#isolation

Tess realized one of the great modern dating sadnesses: everyone is so used to the comforting glow of the computer screen that no one can go so far as to say "good morning" in public without being liquored up. ↗

— Amelia Gray

#alienation #dating #digital-age #isolation #age

Maybe that's what growing up means, in the end - you go far enough in the direction of - somewhere - and you realise that you've neutered the capacity of the term home to mean anything. [...] We don't get an endless number of orbits away from the place where meaning first arises, that treasure-house of first experiences. What we learn, instead, is that our adventures secure us in our isolation. Experience revokes our licence to return to simpler times. Sooner or later, there's no place remotely like home. ↗

— Gregory Maguire

#home #isolation #experience

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee. ↗

— John Donne

#connectedness #for-whom-the-bell-tolls #inspirational #interdependence #isolation

America... goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. ↗

— John Quincy Adams

#imperialism #independence #isolationism #liberty #noninterventionism

Too much of what is called "education" is little more than an expensive isolation from reality. ↗

— Thomas Sowell

#education #expensive #isolation #little #more

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. ↗

— Carolyn Ainscough

#child-abuse #isolation #rape #sexual-abuse #survivors

This is what it means to be alone: everyone is connected to everyone else, their bodies are a bright liquid life flowing around you, sharing a single heart that drives them to move all together. If the shark comes they will all escape, and leave you to be eaten. ↗

— Barbara Kingsolver

#loneliness #life

. . . clumsiness is often mated with a love of solitude. ↗

— Virginia Woolf

#isolation #loneliness #personality #solitude #love

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