Being alone makes us stronger. That’s the honest truth. But it’s cold comfort, since even if I wanted company no one will come near me anymore.
Interpretation
Being alone can foster inner strength, but it also highlights the pain of solitude.
This quote reflects on the paradox of solitude; while it can fortify an individual’s resilience and independence, it can also lead to deep feelings of loneliness and isolation. The speaker acknowledges the strength gained from being alone, yet simultaneously expresses a longing for companionship that has seemingly vanished. This duality captures the complex emotional landscape of human experience, where personal growth often comes at the cost of connection with others.
In practice
In a speech about personal growth, this quote can illustrate how solitude can build resilience.
Coincidence obeys no laws and if it does we don't know what they are. Coincidence, if you'll permit me the simile, is like the manifestation of God at every moment on our planet. A senseless God making senseless gestures at his senseless creatures. In that hurricane, in that osseous implosion, we find communion.
The sky, at sunset, looked like a carnivorous flower.
I'd obviously never heard of the group, but my ignorance in literary matters is to blame for that (every book in the world is out there waiting to be read by me).
Every book in the world is out there waiting to be read by me.
Bright colours in the west, giant butterflies dancing as night crept like a cripple toward the east.
Of all the islands he'd visited, two stood out. The island of the past, he said, where the only time was past time and the inhabitants were bored and more or less happy, but where the weight of illusion was so great that the island sank a little deeper into the river every day. And the island of the future, where the only time was the future, and the inhabitants were planners and strivers, such strivers, said Ulises, that they were likely to end up devouring one another.
I always adhered to the idea that God is time, or at least that His spirit is.
An admiral without ships, a hand without fingers, in service of a king without a throne. Is this a knight who comes before us, or the answer to a child's riddle?
To write the lives of the great in separating them from their works necessarily ends by above all stressing their pettiness, because it is in their work that they have put the best of themselves.
Sometimes human places, create inhuman monsters.
Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.
I recall drinking sherry in California and dreaming of England, where I ate dalmoth and dreamed of Delhi. What is the purpose, I wonder, of all this restlessness? I sometimes seem to myself to wander around the world merely accumulating material for future nostalgias.
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