“To awaken quite alone in a strange town, is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world.”
Freya Stark (1893–1993) British explorer and writer
Baghdad Sketches
Jane (Ch. 11)
Jane Eyre (1847)
“To awaken quite alone in a strange town, is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world.”
Freya Stark (1893–1993) British explorer and writer
Baghdad Sketches
George Whyte-Melville (1821–1878) Scottish writer
The Autobiography of Captain Digby Grand, p. 672 of Fraser's Magazine, vol. 46, December 1852 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.a0013488754;view=1up;seq=680
Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity
1940s, "Autobiographical Notes" (1949)
Context: It is quite clear to me that the religious paradise of youth, which was thus lost, was a first attempt to free myself from the chains of the "merely-personal," from an existence which is dominated by wishes, hopes and primitive feelings. Out yonder there was this huge world, which exists independently of us human beings and which stands before us like a great, eternal riddle, at least partially accessible to our inspection and thinking. The contemplation of this world beckoned like a liberation, and I soon noticed that many a man whom I had learned to esteem and to admire had found inner freedom and security in devoted occupation with it. The mental grasp of this extrapersonal world within the frame of the given possibilites swam as highest aim half consciously and half unconsciously before my mind's eye. Similarly motivated men of the present and of the past, as well as the insights which they had achieved, were the friends which could not be lost. The road to this paradise was not as comfortable and alluring as the road to the religious paradise; but it has proved itself as trustworthy, and I have never regretted having chosen it.
George F. Kennan (1904–2005) American advisor, diplomat, political scientist and historian
Around the Cragged Hill : A Personal and Political Philosophy (1994), p. 143
Context: We are, if territory and population be looked at together, one of the great countries of the world — a monster country, one might say, along with others such as China, India, the recent Soviet Union, and Brazil. And there is a real question as to whether "bigness" in a body politic is not an evil in itself, quite aside from the policies pursued in its name.
“All alone! Whether you like it or not, alone is something you'll be quite a lot!”
Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books
Source: Oh, the Places You'll Go! and The Lorax
Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908–2004) French photographer
Source: Henri Cartier-Bresson: Interviews and Conversations, 1951-1998, To Seize Life: Interview with Yvonne Baby (1961), p. 44
Gregory Bateson (1904–1980) English anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician and cyberneticist
Source: Communication: The Social Matrix of Psychiatry, 1951, p. 238 cited in: William Rasch, Cary Wolfe (2000) Observing Complexity: Systems Theory and Postmodernity. p. 36
James Jeans book The Mysterious Universe
The closing sentences of the book, on p. 188 of Pelican Books 1938 reprint of 1931 2nd ed.
The Mysterious Universe (1930)
Howard Cosell (1918–1995) American sportscaster
November 25, 1980, calling the fight between Roberto Duran and Sugar Ray Leonard, which Duran infamously quit during the 8th round of the fight.
Thomas Erskine (1788–1870) Scottish theologian
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 32.