Companionship Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Companionship. Here they are! All 100 of them:

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After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.
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Philip Pullman
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I had already found that it was not good to be alone, and so made companionship with what there was around me, sometimes with the universe and sometimes with my own insignificant self; but my books were always my friends, let fail all else.
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Joshua Slocum (Sailing Alone around the World)
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The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, not the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when you discover that someone else believes in you and is willing to trust you with a friendship.
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Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Are you implying that shreds of my reputation remain intact?" Will demanded with mock horror. "Clearly I have been doing something wrong. Or not something wrong, as the case may be." He banged on the side of the carriage. "Thomas! We must away at once to the nearest brothel. I seek scandal and low companionship.
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Cassandra Clare (Clockwork Angel (The Infernal Devices, #1))
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The trouble is not that I am single and likely to stay single, but that I am lonely and likely to stay lonely.
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Charlotte BrontΓ«
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Books are a poor substitute for female companionship, but they are easier to find.
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Patrick Rothfuss (The Wise Man's Fear (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #2))
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I don't want to be married just to be married. I can't think of anything lonelier than spending the rest of my life with someone I can't talk to, or worse, someone I can't be silent with.
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Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)
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God, but life is loneliness, despite all the opiates, despite the shrill tinsel gaiety of "parties" with no purpose, despite the false grinning faces we all wear. And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter - they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long. Yes, there is joy, fulfillment and companionship - but the loneliness of the soul in its appalling self-consciousness is horrible and overpowering.
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Sylvia Plath (The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath)
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How we need another soul to cling to.
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Sylvia Plath (The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath)
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No man can be called friendless who has God and the companionship of good books.
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Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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I have learned that to be with those I like is enough
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Walt Whitman
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It is an absolute human certainty that no one can know his own beauty or perceive a sense of his own worth until it has been reflected back to him in the mirror of another loving, caring human being.
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John Joseph Powell (The Secret of Staying in Love)
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To get the full value of joy you must have someone to divide it with.
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Mark Twain
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She was struck by the simple truth that sometimes the most ordinary things could be made extraordinary, simply by doing them with the right people...
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Nicholas Sparks (The Lucky One)
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From that time on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again, never miss the lack of intimate friends. Books became her friends and there was one for every mood. There was poetry for quiet companionship. There was adventure when she tired of quiet hours. There would be love stories when she came into adolescence and when she wanted to feel a closeness to someone she could read a biography. On that day when she first knew she could read, she made a vow to read one book a day as long as she lived.
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Betty Smith (A Tree Grows in Brooklyn)
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We like companionship, see, but we can't stand to be around people for very long. So we go get ourselves lost, come back for a while, then get the hell out again.
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Jon Krakauer (Into the Wild)
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Solitude sometimes is best society.
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John Milton (Paradise Lost)
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Let’s start with this statistic: You are delicious. Be brave, my sweet. I know you can get lonely. I know you can crave companionship and sex and love so badly that it physically hurts. But I truly believe that the only way you can find out that there’s something better out there is to first believe there’s something better out there. What other choice is there?
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Greg Behrendt (He's Just Not That Into You)
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It is wrong to think that love comes from long companionship and persevering courtship. Love is the offspring of spiritual affinity and unless that affinity is created in a moment, it will not be created for years or even generations.
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Kahlil Gibran
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Those who have never known the deep intimacy and the intense companionship of happy mutual love have missed the best thing that life has to give.
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Bertrand Russell
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A career is wonderful, but you can't curl up with it on a cold night
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Marilyn Monroe
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I realize, for the first time, how very lonely I've been in the arena. How comforting the presence of another human being can be.
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Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1))
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It is true that I miss intelligent companionship, but there are so few with whom I can share the things that mean so much to me that I have learned to contain myself. It is enough that I am surrounded with beauty...
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Jon Krakauer (Into the Wild)
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Joy multiplies when it is shared among friends, but grief diminishes with every division. That is life.
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R.A. Salvatore (Exile (Forgotten Realms: The Dark Elf Trilogy, #2; Legend of Drizzt, #2))
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I was tired of pretending that I was someone else just to get along with people, just for the sake of having friendships.
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Kurt Cobain
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Tell your friend that in his death, a part of you dies and goes with him. Wherever he goes, you also go. He will not be alone.
