Quotes & Sayings About Preferring To Be Alone

As a functional Aspergian adult, one thing troubles me deeply about those kids who end up behind the second door. Many descriptions of autism and Asperger's describe people like me as "not wanting contact with others" or "preferring to play alone." I can't speak for other kids, but I'd like to be very clear about my own feelings: I did not ever want to be alone. And all those child psychologists who said "John prefers to play by himself" were dead wrong. I played by myself because I was a failure at playing with others. I was alone as a result of my own limitations, and being alone was one of the bitterest disappointments of my young life. — John Elder Robison

Had not the outrageous flair of Sybilla, and since George was a natural horseman it seemed almost inevitable that they should more often than not end up side by side, at some distance from the others. William never came, preferring to work at his painting, which was his profession as well as his vocation. He was gifted to the degree that his works were admired by academicians and collected by connoisseurs. Only Eustace affected to find it displeasing that his only son preferred to retire alone to the studio arranged for him in the conservatory and make use of the morning light, rather than parade on horseback for the fashionable world to admire. When they did not ride, they drove in the carriage, went shopping, paid calls upon their more intimate friends, or visited art galleries and exhibitions. — Anne Perry

Although we've been authoritatively informed that a majority of Americans support a "pathway to citizenship," approximately five hundred times in the last two years alone, according to a quick Nexis search,18 that is a lie. This is part of the media's campaign to convince Americans they're nuts for preferring not to turn America into Mexico. Polls are irrelevant if you lie to the people being polled. Poll: Do you support commonsense gun safety or are you against it? Headline: MAJORITY OF AMERICANS SUPPORT GUN CONTROL. But I hate gun control! Too late! You agreed to "commonsense gun safety" - that means gun control. — Ann Coulter

What all this tells me is that a large proportion of the people in positions of power across Australia - politicians and media pundits included - just don't consider the beating down of women to be of any consequence. Half the time they won't even acknowledge it, let alone take a stand against it, preferring instead to gaslight women and pretend it's all in their head. Are these the kinds of people we want making decisions for us? The ones who think mockery about women's genitals is bad when it targets no one in particular, but OK when it targets the Prime Minister? — Clementine Ford

Solitude is escapist. People who like being alone are running away from 'reality', refusing to make the effort to 'commit' to real life and live instead in a half-dream fantasy world. They should 'man up', get real, get a grip. But if social life is so natural, healthy and joyous as contemporary society insists, why would anyone be 'escaping' from it?
Solitude is antisocial. Well of course it is - that's the point. This argument is tautological. But 'antisocial' is a term that carries implicit rather than explicit moral condemnation; it is clearly a 'bad thing' without it being at all clear what it might mean. All this actually says is 'solitude is preferring to be alone rather than with others/me [the speaker] and I am hurt.' It is true, but is based on the assumption that being alone is self-evidently a bad thing, and being social is equally self-evidently a good thing. — Sara Maitland

GERTRUDE (1964) Three men-her husband, a poet, and a young musician-love her, but because none of them will put his love for her before everything else in his live, she rejects them all, preferring to live celibate in Paris and devote herself to the life of mind. In an epilogue, grown old and still alone, she speaks her epitaph: 'I have known love. — Steven Jay Schneider