Quotes About Isolation

We're no longer young men. We've lost any desire to conquer the world. We are refugees. We are fleeing from ourselves. From our lives. We were eighteen years old, and we had just begun to love the world and to love being in it; but we had to shoot at it. The first shell to land went straight for our hearts. We've been cut off from real action, from getting on, from progress. We don't believe in those things any more; we believe in the war.

Let the months and years come, they can take nothing from me, they can take nothing more. I am so alone, and so without hope that I can confront them without fear. The life that has borne me through these years is still in my hands and my eyes. Whether I have subdued it, I know not. But so long as it is there it will seek its own way out, heedless of the will that is within me. -All Quiet On The Western Front, Chapter 12

I am a modern man with a strong tendency to self-destruction.

Educationalists who think they can understand the young are enthusiasts. Youth does not want to be understood; it wants only to be let alone. It preserves itself immune against the insidious bacillus of being understood. The grown-up who would approach it too importunately is as ridiculous in its eyes as if he had put on children's clothes. We may feel with our youth, but youth does not feel with us. That is its salvation.

We know only that in some strange and melancholy way we have become a waste land. All the same, we are not often sad.

We had suddenly learned to see. And we saw that there was nothing of their world left. We were all at once terribly alone; and alone we must see it through.

A man can gasp out his life beside you-and you feel none of it. Pity, Sympathy, sure-but you don't feel the pain. Your belly is whole and that's what counts. A half-yard away someone's world is snuffled out in roaring agony-and you feel nothing. That's the misery of the world.

People should die, only when they're alone. Or when they hate—not when they love.

Perhaps there is really nothing else when everything is falling to pieces, I think, except this bit of togetherness and even that is a sweet deception, for when someone else really needs you you cannot follow him or stand by him. I have noticed that often enough in the war when I looked into the face of a dead comrade. Each one of us has his own death and must suffer it alone; no one can help him then.

I don't know what it is. I simply can't stand it. It's like a hand reaching out of the dark. It is fear—blind fear as if it were lying in wait somewhere for me.

Niemand kennt mich hier, dachte sie. Und niemand weiß, dass ich hier bin! Sie empfand diese Anonymität wie ein sonderbares, stürmisches Glück, das Glück, einem Glück entkommenzu sein, auf kurze Zeit oder für immer.

An hour passes. I sit tensely and watch his every movement in case he may perhaps say something. What if he were to open his mouth and cry out! But he only weeps, his head turned aside. He does not speak of his mother or his brothers and sisters. He says nothing; all that lies behind him; he is entirely alone now with his little life of nineteen years, and cries because it leaves him.

he begins to notice that he has been turned out of the silent company of the trees, the animals, the stars, and the unconscious life.

The tension has worn us out. It is a deadly tension that feels as if a jagged knife blade is being scraped along the spine. Our legs won't function, our hands are trembling and our bodies are like thin membranes stretched over barely repressed madness, holding in what would otherwise be an unrestrained outburst of endless scream.s. We have no flesh, no muscle now

Üksindus – elu igavene refrään. See ei olnud ei pahem ega parem kui mõnigi muu asi. Sellest räägiti liiga palju. Inimene on alati – ja mitte iial – üksi.

We live in rooms too much, I say. We think too much in rooms. We make love too much in rooms. We despair too much in rooms. Can you despair in the open?

We have lost all feeling for one another. We can hardly control ourselves when our glance lights on the form of some other man. We are insensible, dead men, who through some trick, some dreadful magic, are still able to run and to kill.

Te? kiedyÅ› to pani czuÅ'a? - zapytaÅ'. MilczaÅ'a przez chwilÄ™. -Owszem, ale nie tak. Inaczej. Kiedy caÅ'ymi dniami nie mówiÅ'am do nikogo, a nocami spacerowaÅ'am, i wszÄ™dzie byli ludzie, którzy mieli gdzieÅ› swoje miejsce, którzy dokÄ…dÅ› chodzili, mieli gdzieÅ› swój dom. Tylko ja nie. Wtedy wszystko powoli stawaÅ'o siÄ™ nierzeczywiste, jakbym siÄ™ utopiÅ'a i szÅ'a po dnie przez jakieÅ› obce podwodne miasto...

Let the months and years come, they can take nothing from me, they can take nothing more. I am so alone, and so without hope that I can confront them without fear.

We loved our country as much as they; we went courageously into every action; but also we distinguished the false from true, we had suddenly learned to see. And we saw that there was nothing of their world left. We were all at once terribly alone; and alone we must see it through.

What if he were to open his mouth and cry out! But he only weeps, his head turned aside. He does not speak of his mother of his brothers or his sisters. He says nothing; all that lies behind him; he is entirely alone now with his little life of nineteen years, and cries because it leaves him.

Er drehte die Dusche an. Das kühle Wasser strömte über seine Haut. Er atmete tief und trocknete sich ab. Der Trost der kleinen Dinge. Wasser, Atem, abendlicher Regen. Nur wer allein war, kannte auch sie.

Cans. We don't have to think anymore. Everything is premeditated, pre-chewed, pre-felt. Cans. All you have to do is open them. Delivered to your home three times a day. Nothing any more to cultivate yourself, or let grow and boil on the fire of questions, of doubt, and of desire. Cans.

They were living corpses and died like flies in frost. The Small camp was full of them. They were broken and lost and nothing could save them—not even freedom.