Confinement Quotes

• Some minds corrode and grow inactive under the loss of personal liberty; others grow morbid and irritable; but it is the nature of the poet to become tender and imaginitive in the loneliness of confinement. He banquets upon the honey of his own thoughts, and, like the captive bird, pours forth his soul in melody.

  Washington Irving

  Loneliness, Loss, Bird

  Washington Irving (1835). “The complete works”, p.251

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• Not being tense but ready. Not thinking but not dreaming. Not being set but flexible. Liberation from the uneasy sense of confinement. It is being wholly and quietly alive, aware and alert, ready for whatever may come.

  Bruce Lee

  Dream, Positivity, Power

  Bruce Lee (2015). “Bruce Lee Jeet Kune Do: Bruce Lee's Commentaries on the Martial Way”, p.377, Tuttle Publishing

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• Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
  confinement of your aloneness
  to learn
  anything or anyone
  that does not bring you alive
  is too small for you.

  David Whyte

  Sweet, Darkness, Suffering

  "Sweet Darkness". onbeing.org. April 7, 2016.

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• We are all sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life.

  Tennessee Williams

  Lonely, Loneliness, Being Alone

  Orpheus Descending act 2, sc. 1 (1958)

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• All humans are essentially wild creatures and hate confinement. We need what is wild, and we thrill to it, our wildness bubbling over with an anarchic joie de vivre. We glint when the wild light shines. The more suffocatingly enclosed we are - tamed by television, controlled by mortgages and bureaucracy - the louder our wild genes scream in aggression, anger and depression.

  Jay Griffiths

  Hate, Light, Shining

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• If you're living completely on your own, break out of solitary confinement. Seek to understand others, and help them understand you

  Martha Beck

  Break Out, Helping, Solitary

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• Even painless research is fascism, supremacism...

  Ingrid Newkirk

  Animal, Research, Peta

  "Washingtonian" Magazine, August 1986.

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• The world is a prison in which solitary confinement is preferable.

  Karl Kraus

  World, Prison, Solitary

  "Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths". Book by Karl Kraus, translated by Harry Zohn, 1986.

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• Cultural confinement takes place when a curator imposes his own limits on an art exhibition, rather than asking an artist to set his limits.

  Robert Smithson

  Art, Limits, Asking

  Robert Smithson, Jack D. Flam (1996). “Robert Smithson, the Collected Writings”, p.154, Univ of California Press

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• Cats know how to obtain food without labor, shelter without confinement, and love without penalties.

  W. L. George

  Cat, Pet, And Love

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• All the asylum clothing is made by the patients, but sewing does not employ one's mind. After several months' confinement the thoughts of the busy world grow faint, and all the poor prisoners can do is to sit and ponder over their hopeless fate

  Nellie Bly

  Fate, Mind, Doe

  Nellie Bly (2015). “The Collected Works of Nellie Bly (Annotated)”, p.82, Golgotha Press

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• In this country, don't forget, a habit is no damn private hell. There's no solitary confinement outside of jail. A habit is hell for those you love. And in this country it's the worst kind of hell for those who love you.

  Billie Holiday

  Country, Love You, Recovery

  Billie Holiday, William Dufty (2011). “Lady Sings the Blues: The 50th-Anniversay Edition with a Revised Discography”, p.220, Broadway Books

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• If the Court were to extend its reach to the base, judges could begin managing conditions of confinement, interrogation methods, and the use of information.

  John Yoo

  Judging, Use, Information

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• As we have seen, WikiLeaks is a robust organization. During my time in solitary confinement in the basement of a Victorian prison, we continue to release, our media partners continued to write stories. The important revelations from this material continue to come out. We have approximately 2,000 cables into 250,000.

  Julian Assange

  Writing, Media, Organization

  "WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange Interview". Interview with Matt Lauer, www.nbclearn.com. December 17, 2010.

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• Each man is his own prisoner, in solitary confinement for life.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Men, Prison, Solitary

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• We would consider it cruel to confine a dog permanently in a kennel. Yet we visit zoos where hundreds of wild animals are kept permanently in the equivalent of a kennel.

  Virginia McKenna

  Dog, Zoos, Animal

  Virginia McKenna, Will Travers, Jonathan Wray (1987). “Beyond the bars: the zoo dilemma”, Sterling Pub Co Inc

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• The Holy Spirit showed me that when I put up walls to keep others out I also wall myself into solitary place of confinement.

  Joyce Meyer

  Wall, Spirit, Holy

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• From the moment we are born, the world tends to have a box already built for us to fit inside. Our umbilical cord never seems to be severed; we only find new needs to fill. If we disconnected and severed our attachments, would we shatter our confinements and expand beyond our shell? Would the world look different? Would we recognize ourselves? Are we the box that we are inside, and to be authentically 'un-contained' would we still be able to exist? This is the irony of containment. As long as we don't push on the walls of our surroundings, we may never know how strong we really are.

  Paige Bradley

  Strong, Wall, Attachment

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• Something in our nature cries out to be loved by another. Isolation is devastating to the human psyche. That is why solitary confinement is considered the cruelest of punishments.

  Gary Chapman

  Punishment, Isolation, Cry

  Gary Chapman (2010). “The 5 Love Languages/Things I Wish I'd Known Before We Got Married Set”, p.18, Moody Publishers

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• The artist's task is to become a successful eccentric, a strange but wise duck able to venture out of solitary confinement and mingle among society.

  Eric Maisel

  Wise, Successful, Artist

  Eric Maisel (1996). “Affirmations for Artists”, Tarcher

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• I found solitary confinement the most forbidding aspect of prison life. There is no end and no beginning; there is only one's mind, which can begin to play tricks. Was that a dream or did it really happen? One begins to question everything.

  Nelson Mandela

  Dream, Play, Mind

  Nelson Mandela (2013). “Long Walk To Freedom”, p.264, Hachette UK

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• The writing life is essentially one of solitary confinement - if you can't deal with this, you needn't apply.

  Will Self

  Writing, Life Is, Solitary

  "Ten rules for writing fiction (part two)". www.theguardian.com. February 20, 2010.

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• Misery, depression, elation all mine, refine confinement all my design.

  Henry Rollins

  Sadness, Design, Elation

  Song: Obscene

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• During this period (of technological confinement / [and language]) the human mind has been placed in its narrowest confines it has experienced since consciousness emerged from its Paleolithic phase. Even the most primitive tribes have a larger vision of the universe, of our place and functioning within it, a vision that extends to celestial regions of space and to interior depths of the human in a manner far exceeding the parameters of our world of technological confinement.

  Thomas Berry

  Our World, Space, Mind

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• But man as a person, the same man, gains mastery over egocentric self-confinement by disclosing a universe in himself...Personality is a universe, it is filled with universal content.

  Nikolai Berdyaev

  Men, Self, Personality

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