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Existential solitude11 quotes
We are all travellers in what John Bunyan calls the wilderness of this world....and the best that we find in our travels is an honest friend. — Robert Louis Stevenson · 1879The bonds between ourselves and another person exist only in our minds. Memory as it grows fainter loosens them, and notwithstanding the illusion by which we want to be duped and which, out of love, friendship, politeness, deference, duty, we dupe other people, we exist alone. Man is the creature who cannot escape from himself, who knows other people only in himself, and when he asserts the contrary, he is lying. — Marcel Proust · 1922Who knows what true loneliness is—not the conventional word, but the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion. Now and then a fatal conjunction of events may lift the veil for an instant. For an instant only. No human being could bear a steady view of moral solitude without going mad. — Joseph Conrad · 1911Which of us has known his brother? Which of us has looked into his father's heart? Which of us has not remained forever prison-pent? Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone? — Thomas Wolfe · 1929We're all of us sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life. — Tennessee Williams · 1957A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. — Charles Dickens · 1859All 11 quotes →Alienation1 quote
Most people are on the world, not in it—have no conscious sympathy or relationship to anything about them—undiffused, separate, and rigidly alone like marbles of polished stone, touching but separate. — John Muir · 1890Connecting with others1 quote
The bonds between ourselves and another person exist only in our minds. Memory as it grows fainter loosens them, and notwithstanding the illusion by which we want to be duped and which, out of love, friendship, politeness, deference, duty, we dupe other people, we exist alone. Man is the creature who cannot escape from himself, who knows other people only in himself, and when he asserts the contrary, he is lying. — Marcel Proust · 1922Death1 quote
We shall die alone. — Blaise Pascal · 1662Empathy1 quote
No human being can really understand another and no one can arrange another's happiness. — Graham Greene · 1948Friends1 quote
We are all travellers in what John Bunyan calls the wilderness of this world....and the best that we find in our travels is an honest friend. — Robert Louis Stevenson · 1879Inner life1 quote
What other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart!
What jailer so inexorable as one's self! — Nathaniel Hawthorne · 1851Isolation1 quote
The bonds between ourselves and another person exist only in our minds. Memory as it grows fainter loosens them, and notwithstanding the illusion by which we want to be duped and which, out of love, friendship, politeness, deference, duty, we dupe other people, we exist alone. Man is the creature who cannot escape from himself, who knows other people only in himself, and when he asserts the contrary, he is lying. — Marcel Proust · 1922Loneliness1 quote
Who knows what true loneliness is—not the conventional word, but the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion. Now and then a fatal conjunction of events may lift the veil for an instant. For an instant only. No human being could bear a steady view of moral solitude without going mad. — Joseph Conrad · 1911Self-criticism1 quote
What other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart!
What jailer so inexorable as one's self! — Nathaniel Hawthorne · 1851Solitude1 quote
We shall die alone. — Blaise Pascal · 1662The human condition1 quote
The bonds between ourselves and another person exist only in our minds. Memory as it grows fainter loosens them, and notwithstanding the illusion by which we want to be duped and which, out of love, friendship, politeness, deference, duty, we dupe other people, we exist alone. Man is the creature who cannot escape from himself, who knows other people only in himself, and when he asserts the contrary, he is lying. — Marcel Proust · 1922Travel1 quote
We are all travellers in what John Bunyan calls the wilderness of this world....and the best that we find in our travels is an honest friend. — Robert Louis Stevenson · 1879