Single person

“ What a hard case is mine!—Could I but doubt, I know I could conquer.—That which is an inducement to my friends, is none at all to me—How often, my dearest Aunt, must I repeat the same thing?—Let me but be single—Cannot I live single? ”

“ I might well desire to be joined by devout men in my prayers, to be mixed and incorporated with them, to escape standing alone before Thee and feeling my own solitariness, oneness, singleness of my own individual personal life. I might well desire to cast myself among a multitude, that I might be, as it were, a part of a multitude. But yet it is good for me to be alone, to feel that I am one, single, separate, responsible soul, who must in my own self live eternally. ”

“ Restless and lonely, shaken by your own moods, You are celibate and single, scorning a comrade even, Threshing your own passions with no woman for the threshing-floor, Finishing your dreams for your own sake only, Playing your great game around the world, alone, Without playmate, or helpmate, having no one to cherish, No one to comfort, and refusing any comforter. ”

“ Who shall say that these, and thousands of others of earth’s grandest souls, were not better for their single-heartedness in the service of humanity?
A writer in a leading journal recently said: “The fact that a woman remains single is a tribute to her perception. She gains an added dignity from being hard to suit.” ”

“ And mixed with his brooding thoughts came the consciousness of his own joyless, danger-fraught life, with the bitter, hopeless, lonely feeling that the single man past thirty knows so well, whose occupation, and more especially—means—place him without the pale of matrimony. ”

“ But I found that the crowd was made up of single human lives, not one of them wholly uninteresting, when separately known. I learned also that there are many things which belong to the whole world of us together, that no one of us, nor any few of us, can claim or enjoy for ourselves alone. ”

“ There was the paradisal entry into pure, single being, the individual soul taking precedence over love and desire for union, stronger than any pangs of emotion, a lovely state of free proud singleness, which accepted the obligation of the permanent connection with others, and with the other, submits to the yoke and leash of love, but never forfeits its own proud individual singleness, even while it loves and yields. ”

“ For the end, the goal, is the perfecting of each single individuality, unique in itself—which cannot take place without a perfected harmony between the beloved, a harmony which depends on the at-last-clarified singleness of each being, a singleness equilibrized, polarized in one by the counter-posing singleness of the other. ”

“ To be alone, alone ‘in the open’ above all, is not merely healing to me but an imperative necessity of my life—and the chief counter agent to the sap that almost every person exercises on me, unless obviated by frequent and radical interruption. ”

“ I am simply telling all the single volumes in my study—who are looking a little downcast and unhappy now that the excitement of the wedding is past—that single volumes are not odd volumes. It is very nice, of course, to be happily mated; but it is quite possible for a solitary life to be a very useful one. ”

“ Certainly many people have the impression that in an evolutionary view of life single individuals become insignificant, and that all great movements must be regarded as the outcome of vast, impersonal tendencies. ”

“ Whether you take it across its breadth, or down its length, you discover a great want of singleness. This one memory of which we talk is very weak for many aspects of our varied life, and is again disproportionately strong for other aspects. ”

“ I mean can't one live with one's wife, and be fond of her: and with one's friends, and enjoy their company: and with the world and everything, pleasantly: and yet know that one is alone? Essentially, at the very core of me, alone. ”

“ Thus, with a passionate, lively temperament, keenly susceptible to the charm of society, I was forced early to separate myself from men, and lead a solitary life. If at times I sought to break away from my solitude, how harshly was I repulsed by the renewed consciousness of my condition ”

“ Not long ago I was at a cheery social gathering where the non-marrying tendency of modern men was being discussed. Someone put all the men into a good humour with the reminder that ‘by persistently remaining single, a man converts himself into a permanent public temptation,’ and as there were fifteen bachelors present, the conversation naturally became personal. ”

