little vase of a living flower may redeem it.

  Vita Sackville-West

  Flower, Thinking, May

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• A cigar numbs sorrow and fills the solitary hours with a million gracious images.

  George Sand

  Sorrow, Cigar, Hours

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• Imaginative writing has always been a solitary and indeed a somewhat antisocial activity. Apprenticeship existed, no doubt, but it was an apprenticeship to books and not to living masters of the craft.

  Madison Smartt Bell

  Book, Writing, Doubt

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• Writing fiction is a solitary occupation but not really a lonely one. The writer's head is mobbed with characters, images and language.

  Hilma Wolitzer

  Lonely, Writing, Character

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• The greatest threat to mankind comes from the renunciation of individual scruple in favor of institutional denominators. . . . Real heroism lies, as it always will, not in conformity or even patriotism, but in acts of solitary moral courage. Which, come to think of it, is what we used to admire in our Christian savior

  John le Carre

  Christian, Real, Lying

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• Because I have become such a solitary, and not in the Aristotelian sense: not a beast, not a god. Rather, a loner troubled by longings, incapable of finding a suitable language and despairing at the impossibility of composing messages in a playable key--as if I no longer understood the codes used by the estimable people who wanted to hear from me and would have so much to reply if only the impediments were taken away.

  Saul Bellow

  Taken, Keys, People

  Saul Bellow (2010). “Saul Bellow: Letters”, p.422, Penguin

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• I am not prepared to deny or assert any proposition which concerns myself; but certainly this solitary struggle with platitudinous atoms, called men and women by courtesy, leads me to wish for my wife again. How did I ever hit on the only woman in the world who fits my cravings and never sounds hollow anywhere? Social chemistry-the mutual attraction of equivalent human molecules-is a science yet to be created, for the fact is my daily study and only satisfaction in life.

  Henry Adams

  Struggle, Men, Satisfaction In Life

  Henry Adams (1982). “The Letters of Henry Adams, Volumes 1-3: 1858-1892”, p.28, Harvard University Press

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• Editing is kind of a solitary job.

  Joe Dante

  Jobs, Editing, Kind

  "What You Can Get Away With: The Collegial Cutting Room Collaborators of Joe Dante, Part 1". Interview with Peter Tonguette, www.indiewire.com. January 13, 2012.

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• I suppose directing on set is the most fun because it's a good crack and you feel you're on the battlefield whereas writing is a fairly solitary undertaking.

  Guy Ritchie

  Fun, Writing, Cracks

  "Revolver - Guy Ritchie interview" by Jack Foley, www.indielondon.co.uk.

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• Theyre not group animals, theyre completely solitary, so if the babys mother is taken away, theres no system of aunts ... their whole system is destroyed.

  Joanna Lumley

  Mother, Taken, Animal

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• Man is, at one and the same time, a solitary being and a social being.

  Albert Einstein

  Men, Social, Social Being

  Albert Einstein (2011). “Out of My Later Years: The Scientist, Philosopher, and Man Portrayed Through His Own Words”, p.32, Open Road Media

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• Poetry is a solitary process. One does not write poetry for the masses. Poetry is a self-involved, lofty pursuit. Songs are for the people. When I'm writing a song, I imagine performing it. I imagine giving it. It's a different aspect of communication. It's for the people.

  Patti Smith

  Song, Communication, Writing

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• When I think of this life I have led; the desolation of solitude it has been; the masoned, walled-town of a Captain's exclusiveness, which admits but small entrance to any sympathy from the green country without - oh, weariness! heaviness! Guinea-coast slavery of solitary command!

  Herman Melville

  Life, Country, Thinking

  1851 Captain Ahab. Moby Dick, ch.132.

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• Every one of the aristocratic conspirators and would-be murderers claims to be an arch-patriot; every one of them insists that the war is being waged to make the world safe for democracy. What humbug! What rot! What false pretense! These... tyrants, these red-handed robbers and murderers, the "patriots," while the men who have the courage to stand face to face with them, speak the truth, and fight for their exploited victims - they are [called] the disloyalists and traitors. If this be true, I want to take my place side by side with the traitors in this fight.

  Eugene V. Debs

  War, Fighting, Men

  Eugene V. Debs' speech he gave across the street from a jail, where he had just visited three socialists who were in prison for opposing the draft, June 1918.

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• One solitary God-centered, God-intoxicated man can do more to keep God's love alive and His presence felt in the world than a thousand half-hearted, talkative busy men living frightened, fragmented lives of quiet desperation.

  Robert McNamara

  Faith, Inspiration, Men

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• Those who surrender to the service of the poor through love of Christ, will live like the grains of wheat that dies. It only apparently dies. If it were not to die, it would remain a solitary grain. The harvest comes because of the grain that dies. We know that every effort to improve society, above all when society is so full of injustice and sin, is an effort that God blesses; that God wants; that God demands of us.

  Oscar Romero

  Effort, Wheat, Demand

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• In tennis you're on an island. Of all the games men and women play, tennis is the closest to solitary confinement.

  Andre Agassi

  Men, Islands, Games

  Andre Agassi (2015). “The Whirl”, p.11, Vintage

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• I wish I could have lived just one day when the world was new. I wish—I wish I could have reaped just one single, solitary, big Emotion before the world had caught it and—appraised it—and taxed it—and licensed it—and staled it!

  Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

  Wish, One Day, World

  Eleanor Hallowell Abbott (2009). “The Indiscreet Letter: Easyread Large Bold Edition”, p.31, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• Who has not watched a mother stroke her child's cheek or kiss her child in a certain way and felt a nervous shudder at the possessive outrage done to a free solitary human soul?

  John Cowper Powys

  Family, Mother, Children

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• I love the apparent quiet of reading a book. You sit there; you're not really moving. It looks very solitary. It looks very boring, but actually it's the most exciting place because it's going on for you, and you're in that relationship. In that sense, it's like being with a lover. Nobody else can intrude on that space. It's the two of you. It's your own world.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Reading, Moving, Book

  Source: americanlibrariesmagazine.org

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