#sol

We are forlorn like children, and experienced like old men, we are crude and sorrowful and superficial—I believe we are lost. ↗

— Erich Maria Remarque

#forlorn #lost #old #soldiers #sorrow

I don't want anyone to look to me, not for protection, not for happiness, not for love, not for anything. ↗

— P.D. James

#love #protection #responsibility #self-sufficiency #solitude

Look now -- in all of history men have been taught that killing of men is an evil thing not to be countenanced. Any man who kills must be destroyed because this is a great sin, maybe the worst we know. And then we take a soldier and put murder in his hands and we say to him, "use it well, use it wisely." We put no checks on him. Go out and kill as many of a certain kind or classification of your brothers as you can. And we will reward you for it because it is a violation of your early training. ↗

— John Steinbeck

#soldiers #men

Military men are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy. ↗

— Henry Kissinger

#peace #soldier #war #men

Only solitary men know the full joys of friendship. Others have their family; but to a solitary and an exile his friends are everything. ↗

— Warren G. Harding

#exile #family #friends #friendship #full

Only boxers can understand the loneliness of tennis players - and yet boxers have their corner men and managers. Even a boxer's opponent provides a kind of companionship, someone he can grapple with and grunt at. In tennis you stand face-to-face with the enemy, trade blows with him, but never touch him or talk to him, or anyone else. The rules forbid a tennis player from even talking to his coach while on the court. People sometimes mention the track-and-field runner as a comparably lonely figure, but I have to laugh. At least the runner can feel and smell his opponents. They're inches away. In tennis you're on an island. Of all the games men and women play, tennis is the closest to solitary confinement.... ↗

— Andre Agassi

#loneliness #opponents #solitary-confinement #tennis #men

I love to be alone. I never found the companion that is so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. ↗

— Henry David Thoreau

#love

No man is a man until he has been a soldier. ↗

— Louis de Bernières

#soldiers #war #men

Among men, it seems, historically at any rate, the processes of coordination and disintegration follow each other with great regularity, and the index of the coordination is the measure of the disintegration which follows. There is no mob like a group of well-drilled soldiers when they have thrown off their discipline. And there is no lostness like that which comes to a man when a perfect and certain pattern has dissolved about him. There is no hater like one who has greatly loved. ↗

— John Steinbeck

#discipline #disintegration #hater #love #mob

Tant que mes jambes me permettent de fuir, tant que mes bras me permettent de combattre, tant que l'expérience que j'ai du monde me permet de savoir ce que je peux craindre ou désirer, nulle crainte : je puis agir. Mais lorsque le monde des hommes me contraint à observer ses lois, lorsque mon désir brise son front contre le monde des interdits, lorsque mes mains et mes jambes se trouvent emprisonnées dans les fers implacables des préjugés et des cultures, alors je frissonne, je gémis et je pleure. Espace, je t'ai perdu et je rentre en moi-même. Je m'enferme au faite de mon clocher où, la tête dans les nuages, je fabrique l'art, la science et la folie. ↗

— Henri Laborit

#fantasy #folly #solitude #art