Alone And Thinking Quotes & Sayings

We give each other a wide berth even if we have the flu, let alone ... So, I think that's part of the stigma that people who have diseases suffer. It's almost infectious ... if somebody is closer to death, they're almost a bad omen and I think that's terrible. — Peter Morgan

The idea that business is strictly a numbers affair has always struck me as preposterous. For one thing, I've never been particularly good at numbers, but I think I've done a reasonable job with feelings. And I'm convinced that it is feelings - and feelings alone - that account for the success of the Virgin brand in all of its myriad forms. — Richard Branson

We slip into thinking that always being connected is going to make us less lonely. But we are at risk because it is actually the reverse: If we are unable to be alone, we will be more lonely. And if we don't teach our children to be alone, they will only know how to be lonely. Yet — Sherry Turkle

I don't really have any advice for people who love each other and both happen to be writers, other than one of the two people in the couple better be slightly less in the clouds all day, or else you'll both starve to death. Humans really can't survive on just coffee alone, I don't think. — Tod Goldberg

How could God invite you to heaven, where the most exciting thing to do all day is gaze upon His glorious face, if you're not in heaven right here on earth when you're alone with Him? Do you think that after you die, suddenly you'll be in heaven and "presto!" all at once you're not going to like worldly things anymore? All of a sudden you'll love more than anything else just to hang out with God, when you couldn't stand being alone with Him even 20 minutes a day? — Keith Green

You're surrounded by people and voices and noises, but there you are, alone and trembling inside. And you want to be invisible. (thinking) Please, don't notice me. — Kellie Elmore

It was a joy, though, to get down into the valley and lose sight of all that open sky space underneath everything and finally, as it got graying five o'clocking, about a hundred yards from the other boys and walking alone, to just pick my way singing and thinking along the little black cruds of a deer trail through the rocks, no call to think or look ahead or worry, just follow the little balls of deer crud with your eyes cast down and enjoy life. — Jack Kerouac

Scientists or thinkers who try to discover the truth cannot find that higher life by thinking alone, but their own life, spent in search for the truth and neglecting the physical living, is just that higher form of human existence. — Alija Izetbegovic

Simon hated her for that. Perhaps it was automatic. Her appearance alone made her different from him, and human beings had always feared and hated anyone who was different. Two thousand years of history saw it being repeated over and over, the perpetual struggle of one race, or tribe, or creed, against another ... each one thinking they were right, superior, morally justified, or chosen by God. Simon saw himself as normal, Laura as abnormal. — Louise Lawrence

Greed plays a role in causing unnecessary surgery, although I don't think the economic motive alone is enough to explain it. There's no doubt that if you eliminated all unnecessary surgery, most surgeons would go out of business. They'd have to look for honest work, because the surgeon gets paid when he performs surgery on you, not when you're treated some other way. In pre-paid group practices where surgeons are paid a steady salary not tied to how many operations they perform, hysterectomies and tonsillectomies occur only about one-third as often as in fee-for-service situations. — Robert S. Mendelsohn

UNDERLYING NEED "COPING" MECHANISM To have support in figuring out your talents Getting stoned to avoid thinking about it To be loved, held, appreciated Negativity, pessimism to "control" expectations To have feelings received Overeating as an attempt at self-soothing To be recognized as mattering Overwork to prove worth To forgive yourself Becoming perfectionistic to try and avoid mistakes To avoid punishment or disapproval Focusing solely on the needs of others so you don't take care of yourself by exercising Rest and rejuvenation Drinking alcohol to excess, "rewarding" yourself with fatty or sweet foods Solitude and contemplation Picking fights so you end up alone Stability in chaos Worrying as a way to feel in control A sense of purpose Overspending in an attempt to find meaning in material things — M.J. Ryan

There are many actors alone who haven't acted Pirandello or Shaw or Shakespeare for years because their plays are too aware of the world. We could use their anger. And we could use the honest rage of those historians who haven't written a line for forty years. True, we might form classes in thinking and reading. — Ray Bradbury

There are so many ways to live, to define what living means for you and you alone. We are so narrow in our thinking, and once you understand that, once you decide to not abide by these artificial constraints, anything is possible and you are so liberated — Gayle Forman