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J. Krishnamurti
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My peers, lately, have found companionship through means of intoxication--it makes them sociable. I, however, cannot force myself to use drugs to cheat on my loneliness--it is all that I have--and when the drugs and alcohol dissipate, will be all that my peers have as well.
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Franz Kafka
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They send a person who can never stay," she whispered. "Who can never accept my offer of companionship for more than a little while. They send me a hero I can't help ... just the sort of person I can't help falling in love with." ... As I sailed into the lake I realized the Fates really were cruel. They sent Calypso someone she couldn't help but love. But it worked both ways. For the rest of my life I would be thinking about her. She would always be my biggest what if.
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Rick Riordan (The Battle of the Labyrinth (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #4))
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Ultimately the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or in friendship, is conversation, and conversation must have a common basis, and between two people of widely different culture the only common basis possible is the lowest level.
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Oscar Wilde
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He dug so deeply into her sentiments that in search of interest he found love, because by trying to make her love him he ended up falling in love with her. Petra Cotes, for her part, loved him more and more as she felt his love increasing, and that was how in the ripeness of autumn she began to believe once more in the youthful superstition that poverty was the servitude of love. Both looked back then on the wild revelry, the gaudy wealth, and the unbridled fornication as an annoyance and they lamented that it had cost them so much of their lives to find the paradise of shared solitude. Madly in love after so many years of sterile complicity, they enjoyed the miracle of living each other as much at the table as in bed, and they grew to be so happy that even when they were two worn-out people they kept on blooming like little children and playing together like dogs.
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Gabriel GarcΓ­a MΓ‘rquez (One Hundred Years of Solitude)
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Friendship, companionship: it so often defied logic, so often eluded the deserving, so often settled itself on the odd, the bad, the peculiar, the damaged.
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Hanya Yanagihara (A Little Life)
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Also, I do not like the companionship of women. They are petty and personal. They hang on to their mysteries and secrets, they act and pretend. I like the character of men better.
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AnaΓ―s Nin (Delta of Venus)
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If you find no one to support you on the spiritual path, walk alone. There is no companionship with the immature.
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Gautama Buddha (The Dhammapada)
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If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement, and mystery of the world we live in.
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Rachel Carson
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How we need that security. How we need another soul to cling to, another body to keep us warm. To rest and trust; to give your soul in confidence: I need this, I need someone to pour myself into.
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Sylvia Plath (The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath)
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It sometimes takes a state of solitude to bring to mind the real power of companionship.
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Stephen Richards
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There's a hunger for stories in all of us, adults too. We need stories so much that we're even willing to read bad books to get them, if the good books won't supply them.
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Philip Pullman
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Companionship is a foreign concept to some people. They fear it as much as the majority of people fear loneliness.
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Criss Jami (Killosophy)
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I have found that when you are deeply troubled, there are things you get from the silent devoted companionship of a dog that you can get from no other source.
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Doris Day
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Anyone who imagines they can work alone winds up surrounded by nothing but rivals, without companions. The fact is, no one ascends alone.
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Lance Armstrong (It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life)
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Having someone wonder where you are when you don't come home at night is a very old human need.
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Margaret Mead
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If a traveller does not meet with one who is his better, or his equal, let him firmly keep to his solitary journey; there is no companionship with a fool.
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Gautama Buddha
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Love someone because their soul inspires you, not because you’re interested in the relief from loneliness and companionship they can provide. Anybody can do that. Not just anybody can show you to yourself.
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Brianna Wiest
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Isolation offered its own form of companionship: the reliable silence of her rooms, the steadfast tranquility of the evenings. The promise that she would find things where she put them, that there would be no interruption, no surprise. It greeted her at the end of each day and lay still with her at night.
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Jhumpa Lahiri (The Lowland)
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When what you want is a relationship, and not a person, get a dog.
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Deb Caletti (The Secret Life of Prince Charming)
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I am beginning to remember what it means to need things. Laughter. Companionship. Love. " He leant forward and pressed his forehead to mine. "And I need you, Merit.
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Chloe Neill (Twice Bitten (Chicagoland Vampires, #3))
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The act of quiet nighttime talking, illustrates for me more than anything else the curious alchemy of companionship.
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Elizabeth Gilbert (Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage)
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Isolation offered its own form of companionship
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Jhumpa Lahiri (The Lowland)
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When I was young I asked more of people than they could give: everlasting friendship, endless feeling. Now I know to ask less of them than they can give: a straightforward companionship. And their feelings, their friendship, their generous actions seem in my eyes to be wholly miraculous: a consequence of grace alone.
