#line

You think you know how this story is going to end, but you don't. ↗

— Christopher Moore

#opening-lines #christ

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. ↗

— George Orwell

#dystopia #first-sentence #opening-lines #day

The Word of God I think of as a straight edge, which shows up our own crookedness. We can't really tell how crooked our thinking is until we line it up with the straight edge of Scripture. ↗

— Elisabeth Elliot

#edge #god #line #ruler #scripture

We must become so alone, so utterly alone, that we withdraw into our innermost self. It is a way of bitter suffering. But then our solitude is overcome, we are no longer alone, for we find that our innermost self is the spirit, that it is God, the indivisible. And suddenly we find ourselves in the midst of the world, yet undisturbed by its multiplicity, for our innermost soul we know ourselves to be one with all being. ↗

— Hermann Hesse

#solitude #spirit #alone

Perhaps only people who are capable of real togetherness have that look of being alone in the universe. The others have a certain stickiness, they stick to the mass. ↗

— D.H. Lawrence

#alone

There is the solitude of suffering, when you go through darkness that is lonely, intense, and terrible. Words become powerless to express your pain; what others hear from your words is so distant and different from what you are actually suffering. ↗

— John O'Donohue

#suffering #suffering

I used to feel so alone in the city. All those gazillions of people and then me, on the outside. Because how do you meet a new person? I was very stunned by this for many years. And then I realized, you just say, "Hi." They may ignore you. Or you may marry them. And that possibility is worth that one word. ↗

— Augusten Burroughs

#lonliness #opportunity #risk #social-anxiety #opportunity

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces Between stars—on stars where no human race is. I have it in me so much nearer home To scare myself with my own desert places. ↗

— Robert Frost

#humans

You do not have to be alone. The world never inflicts loneliness upon us. That is something we choose or reject by ourselves. ↗

— Darren Shan

#loneliness #birth

Separation Your absence has gone through me Like thread through a needle. Everything I do is stitched with its color. ↗

— W.S. Merwin

#loneliness #loss #poetry #influence