Quotes to inspire and reflect

There are places and moments in which one is so completely alone that one sees the world entire.

You and I possess manifold ideal bonds in the interests we share; but each of us has his poor body and his irremediable, incommunicable dreams.

There are some solitary wretches who seem to have left the rest of mankind, only, as Eve left Adam, to meet the devil in private.

We are fools to depend upon the society of our fellow-men. Wretched as we are, powerless as we are, they will not aid us; we shall die alone.

A solitary, unused to speaking of what he sees and feels, has mental experiences which are at once

Nature has presented us with a large faculty of entertaining ourselves alone; and often calls us to it, to teach us that we owe ourselves in part to society, but chiefly and mostly to ourselves.

Solitude is bearable only with God.

What a commentary on our civilization, when being alone is considered suspect; when one has to apologize for it, make excuses, hide the fact that one practices it—like a secret vice!

When you have shut your doors and darkened your room, remember, never to say that you are alone; for you are not alone, but God is within, and your genius is within.

We never touch but at points.

It is sometimes advantageous to be unseen, although it is most often rather wearing on the nerves.

Isolation must precede true society.

If from society we learn to live, / Tis Solitude should teach us how to die; / It hath no flatterers.

To fly from, need not be to hate, mankind: / All are not fit with them to stir and toil, / Nor is it discontent to keep the mind / Deep in its fountain.

To get into the best society nowadays, one has either to feed people, amuse people, or shock people.

Those that want friends to open themselves unto are cannibals of their own hearts.

To be in it [society] is merely a bore. But to be out of it simply a tragedy.

Teas, / Where small talk dies in agonies.

There are people whom one should like very well to drop, but would not wish to be dropped by.

Human society is founded on mutual deceit; few friendships would endure if each knew what his friend said of him in his absence.

If all your clothes are worn to the same state, it means you go out too much.

Society is a more level surface than we imagine. Wise men or absolute fools are hard to be met with, as there are few giants or dwarfs.

The secret of success in society is a certain heartiness and sympathy.

Society is a masked ball, where every one hides his real character, and reveals it in hiding.

Society soon grows used to any state of things which is imposed upon it without explanation.

A great society is a society in which its men of business think greatly of their functions.

Nature holds no brief for the human experiment: it must stand or fall by its results.

Every social system is more or less against nature, and at every moment nature is at work to reclaim her rights.

Society itself is an accident to the spirit, and if society in any of its forms is to be justified morally it must be justified at the bar of the individual conscience.

What man loses by the social contract is his natural liberty and an unlimited right to everything he tries to get and succeeds in getting; what he gains is civil liberty and the proprietorship of all he possesses.

Necessity reconciles and brings men together; and this accidental connection afterward forms itself into laws.

In civilized communities men’s idiosyncrasies are mitigated by the necessity of conforming to certain rules of behaviour. Culture, is a mask that hides their faces.

Time and time again I have been persuaded that a huge potential of goodwill is slumbering within our society. It’s just that it's incoherent, suppressed, confused, crippled and perplexed.

In civilized society we all depend upon each other, and our happiness is very' much owing to the good opinion of mankind.

In the mouth of Society are many diseased teeth, decayed to the bones of the jaws. But Society makes no effort to have them extracted and be rid of the affliction. It contents itself with gold fillings.

Human life in common is only made possible when a majority comes together which is stronger than any separate individual and which remains united against all separate individuals.

The power that keeps cities of men together / Is noble preservation of law.

Society acquires new arts and loses old instincts.

Society is immoral and immortal; it can afford to commit any kind of folly, and indulge in any sort of vice; it cannot be killed, and the fragments that survive can always laugh at the dead.

No scheme for a change of society can be made to appear immediately palatable, except by falsehood, until society has become so desperate that it will accept any change.

What the collectivist age wants, allows, and approves is the perpetual holiday from the self.

Snobbishness, like hypocrisy, is a check upon behaviour whose value from a social point of view has been underrated.

Levellers wish to level down as far as themselves; but they cannot bear levelling up to themselves.

All the people like us are We, / And every one else is They.

Men hate the haughty of heart who will not be / the friend of every man.

There was a certain inner comfort in knowing he could knock down anybody who was snooty toward him, although, being very shy and a throughly nice boy, he never fought except in the gym.

Next to “I win,” “I told you so” are the sweetest words.

In Sleep we lie all naked and alone, in Sleep we are united at the heart of night and darkness, and we are strange and beautiful asleep; for we are dying in the darkness, and we know no death.