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Albert Camus (The First Man)
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But where do you live mostly now?" With the lost boys." Who are they?" They are the children who fall out of their perambulators when the nurse is looking the other way. If they are not claimed in seven days they are sent far away to the Neverland to defray expanses. I'm captain." What fun it must be!" Yes," said cunning Peter, "but we are rather lonely. You see we have no female companionship." Are none of the others girls?" Oh no; girls, you know, are much too clever to fall out of their prams.
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J.M. Barrie (Peter Pan)
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I want someone to sit beside after the day's pursuit and all its anguish, after its listening, and its waitings, and its suspicions. After quarrelling and reconciliation I need privacy - to be alone with you, to set this hubbub in order. For I am as neat as a cat in my habits.
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Virginia Woolf (The Waves)
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Honeybees depend not only on physical contact with the colony, but also require it's social companionship and support. Isolate a honeybee from her sisters and she will soon die.
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Sue Monk Kidd (The Secret Life of Bees)
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Because I wanted you." He turned from the window to face me. "More than I ever wanted anything in my life," he added softly. I continued staring at him, dumbstruck. Whatever I had been expecting, it wasn't this. Seeing my openmouthed expression, he continued lightly. "When I asked my da how ye knew which was the right woman, he told me when the time came, I'd have no doubt. And I didn't. When I woke in the dark under that tree on the road to Leoch, with you sitting on my chest, cursing me for bleeding to death, I said to myself, 'Jamie Fraser, for all ye canna see what she looks like, and for all she weighs as much as a good draft horse, this is the woman'" I started toward him, and he backed away, talking rapidly. "I said to myself, 'She's mended ye twice in as many hours, me lad; life amongst the MacKenzies being what it is, it might be as well to wed a woman as can stanch a wound and set broken bones.' And I said to myself, 'Jamie, lad, if her touch feels so bonny on your collarbone, imagine what it might feel like lower down...'" He dodged around a chair. "Of course, I thought it might ha' just been the effects of spending four months in a monastery, without benefit of female companionship, but then that ride through the dark together"--he paused to sigh theatrically, neatly evading my grab at his sleeve--"with that lovely broad arse wedged between my thighs"--he ducked a blow aimed at his left ear and sidestepped, getting a low table between us--"and that rock-solid head thumping me in the chest"--a small metal ornament bounced off his own head and went clanging to the floor--"I said to myself..." He was laughing so hard at this point that he had to gasp for breath between phrases. "Jamie...I said...for all she's a Sassenach bitch...with a tongue like an adder's ...with a bum like that...what does it matter if she's a f-face like a sh-sh-eep?" I tripped him neatly and landed on his stomach with both knees as he hit the floor with a crash that shook the house. "You mean to tell me that you married me out of love?" I demanded. He raised his eyebrows, struggling to draw in breath. "Have I not...just been...saying so?
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Diana Gabaldon (Outlander (Outlander, #1))
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It contributes greatly towards a man's moral and intellectual health, to be brought into habits of companionship with individuals unlike himself, who care little for his pursuits, and whose sphere and abilities he must go out of himself to appreciate.
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Nathaniel Hawthorne (The Scarlet Letter)
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Friendship arises out of mere Companionship when two or more of the companions discover that they have in common some insight or interest or even taste which the others do not share and which, till that moment, each believed to be his own unique treasure (or burden). The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, "What? You too? I thought I was the only one." ... It is when two such persons discover one another, when, whether with immense difficulties and semi-articulate fumblings or with what would seem to us amazing and elliptical speed, they share their vision - it is then that Friendship is born. And instantly they stand together in an immense solitude.
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C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves)
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You could hold me and I could hold you. And it would be so peaceful. Completely peaceful. Like the feeling of sleep, but awake in it together.
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John Green (Will Grayson, Will Grayson)
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Will you come with me?" "Ah, Kestrel, that's something you never need to ask.
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Marie Rutkoski (The Winner's Kiss (The Winner's Trilogy, #3))
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I find greater companionship in inert figures, animals & speechless artifacts, for I can enjoy their presence & there is no psychic drain
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Anton Szandor LaVey
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He banged on the side of the carriage. "Thomas! We must away at once to the nearest brothel. I seek scandal and low companionship.
