Quotes About Isolation

A woman never overcomes these problems by any exercise of thought. They are not to be solved, or only in one way. If her heart chance to come uppermost, they vanish. Thus Hester Prynne, whose heart had lost its regular and healthy throb, wandered without a clue in the dark labyrinth of mind; now turned aside by an insurmountable precipice; now starting back from a deep chasm. There was wild and ghastly scenery all around her, and a home and comfort nowhere.

a flower of strange beauty, growing in a desolate spot, and blossoming in the wind...

Every gesture, every word, and even the silence of those with whom she came in contact, implied, and often expressed, that she was banished, and as much alone as if she inhabited another sphere, or communicated with the common nature by other organs and senses than the rest of human kind.

She perchance underwent an agony from every footstep of those that thronged to see her, as if her heart had been flung into the street for them all to spurn and trample upon.

Mr. Hooper spent a long life, irreproachable in outward act, yet shrouded in dismal suspicions; kind and loving, though unloved, and dimly feared; a man apart from men, shunned in their health and joy, but ever summoned to their aid in mortal anguish.

They stood, as it were, in an utter solitude, which would be made none the less solitary by the densest throng of human life.

My heart was a habitation large enough for many guests, but lonely and chill, and without a household fire, I longed to kindle one!

Es war der letzte Ausdruck der Kleinmütigkeit einer gebrochenen Seele. Ihm fehlte die Energie, nach dem besseren Schicksal zu greifen, das in seiner Reichweite schien. Er wiederholte das Wort. Allein Hester! Du wirst nicht allein gehen! flüsterte sie leise zur Antwort. Damit war alles gesagt.

She could scarcely forgive him--least of all now, when the heavy footstep of their approaching Fate might be heard, nearer, nearer, nearer!--for being able so completely to withdraw himself from their mutual world--while she groped darkly, and stretched forth her cold hands, and found him not.

It had the effect of a spell, taking her out of the ordinary relations with humanity and enclosing her in a sphere by herself.

Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers--stern and wild ones--and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.

Mother and daughter stood together in the same circle of seclusion from human society;

I wonder he is not afraid to be alone with himself. Men sometimes are so, said her husband.

All through life that piece of crape had hung between him and the world; it had separated him from cheerful brotherhood and woman's love and kept him in that saddest of all prisons his own heart;

I look around me, and, lo! on every visage a black veil!

The links that united her to the rest of human kind - links of flowers, or silk or gold - had all been broken.

Unknown to all but Hester Prynne, and possessing the lock and key of her silence, he chose to withdraw his name from the roll of mankind, and, as regarded his former ties and interests, to vanish out of life as completely as if he indeed lay at the bottom of the ocean, whither rumor had long ago consigned him.

I know what to think when a young girl shivers by a warm hearth and complains of lonesomeness at her mother's side. Shall I put these feelings into words?

In all her intercourse with society, however, there was nothing that made her feel as if she belonged to it.

a poor, deceived, and half-delirious girl, who, exclaiming that she was the most worthless thing alive or dead, attempted to cast herself into the fire amid all that wrecked and broken trumpery of the world.

O, what a joy for a shy man to feel himself so solitary, that he may lift his voice to its highest pitch without hazard of a listener!

If it be a sign of mourning, replied Mr. Hooper, I, perhaps, like most other mortals, have sorrows dark enough to be typified by a black veil.

Could it be true? She clutched the child so fiercely to her breast, that it sent forth a cry; she turned her eyes downward at the scarlet letter, and even touched it with her finger, to assure herself that the infant and the shame were real. Yes! — these were her realities, — all else had vanished!

After seventeen days, one of the crew suggested that they cast lots. As it turned out, the lot fell to the man who had originally made the proposal, and after lots were cast again to see who should execute him, he was killed and eaten.