Quotes & Sayings About Learning To Be Alone

This time Elizabeth Ann didn't answer, because she herself didn't know what the matter was. But I do, and I'll tell you. The matter was that never before had she known what she was doing in school. She had always thought she was there to pass from one grade to another, and she was ever so startled to get a little glimpse of the fact that she was there to learn how to read and write and cipher and generally use her mind, so she could take care of herself when she came to be grown up. Of course, she didn't really know that till she did come to be grown up, but she had her first dim notion of it in that moment, and it made her feel the way you do when you're learning to skate and somebody pulls away the chair you've been leaning on and says, "Now, go it alone! — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

I hoped my solitude would help me reclaim my innocence, remember who I'd been, to find who I wanted to be. To become her. To love her, Deborah, Debby, Doll Girl, Wild Child, me, despite the irreversible truth that I'd been raped. I was learning again that I could trust myself and, also, I was seeing, other people. I was brave enough now to go out alone towards what I wanted, to trust that I was strong enough for it, to know that help would come when I needed it. It always came. — Aspen Matis

In adopting these attitudes and practices, a parent will accomplish a large part of educating a child for responsibility. And yet, example alone is not enough. A sense of responsibility is attained by each child through his or her own efforts and experience. While the parents' example creates the favorable attitude and climate for learning, specific experiences consolidate the learning to make it part of the child's character. Therefore, it is important to give specific responsibilities to children matched to their different levels of maturity. In most homes children present problems, but parents find the solutions. If children are to mature, they must be given the opportunity to solve their own problems. — Haim G. Ginott

Our guns were still strapped onto our backs, because a gun meant life. Without it there was no life in the LRA. After crossing the water and walking for a long time, there was a whisper in my heart, telling me that if we kept the guns we would get killed.

I was learning to listen to this gentle voice that spoke to my heart. This time what was said was hard to accept. I didn't know how I would convince my friends to throw away what seemed to be their last hope. The voice would not leave me alone. It continued to whisper in my ears to drop the guns. — Grace Akallo

I wonder if the real measure of "home" is the degree to which you can leave it alone. Maybe appreciating a house means knowing when to stop decorating. Maybe you've never really lived there until you've thrown its broken pieces in the garbage. Maybe learning how to be out in the big world isn't the epic journey everyone thinks it is. Maybe that's actually the easy part. The hard part is what's right in front of you. The hard part is learning how to hold the title to your very existence, to own not only property, but also your life. The hard part is learning not just how to be but mastering the nearly impossible art of how to be at home. — Meghan Daum

But what if I make a mistake?' Will asked.
Gilan threw back his head and laughed. 'A mistake? One mistake? You should be so lucky. You'll make dozens! I made four or five on my first day alone! Of course you'll make mistakes. Just don't make any of them twice. If you do mess things up, don't try to hide it. Don't try to rationalize it. Recognize it and admit it and learn from it. We never stop learning, none of us. — John Flanagan

I will forever walk alone in a world overflowing with those that will never understand my meaning of "Learning to See" I'm always teaching myself to see beauty in all aspects of reality, yearning to learn the beauty in others, from their vision of everyday life to their deepest secrets of their dreams. As the sun rises I must smile, smile for those with the beautiful mind and soul. I'm so passionate for the visions I see, and the dreams I wish the world could be. — Michael Jones

We could use up two Eternities in learning all that is to be learned about our own world and the thousands of nations that have arisen and flourished and vanished from it. Mathematics alone would occupy me eight million years. — Mark Twain

As you can imagine, I have a deeply personal interest in people learning to at least be tolerant of homosexuals. My life depends on it. And as I wish to be left alone, I realize it is not in my interest to interfere with how other people choose to lead their lives, or raise their children. All totalitarian arguments that restrict people's freedom have been based in the "it's best for everyone" framework. — Tammy Bruce

What I'm trying to say is that I spent the last four months learning to be alone, avoiding the world, hating pretty much anyone who so much as blinked at me. But when I am with you, I don't want to be that person anymore. — Andrea Cremer

We're not alone
at least, we're alone only if we choose to be alone. We're alone only if we choose to go through life relying solely on our own strength rather than learning to draw upon the power of God. — Sheri Dew