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Cassandra Clare (Clockwork Angel (The Infernal Devices, #1))
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Love is like the wild rose-briar; Friendship like the holly-tree. The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms, but which will bloom most constantly?
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Emily BrontΓ« (The Complete Poems)
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I dont crave companionship. It stands in my way. I live for pleasure. There are few persons who can give me as much pleasure as those acts I perform myself. I would rather create pleasure according to my own whim than be subjected to the whims of others.
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Anton Szandor LaVey
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In a dog's life, some plaster would fall, some cushions would open, some rugs would shred. Like any relationship, this one had its costs. They were costs we came to accept and balance against the joy and amusement and protection and companionship he gave us.
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John Grogan (Marley and Me: Life and Love With the World's Worst Dog)
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I wanted what most people wantedβ€”love, companionship. I wanted someone to touch. I wanted someone to touch me back. I wanted someone to laugh with, someone who would laugh with me, laugh at me. I wanted someone who looked and sawme . Not my power, not my position. I wanted someone to say my name. To call out, β€œMerit,” when it was time to go, or when we arrived. Someone who wanted to say to someone else, with pride, β€œI’m here with her. With Merit.” I wanted all those things. Indivisibly. But I didn’t want them from Morgan.
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Chloe Neill (Friday Night Bites (Chicagoland Vampires, #2))
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If his voice hasn't been the melody of my life, it's been the bass line, so subtle you don't notice it until it's missing.
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Jodi Picoult (Vanishing Acts)
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What's this about?" "Finally. Interest," was the only response. "If this is one of your tricks..." Like the time Torin had ordered hundreds of blow-up dolls and placed them throughout the fortress, all because Paris had foolishly complained about the lack of female companionship in town. The plastic "ladies" had stared our from every corner, their wide eyes and let-me-suck-you mouths taunting everyone who passed them. Things like that happened when Torin was bored.
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Gena Showalter (The Darkest Night (Lords of the Underworld, #1))
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This pause in time, within time ... When did I first experience the exquisite sense of surrender that is only possible with another person? The peace of mind one experiences on one's own, one's certainty of self in the serenity of solitude, are nothing in comparison to the release and openness and fluency one shares with another, in close companionship ...
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Muriel Barbery (The Elegance of the Hedgehog)
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The man who fears to be alone will never be anything but lonely, no matter how much he may surround himself with people. But the man who learns, in solitude and recollection, to be at peace with his own loneliness, and to prefer its reality to the illusion of merely natural companionship, comes to know the invisible companionship of God. Such a one is alone with God in all places, and he alone truly enjoys the companionship of other men, because he loves them in God in Whom their presence is not tiresome, and because of Whom his own love for them can never know satiety.
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Thomas Merton (No Man Is an Island)
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People leave imprints on our lives, shaping who we become in much the same way that a symbol is pressed into the page of a book to tell you who it comes from. Dogs, however, leave paw prints on our lives and our souls, which are as unique as fingerprints in every way.
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Ashly Lorenzana
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If I could always read I should never feel the want of company.
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Lord Byron
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When we cannot bear to be alone, it means we do not properly value the only companion we will have from birth to death - ourselves.
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Eda J. LeShan
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Nice work in there, Herondale, setting the place on fire,” Gabriel observed. β€œGood thing we were there to clean up after you, or the whole plan would have gone down in flames, along with the shreds of your reputation.” β€œAre you implying that shreds of my reputation remain intact?” Will demanded with mock horror. β€œClearly I have done something wrong. Or not doing something wrong as the case may be.” He banged on the side of the carriage. β€œThomas! We must away at once to the nearest brothel! I seek scandal and low companionship.
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Cassandra Clare (Clockwork Angel (The Infernal Devices, #1))
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And as ridiculous as it may sound, sometimes all any of us needs in life is for someone to hold our hand and walk next to us.
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James Frey (The Final Testament of the Holy Bible)
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The real thing that keeps men and women apart, is fear. Women blame men and men blame women, but the culprit is fear, women are afraid of one thing, men are afraid of a different thing; the fears of women have to do with losing while the fears of men have to do with not being good enough for something. One is loss, the other is insecurity. Men are innately more insecure than women and women are innately more needful of companionship than men. It's good for both men and women to be able to recognize and identify these fears not only within themselves, but within each other, and then men and women will see that they really do need to help each other. It's not a game, it's not a competition, the two sexes need one another.
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C. JoyBell C.
