Best 399 quotes in «isolation quotes» category

We were the only humans - the only forms of life, in fact - for hundreds of miles in each direction, unreaching and unreachable as we rocketed back towards civilisation.

What do you mean by isolation?' I asked him. 'Why, the isolation that prevails everywhere, above all in our age-it has not fully developed, it has not reached its limit yet. Fore every one strives to keep his individuality as apart as possible, wishes to secure the greatest possible fulness of life for himself; but meantime all his efforts result not in attaining fulness of life but self-destruction, for instead of self-realisation he ends by arriving at complete solitude. All mankind in our age have split up into unites, they all keep apart, each in his own groove; each one holds aloof, hides himself and hides what he has, from the rest, and he ends by being repelled by others and repelling them.

What I am about to say does not concern the ordinary man of our day. On the contrary, I have in mind the man who finds himself involved in today's world, even at its problematic and paroxysmal points; yet he does not belong inwardly to such a world, nor will he give in to it. He feels himself, in essence, as belonging to a different race from that of the overwhelming majority of his contemporaries. The natural place for such a man, the land in which he would not be a stranger, is the world of Tradition.

What if you could start allowing your sensuality to permeate every aspect of whatever you're doing on a daily basis instead of compartmentalizing and isolating it from a majority of your daily affairs like it's some kind of an infectious disease?

What was it - this implacable remoteness, this inability to surrender herself to the warmth and comradely feelings of others? Could being an academic star, being applauded over and over again as a prodigy, take the place of all that? She shuddered with a feeling she couldn't have put a name to. It was the congenital human fear of isolation.

When they speak of Hell there's something they miss there's a worse place to be and it's called the Abyss.

When I was going on one day in the car about not having any close friends - using my favourite metaphor: the cage of glass between me and the rest of the world - she just laughed. 'You like it,' she said. 'You say you're isolated, boyo, but you really think you're different.

When I felt as though I had reached land, it was like I was on a deserted sandy beach, feeling isolated and afraid to share with anyone the memories that haunted me.

When I had those small children, I didn't have to go out and meet people. I can create my own mood at home with my children," she said. "It creates balance for me somehow.

When John and his colleagues added up the data, they were startled. Feeling lonely, it turned out, caused your cortisol levels to absolutely soar - as much as some of the most disturbing things that can happen to you. Becoming acutely lonely, the experiment found, was as stressful as experiencing a physical attack. It's worth repeating. Being deeply lonely seemed to cause as much stress as being punched by a stranger.

When you want to fully isolate yourself from the madnesses of the people, find a wooden cottage in the middle of nowhere by the side of high mountains! Over there, alongside the fresh winds, the mysterious sounds and the pleasant scents, you will find the most precious thing: Freedom!

When you are isolated and obscured, your achievements may be wonderful but unknown.

When we study the past seeking evidence of a highly advanced culture, we should not expect to find objects that we associate with our own culture. Different cultures develop along different paths. This process occurs even over relatively short periods of time, especially when one society is isolated from others. For example, when the Allies went into Germany after Hitler's defeat, they found that after only twelve years of isolation German technology was being developed along lines vastly different from our own. Pauwels and Bergier wrote: 'When the War in Europe ended on May 8th, 1945, missions of investigation were immediately sent out to visit Germany after her defeat. Their reports have been published; the catalogue alone has 300 pages. Germany had only been separated from the world since 1933. In twelve years the technical evolution of the Reich developed along strangely divergent lines. Although the Germans were behindhand as regards the atomic bomb, they had perfected giant rockets unmatched by any in America or Russia. They may not have had radar, but they had perfected a system of infra-red ray detectors which were quite as effective. Though they did not invent silicones, they had developed an entirely new organic chemistry, based on the eight-ring carbon chain. [...] They had rejected the theory of relativity and tended to neglect the quantum theory. [...] They believed in the existence of eternal ice and that the planets and the stars were blocks of ice floating in space. If it has been possible for such wide divergencies to develop in the space of twelve years in our modern world, in spite of the exchange of ideas and mass communications, what view must one take of the civilizations of the past? To what extent are our archaeologists qualified to judge the state of the sciences, techniques, philosophy and knowledge that distinguished, say, the Maya or Khmer civilizations?

Where had they learned to converse and to dance? I couldn't converse or dance. Everybody knew something I didn't know. The girls looked so good, the boys so handsome. I would be too terrified to even look at one of those girls, let alone be close to one. To look into her eyes or dance with her would be beyond me. And yet I know that what I saw wasn't as simple and good as it appeared. There was a price to be paid for it all, a general falsity, that could be easily believed, and could be the first step down a dead-end street.