“ I am no more lonely than a single mullein or dandelion in a pasture, or a bean leaf, or sorrel, or a horse-fly, or a bumblebee. I am no more lonely than the Mill Brook, or a weathercock, or the north star, or the south wind, or an April shower, or a January thaw, or the first spider in a new house. ”

“ Why, all the husbands I’ve seen seemed to be pretty well managed. You can see samples of it every day, ma’am, if you look around. Young fellows that have acted pretty wild when they was single, always sort of steady down when they’re hooked into double harness. ”

“ If girls only realized what is before them when they marry, few would be brave enough to change their condition. When I picture to myself what I was at home—a petted darling—never allowed to inconvenience myself when it could possibly be avoided; courted in society; free as air and light-hearted as a child; and then think of all that I have endured from the unkindness of strangers, and the—well—the want of sympathy in him for whom I had given up my dear old home and friends—I ask myself why I did not remain single! ”

“ This love of solitude which appeals so strongly to certain temperaments recalls a vivid imagination of my boyhood. The desire to be alone was so strong within me, that my idea of perfect happiness was to live in a planet all my own. ”

“ Nay, Poets, Astrologers, and Persons devoted to such-like Arts, whensoever they take in Hand any Thing that's great and beyond the Sphere of the common People, commonly betake themselves to a Retreat. But why should you call this Kind of Life Solitude? The Conversation of one single Friend drives away the Tædium of Solitude. I have here more than sixteen Companions, fit for all Manner of Conversation. And besides, I have Friends who come to visit me oftner than I would have them, or is convenient Do I then, in your Opinion, live melancholy? ”

“ Even some of the most humpbacked married men you ever saw, who come in here dragging leg irons and looking a picture of the Common People, they're single, too. I've seen them slip wedding rings off their fingers to make their racket stand up. ”

“ “If we be doomed to marry, we marry; if we be doomed to remain single, we do,” replied Dick. ”

“ In Advancing I have left myself distinctly in the lurch! Seeking still a worthy partner, from the land of brutes and dudes I have penetrated rashly into manless solitudes. Now without a mate of any kind where am I?—that's to say, Where shall I be to-morrow?—where exert my rightful sway And the purifying strength of my emancipated mind? Can solitude be lifted up, vacuity refined? ”

“ Do you who are reading these life-lines know what it is to be alone in a world none too mindful of anyone, even if he be somebody? Never to experience after the day's work the rest and joy of home-coming to one's own? ”

“ How to enter life and be one with other men, how to be the child of society, and a peer there, belongs to our duty; and to escape from the solitude of private life is the most important thing for men of lonely thought and feeling, such as meditation breeds. ”

“ If he pines in a lonely place, hankering for the crowd, for display, he is not in the lonely place; his heart is in the market; he does not see; he does not hear; he does not think. But go cherish your soul; expel companions; set your habits to a life of solitude; then, will the faculties rise fair and full within, like forest trees and field flowers; you will have results, which, when you meet your fellow-men, you can communicate, and they will gladly receive. ”

“ But the years of solitude looked less and less inviting to the woman, who had been born with a large social side that had met with a pinch here, been lopped off there, and crowded in another person's measure. ”

“ I was ever of opinion, that the honest man who married and brought up a large family, did more service than he who continued single, and only talked of population. ”

“ But the first and most incontestable advantage of solitude is, that it accustoms the mind to think; the imagination becomes more vivid, and the memory more faithful, while the sense remains undisturbed, and no external object agitates the soul. Removed far from the tiresome tumults of public society, where a multitude of heterogeneous objects dance before our eyes and fill the mind with incoherent notions, we learn to fix our attention to a single subject, and to contemplate that alone. ”

“ But I live alone—much alone bodily, more alone mentally; I have no intimates, no society, no intellectual intercourse whatever; and I give myself up, as I never did in my life before, to mere musing, reverie, and speculation—I cannot dignify the process by the title of thought or contemplation. ”