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Learn to like what doesn't cost much. Learn to like reading, conversation, music. Learn to like plain food, plain service, plain cooking. Learn to like fields, trees, brooks, hiking, rowing, climbing hills. Learn to like people, even though some of them may be different...different from you. Learn to like to work and enjoy the satisfaction doing your job as well as it can be done. Learn to like the song of birds, the companionship of dogs. Learn to like gardening, puttering around the house, and fixing things. Learn to like the sunrise and sunset, the beating of rain on the roof and windows, and the gentle fall of snow on a winter day. Learn to keep your wants simple and refuse to be controlled by the likes and dislikes of others.
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Lowell C. Bennion
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I used to think of you that way, you know. Like the sun. My personal sun. You balanced out the clouds nicely for me." He sighed. "The clouds I can handle. But I can't fight with an eclipse.
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Stephenie Meyer (Eclipse (The Twilight Saga, #3))
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Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough, A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse - and Thou Beside me singing in the Wilderness - And Wilderness is Paradise enow.
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Omar KhayyΓ‘m (Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam)
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When the other person is hurting, confused, troubled, anxious, alienated, terrified; or when he or she is doubtful of self-worth, uncertain as to identity, then understanding is called for. The gentle and sensitive companionship of an empathic stance… provides illumination and healing. In such situations deep understanding is, I believe, the most precious gift one can give to another.
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Carl R. Rogers
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Every fairy tale, it seems, concludes with the bland phrase "happily ever after." Yet every couple I have ever known would agree that nothing about marriage is forever happy. There are moments of bliss, to be sure, and lengthy spans of satisfied companionship. Yet these come at no small effort, and the girl who reads such fiction dreaming her troubles will end ere she departs the altar is well advised to seek at once a rational women to set her straight.
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Catherine Gilbert Murdock (Princess Ben)
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She longed for porch friendship, for the sticky, hot sensation of familiar female legs thrown over hers in companionship. She pined for the girliness of it all, the unplanned, improvisational laziness. She wanted to soak the words 'time management' out of her lexicon. She wanted to hand over, to yield, to let herself float down the unchartered beautiful fertile musky swamp of life, where creativity and eroticism and deep intelligence dwell.
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Rebecca Wells (Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood)
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A safe, still night; too serene for the companionship of fear. We know that God is everywhere; but certainly we feel His presence most when His works are on the grandest scale spread before us: and it is in the unclouded night sky, where His worlds wheel their silent course, that we read clearest His infinitude, His omnipotence, His Omnipresence.
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Charlotte BrontΓ« (Jane Eyre)
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Often you shall think your road impassable, sombre and companionless. Have will and plod along; and round each curve you shall find a new companion.
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Mikhail Naimy (The Book of Mirdad: The strange story of a monastery which was once called The Ark)
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One smile has the power to... Calm fears. Soften stone walls. Warm a cold heart. Invite a new friend. Mimic a loving hug. Beautify the bearer. Lighten heavy loads. Promote good deeds. Brighten a gloomy day. Comfort a grieving spirit. Offer hope to the forlorn. Send a message of caring. Lift the downtrodden soul. Patch up invisible wounds. Weaken the hold of misery. Act as medicine for suffering. Attract the companionship of angels. Fulfill the human need for recognition. Who knew changing the world would prove so simple?
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Richelle E. Goodrich (Smile Anyway: Quotes, Verse, and Grumblings for Every Day of the Year)
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Marriage was an economic institution in which you were given a partnership for life in terms of children and social status and succession and companionship. But now we want our partner to still give us all these things, but in addition I want you to be my best friend and my trusted confidant and my passionate lover to boot, and we live twice as long. So we come to one person, and we basically are asking them to give us what once an entire village used to provide: Give me belonging, give me identity, give me continuity, but give me transcendence and mystery and awe all in one. Give me comfort, give me edge. Give me novelty, give me familiarity. Give me predictability, give me surprise. And we think it’s a given, and toys and lingerie are going to save us with that. Ideally, though, we’re lucky, and we find our soul mate and enjoy that life-changing mother lode of happiness. But a soul mate is a very hard thing to find.
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Aziz Ansari (Modern Romance)
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Ah. I smiled. I'm not really here to keep you from freaking out. I'm here to be with you while you freak out, or grieve or laugh or suffer or sing. It is a ministry of presence. It is showing up with a loving heart.
