Quotes About Alienation

Our society is not a community, but merely a collection of isolated family units.

There's a thousand different ways a group of people can make someone in their midst feel unwanted.

Tremendous beauty and tremendous ugliness puts you on the outside of things.

These days he was like a zombie, all grim business, just another jerk with an erection.

we think that by protecting ourselves from suffering we are being kind to ourselves. the truth is, we only become more fearful, more hardened, and more alienated.

Everyone and everything oppresses me, chokes and maddens me; I am troubled by a crushing physical sense of other people's lack of comprehension.

lonely and isolated people who feel their solitude more intensely within the busy life of the streets. They are what George Gissing called the anchorites of daily life, who return unhappy to their solitary rooms.

Tremendous beauty and tremendous ugliness puts you on the outside of things.

The knowledge worker is not poverty-prone. He is in danger of alienation, to use the fashionable word for boredom, frustration, and silent despair.

Y el mundo se convirtió en un país extranjero donde ya no había necesidad de huir ni de volver a casa.

Porque no sé dónde estoy, porque he olvidado que estoy en la habitación y espero que me llamen a comer, porque me he olvidado de mí mismo, porque ya no me llega nada desde fuera que me indique dónde se encuentra mi cuerpo y porque ningún ruido me retiene, los pensamientos me llevan de aquí para allá en tierra de nadie; no son pensamientos elaborados por mí, sino pensamientos que surgen en mí.

Christianity has its roots in the profound sense of exile.

You're - psychotic. There's something wrong with you. I know, Benteley agreed. I'm a sick man. And the more I see, the sicker I get. I'm so sick I think everybody else is sick and I'm the only healthy person. That's pretty bad off, isn't it?

Upon him the contempt of three planets descended.

Life which we can no longer distinguish; life carefully buried up to its forehead in the carcass of a dead world.

I even gave up, for a while, stopping by the window of the room to look out at the lights and deep, illuminated streets. That's a form of dying, that losing contact with the city like that.

We live in a society where detachment is almost essential.

Before they came here I could stand it, being alone in the building. But now it's changed… You can't go from people to nonpeople.

Is it a loss?" Rachael repeated. "I don't really know; I have no way to tell. How does it feel to have a child? How does it feel to be born, for that matter? We're not born; we don't grow up; instead of dying from illness or old age, we wear out like ants. Ants again; that's what we are. Not you; I mean me. Chitinous reflex-machines who aren't really alive." She twisted her head to one side, said loudly, "I'm not alive!

Life which we can no longer distinguish; life carefully buried up to its forehead in the carcass of a dead world. In every cinder of the universe Mercer probably perceives inconspicuous life. Now I know, he thought. And once having seen through Mercer's eyes, I probably will never stop.

Nothing is so alien, so bleak and unfriendly, as the strip of gas stations—cut-rate gas stations—and motels on the rim of your own city. You fail to recognize it. And at the same time, you have to clasp it to your bosom. Not just for one night, but as long as you intend to live where you live.

It would have been rewarding to talk to Dave, he decided. Dave would have approved what I did. But also he would have understood the other part, which I don't think even Mercer comprehends. For Mercer everything is easy, he thought, because Mercer accepts everything. Nothing is alien to him. But what I've done, he thought; that's become alien to me. In fact everything about me has become unnatural; I've become an unnatural self.

In the absence of the Batys and Pris he found himself fading out, becoming strangely like the inert television set which he had just unplugged. You have to be with other people, he thought. In order to live at all. I mean, before they came here I could stand it, being alone in the building. But now it's changed. You can't go back, he thought. You can't go from people to nonpeople.

am an outsider in my own country.