1880s, Reminiscences (1881)
Source: Orlando: A Biography (1928), Ch. 2
Context: While fame impedes and constricts, obscurity wraps about a man like a mist; obscurity is dark, ample, and free; obscurity lets the mind take its way unimpeded. Over the obscure man is poured the merciful suffusion of darkness. None knows where he goes or comes. He may seek the truth and speak it; he alone is free; he alone is truthful, he alone is at peace.
“Who breathes must suffer, and who thinks must mourn;
And he alone is bless'd who ne'er was born.”
Solomon on the Vanity of the World, book iii, line 240; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Characterizations of Existentialism (1944)
“He laughs best who laughs last.”
The Country House, Act II, sc. v (1706)
The Labyrinth of Solitude (1950)
Variant: Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone.
Context: Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone, and the only one who seeks out another. His nature – if that word can be used in reference to man, who has 'invented' himself by saying 'no' to nature – consists in his longing to realize himself in another. Man is nostalgia and a search for communion. Therefore, when he is aware of himself he is aware of his lack of another, that is, of his solitude.