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Kate Braestrup (Here If You Need Me)
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After one moment of gripped immobility, the queen bent to kiss the king lightly on one closed eyelid, then on the other. She said, 'I love your eyes.' She kissed him on either cheek, near the small lobe of his ear. 'I love your ears, and I love'-she paused as she kissed him gently on the lips-'every single one of your ridiculous lies.' The king opened his eyes and smiled at the queen in a companionship that was as unassailable as it was unfathomable.
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Megan Whalen Turner (The King of Attolia (The Queen's Thief, #3))
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Gabriel: Good thing we were there to clean up after you, or the whole plan would have gone down in flames, along with the shreds of your reputation. Will:Are you implying that shreds of my reputation remain intact? Clearly I have been doing something wrong. Or not doing something wrong, as the case may be. Thomas! We must away at once to the mearest brothel! I seek scandal and low companionship.
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Cassandra Clare (Clockwork Angel (The Infernal Devices, #1))
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The first basic need of a male is sexual fulfillment; for a female, affection. The second most basic need of a male is recreational companionship; for a female, communication and conversation. The third basic need of a male in a relationship is an attractive woman; for a woman, honesty and openness. The fourth basic need of a male is domestic support; for a female, financial support. The fifth basic need of a male is admiration and respect; for a woman, family commitment.
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Myles Munroe (The Purpose and Power of Love & Marriage)
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Here's what I think. We all want someone to build a fort with. We want somebody to swap crayons with and play hide-and-seek with and live out imaginary stories with. We start out getting that from our family. Then we get it from our friends. And then, for whatever reasons, we get it in our heads that we need to get that feeling- that intimacy- from a single someone else. We call if growing up. But really, when you take sex out of it, what we want is a companion. And we make that so damn hard to find.
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David Levithan (Are We There Yet?)
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When we fully understand the brevity of life, its fleeting joys and unavoidable pains; when we accept the facts that all men and women are approaching an inevitable doom: the consciousness of it should make us more kindly and considerate of each other. This feeling should make men and women use their best efforts to help their fellow travelers on the road, to make the path brighter and easier as we journey on. It should bring a closer kinship, a better understanding, and a deeper sympathy for the wayfarers who must live a common life and die a common death.
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Clarence Darrow (The Essential Words and Writings of Clarence Darrow (Modern Library Classics))
β€œ
There is no living being on earth at this moment except myself. I could walk down the halls, and empty rooms would yawn mockingly at me from every side. God, but life is loneliness, despite all the opiates, despite the shrill tinsel gaiety of 'parties' with no purpose, despite the false grinning faces we all wear. And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter β€” they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long. Yes, there is joy, fulfillment and companionship β€” but the loneliness of the soul in it's appalling self-consciousness, is horrible and overpowering.
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Sylvia Plath (The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath)
β€œ
A student once asked anthropologist Margaret Mead, β€œWhat is the earliest sign of civilization?” The student expected her to say a clay pot, a grinding stone, or maybe a weapon. Margaret Mead thought for a moment, then she said, β€œA healed femur.” A femur is the longest bone in the body, linking hip to knee. In societies without the benefits of modern medicine, it takes about six weeks of rest for a fractured femur to heal. A healed femur shows that someone cared for the injured person, did their hunting and gathering, stayed with them, and offered physical protection and human companionship until the injury could mend. Mead explained that where the law of the jungleβ€”the survival of the fittestβ€”rules, no healed femurs are found. The first sign of civilization is compassion, seen in a healed femur.
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Ira Byock
β€œ
WE two boys together clinging, One the other never leaving, Up and down the roads going, North and South excursions making, Power enjoying, elbows stretching, fingers clutching, Arm'd and fearless, eating, drinking, sleeping, loving. No law less than ourselves owning, sailing, soldiering, thieving, threatening, Misers, menials, priests alarming, air breathing, water drinking, on the turf or the sea-beach dancing, Cities wrenching, ease scorning, statutes mocking, feebleness chasing, Fulfilling our foray.
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Walt Whitman
β€œ
Only boxers can understand the loneliness of tennis players - and yet boxers have their corner men and managers. Even a boxer's opponent provides a kind of companionship, someone he can grapple with and grunt at. In tennis you stand face-to-face with the enemy, trade blows with him, but never touch him or talk to him, or anyone else. The rules forbid a tennis player from even talking to his coach while on the court. People sometimes mention the track-and-field runner as a comparably lonely figure, but I have to laugh. At least the runner can feel and smell his opponents. They're inches away. In tennis you're on an island. Of all the games men and women play, tennis is the closest to solitary confinement....