You feel alone if you're the only one thinking 'wouldn't it be nice if there was peace and nobody was getting killed.' So advertise yourself that you're for peace if you believe in it. — John Lennon

People use tricks to get you to think the way they do or take away something you have that they want. One way they do that is to interrupt your normal way of thinking and take you by the hand and guide you down the path they want you to take. Father says they make you take a teeny-weeny step in their direction, and then they start to nudge you a little further down the path and before you know it, you're running full speed with them in a direction that you probably wouldn't have gone alone. — Christopher Paul Curtis

Me, following her home.
Her, thinking she's alone.
For hours, I watched her paint, sat in the darkness, and marveled. — Kenya Wright

What did I discover during my solo - besides learning to unwrap my energy bar ahead of time? That you ask yourself a lot of questions when you're alone on a bike for that long. One question more than others: Why the heck am I doing this? When I was done, I think I had found the answer: For the satisfaction that comes with pushing your body to the breaking point and conquering the unknown. — Matt Long

She found a mossy hollow between the roots of a tree and, putting on her mackintosh, huddled down in her makeshift bed. She ate one sandwich and saved the others for the night, thinking that she was rather enjoying the progress of this adventure, thus far, and almost looking forward to her night in the open air. The hurry of the fast water rushing over the round pebbly rocks of the river bed was soothing: it made her feel less alone and she felt she had no need for her candle to keep the gathering darkness at bay - in fact she was rather relieved to be away from her colleagues and the instructors at Lyne Manor. — William Boyd

We live and breathe words ... It was books that made me feel that perhaps I was not completely alone. They could be honest with me, and I with them. Reading your words, what you wrote, how you were lonely sometimes and afraid, but always brave; the way you saw the world, its colors and textures and sounds, I felt
I felt the way you thought, hoped, felt, dreamt. I felt I was dreaming and thinking and feeling with you. I dreamed what you dreamed, wanted what you wanted
and then I realized that truly I just wanted you. — Cassandra Clare

Listen, everyone, you all have your own circumstances. Some of you come from rich families,and some poor. But your value isn't determined by such things
by things beyond your control. Each one of you must discover your own worth through your own efforts. So ... don't make the mistake of thinking you alone are special. — Koushun Takami

Oh, we women know things you don't know, you teachers, you readers and writers of books, we are the ones who wait around libraries when it's time to leave, or sit drinking coffee alone in the kitchen; we make crazy plans for marriage but have no man, we dream of stealing men, we are the ones who look slowly around when we get off a bus and can't even find what we are looking for, can't quite remember how we got there, we are always wondering what will come next, what terrible thing will come next. We are the ones who leaf through magazines with colored pictures and spend long heavy hours sunk in our bodies, thinking, remembering, dreaming, waiting for something to come to us and give a shape to so much pain. — Joyce Carol Oates

We ate, we slept, we formed our kaleidoscopic relationships and marched ever forward. We licked chocolate from our fingers. We arranged flowers in vases. We inspected our backsides when we tried on new clothes. We gave ourselves over to art. We elected officials and complained. We stood up for home runs. We marked life passages in ceremonies we attended with impatience and pride. We reached out for new love when what we had died, confessing our unworthiness, confessing our great need. We felt at times that perhaps we really were visitors from another planet. We occasionally wondered if it was true that each of us was making everything up. But this was a wobbly saucer; this was thinking we could not endure; we went back to our elegant denial of unbreachable isolation, to refusing the lesson of being born alone and dying that way, too. We went back to loving, to eating, to sleeping, to marching and marching and marching along. — Elizabeth Berg

I have been sad almost a whole year, thinking that taking that test was somehow the end of my learning and that not having that as a possibility in my future left a big empty spot in my life that the children and the ranch didn't fill. But my life is not like that, it is a tree, and I can stay in one place and spread out in all directions, and I can do more learning shading this brood of mine than if I was all alone. — Nancy E. Turner

