Quotes About Solitude

His supper still remained spread; and going to the front door, and softly setting it open, he returned to the room and sat as watchers sit on Old-Midsummer eves, expecting the phantom of the Beloved. But she did not come.

The Wound I climbed to the crest, And, fog-festooned, The sun lay west Like a crimson wound: Like that wound of mine Of which none knew, For I'd given no sign That it pierced me through.

Down there they are dubious and askance; there nobody thinks as I, But mind-chains do not clank where one's next neighbour is the sky.

Tess comprese che malgrado i lunghi mesi di segreti pentimenti, di lotte, di autoraccomandazioni, di programmi per un futuro vissuto in solitudine, il consiglio dell'amore avrebbe vinto.

Si sdraiò sul suo giaciglio nel soggiorno e spense la luce. La notte entrò e vi prese il suo posto, noncurante e indifferente; quella stessa notte che si era già ingoiata la sua felicità e che ora stava distrattamente digerendosela; ed era pronta a ingoiare la felicità di migliaia d'altre persone, con la stessa noncuranza e impassibilità.

There was not a human soul near. Sad October and her saddest self seemed the only two existences haunting that lane.

And it was then, when out in the woods, that she seemed least solitary. She knew how to hit a hair's-breadth that moment of evening when the light and the darkness are so evenly balanced that the constraint of day and the suspense of night neutralize each other, leaving absolute mental liberty. It is then that the plight of being alive becomes attenuated to it's least possible dimensions.

Boldwood had not been outside his garden since his meeting with Bathsheba in the road to Yalbury. Silent and alone, he had remained in moody meditation on woman's ways, deeming as essentials of the whole sex the accidents of the single one of their number he had ever closely beheld.

that nobody is wished to see my dead body. "& that no murners walk behind me at my funeral. "& that no flours be planted on my grave. "& that no man remember me. "To this I put my name.

Ojalá hubiera estado sola, como he estado durante el último año, sin esperanzas, ni temores, ni placer, ni dolor.

I know what you're afraid of. It's not pain, or solitude. It's indignity you can't stand, Hannibal, you're like a cat that way.

Hannibal had entered his heart's long winter. He slept soundly and was not visited in dreams as humans are.

His empty hands hanging palms forward at his sides, he stood at the window looking to the empty east. He did not look for dawn; east was only the way the window faced.

He was alone because he was Unique.

Barney was nearly through with his workout, cooling down on a bike, when he realized he was not alone in the room.

It seemed a very short distance to the outside. This was only a building, there were only five doors between Lecter and the outside. He had the absurd feeling that Lecter had walked out with him. He stopped outside the entrance and looked around him, assuring himself that he was alone.

Graham switched on the lights and bloodstains shouted at him from the walls, from the mattress and the floor. The very air had screams smeared on it. He flinched from the noise in this silent room full of dark stains drying. Graham sat on the floor until his head was quiet. Still, still, be still.

He cleared his throat. "One good thing about the range, Starling, is there's no politics out there." "No?" "You were right to secure that garage up at Baltimore there. You worried about the TV?

When I couldn't speak I was not drawn into silence, silence captured me.

Graham climbed out a window onto the porch roof and sat on the gritty shingles. He hugged his knees, his damp shirt pressed cold across his back, and snorted the smell of slaughter out of his nose.

He's a cemetery mink. He lives down in a ribcage in the dry leaves of a heart.

I think one travels more usefully when they travel alone, because they reflect more. ( Letter to John Banister, Jr., June 19, 1787)

I am savage enough to prefer the woods, the wilds, and the independence of Monticello, to all the brilliant pleasures of this gay capital [Paris].

I felt enough of the effect of withdrawing from the world then, to see that it led to an antisocial and misanthropic state of mind, which severely punished him who gives in to it. And it will be a lesson I never shall forget as to myself.