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Andre Agassi (Open)
β€œ
Ya Ummi(my mother), I cannot live my life with a woman who has no key to my mind and does not share my concerns. She cannot - will not - read anything. She shrugs off the grave problems of the day and asks if I think her new tablecloth is pretty. We are living in difficult times and it is not enough for a person to be interested in his home and his job - in his own personal life. I need my partner to be someone to whom I can turn, confident of her sympathy, believing her when she tells me I'm in the wrong, strengthened when she tells me I'm in the right. I want to love, and be loved back - but what I see is not love or companionship but a sort of transacton of convenience santioned by religion and society and I do not want it.
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Ahdaf Soueif (The Map of Love)
β€œ
In depression this faith in deliverance, in ultimate restoration, is absent. The pain is unrelenting, and what makes the condition intolerable is the foreknowledge that no remedy will come- not in a day, an hour, a month, or a minute. If there is mild relief, one knows that it is only temporary; more pain will follow. It is hopelessness even more than pain that crushes the soul. So the decision-making of daily life involves not, as in normal affairs, shifting from one annoying situation to another less annoying- or from discomfort to relative comfort, or from boredom to activity- but moving from pain to pain. One does not abandon, even briefly, one’s bed of nails, but is attached to it wherever one goes. And this results in a striking experience- one which I have called, borrowing military terminology, the situation of the walking wounded. For in virtually any other serious sickness, a patient who felt similar devistation would by lying flat in bed, possibly sedated and hooked up to the tubes and wires of life-support systems, but at the very least in a posture of repose and in an isolated setting. His invalidism would be necessary, unquestioned and honorably attained. However, the sufferer from depression has no such option and therefore finds himself, like a walking casualty of war, thrust into the most intolerable social and family situations. There he must, despite the anguish devouring his brain, present a face approximating the one that is associated with ordinary events and companionship. He must try to utter small talk, and be responsive to questions, and knowingly nod and frown and, God help him, even smile. But it is a fierce trial attempting to speak a few simple words.
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William Styron (Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness)
β€œ
It's because I haven't courage,' said Samuel. 'I could never quite take the responsibility. When the Lord God did not call my name, I might have called his name - but I did not. There you have the difference between greatness and mediocrity. It's not an uncommon disease. But it's nice for a mediocre man to know that greatness must be the loneliest state in the world.' 'I'd think there are degrees of greatness,' Adam said. 'I don't think so,' said Samuel. 'That would be like saying there is a little bigness. No. I believe when you come to that responsibility the hugeness and you are alone to make your choice. On one side you have warmth and companionship and sweet understanding, and on the other - cold, lonely greatness. There you make your choice. I'm glad I chose mediocrity, but how am I to say what reward might have come with the other? None of my children will be great either, except perhaps Tom. He's suffering over the choosing right now. It's a painful thing to watch. And somewhere in me I want him to say yes. Isn't that strange? A father to want his son condemned to greatness! What selfishness that must be.
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John Steinbeck (East of Eden)
β€œ
Snowflakes swirl down gently in the deep blue haze beyond the window. The outside world is a dream. Inside, the fireplace is brightly lit, and the Yule log crackles with orange and crimson sparks. There’s a steaming mug in your hands, warming your fingers. There’s a friend seated across from you in the cozy chair, warming your heart. There is mystery unfolding.
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Vera Nazarian (The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration)
β€œ
Man was born for society. However little He may be attached to the World, He never can wholly forget it, or bear to be wholly forgotten by it. Disgusted at the guilt or absurdity of Mankind, the Misanthrope flies from it: He resolves to become an Hermit, and buries himself in the Cavern of some gloomy Rock. While Hate inflames his bosom, possibly He may feel contented with his situation: But when his passions begin to cool; when Time has mellowed his sorrows, and healed those wounds which He bore with him to his solitude, think you that Content becomes his Companion? Ah! no, Rosario. No longer sustained by the violence of his passions, He feels all the monotony of his way of living, and his heart becomes the prey of Ennui and weariness. He looks round, and finds himself alone in the Universe: The love of society revives in his bosom, and He pants to return to that world which He has abandoned. Nature loses all her charms in his eyes: No one is near him to point out her beauties, or share in his admiration of her excellence and variety. Propped upon the fragment of some Rock, He gazes upon the tumbling waterfall with a vacant eye, He views without emotion the glory of the setting Sun. Slowly He returns to his Cell at Evening, for no one there is anxious for his arrival; He has no comfort in his solitary unsavoury meal: He throws himself upon his couch of Moss despondent and dissatisfied, and wakes only to pass a day as joyless, as monotonous as the former.
