#isolation

Reading enables me to maintain a sense of something substantive– my ethical integrity, my intellectual integrity. ↗

— Jonathan Franzen

#integrity #isolation #reading #self-knowledge #social-change

And in this curious state I had the realization, at the moment of seeing that stranger there, that I was a person like everybody else. That I was known by my actions and words, that my internal universe was unavailable for inspection by others. They didn't know. They didn't know, because I never told them. ↗

— Kim Stanley Robinson

#friendship #identity #isolation #communication

A study in scarlet, eh? Why shouldn't we use a little art jargon? There's the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it. ↗

— Arthur Conan Doyle

#colour #exposure #isolation #jargon #life

Remember you don't do anything in isolation. ↗

— King Abdullah II

#isolation #remember #you

The pain we feel in separation is the price we pay for love. ↗

— Hatef Mokhtar

#love #romance #sacrifice #separated #love

As the new work fills my notebooks, I've come to realize that the characters in my stories were so real because I really did want to get close to people, I really did want to know them. It was just easier to do it on paper, one step removed. ↗

— Charles de Lint

#loneliness #people #dreams

Man was born for society. However little He may be attached to the World, He never can wholly forget it, or bear to be wholly forgotten by it. Disgusted at the guilt or absurdity of Mankind, the Misanthrope flies from it: He resolves to become an Hermit, and buries himself in the Cavern of some gloomy Rock. While Hate inflames his bosom, possibly He may feel contented with his situation: But when his passions begin to cool; when Time has mellowed his sorrows, and healed those wounds which He bore with him to his solitude, think you that Content becomes his Companion? Ah! no, Rosario. No longer sustained by the violence of his passions, He feels all the monotony of his way of living, and his heart becomes the prey of Ennui and weariness. He looks round, and finds himself alone in the Universe: The love of society revives in his bosom, and He pants to return to that world which He has abandoned. Nature loses all her charms in his eyes: No one is near him to point out her beauties, or share in his admiration of her excellence and variety. Propped upon the fragment of some Rock, He gazes upon the tumbling waterfall with a vacant eye, He views without emotion the glory of the setting Sun. Slowly He returns to his Cell at Evening, for no one there is anxious for his arrival; He has no comfort in his solitary unsavoury meal: He throws himself upon his couch of Moss despondent and dissatisfied, and wakes only to pass a day as joyless, as monotonous as the former. ↗

— Matthew Gregory Lewis

#contentment #discontentment #hermit #hermits #hopelessness

My habit of glorifying things far away in space and time, also contributed to my social isolation. ↗

— Luke Ford

#away #contributed #far #far away #glorifying

If you want to end your isolation, you must be honest about what you want at a core level and decide to go after it. ↗

— Martha Beck

#after #core #decide #end #go

There is no such thing as a good or bad ad in isolation. What is good at one moment is bad at another. Research can trap you into the past. ↗

— William Bernbach

#another #bad #good #into #isolation