Each one of us has some goal we want to reach, and we must work toward that goal one step at a time. You can't reach toward that goal and expect it on the first try. All your small steps will bring you just a little closer. You must continue to work toward this goal. You may take a few steps back or be at a standstill, but you will be learning from each step. Through hard work, self-confidence and motivation, you will find ways to move ahead. You alone can help yourself to move ahead in life and gain personal satisfaction. You only get out of life what you put into it. — Sid Luckman

But come, hear my words, for truly learning causes the mind to grow. For as I said before in declaring the ends of my words: Twofold is the truth I shall speak; for at one time there grew to be the one alone out of many, and at another time it separated so that there were many out of the one; fire and water and earth and boundless height of air, and baneful Strife apart from these, balancing each of them, and Love among them, their equal in length and breadth. — Empedocles

Sometimes it all becomes too much. Your body and mind will just give way. Part of you may want to blissfully fade into nothing, but you never do. After a while all the memories and emotions make you shut down but never fully disappear - it's safer for you this way, to be excluded. It's a time to be alone, to heal, and to find yourself. It doesn't mean you've given up or stopped trying; it just means you know what's best for you.
Breathing is medicine. I forgot how to breathe, but I'm learning all over again. — Mandi Lynn

Part of my joy in learning is that it puts me in a position to teach; nothing, however outstanding and however helpful, will ever give me any pleasure if the knowledge is to be for my benefit alone. — Seneca.

I am learning how to be alone without being lonely; I am learning how to be lonely without losing my mind. — Paul Baribeau

Not literature alone, but society itself is wormed and rotten when language ceases to be respected not merely by advertisers and politicians, but by persons of learning and authority. — Storm Jameson

I've been having a lot of dance parties alone in my apartment while learning to cook. Part of my quest to be an attractive single is to learn how to cook and sew and get a license. — Sara Quin

The answer you seek lies in learning to combine the power of reason with the passion of emotion. If you let reason alone control your choices, you lose the power of intuition. If you let emotion control your choices, you will be a slave to every minor tragedy. — Roy Huff

The pathetic superstition prevails that by knowing more and more facts one arrives at knowledge of reality. Hundreds of scattered and unrelated facts are dumped into the heads of students; their time and energy are taken up by learning more and more facts so that there is little left for thinking. To be sure, thinking without a knowledge of facts remains empty and fictitious; but "information" alone can be just as much of an obstacle to thinking as the lack of it. — Erich Fromm

Over the years I suffered poverty and rejection and came to believe that my mother had formed me for a freedom that was unattainable, a delusion. Then ... I was ... confined to this small apartment in this alien city of Rochester. ... Looking about, I saw millions of old people in my situation, wailing like lost puppies because they were alone and had no one to talk to. But they had become enslaved by habits which bound their lives to warm bodies that talked. I was free! Although my mother had ceased to be a warm body in 1944, she had not forsaken me. She comforts me with every book I read. Once again I am five, leaning on her shoulder, learning the words as she reads aloud 'Alice in Wonderland'. — Louise Brooks

The purpose of college, to put this all another way, is to turn adolescents into adults. You needn't go to school for that, but if you're going to be there anyway, then that's the most important thing to get accomplished. That is the true education: accept no substitutes. The idea that we should take the first four years of young adulthood and devote them to career preparation alone, neglecting every other part of life, is nothing short of an obscenity. If that's what people had you do, then you were robbed. And if you find yourself to be the same person at the end of college as you were at the beginning - the same beliefs, the same values, the same desires, the same goals for the same reasons - then you did it wrong. Go back and do it again. — William Deresiewicz

Like jilted and disappointed lovers, some of my students just want to be left alone. — Kirsten Olson

I thought that if I owned nothing, had nothing, was nothing, I would have nothing left to lose, and I wouldn't be scared anymore. Because my whole life I've been so damn scared. Scared to live because I was scared to die. But at the same I was so scared of living, so I wanted to die. Or maybe so scared of dying that I refused to live. You don't have to be afraid to fall, when you're already on the ground. You don't have to be scared to lose someone, when there's no one around to lose. — Charlotte Eriksson