Wherever you go in the next catastrophé Be it sickroom, or prison, or cemet’ry Do not fear that your stay will be solit’ry Countless souls share your fate, you’ll have company!

Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone?

While one lives in a foreign country, language's main function is as a means of self-protection and a weapon in one's fight with the world. You can't fight without a weapon. But perhaps its human instinct that makes it even more imperative to somehow express oneself, convey meaning, connect with others.

Wisdom is not in a book, it has no secret source. You will find the real very near; it is in yourself. But to discover it there must be the activity of constant alertness. When thought is passively aware, watching and following, then the map of self-knowledge unfolds itself. Self-knowledge is not by the study of the self in isolation, for there is no isolation. To live is to be related, and isolation is merely escape. If thought is alertly passive, watching its own movements and flutters, then when sleep comes the conscious mind is capable of receiving the hints and intimations of the hidden consciousness. He who desires to discover the real, the eternal, must put aside every book, every system, every guru, for that which is can be uncovered only through self-knowledge. From: Fifth Talk in Madras

Wilderness begins with disconnections. It continues with deceit

World is so full of idiots that you can't even imagine to escape. The only solution is isolation. But it still spares one!

Without hesitation, Dove chose the nowhere road. For that was the only place, in his heart of hearts, that he really wanted to go.

Work on making yourself a complete being. Though you were born with the physical traits of one sex, you possess the characteristics of both - including those of plants and animals. You were created as a nearly complete universal being, but with flaws. True perfection can only be achieved when one recognizes that they need to combine their oneness with others and nature. Only then is one considered complete.

Without willing it, I had gone from being ignorant of being ignorant to being aware of being unaware. And the worst part of my awareness was that I didn't know what I was aware of.

...you are my Lady of Shalott lost in a dream of isolation - I care too much for you - I romanticize depression...

You are the salt of the earth. But remember that salt is useful when in association, but useless in isolation.

You can be the most productive person in your area of your calling if you can just isolate yourself and learn to convert your time into products.

You end up isolated if you don't cultivate the capacity for solitude, the ability to be separate, to gather yourself. Solitude is where you find yourself so that you can reach out to other people and form real attachments. When we don't have the capacity for solitude, we turn to other people in order to feel less anxious or in order to feel alive. When this happens, we're not able to appreciate who they are. It's as though we're using them as spare parts to support our fragile sense of self. We slip into thinking that always being connected is going to make us feel less alone. But we're at risk, because actually it's the opposite that's true.

At the moment of childbirth, every woman has the same aura of isolation, as though she were abandoned, alone.

You will believe me when I say the life we lead grows less and less distinct from the life we led of Cruso's island. Sometimes I wake up not knowing where I am. The world is full of islands, said Cruso once. His words ring truer every day.

Abode where lost bodies roam each searching for its lost one.

Chekhov is this poet of melancholy and isolation and of wishing you were somewhere else than where you are.

Battling terrorism must go beyond belligerence vs. isolation.

But your isolation must not be mechanical, but spiritual, that is, must be elevation.

Coming to know one another based on a shared humanity through dialogue is the key to breaking down the walls of isolation and reversing the decline of life-to-life bonds among human beings.

Feminism exists so that no woman ever has to face her abuser in isolation, alone.

Everyone is isolated from everyone else. The concept of society is like a cushion to protect us from the knowledge of that isolation. A fiction that serves as an anesthetic.

Evidently, whatever else marriage might prevent, it was not a remedy for isolation of spirit.

If you go deeper and deeper into your own heart, you'll be living in a world with less fear, isolation and loneliness.

He was part of a whole, a people scattered over the earth and yet eternally one and indivisible. Wherever a Jew lived, in whatever safety and isolation, he still belonged to his people.

I am greatly pleased with the public, authentic isolation in which we two, you and I, now find ourselves. It is wholly in accord with our attitude and our principles.

If isolation tempers the strong, it is the stumbling-block of the uncertain.

I like the varying rhythm of being a writer that you have a period of being in complete isolation where it's just you and the book and your screenplay and no-one can read it.

I guess Im attracted and repelled by isolation. It scares me. And its why I tend to write about older characters, too, because for them the stakes are somewhat higher.

Indifference is isolation. In difference is texture and wonder.

I'm not trying to be ridiculous or funny, but it was rather pleasant to find yourself in isolation, in solitary.

I need some isolation, it's necessary to me, that's just who I am. I need to be left alone.

Isolation from power makes men look for a mob in which they can be strong.

Isolating mechanisms are biological properties of individuals that prevent the interbreeding of populations that are actually or potentially sympatric.

Isolation is the worst possible counselor.

Isolation, but it's a good vulnerability. Humbling. I actually seek out solitude.