I'm not quite sure. Probably because "Hanky Panky" and "I Think We're Alone Now" had more to do with it than anything else. For some reason, staccato eighth notes on a bass sounded like bubblegum. Basically, groups like the 1910 Fruitgum Co. took my early format and kind of perverted it, and made these mindless pre-fab hits over and over. In the 60s, anybody who was making commercial music, that is music that didn't have a political slant to it, or wasn't taking drugs, was bubblegum. And that term kind of hung on a lot of people back then, and it's unfortunate. — Tommy James

He loved her.
Jay Heaton, her best friend since childhood was in love with her. He didn't say it but she knew that it was true.
And the part that really freaked her out, the part that caught her completely off guard, is that he wasn't alone. Because even though she'd been denying it for a long, long time, it had always been there ... waiting beneath the surface of their friendship. And now that it was out there was no going back.
And it was so weird to even be thinking it but ... she was in love with him too. — Kimberly Derting

When I first started to remember specific memories of abuse, I felt like I had a storm cloud over me for about two or three days beforehand. When the memory finally surfaced, I felt like I was alone in a dark cave. I stayed in bed just thinking and crying and eating chocolate. I wrote in my healing journal and talked it out with a friend. I examined what I thought and how I felt and cried some more. It was agonizing. The more issues I faced, the stronger I got. It wasn't a pleasant process, but I knew it would be over in a few days and I would feel alive again. With each memory, I recovered faster and I had longer and longer breaks in between them. Facing them made me stronger. I was able to see more and more of the truth without it overwhelming me. Even though the memories increased in intensity, it was easier to deal with them. — Christina Enevoldsen

I think one must take responsibility for one's actions and one's decisions. But one should never take
one should never assume that everything that happens for the good is achieved by one's self alone. — Aung San Suu Kyi

I sometimes think we ought to bring a bill before Congress changing our national symbol from the eagle to the buffalo, because we are more like the buffalo than the eagle. The eagle is a powerful bird. It flies alone. It rises up into the sky with authority. It is master of all it surveys. The eagle is an individualist and was selected from among the rest of the birds to be our symbol. But the buffalo was never alone. It always ran in a herd with other buffaloes. And, friends, I call your attention that the buffaloes are gone from the open range, but the eagles are still soaring. — Norman Vincent Peale

You are what you've been looking for. The answer is always in you alone. There is nothing in the external world. For the external world is an emanation of your own mind, your own thinking and your own imagination. You created this world. — Robert Adams

I sometimes like to think of God as a great symphony and the various spiritual paths as instruments in an orchestra. The gift that you have is like music waiting to be played. You need only to find the instrument that will best bring it out. You alone can never play all the instruments, and your music might not find voice in all the instruments. All you can do is find the instrument that suits you best, play it as well as you can, and add your music to the great symphony of divine creation. — Kent Nerburn

Sometimes when I think of Jesper all I can see is his dark back on the way across the white sea to Hirsholmene. It gets smaller and smaller and I stand at the edge of the ice feeling empty. Why didn't he ask me to go with him? I have a will of my own but if he had asked, I wouldn't have hesitated. I always went with him. After all, I had to look after him and he had to look after me, and my father would be furious with us both. Staying there alone was meaningless.
Sometimes I imagine he tells me everything, but I know that's not true. He never told me if he went all the way to Hirsholmene. I don't tell him everything either, but I feel he knows what I am thinking, and I know what HE thinks. I have taught myself to do that.
And yet all the same I am not sure. — Per Petterson

Elsewhere and leave me here alone with a whole plantation and two hundred woolly cannibals on my hands. Therefore you stay, and I stay. It is very simple. Also, it is adventure. And furthermore, you needn't worry for yourself. I am not matrimonially inclined. I came to the Solomons for a plantation, not a husband." Sheldon flushed, but remained silent. "I know what you are thinking," she laughed gaily. "That if I were a man you'd wring my neck for me. And I deserve it, too. I'm so sorry. I ought not to keep on hurting your feelings." "I'm afraid I rather invite it," he said, relieved by the signs of the tempest subsiding. "I have it," she announced. "Lend me a — Jack London

In the quiet moments of your day, what do you think and do? When you are with your Self and no one else, how does life proceed for you? Who are you when you are alone? Self-creation is a Holy Experience. It is sacred. It is you, deciding Who You Are. — Neale Donald Walsch

He who saw that everything depended on himself alone, who decided the fortune of individuals and nations, was happiest when thinking of that day on which he would lay aside his own greatness. — Seneca.

