Best 399 quotes in «isolation quotes» category

....Lived in curious but not unhappy isolation…subscribing to magazines nobody around them read, listening to programs on the national radio network which nobody around them listened to…

Loneliness makes us more capable of true intimacy if ever better opportunities do come along. We might be isolated for now, but we'll be capable of far closer, more interesting bonds with anyone we do eventually locate.

Loneliness always eats up time, fills on depression where hands move slow, to reach out for a moment of care.

Loneliness clarifies. Here silence stands Like heat. Here leaves unnoticed thicken, Hidden weeds flower, neglected waters quicken, Luminously-peopled air ascends; And past the poppies bluish neutral distance Ends the land suddenly beyond a beach Of shapes and shingle. Here is unfenced existence: Facing the sun, untalkative, out of reach.

Loneliness doesn't come from being alone, but from being surrounded by people who can't understand you. A deep feeling of isolation comes when you realize that even the person standing right next to you is unreachable.

Loneliness is not a result of physical isolation; you're only lonely the day you realize that nobody shares your opinions.

Mastery generally requires the ability to not only tolerate but also enjoy your own company.

Love is its own reward. We do not have to worry about what other people think about us. We can never feel alone or isolated when we understand that it is impossible for love to leave our side. Love is all around us.

Maybe the real issue here is that we were not created to do life by ourselves. We were not given a sentence of solitary confinement and placed in a world of isolation, but from the moment we entered this human experience, it was clear there was a world waiting to be discovered, creatures which were there for our interaction. And the spark inside us often has to be spoken to, to be touched by the soul of another. It’s as if the spark is only visible through the lens of night vision, a set of goggles which only another human being can hand to us.

Many Survivors blame themselves for the abuse and continue to feel responsible and guilty for anything bad that happens to them or to other people they know. Survivors often feel bad about themselves and different from other people. They therefore isolate themselves from other people and avoid making close friendships.

Maybe my dissertation really had been as brilliant as he claimed, the truth was I remember almost nothing about it; the intellectual leaps I made when I was young were a distant memory to me, and now I was surrounded by a kind of aura, when really my only goal in life was to do a little reading and get in bed at four in the afternoon with a carton of cigarettes and a bottle; and yet, at the same time, I had to admit, I was going to die if I kept that up – I was going to die fast, unhappy and alone. And did I really want to die fast, unhappy and alone? In the end, only kind of.

Mourning. At the death of the loved being, acute phase of narcissism: one emerges from sickness, from servitude. Then, gradually, freedom takes on a leaden hue, desolation settles in, narcissism gives way to a sad egoism, an absence of generosity.

My aunt must have been perfectly well aware that she would not see Swann again, that she would never leave her own house any more, but this ultimate seclusion seemed to be accepted by her with all the more readiness for the very reason which, to our minds, ought to have made it more unbearable; namely, that such a seclusion was forced upon her by the gradual and steady diminution in her strength which she was able to measure daily, which, by making every action, every movement 'tiring' to her if not actually painful, gave to inaction, isolation and silence the blessed, strengthening and refreshing charm of repose.

My husband says this longing for isolation is not a good quality, that if I wanted to be a hermit I should have moved to the West Coast and adopted a lot of cats, not gotten married and had children that demand to be fed several times a day.

My name is Jeff Witherspork. I always thought I was the only one.

No man, proclaimed Donne, is an Island, and he was wrong. If we were not islands, we would be lost, drowned in each other's tragedies. We are insulated (a word that means, literally, remember, made into an island) from the tragedy of others, by our island nature, and by the repetitive shape and form of the stories. The shape does not change: there was a human being who was born, lived, and then, by some means or another, died. There. You may fill in the details from your own experience. As unoriginal as any other tale, as unique as any other life. Lives are snowflakes—forming patterns we have seen before, as like one another as peas in a pod (and have you ever looked at peas in a pod? I mean, really looked at them? There's not a chance you'd mistake one for another, after a minute's close inspection), but still unique.

Nothing is more isolating than having a particular history.

No wires tender even as nerves can transmit the impact of our seasons, our catastrophes while we are closed inside them

One by one they are being picked off around him: in his small circle of colleagues the ratio slowly grows top-heavy, more ghosts, more each winter, and fewer living... and with each one, he thinks he feels patterns on his cortex going dark, settling to sleep forever, parts of whoever he's been losing all definition, reverting to dumb chemistry...

One's policies based on lunacy cause its isolation and solitary. For that, no one else or whatever propaganda can be responsible and blamed.

One recalls the literary writer who, after grasping a story of a Mars voyage as a metaphor for isolation and the precariousness of relationships, realized that at a deeper, more subtle level it might even be a story about an actual trip to Mars!

One thing's for sure, everyone has something. Not everyone has a giant scar or a missing limb to show for it, but it's there. The indelible mark of that thing. It's that thing that will not just go away quietly. That thing you resent because it can't let one day go by without making you think about it no matter how hard you try, until you end up depressed/angry/drunk/isolated (at best), disassociated (middle) or utterly self-destructive (at worst). It's that thing that went and branded you without your permission.