The only real progress lies in learning to be wrong all alone. — Albert Camus

I'm learning so many different ways to be quiet. There's how I stand in the lawn, that's one way. There's also how I stand in the field across from the street, that's another way because I'm farther from people and therefore more likely to be alone. There's how I don't answer the phone, and how I sometimes like to lie down on the floor in the kitchen and pretend I'm not home when people knock. There's daytime silent where I stare, and a nighttime silent when I do things. There's shower silent and bath silent and California silent and Kentucky silent and car silent and then there's the silence that comes back, a million times bigger than me, sneaks into my bones and wails and wails and wails until I can't be quiet anymore. That's how this machine works. — Ada Limon

I received comments on how extraordinary it was that I could keep up speaking for exactly 45 minutes. Indeed, in an age of soundbites lasting some seconds and of quick quotes in the news, all those minutes do seem like an eternity, easy to get lost in. Yet, wait a moment. Television is not the only place where speeches are given. Some hundred thousand teachers teach every day. They all speak 45 minutes, more times a day. They have been doing this for years. Every teacher knows exactly when the time will be over and that by then his speech will need to come to a natural end. It is this tension that determines the success of a lesson. It is a sign of the times that we forget these daily achievements in education. A million students daily attend several 'live' lectures and this in secondary education alone. These are high ratings! — Robbert Dijkgraaf

Men of learning in Milan have not enjoyed proper respect. They hid themselves in their laboratories and thought themselves lucky if ... priests left them alone. All is changed today. Thought in Italy is free. Inquisition, intolerance, despots have vanished. I invite scholars to meet and propose what must be done to give science and the arts a new flowering. — Napoleon Bonaparte

As the taste for what may be called book-learning increases, manual labor should not be neglected. The education of the mind and the education of the body should go hand in hand. A skillful brain should be joined with a skillful hand. Manual labor should be dignified among us and always be made honorable. The tendency, which is too common in these days, for young men to get a smattering of education and then think themselves unsuited for mechanical or other laborious pursuits is one that should not be allowed to grow among us ... Every one should make it a matter of pride to be a producer, and not a consumer alone. Our children should be taught to sustain themselves by their own industry and skill, and not only do this, but to help sustain others, and that to do this by honest toil is one of the most honorable means which God has furnished to His children here on earth. The subject of the proper education of the youth of Zion is one of the greatest importance. — Wilford Woodruff

Learning is not to be tacked to the mind, but we must fuse and blend them together, not merely giving the mind a slight tincture, but a thorough and perfect dye. And if we perceive no evident change and improvement, it would be better to leave it alone; learning is a dangerous weapon, and apt to wound its master if it be wielded by a feeble hand, and by one not well acquainted with its use. — Michel De Montaigne

Self-will means believing that you alone have all the answers. Letting go of self-will means becoming willing to hold still, be open, and wait for guidance for yourself. It means learning to let go of fear (all of the "what ifs") and despair (all of the "if onlys") and replacing them with positive thoughts and statements about your life. — Robin Norwood

We have been taught to keep the commandments, and we have kept them all too well. We have enshrined them like religious relics in sealed containers on the altar. Thus, it could be said that one lives by the commandments in much the same way as many persons live by a neighbor, never learning his name, let alone having any understanding communication with him. — Eric Butterworth

He could be alone with her, but it was difficult learning to be alone without her. — Keith Donohue

To be lovingly present through the primal, naked pain that marks aspects of birth, and to be lovingly present through the difficult, heart-wrenching ending that marks aspects of death is to learn about life and love. Fear may be strong but love is stronger. Learning how to love includes learning how to make room for and transform fear. Learning how to live involves learning how to die. Love alone is the most potent power illuminating the breath's journey in between these thresholds. Love is the key. Love is the dance. — Amy Wright

A stranger can see in an instant something in you that you might spend years learning about yourself. How awful we all are when we look at ourselves under a light, finally seeing our reflections. How little we know about ourselves. How much forgiveness it must take to love a person, to choose not to see their flaws, or to see those flaws and love the person anyway. If you never forgive you'll always be alone. — Stephen Elliott

Everybody possesses knowledge and experience that is considered to be unique to them alone; therefore, everyone has something to learn from everyone else. — C W Newman

To believe is to commit. In the area of intellectual learning I commit myself mentally, and reject anything not related to that belief. In the realm of personal belief I commit myself morally to my convictions and refuse to compromise. But in intimate personal belief I commit myself spiritually to Jesus Christ and make a determination to be dominated by Him alone. — Oswald Chambers