You can't imagine how much I hated middle school. Remember the way people would look at you blankly and say, "Um, okaaay," after you finished talking? Everyone just had to make it so clear that, whatever you were thinking or feeling, you were totally alone. The worst part, of course, was that I did the same thing to other people. It makes me a little nauseated just remembering that. — Becky Albertalli

If originally it was not good for a man to be alone, it is much worse for a sick man to be so; he thinks too much of his distemper, and magnifies it. — Lord Chesterfield

To identify the causes, so it seemed to him, is the very essence of thinking, and by this alone sensations turn into realizations and are not lost, but become entities and start to emit like rays of light what is inside of them. — Hermann Hesse

And then once in the music storage room. It was cold. The room was small with thin gray carpet and I cried after in my bed thinking of how sad the violins looked alone in the corner. It was embarrassing to have sex in front of the wrong things, especially a violin, which was so dignified at every angle — Alison Espach

Oh my god, she couldn't help thinking. I have hairy legs and I'm going to die alone. — Cecily Von Ziegesar

I think that it's a universal urge to have our pain not be felt alone and to have our joys not be felt alone. — John Green

For my own part, I am apt to join in the opinion with those who believe that all the regions of Nature swarm with spirits, and that we have multitudes of spectators on all our actions when we think ourselves most alone. — Joseph Addison

Some patients will report that they have sleep paralysis. If we see sleep paralysis alone and nothing else, we don't really think all that much of it, but if we see other symptoms, then it might be a red flag for something else that's going on. — Shelby Harris

All the charm of the angler's life would be lost but for these hours of thought and memory. All along the brook, all day on lake or river, while he takes his sport, he thinks. All the long evenings in camp, or cottage, or inn, he tells stories of his own life, hears stories of his friend's lives, and if alone calls up the magic of memory. — William Cowper Prime

A Ming vase can be well-designed and well-made and is beautiful for that reason alone. I don't think this can be true for photography. Unless there is something a little incomplete and a little strange, it will simply look like a copy of something pretty. We won't take an interest in it. — John Loengard

It is therefore absurd to approach the subject of health piecemeal with a departmentalized band of specialists. A medical doctor uninterested in nutrition, in agriculture, in the wholesomeness of mind and spirit is as absurd as a farmer who is uninterested in health. Our fragmentation of this subject cannot be our cure, because it is our disease. The body cannot be whole alone. Persons cannot be whole alone. It is wrong to think that bodily health is compatible with spiritual confusion or cultural disorder, or with polluted air and water or impoverished soil. — Wendell Berry

I think that men think they need their man caves. They don't really do. They think they want them, and then the second they do get them and they have alone time and time away from the girl, and the girl is really cool with giving them alone time, then that's when they, or at least I, start to think, "So, why are you so cool with me being alone? What's wrong with me that you don't want to be with me every second." — Chris D'Elia

I think those walks to the studio were the most enjoyable times for me, because I could get lost in my head and think about what I wanted the album to sound like as I was writing. For the most part, it was great to have all that time alone writing the songs. — Sarah Blasko

I think every family has that moment when the parents realize they need help and think, Oh my gosh. We cannot do this all alone. Every woman has that panic at some point in motherhood when you feel completely overwhelmed and constantly tired. — Nia Long

I think my weight-training proved to me more than anything that I can do anything in life if I really put my mind to it. I saw me bring myself from 137 pounds to 175 pounds over a seven-year period. That alone said to me that all you have to do is really stick with something, and you can accomplish anything you want. It's brought me great self-esteem because I know I did it. I changed me. — Aaron Tippin

This left me alone to solve the coffee problem - a sort of catch-22, as in order to think straight I need caffeine, and in order to make that happen I need to think straight. — David Sedaris

