Quotes About Isolation

It is not physical solitude that actually separates one from others; not physical isolation, but spiritual isolation. It is not the desert island nor the stony wilderness that cuts you from the people you love. It is the wilderness in the mind, the desert wastes in the heart through which one wanders lost and a stranger.

When one is a stranger to oneself then one is estranged from others too. If one is out of touch with oneself, then one cannot touch others.

Solitude, says the moon shell. Every person, especially every woman, should be alone sometime during the year, some part of each week, and each day.

Modern communication loads us with more problems than the human frame can carry. [...] Our grandmothers, and even - with some scrambling - our mothers, lived in a circle small enough to let them implement in action most of the impulses of their hearts and minds. We were brought up in a tradition that has now become impossible, for we have extended our circle throughout space and time.

No man is an island," said John Donne. I feel we are all islands—in a common sea.

We must re-learn to be alone.

People, too, become like islands in such an atmosphere, self-contained, whole and serene; respecting other people's solitude, not intruding on their shores, standing back in reverence before the miracle of another individual. 'No man is an island,' said John Donne. I feel we are all islands – in a common sea. We

I feel we are all islands - in a common sea.

Charlotte felt a pity for her, because her world was changing, and she did not understand it; it had no place for her. She was like one of Mr. Darwin's dinosaurs, dangerous and ridiculous, beyond its time.

I didn't realize what a—comfortless thing respect is.

That was the worst truth of all: alone. The word was a kind of death.

He had been too clever to be easy friends with other boys, who were afraid of his intelligence and lashed out at him the only way they knew how, with fists and boots. Even sitting here by his own fire, Tellman could feel the sweat of fear in his body, and then the chill, as he remembered standing facing them in the street, knowing what was coming.

Don't you see? I'm not the spirit of any age. I'm at odds with everything and always have been! I have never belonged anywhere with anyone at any time!

One will hate you for taking his life, another will run to excesses that you scorn. A third will emerge mad and raving, another a monster you cannot control. One will be jealous of your superiority, another shut you out... And the veil will always come down between you Make a legion, you will be, always and forever alone!

I feel like an outsider, and I always will feel like one. I've always felt that I wasn't a member of any particular group.

His Back was turned to the end of the world and the end of the world was quiet.

I stumble through a carnival of horrors

Dear God, help me. Do not forget me on this tiny cinder lost in a galaxy that is lost–a heart no bigger than a speck of dust beating, beating against death, against meaninglessness, against guilt, against sorrow.

It's not so, I said. And how long do you think it will sustain you, feeling and seeing and touching and tasting, if there is no love? No one with you?

For what can the damned really have to say to the damned?

But you're dead inside to me, you're cold and beyond my reach! It is as if I'm not here, beside you. And, not being here with you, I have the dreadful feeling that I don't exist at all. And you are as cold and distant from me as those strange modern paintings of lines and hard forms that I cannot love or comprehend, as alien as those hard mechanical sculptures of this age which have no human form. I shudder when I'm near you. I look into your eyes and my reflection isn't there . . . .

There's a bitter cold in me, a cold which comes from a distant land. And nothing ever really makes it warm. You knew of this cold. You tried a thousand times to melt it, and transform it to something more brilliant, but you never succeeded.

You are alone when something like this happens. Doesn't matter how many people love you and want to help you. You are alone. When Marchent died, she was alone.

Pain. Unspeakable pain. It didn't matter who in this world or any other was staring at me, watching me, seeking to share this moment or merely shuddering as I experienced it. Just didn't matter. Because in pain like this one is always alone.