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"Solitude is a virtue for us, since it is a sublime inclination and impulse to cleanliness which shows that contact between people, "society, inevitably makes things unclean. Somewhere, sometime, every community makes people-"base."
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"I knew this feeling, the 2 a.m. loneliness that I'd practically invented."
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Personal Development

"I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude."
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Personal Development

"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."
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Personal Development

"This was not my moment to be seeking romance and (as day follows night) to further complicate my already knotty life. This was my moment to look for the kind of healing and peace that can only come from solitude."
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Personal Development

"She didn't want to go far, just out of the trees so she could see the stars. They always eased her loneliness. She thought of them as beautiful creatures, burning and cold; each solitary, and bleak, and silent like her."
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Personal Development

"While fame impedes and constricts, obscurity wraps about a man like a mist; obscurity is dark, ample, and free; obscurity lets the mind take its way unimpeded. Over the obscure man is poured the merciful suffusion of darkness. None knows where he goes or comes. He may seek the truth and speak it; he alone is free; he alone is truthful, he alone is at peace."
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Personal Development

"And you should not let yourself be confused in your solitude by the fact that there is something in you that wants to move out of it."
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Personal Development

"An excellent man he has no enemies and none of his friends like him."
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Personal Development

"Some of my pleasantest hours were during the long rain-storms in the spring or fall, which confined me to the house for the afternoon as well as the forenoon, soothed by their ceaseless roar and pelting; when an early twilight ushered in a long evening in which many thoughts had time to take root and unfold themselves. In those driving northeast rains which tried the village houses so, when the maids stood ready with mop and pail in front entries to keep the deluge out, I sat behind my door in my little house, which was all entry, and thoroughly enjoyed its protection."
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Personal Development

"I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself, with only the music of my heart for company."
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"To use the same words is not a sufficient guarantee of understanding; one must use the same words for the same genus of inward experience; ultimately one must have one's experiences in common."
Experience

"I do not know what the spirit of a philosopher could more wish to be than a good dancer. For the dance is his ideal, also his fine art, finally also the only kind of piety he knows, his "divine service.""
Art

"In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule."
Society

"In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point."
Religion

"Stupid as a man, say the women: cowardly as a woman, say the men. Stupidity in a woman is unwomanly."
Man

"People who have given us their complete confidence believe that they have a right to ours. The inference is false, a gift confers no rights."
People

"Go up close to your friend, but do not go over to him! We should also respect the enemy in our friend."
Friendship

"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
Education

"Shared joys make a friend, not shared sufferings."
Friendship

"The desire to annoy no one, to harm no one, can equally well be the sign of a just as of an anxious disposition."
Desire
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