Christianity is alone in thinking that sex is entirely the Devil's business and an offence to God, This is a strange doctrine and almost implies that God and the devil must have collaborated on the creation of humanity, God working above the belly button and the Devil below. — Robert Anton Wilson

everything human is human because it is brought about through thinking, and for that reason alone."5 — Michael Allen Fox

I suppose that one is always tempted to challenge those who think that they and they alone possess the truth or the way or the key to the mystery. — Gore Vidal

Seventy percent of US companies now use open-plan offices and hot desking in the hope that these free-form physical structures will provoke free-form thinking. This architectural determinism isn't entirely convincing - there's plenty of evidence that people find open workspaces noisy, distracting, and impersonal. Walking through several such workspaces recently, I couldn't help but notice how hard everyone was working to simulate privacy. Plugged into headphones, surrounded by stacks of books and temporary dividers, defensiveness was more evident than openness. Architecture alone won't change mindsets and tearing down physical walls won't demolish the mental silos that trap thinking. — Margaret Heffernan

If this world is wearing thin And you're thinking of escape I'll go anywhere with you Just wrap me up in chains But if you try to go alone Don't think I'll understand (Stay) Stay with me — Siobhan Fahey

The truth is that we have done far too little, for we have never apologized. We have never fully, publicly acknowledged the evil that was done to African-Americans as evil. The Civil War obliterated a wicked institution, but a war alone cannot obliterate wicked thinking. Slavery ended but racism continued, and in many ways it intensified after that war. Slavery existed only in the South, but racism pervades the entire country. — Marianne Williamson

The man whose nature is such that by one path alone his chief desire will reach consummation will try to find it on that path, whatever it may be, and whatever the world thinks of it; and if he does not, he is contemptible. — F.H. Bradley

Figure out who you are separate from your family, and the man or woman you're in a relationship with. Find who you are in this world and what you need to feel good alone. I think that's the most important thing in life. Find a sense of self because with that, you can do anything else. — Angelina Jolie

When people become frightened, they look for things of real value. They will go to monetary metals, gold and silver, and they will buy other things, such as buying property. But no matter what we have, whether we have our gold coins or we have our property, if we have an authoritarian government, that is our greatest threat. So, I would like to think that there is no perfect protection, other than shrinking the size and scope and power of government, so that we can be left alone and take care of ourselves. — Ron Paul

When I met you Izzy, you crawled under my skin, you hit me so hard and I can't stop thinking about you. I can't leave you alone. ~ Declan — Nikola Jensen

I think I sent one [book] to Brian Eno. I don't know how I got to know his address, but I sent one to him. He called me up and he said, "I really like the book, and I'm starting a new label, would you liked to do something?" It was a tricky situation for me, because I've always had this thing in my life of a tension between collaboration, which was extremely important to me, and then being alone. Make of that what you will! — David Toop

The truth of the matter is one knows what it's like being the president. Not I, nor any president to come hence. This is because life, thankfully, offers deeper quandaries. While in office, I would often wake up in a daze, wondering how I could wiggle my toes without even thinking it so, or why hair grows only on certain places and not our entire bodies, or why we aren't completely bald, or why we must close our eyes and sleep every night, or any of the millions of particulars of daily existence, let alone that I was elected the leader of an entire nation. — George Washington

30 cents, two transfers, love
Thinking hard about you
I got on the bus
and paid 30 cents car fare
and asked the driver for two transfers
before discovering
that I was
alone. — Richard Brautigan

This work is the link between my Dear Natalie piece and my upcoming Agatha work. It bridges that lapse in time and shows how my thinking has changed. It shows me telling a story through the surreal and trying to use thought fragments alone to show a tortured existence. This piece was written after the Dear Natalies and before the Agatha mystery, but it is meant to be read after you've already read both.
This book is a bridge between two books, which would make it a bridge between two bridges. That's strange, but I've seen stranger. Like the time I woke up in a fish tank, having morphed into a goldfish during my sleep. I still fear the sound of a flushing toilet, and since then I refuse to let myself fall asleep while wearing flippers.
This book is 3,088 words of pure nonsense, strung together like pearls hurled at bacon. Yum! — Jarod Kintz

