top of page
"That illusion of a world so shaped that it echoes every groan, of human beings so tied together by common needs and fears that a twitch at one wrist jerks another, where however strange your experience other people have had it too, where however far you travel in your own mind someone has been there before you - - is all an illusion. We do not know our own souls, let alone the souls of others. Human beings do not go hand in hand the whole stretch of the way. There is a virgin forest in each; a snowfield where even the print of birds' feet is unknown. Here we go alone, and like it better so. Always to have sympathy, always to be accompanied, always to be understood would be intolerable."
Standard
Customized
More

"An offering for the sake of offering, perhaps. Anyhow, it was her gift. Nothing else had she of the slightest importance; could not think, write, even play the piano. She muddled Armenians and Turks; loved success; hated discomfort; must be liked; talked oceans of nonsense: and to this day, ask her what the Equator was, and she did not know.All the same, that one day should follow another; Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday; that one should wake up in the morning; see the sky; walk in the park; meet Hugh Whitbread; then suddenly in came Peter; then these roses; it was enough. After that, how unbelievable death was!-that it must end; and no one in the whole world would know how she had loved it all; how, every instant . . ."
Reflection

"I will not be "famous," "great." I will go on adventuring, changing, opening my mind and my eyes, refusing to be stamped and stereotyped. The thing is to free one's self: to let it find its dimensions, not be impeded."
Freedom

"She was almost felled to the ground by the extraordinary sight which now met her eyes. There was the garden and some birds. The world was going on as usual. All the time she was writing the world had continued."
Reflection

"The immense success of our life, is I think, that our treasure is hid away; or rather in such common things that nothing can touch it."
Happiness

"For once the disease of reading has laid upon the system it weakens so that it falls an easy prey to that other scourge which dwells in the ink pot and festers in the quill. The wretch takes to writing."
Creativity

"Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others."
Man

"Children, our lives have been gongs striking; clamour and boasting; cries of despair; blows on the nape of the neck in gardens."
Reality

"When the white arm rests upon the knee it is a triangle; now it is upright - a column; now a fountain, falling. It makes no sign, it does not beckon, it does not see us. Behind it roars the sea. It is beyond our reach. Yet there I venture. There I go to replenish my emptiness, to stretch my nights and fill them fuller and fuller with dreams. And for a second even now, even here, I reach my object and say, "Wander no more. All is trial and make-believe. Here is the end."
Dream

"Life for both sexes-and I looked at them, shouldering their way along the pavement-is arduous, difficult, a perpetual struggle. It calls for gigantic courage and strength. More than anything, perhaps, creatures of illusion as we are, it calls for confidence in oneself. Without self-confidence we are as babes in the cradle. And how can we generate this imponderable quality, which is yet so invaluable, most quickly? By thinking that other people are inferior to oneself. By feeling that one has some innate superiority- it may be wealth, or rank, a straight nose, or the portrait of a grandfather by Romney- for there is no end to the pathetic devices of the human imagination- over other people."
Identity

"As for my next book I am going to hold myself from writing it till I have it impending in me: grown heavy in my mind like a ripe pear pendant gravid asking to be cut or it will fall."
Creativity
More

"One of the things you could do with your time is to convert it into a treasure and that treasure is called solitude."
Author Name
Personal Development

"In solitude, you will find the soul."
Author Name
Personal Development

"We learn about life by exploring the texture and depth of space that composes our private inner world. In solitude we revisit our wounded feelings, sins, doubts, and deepest despair, replay poignant memories of loved ones, project what we are becoming, and ascertain the purpose of our being."
Author Name
Personal Development

"Sickness awakens sadness sleeps- Moments of aloneness results into peace."
Author Name
Personal Development

"But how are you going to get out, into the world of other people? That is your problem now, if I may hazard a guess - to find the right relationship, now that you know yourself, between the self that you know and the world outside. It is a difficult problem. No living poet has, I think, altogether solved it."
Author Name
Personal Development

"When alone, concentrate on the fruits of the solitude, not on the poisons of it!"
Author Name
Personal Development

"A time of solitude will always produce some fruits."
Author Name
Personal Development

"Solitude with God is a place for pregnancy."
Author Name
Personal Development

"I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than to be crowded on a velvet cushion."
Author Name
Personal Development

"As a recluse I couldn't bear traffic. It had nothing to do with jealousy, I simply disliked people, crowds, anywhere, except at my readings. People diminished me, they sucked me dry."
Author Name
Personal Development
bottom of page