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alone quotes

  •    Yes! in the sea of life enisled, With echoing straits between us thrown, Dotting the shoreless watery wild, We mortal millions live alone.

    - Matthew Arnold
      Empedocles on Etna and Other Poems,'To MargueriteContinued', l.1^4.

  • This truthto prove, and make thine own: 'Thou hast been, shalt be, art, alone.'

    - Matthew Arnold
      'Isolation. To Marguerite', l.29-30.

  •    There is no such thing as the State And no one exists alone; Hunger allows no choice To the citizen or the police; We must love one another or die.

    -W(ystan) H(ugh) Auden
      'September1,1939'.

  • Encased in talent like a uniform, The rank of every poet is well known; They can amaze us like a thunderstorm, Or die so young, or live for years alone.

    -W(ystan) H(ugh) Auden
      'The Novelist'.

  • Never to be bored, never to be frustrated, never to be alone.

    - GeorgeWildman Ball
    Defining what  John F Kennedy wanted from the presidency. President Kennedy (1993).

  • Apre'  s le rare bonheur de trouver une compagne qui nous soit bien assortie, l'e  tat le moins malheureux de la vie est sans doute de vivre seul. After the rare happiness of finding a companion with whom we are well matched, the least unpleasant state of life is without doubt to live alone.

    -Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre
      Paul et Virginie.

  • And theL Godsaid,It isnot good thatthemanshould be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    ORDGenesis 2:18.

  • Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Ecclesiastes 4:9^10.

  • What is the worst of woes that wait on age? What stamps the wrinkle deeper on the brow? To view each loved one blotted from life's page, And be alone on earth, as I am now.

    -Rochdale
    ^18  Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, canto 2, stanza 98.

  • All we ask is to be let alone.

    -Jefferson Davis
    Inaugural address,18 Feb.

  • What is hell? Hell is oneself, Hell is alone, the other figures in it Merely projections. There is nothing to escape from And nothing to escape to.One is always alone.

    -T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot
      The Cocktail Party, act1, sc.3.

  • I want to be alone.

    - Greta pseudonym of  Greta Lovisa Gustafsson Garbo
       The media have famously attributed these words to Garbo although she always denied she said them. In the film Grand Hotel (1932) Grusinskaya (playedby Garbo) says'I want to be left alone'.

  • Ach da ich irrte, hatt' ich viel Gespielen, Da ich dich kenne, bin ich fast allein. Ah! while I erred I had many friends. Now that I know you, I am alone.

    -JohannWolfgang von Goethe
    Gedichte, Zuneigung (published1910).

  • Self-respect†comes to us when we are alone, in quiet moments in quiet places when we suddenly realize that, knowing the good, we have done it; knowing the

    - Alfred Whitney Griswold
    Soviet  politician,  notorious  for  his   austere  and  humourless demeanour.   As   Foreign   Minister   (1957^85)   he   influenced Soviet relations with theWest during the ColdWar. President in 1985, he was replaced by Gorbachev.

  • As you walk through the storm, Hold your head up high, And don't be afraid of the dark, At the end of the storm, Is a golden sky, And the sweet silver song of the lark, Walk on through the wind, Walk on through the rain, Though your dreams be tossed and blown. Walk on, walk on, With hope in your hearts, And you'll never walk alone, You'll never walk alone.

    - Oscar, II Hammerstein
      Carousel,'You'll NeverWalk Alone' (music by Richard Rodgers). The song was subsequently released in a pop version by Gerry and the Pacemakers in1963 and adopted as a club song by Liverpool football club.

  • 'A man†ain't got no hasn't got any can't really isn't any way out† One man alone ain't got†no chance.

    - Ernest Millar Hemingway
      Harry Morgan's dying words. To Have and Have Not.

  • The stroke of midnight ceases, And I lie down alone.

    - A(lfred) E(dward) Housman
      More Poems, no.11.

  • If a man does not make new acquaintance as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone. A man, Sir, should keep his friendship in constant repair.

    - Samuel known as Dr Johnson Johnson
      Quoted in  James Boswell The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), vol.1.

  • Er l a« chelte und sagte: 'Von mir willst du denWeg erfahren?' 'Ja,'sagte ich,'da ich ihn selbst nich finden kann.' 'Gibs auf, gibs auf,'sagte er und wandte sich mit einem groÞen Schwunge ab, so wie Leute, die mit ihrem Lachen allein sein wollen. Hesmiled and said: 'Youasking metheway?' 'Yes,'Isaid, 'since I cannot find it myself.' 'Give it up! Give it up!'said he, and turned with a sudden jerk, like someone who wants to be alone with his laughter.