Christ want to point this out and to warn His followers that in the world everyone should live as though he were alone and should consider His Word and preaching as the very greatest thing on earth, thinking this way to himself: I see my neighbor and the whole city, and yes the whole world, living differently. All those who are great or noble or rich, the princes and the lords, are allied with it. Nevertheless I have an ally who is greater than all of them, namely, Christ and His Word. When I am all alone, therefore, I am still not alone. Because I have the Word of God, I have Christ with me, together with all the dear angels and all the saints since the beginning of the world. Actually there is a bigger crowd and a more glorious procession surrounding me than there could be in the whole world now. Only I cannot see it with my eyes, and I have to watch and bear the offense of having so many people forsake me or live and act in opposition to me. — Martin Luther

I lay there with my mind running amuck, on the brink of madness. And somehow, gradually, early Sunday morning, I became calm. I can't think of any other word for it. I was thinking about the beach poem again, and I started to feel that I was being looked after, that everything was OK. It was strange: if there was ever a time in my life when I had the right to feel alone this was it. But I lost that sense of loneliness. I felt like there was a force in the room with me, not a person, but I had a sense that there was another world, another dimension, and it would be looking after me. It was like, This isn't the only world, this is just one aspect of the whole thing, don't imagine this is all there is. — John Marsden

A depressed person is selfish because her self, the very core of who she is, will not leave her alone, and she can no more stop thinking about this self and how to escape it than a prisoner held captive by a sadistic serial killer can forget about the person who comes in to torture her everyday. Her body is brutalized by her mind. — Stacy Pershall

My thoughts drift to Brittany. I've tried to forget Brittany will be going with someone else to the Halloween dance. I heard she was going with her old boyfriend. I try to push out of my mind the fact that another guy will have his hands on her.
Her date will kiss her tonight, I'm sure of it. Who wouldn't want to kiss those sweet, soft, frosted lips?
I'm going to work tonight until I have to leave for the deal. Because if I was home alone, I'd go nuts thinking about everything.
My grip on the riveter in my hand loosens and it drops smack in the middle of my forehead. I don't get pissed off at myself, I blame Brittany. And by eight o'clock I'm as angry as anything with my little chem partner, whether it's warranted or not. — Simone Elkeles

No One Is Alone by Stephen Sondheim is all about thinking for yourself and being your own person. — Bernadette Peters

Where students talk about being independent and on their own, you will find them practicing the most rigid conformity in dress, in speech, in moral attitudes, and in thinking. Sometimes they follow fashion at the expense of integrity. They dread to be alone. They do not want to stand out or be different. They want to conform. After they graduate from college, many of these young people want nothing more than a good job with a big firm, and a home somewhere in suburbia. But they don't find security. — Billy Graham

There are people whose society I find delicious; but when I sit alone and think of them I shudder. — Logan Pearsall Smith

I don't know how long I sat there without moving, thinking, or breathing. It probably wasn't as long as it felt, because the building where I sat had not crumbled into dust, and the sun had not turned cold and fallen from the sky. But it was still a very long time before a single jagged thought managed to penetrate the cold and empty vault between my ears, and when it finally did register I still couldn't do any more than take a large and sharp breath and let that thought echo around all alone. Closer — Jeff Lindsay

Understanding is very different from knowing. Understanding is a psychological process of perceiving an object through reason. It is, in a sense, conceptualizing an object. But an object cannot be fully comprehended by conceptual understanding alone. Knowing is not thinking artificially or mobilizing rational logic. It is a state in which you come to obviously and plainly know, without trying to get it right. — Ilchi Lee

But don't go thinking that I'm critical of you, Anton, because really I'm not. Not a bit! It's just that you're not here. I'm alone and I'm frightened and you're not here. And you're not ever going to be here for me. — Bette Greene

I don't think of myself as "a lesbian musician." It's not one and alone. I think of myself as a musician. — Michelle Chamuel

The only remedy for bad habits is counter habits; all the bad habits that have left their impressions are to be controlled by good habits. Go on doing good, thinking holy thoughts continuously; that is the only way to suppress base impressions. Never say any man is hopeless, because he only represents a character, a bundle of habits, which can be checked by new and better ones. Character is repeated habits, and repeated habits alone can reform character. — Swami Vivekananda

They gathered after mass, sang hymns and read. Everyone had grown even more serene; beneath the sisters' kerchiefs it was as if there were no faces. When they met Daryushka - it was as if they bowed down lower. She was walking in the Spirit.

