#lines

Stillness was most natural. To go on scrabbling and running and grasping after some kind of life was aberration; stillness was lasting. ↗

— Jane Rogers

#loneliness #nature

Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. ↗

— J.K. Rowling

#human-nature #opening-lines #nature

Real relief from loneliness requires the cooperation of at least one other person, and yet the more chronic our loneliness becomes, the less equipped we may be to entice such cooperation. ↗

— John T. Cacioppo

#nature

Worldliness proposes objectives which demand no radical breach with man's fallen nature; it judges the importance of things by the present and material results; it weighs success by numbers; it covets human esteem and wants no unpopularity; it knows no truth for which it is worth suffering; it declines to be a 'fool for Christ's sake. ↗

— Iain Murray

#theology #worldliness #nature

There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife. ↗

— Neil Gaiman

#opening-lines #first-sentence

True friendship never questions what it costs you. ↗

— Stephen Richards

#friendliness #friendly #friends #friends-forever #friendship

When you're alone is when you can count your friends. ↗

— Stephen Richards

#friendliness #friends #friendship #friendship-and-love #friendship-true-and-loyal

What a luxury a cat is, the moments of shocking and startling pleasure in a day, the feel of the beast, the soft sleekness under your palm, the warmth when you wake on a cold night, the grace and charm even in a quite ordinary workaday puss. Cat walks across your room, and in that lonely stalk you see leopard or even panther, or it turns its head to acknowledge you and the yellow blaze of those eyes tells you what an exotic visitor you have here, in this household friend, the cat who purrs as you stroke, or rub his chin, or scratch his head. ↗

— Doris Lessing

#friendship #age

Now Doon seemed to care for his new friends more than he did for her. Every time she thought about him she felt a thud of pain, like a bruised place inside her. ↗

— Jeanne DuPrau

#city-of-ember #friendship #jeanne-duprau #lef-out #loneliness

Our society is so fragmented, our family lives so sundered by physical and emotional distance, our friendships so sporadic, our intimacies so 'in-between' things and often so utilitarian, that there are few places where we can feel truly safe. ↗

— Henri J.M. Nouwen

#brokenness #despair #isolation #loneliness #society