    - Franz Kafka
    'Gibs  Auf!', collected in Nahum N Glatzer (ed)  The Complete Stories (1971).

  • Oh what can ail thee, knight at arms, Alone and palely loitering; The sedge has wither'd from the lake, And no birds sing.

    -John Keats
      'La Belle Dame Sans Merci', stanza1.

  • 'Oh Mary, go and call the cattle home, And call the cattle home, And call the cattle home, Across the sands of Dee.' The western wind was wild and dank with foam, And all alone went she.

    - Charles Kingsley
      Alton Locke, ch.26,'The Sands of Dee'.

  • Down to Gehenna or up to theThrone, He travels fastest who travels alone.

    - (Joseph) Rudyard Kipling
      The Story of the Gadsbys,'L'Envoi'. The poem was later renamed 'The Winners' (1912).

  • But wherefore thou alone? Wherefore with thee Came not all hell broke loose?

    -John Milton
      Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.4, l.917^18.

  • In art one is usually totally alone with oneself.

    - Paula ne  e Becker Modersohn-Becker
      Diary entry, Paris,18 Nov, quoted in Gillian Perry Paula Modersohn-Becker (1979).

  • For the present at any rate, I must proceed alone. I must plough my own furrow alonebut before I get to the end of that furrow, it is possible that I may not find myself alone.

    - Archibald Philip Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery
    On breaking from the Liberal Party, Jul.

  • On est un peu seul dans le de  sert. On est seul aussi chez les hommes. One is a little bit alone in the desert. One is also alone among others.

    - Antoine de Saint-Exupe  ry
      Le Petit Prince.

  • Alone† The word is life endured and known. It is the stillness where our spirits walk And all but inmost faith is overthrown.

    - Siegfried Louvain Sassoon
      The Heart'sJourney, pt.11,'''When I'm alone''the words tripped off his tongue'.

  • An Irishman's imagination never lets him alone, never convinces him, never satisfies him; but it makes him that he can't face reality nor deal with it nor handle it nor conquer it: he can only sneer at them that do, and be 'agreeable to strangers', like a good-for-nothing woman on the streets.

    - George Bernard Shaw
      Larry Doyle toTom Broadbent. John Bull's Other Island, act1.

  • Society needs first of all to be free from meddlersthat is, to be let alone.

    -William Graham Sumner
    Attributed.

  • I cannot rest from travel: I will drink Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades Vext the dim sea: I am become a name; For always roaming with a hungry heart Much have I seen and known; cities of men And manners, climates, council, governments, Myself not least, but honoured of them all; And drunk delight of battle with my peers, Far on the ringing plains of windyTroy. I am part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades For ever and for ever when I move. How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnished, not to shine in use! As though to breathe were life.

    -Tennyson
      Poems,'Ulysses' (published1842), l.6^24.

  • Alone until she dies,Bessie Bighead, hired help, born in the workhouse, smelling of the cowshed, snores bass and gruff on a couch of straw in a loft in Salt Lake Farm and picks a posy of daisies in Sunday Meadow to put on the grave of Gomer Owen who kissed her once by the pig-sty when she wasn't looking and never kissed her again although she was looking all the time.

    - Dylan Marlais Thomas
      Under MilkWood.

  • Dieu cre  a l'homme, et ne le trouvant pas assez seul, il lui donne une compagne pour lui faire mieux sentir sa solitude. God created man and, finding him not sufficientlyalone, gave him a companion to make him feel his solitude more keenly.

    - Paul Vale  ry
    Tel Quel1,'Moralite  s'.

  • But there comes a time in everybody's life when he must decide whether he'll live among human beings or nota fool among fools or a fool alone.

    -Thornton Niven Wilder
      The Matchmaker, act 4.

  • I love to be envied, and would not marry a wife that I alone could love; loving alone is as dull as eating alone.

    -William Wycherley
      The CountryWife, act 3, sc.2.

  • I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made: Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade. And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; There midnight's all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow, And evening full of the linnet's wings.

    -W(illiam) B(utler) Yeats
      'The Lake Isle of Innisfree', stanzas1^2. Collected in The Rose (1893).

Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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