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Matthew Gregory Lewis (The Monk)
β€œ
It’s all about our egos. She felt she was on the edge of understanding something important. They could fall in love with fresh, new people, or they could have the courage and humility to tear off some essential layer of themselves and reveal to each other a whole new level of otherness, a level far beyond what sort of music they liked. It seemed to her everyone had too much self-protective pride to truly strip down to their souls in front of their long-term partners. It was easier to pretend there was nothing more to know, to fall into an easygoing companionship. It was almost embarrassing to be truly intimate with your spouse; how could you watch someone floss one minute, and the next minute share your deepest passion or most ridiculous, trite little fears? It was almost easier to talk about that sort of thing before you’d shared a bathroom and a bank account and argued over the packing of the dishwasher.
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Liane Moriarty (The Husband's Secret)
β€œ
It’s loneliness. Even though I’m surrounded by loved ones who care about me and want only the best, it’s possible they try to help only because they feel the same thingβ€”lonelinessβ€”and why, in a gesture of solidarity, you’ll find the phrase β€œI am useful, even if alone” carved in stone. Though the brain says all is well, the soul is lost, confused, doesn’t know why life is being unfair to it. But we still wake up in the morning and take care of our children, our husband, our lover, our boss, our employees, our students, those dozens of people who make an ordinary day come to life. And we often have a smile on our face and a word of encouragement, because no one can explain their loneliness to others, especially when we are always in good company. But this loneliness exists and eats away at the best parts of us because we must use all our energy to appear happy, even though we will never be able to deceive ourselves. But we insist, every morning, on showing only the rose that blooms, and keep the thorny stem that hurts us and makes us bleed hidden within. Even knowing that everyone, at some point, has felt completely and utterly alone, it is humiliating to say, β€œI’m lonely, I need company. I need to kill this monster that everyone thinks is as imaginary as a fairy-tale dragon, but isn’t.” But it isn’t. I wait for a pure and virtuous knight, in all his glory, to come defeat it and push it into the abyss for good, but that knight never comes. Yet we cannot lose hope. We start doing things we don’t usually do, daring to go beyond what is fair and necessary. The thorns inside us will grow larger and more overwhelming, yet we cannot give up halfway. Everyone is looking to see the final outcome, as though life were a huge game of chess. We pretend it doesn’t matter whether we win or lose, the important thing is to compete. We root for our true feelings to stay opaque and hidden, but then … … instead of looking for companionship, we isolate ourselves even more in order to lick our wounds in silence. Or we go out for dinner or lunch with people who have nothing to do with our lives and spend the whole time talking about things that are of no importance. We even manage to distract ourselves for a while with drink and celebration, but the dragon lives on until the people who are close to us see that something is wrong and begin to blame themselves for not making us happy. They ask what the problem is. We say that everything is fine, but it’s not … Everything is awful. Please, leave me alone, because I have no more tears to cry or heart left to suffer. All I have is insomnia, emptiness, and apathy, and, if you just ask yourselves, you’re feeling the same thing. But they insist that this is just a rough patch or depression because they are afraid to use the real and damning word: loneliness. Meanwhile, we continue to relentlessly pursue the only thing that would make us happy: the knight in shining armor who will slay the dragon, pick the rose, and clip the thorns. Many claim that life is unfair. Others are happy because they believe that this is exactly what we deserve: loneliness, unhappiness. Because we have everything and they don’t. But one day those who are blind begin to see. Those who are sad are comforted. Those who suffer are saved. The knight arrives to rescue us, and life is vindicated once again. Still, you have to lie and cheat, because this time the circumstances are different. Who hasn’t felt the urge to drop everything and go in search of their dream? A dream is always risky, for there is a price to pay. That price is death by stoning in some countries, and in others it could be social ostracism or indifference. But there is always a price to pay. You keep lying and people pretend they still believe, but secretly they are jealous, make comments behind your back, say you’re the very worst, most threatening thing there is. You are not an adulterous man, tolerated and often even admired, but an adulterous woman, one who is ...
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Paulo Coelho (Adultery)