Daryushka was entirely serene. She was thinking of nothing, had turned within herself, peering inside; and inside her all was smiling ever so gently.

After the storm clear days came, frosty, crackling, clear days. Snow and sky, snow and sky, and the sky was even brighter, whiter, from the snow - and the snow sparkled with blue fires from the sky.

Daryushka went down to the river with buckets, to the ice-hole. She went down to the landing alone... Snow, and sky, and brilliance...

("He Has Descended") — Zinaida Gippius

A large house left deserted by those who have filled its rooms with emotions and life, expresses a silence, a quality all its own. A house unfurnished and empty seems less impressively silent. The fact of its devoidness of sound is upon the whole more natural. But carpets accustomed to the pressure of constantly passing feet, chairs and sofas which have held human warmth, draperies used to the touch of hands drawing them aside to let in daylight, pictures which have smiled back at thinking eyes, mirrors which have reflected faces passing hourly in changing moods, elate or dark or longing, walls which have echoed back voices - all these things when left alone seem to be held in strange arrest, as if by some spell intensifying the effect of the pause in their existence. — Frances Hodgson Burnett

Individuality, family, and community are, by definition, expressions of singular organization, never of "one-right-way" thinking on the grand scale. Children and families need some relief from government surveillance and intimidation if original expressions belonging to THEM are to develop. Without these freedom has no meaning. — John Taylor Gatto

When I'm in turmoil, when I can't think, when I'm exhausted and afraid and feeling very, very alone, I go for walks. It's just one of those things I do. I walk and I walk and sooner or later something comes to me, something to make me feel less like jumping off a building. — Jim Butcher

One day, one of my teachers at the Abbey asked me what I did on my [5]free afternoons when I was alone. I told her I went behind my bed in an empty space which was there, and that it was easy to close myself in with my bed curtain and that "I thought." "But what do you think about?" she asked. "I think about God, about life, about ETERNITY ... I think!" The good religious laughed heartily at me, and later on she loved reminding me of the [10]time when I thought, asking me if I was still thinking. I understand now that I was making mental prayer without knowing it and that God was already instructing me in secret. — Therese De Lisieux

My mom taught me a lot. A lot about minding your own business and leaving other people's business alone. And let them think what they want. — Ray Charles

It hardly needs explaining at length, I think, how much authority or beauty is added to style by the timely use of proverbs. In the first place who does not see what dignity they confer on style by their antiquity alone? ... And so to interweave adages deftly and appropriately is to make the language as a whole glitter with sparkles from Antiquity, please us with the colours of the art of rhetoric, gleam with jewel-like words of wisdom, and charm us with titbits of wit and humour. — Desiderius Erasmus

Some people just need to read and think, to spend time alone sorting through the stories in their heads — Ronald T. Potter-Efron

There was only today to throw yourself into without thinking about tomorrow, let alone forever. To keep you from thinking, there was liquor, an ocean's worth at least, all the usual vices and plenty of rope to hang yourself with. Love is a beautiful liar. — Paula McLain

There she is, lying in front of me, smoking a cigarette, thinking of something or someone else. And that's how she is stuck in my mind forever.
We are two explorers in the dark. Mapless and hopeless. Alone together. — Pete Wentz

Always get to the set or the location early, so that you can be all alone and draw your inspiration for the blocking and the setups in private and quiet. In one sense, it's about protecting yourself; in another sense, it's about always being open to surprise, even from the set, because there may be some detail that you hadn't noticed. I think this is crucial. There are many pictures that seem good in so many ways except one: They lack a sense of surprise, they've never left the page. — Martin Scorsese

As if any one believed anything by instinct! One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them. Finding bad reasons for what one believes for other bad reasons - that's philosophy. People believe in God because they've been conditioned to believe in God.'
'But all the same,' insisted the Savage, 'it is natural to believe in God when you're alone - quite alone, in the night, thinking about death ... '
'But people are never alone now,' said Mustapha Mond. 'We make them hate solitude; and we arrange their lives so that it's almost impossible for them to ever to have it. — Aldous Huxley