“ And another except [5] to it, Yea, but he hath a great charge of Children; As if it were an Abatement to his Riches. But the most ordinary cause of a Single Life is Liberty; especially in certaine Selfepleasing and humorous [6] Mindes, which are so sensible of every restraint as they will goe neare to thinke [7] their Girdles and Garters to be Bonds and Shackles. Unmarried Men are best Friends, best Masters, best Servants, but not alwayes best Subiects; For they are light [8] to runne away, And almost all Fugitives are of that Condition. ”

“ I remember a fancy coming over me, that I could have remained at that spot all the rest of my life; but this solitary desire was but temporary, for, as it was never intended that man should live alone, so are implanted in his nature, social feelings, and thoughts instinctively leading to the comforts of home, be it ever so homely, and yearnings for society, be it ever so humble. ”

“ It is a matter of temperament whether community life, with its enforced lack of individualism, or the intense refraction engendered by the fact of two people only living together in a solitude, is the more trying. ”

“ Our time of singleness is now short, and begging your forgiveness for my seeming neglect or indifference, I hope the tide, which until now has flown so gently, may not be stayed on the eve of entering the harbour of harmony, peace, and love. ”

“ I will not accept the simple and quiet happiness that I ask from any one but yourself. If you persist in condemning me to the lonely life, bereft even of a fraternal smile, which I have led for nine years, if you remain in your solitude and show no sign, my will yields to yours. ”

“ Are other men and women thus close fused, each through the other’s eyes beholding life? If not, dear one, the only other joy, not yet by us slow tasted, is to look and see how we can make them also feel the deep-down inner satisfaction pierce the very roots of their own being too, without which we should lack companionship, and feel ourselves unique and lonely. ”

“ Lord God, help me to take in the glory of life, that my spirit may never be lonely, even though I may have to be much alone. I pray that thou wilt spare me the loneliness and the solitude that may be brought on by selfishness. Make me considerate of others. May I soar above the disappointments and losses that may come to me, and stay where I may have thy companionship. ”

“ It was novel and pleasant occasionally to putter alone for a few hours in one’s room, or in solitude to lose oneself in an absorbing book, with the half{96}-formed purpose of soon finding somebody with whom to discuss it. But to walk alone, to dine alone, to go to the theater alone—to think alone! To be, in a word, for any length of time, on one’s own hands—face to face with nothing but oneself! ”

“ My expression arose from my being at that moment in idea a partner of your seclusion, and feeling that I should want in the same situation that energy and activity which is the support of your solitude. I am fond of society ”

“ They did not yet see, and thousands of young men as hopeful now crowding to the barriers for the career do not yet see, that if the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him. ”

“ Thirty—the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning brief-case of enthusiasm, thinning hair. ”

“ III. Having thus spoken of the resources and the subject of the scholar, out of the same faith proceeds also the rule of his ambition and life. Let him know that the world is his, but he must possess it by putting himself into harmony with the constitution of things. He must be a solitary, laborious, modest, and charitable soul.
He must embrace solitude as a bride. He must have his glees and his glooms alone. ”

“ When you find human society disagreeable and feel yourself justified in flying to solitude, you can be so constituted as to be unable to bear the depression of it for any length of time, which will probably be the case if you are young. Let me advise you, then, to form the habit of taking some of your solitude with you into society, to learn to be to some extent alone even though you are in company ”

“ I melt into the air with a voluptuousness so delicate that I am content to be alone. These things, combined with the opinion I have of the generality of women - who appear to me as children to whom I would rather give a sugar plum than my time, form a barrier against Matrimony which I rejoice in. ”

“ Yet when we think about what we see and hear among so-called humans we must realize how much alone all except the very fewest are, alone because they have not yet discovered the only method of not being alone—the supernal communion of one man and one woman. The few men who have learned how to love, and the exactly equal number of women whom they have taught, are the only persons in the world who are not absolutely and completely as alone as would be a solitary chemical atom in an illimitable universe of space. ”