On Guard I know how to build fences. I've built my border for years. Routinely, I repair attempted entries into my space. Everyone is suspect, gray-haired women, a child's hand reaching in, people disguised as rocks, all possible invasions. Don't be deceived: I savor my isolation, my dark interior. Silence, please. Your opinions are unwelcome. Your jabber, your many tongues bore me but will never bore into my well-guarded space. All the un-me is alien. I take pride in being on guard. I'm willing to share my strategies– threats, barks, explosions– for remaining untouched –in here– by the world's garbage.

Or, in truth, eventually, though I still noticed, the callouses on my spirit prevented wounds (p.75).

Most of her friends owned laptops and seemed to spend more time with their phones than anything else. Steffy kept her latest playlists and apps updated frequently. She was a member of what Peter called, The Gadget Generation. She could not imagine what it must have been like before such a time. The unbearable isolation that must have been present. How did people deal with it? When she asked a few older people in the town, they simply said she had too much spare time on her hands. It appeared thinking was a crime in the world she lived

My uncle would have about ten pints some nights and then drive us all home. I guess the feeling was that we weren't going to crash into anyone, because barely any fucker lived there.

Nevertheless, some free time remains. What’s to be done? How do you use your time? In dedicating yourself to helping people? But basically other people don’t interest you. Listening to records? That used to be a solution, but as the years go by you have to say that music moves you less and less. Taken in its widest sense, a spot of do-it-yourself can be a way out. But the fact is that nothing can halt the ever-increasing recurrence of those moments when your total isolation, the sensation of an all-consuming emptiness, the foreboding that your existence is nearing a painful and definitive end all combine to plunge you into a state of real suffering.

No island is an island, he said. There is no new land, just the same body broken open.

No man is an island, entire of itself.

No matter how far I try to travel from people, people always appear. Either they follow me, or they're already there, and I followed them, unwittingly.

Oh pillow, please continue to kiss my cheek round. I'll let you listen to my dreams to see the girl you'll never meet.

One of the disadvantages of traveling alone is that when you fall there is none to assist you.

Only I know what my road has been for the last year and a half: the economy of this motionless and anything but spectacular mourning that has kept me unceasingly separate by its demands; a separation that I have ultimately always projected to bring to a close by a book--Stubbornness, secrecy.

Only one is a wanderer. And when she was sad, she'd go into the streets to be with people.

our hearts break, and take us out of relationships that are too painful for us

Part of the problem is that people at our school don't listen. They just put on the headphones and tune out the world. It's intimidating.

Pain (2) ...You want to give up, throw in the towel but you can't give up because you're all you have.

Our time was most delightfully spent, in mutual Protestations of Freindship, and in vows of unalterable Love, in which we were secure from being interrupted, by intruding and disagreeable Visistors, as Augustus and Sophia had on their first Entrance in the Neighbourhood, taken due care to inform the surrounding Families, that as their happiness centered wholly in themselves, they wished for no other society.

People mean well; they just aren't here enough to get what we are dealing with or what home means to my mother. Everyone thinks they know what should be done, and their suggestions make me suspect they must consider me an idiot who doesn't comprehend the situation.

People don't live like islands.

Playing roles and acting are forms of lying. If a person acts like they really feel and it rocks the boat, they are ostracized. We promote pretense and lying as a cultural way of life. Living this way causes an inner split. It teaches us to hide and cover up our toxic shame. This sends us deeper into isolation and loneliness.

Pour être connu, il suffit en somme de tuer sa concierge.

People are too much sometimes. Friends, acquaintances, enemies, strangers. It doesn’t matter; they all crowd. Even if they’re all the way across the room, they crowd. I take a moment of silence and think: I am here. I am okay.

Philosophy is a distancing, if not debilitating, activity.

Philosophers call this state of isolation and disconnection “species loneliness”—a deep, unnamed sadness stemming from estrangement from the rest of Creation, from the loss of relationship. As our human dominance of the world has grown, we have become more isolated, more lonely when we can no longer call out to our neighbors. It’s no wonder that naming was the first job the Creator gave Nanabozho.

Recovery can take place only within then context of relationships; it cannot occur in isolation.

Pourtant, il n'y a jamais rien qui change et j'ai parfois l'impression de vivre dans une dimension parallèle où ce qui se passe ici ne traverse jamais l'océan et n'atteint jamais personne. Nous sommes seuls.

Recovery can take place only within then context of relationships; it cannot occur in isolation. In her renewed connection with other people, the survivor re-creates the psychological facilities that were damaged or deformed by the traumatic experience. These faculties include the basic operations of trust, autonomy, initiative, competence, identity, and intimacy. Just as these capabilities are formed in relationships with other people, they must be reformed in such relationships. The first principle of recovery is empowerment of the survivor. She must be the author and arbiter of her own recovery. Others may offer advice, support, assistance, affection, and care, but not cure. Many benevolent and well-intentioned attempts to assist the survivor founder because this basic principle of empowerment is not observed. No intervention that takes power away from the survivor can possibly foster her recovery, no matter how much it appears to be in her immediate best interest.

Sartre felt that Hell is other people, but precisely the opposite is true. Hell is being left alone forever with no other reality than your own consciousness of yourself. It is being locked in a casket of your own internal chaos with no hope of a window, or door leading in light from outside to give you a moment's respite from yourself. Hell is the refusal of the gift of the other.

Sadness is the ambrosia of all art.