There is only one answer to this: the ancients, with a few illustrious exceptions, entirely lacked the capacity to concentrate their interest on the transformations of inanimate matter and to reproduce the natural process artificially, by which means alone they could have gained control of the forces of nature. What they lacked was training in directed thinking.15 The secret of cultural development is the mobility and disposability of psychic energy. Directed thinking, as we know it today, is a more or less modern acquisition which earlier ages lacked. — C. G. Jung

While she was saying this, I was thinking, We just finished the freakin' Egypt project, now we have to start a whole new thing? And then in my head I was going, Oh noooooo! like that kid in Home Alone with his mouth hanging open and his hands on his face. That was the face I was making on the inside. And then I thought of those pictures of melting ghost faces I've seen somewhere, where the mouths are open wide and they're screaming. — R.J. Palacio

Many of us spend long minutes in the aisle of the drugstore mulling over what toothpaste to buy. Yet most of us don't spend any time at all thinking about what species of animal we eat and why. Our choices as consumers drive an industry that kills ten billion* animals per year in the United States alone. If we choose to support this industry and the best reason we can come up with is because it's the way things are, clearly something is amiss. — Melanie Joy

Mostly writing requires massive dedication, a whole lot of time spent alone, way too much sitting, countless hours spent thinking hard, and unending and occasionally painful dedication to forming ideas and laboring over the production of sentences, paragraphs, scenes, dialogue, punctuation, and all the elements that go into writing a novel, a play, a screenplay, or a poem. When we're not writing, we're thinking, plotting, imagining, or editing, which can be far more tedious than cranking out first drafts.
--Fire Up Your Writing Brain — Susan Reynolds

Expose yourself to aloneness. When a person is left alone, he starts thinking of higher reality - about death, life, soul, God and the mystery of all. — Chinmayananda Saraswati

My business is to be talented, that is, to be capable of selecting the important moments from the trivial ones ... It's about time for writers - particularly those who are genuine artists - to recognize that in this world you cannot figure out everything. Just have a writer who the crowds trust be courageous enough and declare that he does not understand everything, and that alone will represent a major contribution to the way people think, a long leap forward. — Anton Chekhov

He was alone with his thoughts. They were extremely unpleasant thoughts and he would rather have had a chaperon. — Douglas Adams

I decided to start anew-to strip away what I had been taught, to accept as true my own thinking. This was one of the best times of my life. There was no one around to look at what I was doing, no one interested, no one to say anything about it one way or another. I was alone and singularly free, working into my own, unknown-no one to satisfy but myself. I began with charcoal and paper and decided not to use any color until it was impossible to do what I wanted to do in black and white. I believe it was June before I needed blue. — Georgia O'Keeffe

After the first glass of absinthe you see things as you wish they were. After the second you see them as they are not. Finally you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world. I mean disassociated. Take a top hat. You think you see it as it really is. But you don't because you associate it with other things and ideas.If you had never heard of one before, and suddenly saw it alone, you'd be frightened, or you'd laugh. That is the effect absinthe has, and that is why it drives men mad. Three nights I sat up all night drinking absinthe, and thinking that I was singularly clear-headed and sane. The waiter came in and began watering the sawdust.The most wonderful flowers, tulips, lilies and roses, sprang up, and made a garden in the cafe. "Don't you see them?" I said to him. "Mais non, monsieur, il n'y a rien. — Oscar Wilde

Thinking that it would console him, she took a piece of charcoal and erased the innumerable loves that he still owed her for, and she voluntarily brought up her own most solitary sadnesses so as not to leave him alone in his weeping. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Everything we think of as great has come to us from neurotics. It is they and they alone who found religions and create great works of art. The world will never realize how much it owes to them and what they have suffered in order to bestow their gifts on it. — Marcel Proust

When you're alone and you feel sad, try reading a book. Try touching someone's heart. Try to imagine what they were thinking, what they wanted to convey. If you do that, you might get something amazing. — Mizuki Nomura