#solitude

My fear of loneliness is like a disease. ↗

— Irene Tomkinson

#loneliness #solitude #family

In the wide pile, by others heeded not, Hers was one sacred solitary spot, Whose gloomy aisles and bending shelves contain For moral hunger food, and cures for moral pain. ↗

— Walter Scott

#library #solitude #food

Given enough time, you could convince yourself that loneliness was something better, that it was solitude, the ideal condition for reflection, even a kind of freedom. Once you were thus convinced, you were foolish to open the door and let anyone in, not all the way in. You risked the hard-won equilibrium, that tranquility that you called peace ↗

— Dean Koontz

#loneliness #peace #reflection #solitude #tranquility

No, solitude did not trouble her. She could spend long minutes gazing out the window, hours listening to the BBC on the public radio station. She relished the very texture of her privacy, its depth of space and freedom, much of an entire day hers alone. ↗

— Daphne Kalotay

#privacy #solitude #freedom

Friendship, according to Proust, is the negation of that irremediable solitude to which every human being is condemned. ↗

— Samuel Beckett

#friendship #solitude #friendship

لن يشجعك رفاقك الآتون، ولن يواسوك. لن يدلوك على ما فيك من عناصر الخير والصدق. بالعكس.. سيحصون عليك كل غلطة، ولن يروا غير عيوبك، ولن يبينوا لك إلا ما أنت فيه مخطئ، سيفعلون ذلك وفي نفوسهم فرح خبيث. وإذا تظاهروا لك بأنهم لا يحفلون بأمرك بل يزدرون شأنك، كانوا في الحقيقة يفرحون لكل ما تقع فيه من أخطاء (كأن الإنسان معصوم من الخطأ!). ↗

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#solitude #friendship

With one long breath, caught and held in his chest, he fought his sadness over his solitary life. Don't cry, you idiot! Live or die, but don't poison everything... ↗

— Saul Bellow

#life #solitude #death

Mathematicians call them twin primes: pairs of prime numbers that are close to each other, almost neighbors, but between them there is always an even number that prevents them from truly touching. Numbers like 11 and 13, like 17 and 19, 41 and 43. If you have the patience to go on counting, you discover that these pairs gradually become rarer. You encounter increasingly isolated primes, lost in that silent, measured space made only of ciphers, and you develop a distressing presentiment that the pairs encountered up until that point were accidental, that solitude is the true destiny. Then, just when you’re about to surrender, when you no longer have the desire to go on counting, you come across another pair of twins, clutching each other tightly. There is a common conviction among mathematicians that however far you go, there will always be another two, even if no one can say where exactly, until they are discovered. Mattia thought that he and Alice were like that, twin primes, alone and lost, close but not close enough to really touch each other. He had never told her that. When he imagined confessing these things to her, the thin layer of sweat on his hands evaporated completely and for a good ten minutes he was no longer capable of touching anything. ↗

— Paolo Giordano

#the-solitude-of-prime-numbers #imagination

I have to be alone very often. I'd be quite happy if I spent from Saturday night until Monday morning alone in my apartment. That's how I refuel." (Audrey Hepburn: Many-Sided Charmer, LIFE Magazine, December 7, 1953) ↗

— Audrey Hepburn

#content #privacy #refueling #reprive #restoration

Cherish your solitude. Take trains by yourself to places you have never been. Sleep out alone under the stars. Learn how to drive a stick shift. Go so far away that you stop being afraid of not coming back. Say no when you don’t want to do something. Say yes if your instincts are strong, even if everyone around you disagrees. Decide whether you want to be liked or admired. Decide if fitting in is more important than finding out what you’re doing here. Believe in kissing. ↗

— Eve Ensler

#carpe-diem #cherish #enjoy-life #self-empowerment #self-reliance