#isolation

Not Waving but Drowning Nobody heard him, the dead man, But still he lay moaning: I was much further out than you thought And not waving but drowning. Poor chap, he always loved larking And now he's dead It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way, They said. Oh, no no no, it was too cold always (Still the dead one lay moaning) I was much too far out all my life And not waving but drowning. ↗

— Stevie Smith

#isolation #life

The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted. ↗

— D.H. Lawrence

#social-isolation #sociopathy #united-states #united-states

Isolation is a big part of songwriting. ↗

— Natalie Imbruglia

#isolation #part #songwriting

I think isolation is one of the greatest problems, an ever-growing obstacle to political solidarity. ↗

— Elfriede Jelinek

#i #i think #isolation #obstacle #political

When I married Paul, we lived in St John's Wood in London. We had nice next-door neighbours, but you don't know anyone else. Everyone lives in isolation. ↗

— Linda McCartney

#else #everyone #had #i #isolation

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. ↗

— Neil Gaiman

#insulation #islands #isolation #life #originality

...you are my Lady of Shalott lost in a dream of isolation - I care too much for you - I romanticize depression... ↗

— John Geddes

#isolation #romanticize #tennyson #unconditional-love #dreams

To deprive a gregarious creature of companionship is to maim it, to outrage its nature. The prisoner and the cenobite are aware that the herd exists beyond their exile; they are an aspect of it. But when the herd no longer exists, there is, for the herd creature, no longer entity, a part of no whole; a freak without a place. If he cannot hold on to his reason, then he is lost indeed; most utterly, most fearfully lost, so that he becomes no more than the twitch in the limb of a corpse. ↗

— John Wyndham

#loneliness #nature

There is a terrible beauty to isolation. You don’t have to accept responsibility for others, or live up to their expectations. You could dip your toe into humanity’s maelstrom from time to time, or sit on the river bank and observe. ↗

— Celia Stander

#isolation #philosophy #beauty

Our story is never written in isolation. We do not act in a one-man play. We can do nothing that does not affect other people, no matter how loudly we say, "It's my own business. ↗

— Madeleine L'Engle

#madeleine-l-engle #our-story #walking-on-water #art