Deserted Quotes

• No man finds it difficult to return to nature except the man who has deserted nature.

  Seneca the Younger

  Men, Return, He Man

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  We are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not.

  Joan Didion

  People, Nodding, Attractive

  Joan Didion (2006). “We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: Collected Nonfiction”, Everyman's Library

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• I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends.

  Joan Didion

  Night, Thinking, Doors

  FaceBook post by Joan Didion from Aug 28, 2016

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• For a long time now my heart has had its shutters closed, its steps deserted, formerly a tumultuous hotel, but now empty and echoing like a great empty tomb.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Heart, Long, Steps

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• For some years I deserted religion in favour of Marxism. The republic of goodness seemed more attainable than the Kingdom of God.

  Lionel Blue

  Years, Republic, Kingdoms

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• A silent look of affection and regard when all other eyes are turned coldly away-the consciousness that we possess the sympathy and affection of one being when all others have deserted us-is a hold, a stay, a comfort, in the deepest affliction, which no wealth could purchase, or power bestow.

  Charles Dickens

  Love, Sympathy, Eye

  Charles Dickens (1866). “Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club”, p.296

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• Our society must make it right and possible for old people not to fear the young or be deserted by them, for the test of a civilization is the way that it cares for its helpless members.

  Pearl S. Buck

  Funny, Fear, Civilization

  My Several Worlds pt. 4 (1954) See Ramsey Clark 1; Dostoyevski 1; Humphrey 3; Samuel Johnson 69; Helen Keller 4

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• Munroe stared at the sky. Cursed her weakness, her inability to block out what it would mean to knowingly deliver the innocent into the same hell that had birthed her to life. In this moment of decision she condemned to death the one she would risk anything to save. To the night, Munroe whispered good-bye. Opened the floodgates to Gehenna-that place of the wicked, that place of the dead-and here in this deserted spot, she buried her soul.

  Taylor Stevens

  Block, Mean, Night

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• The test of a civilization is in the way that it cares for its helpless members

  Pearl S. Buck

  Inspiring, Civilization, Society

  My Several Worlds pt. 4 (1954) See Ramsey Clark 1; Dostoyevski 1; Humphrey 3; Samuel Johnson 69; Helen Keller 4

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• Can I be blamed for wanting a real body, to put my arms around? Without it I too am disembodied. I can listen to my own heartbeat against the bedsprings...but there’s something dead about it, something deserted.

  Margaret Atwood

  Real, Body, Arms

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• I see a girl caught in the remains of a holiday gone bad, with her flesh picked off day after day as the carcass dries out. The knife and fork are abviously middle-class sensibilities. The palm tree is a nice touch. A broken dream,perhaps? Plastic honeymoon, deserted island? Oh, If you put in a slice of pumpkin pie, it could be a desserted island! (Pg 64)

  Laurie Halse Anderson

  Girl, Dream, Nice

  Laurie Halse Anderson (2011). “Speak”, p.64, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)

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• Lies had deserted me, and I felt as lonely as though they had been my only friends.

  Graham Greene

  Lonely, Lying, Felt

  Graham Greene (1974). “The end of the affair”, Vintage

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• Alone, condemned, deserted, as those who are about to die are alone, there was a luxury in it, an isolation full of sublimity; a freedom which the attached can never know

  Virginia Woolf

  Luxury, Isolation, Knows

  Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.187, Wordsworth Editions

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• Wealth accumulates, and men decay.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Men, Decay, Wealth

  The Deserted Village l. 51 (1770)

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• You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt, as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear.

  Paul H. Dunn

  Self Confidence, Wrinkles, Inspirational Birthday

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• You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear, as young as your hope, as old as your despair.

  Samuel Ullman

  Birthday, Confidence, Self

  "The Silver Treasury, Prose and Verse for Every Mood" by Jane Manner, (p. 323-24), 1934.

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• Making love to Aurelia was like rummaging through a card catalog in a deserted library, searching for one very obscure, little-read entry on Hungarian poetry.

  Marisha Pessl

  Making Love, Library, Littles

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• But I know the difference. Everyone else is a ghost. I exist here alone, stranded by choice. Deserted.

  Rachel Cohn

  Differences, Choices, Ghost

  Rachel Cohn, David Levithan (2014). “Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List”, p.50, Egmont UK

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• We'll choose knowledge no matter what, we'll maim ourselves in the process, we'll stick our hands into the flames for it if necessary. Curiosity is not our only motive; love or grief or despair or hatred is what drives us on. We'll spy relentlessly on the dead; we'll open their letters, we'll read their journals, we'll go through their trash, hoping for a hint, a final word, an explanation, from those who have deserted us--who've left us holding the bag, which is often a good deal emptier than we'd supposed.

  Margaret Atwood

  Grief, Flames, Hands

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• Lilacs, False Blue, White, Purple,
  Colour of lilac,
  Your great puffs of flowers
  Are everywhere in this my New England ...
  Lilacs in dooryards
  Holding quiet conversation with an early moon;
  Lilacs watching a deserted house; ...
  Lilacs, wind-beaten, staggering under a lopsided shock of bloom,
  You are everywhere.

  Amy Lowell

  Spring, Flower, Moon

  Amy Lowell, “Lilacs”

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• Nothing is more deadly than a deserted, waiting street.

  Harper Lee

  Waiting, Streets

  Harper Lee (1960). “TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD”

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• He wondered how he could ever have thought of the planets, even of the Earth, as islands of life and reality floating in a deadly void. Now with a certainty which never after deserted him, he saw the planets - as mere holes or gaps in the living heaven - excluded and rejected wastes of heavy matter and murky air, formed not by addition to, but by subtraction from, the surrounding brightness.

  C. S. Lewis

  Reality, Islands, Air

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• This soldier, I realized, must have had friends at home and in his regiment; yet he lay there deserted by all except his dog. I looked on, unmoved, at battles which decided the future of nations. Tearless, I had given orders which brought death to thousands. Yet here I was stirred, profoundly stirred, stirred to tears. And by what? By the grief of one dog. Napoleon Bonaparte, on finding a dog beside the body of his dead master, licking his face and howling, on a moonlit field after a battle. Napoleon was haunted by this scene until his own death.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Dog, Grief, Home

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• It's funny, but thinking back on it now, I realize that this particular point in time, as I stood there blinking in the deserted hall, was the one point at which I might have chosen to do something very much different from what I actually did. But of course I didn't see this crucial moment for what it actually was; I suppose we never do. Instead, I only yawned, and shook myself from the momentary daze that had come upon me, and went on my way down the stairs.

  Donna Tartt

  Thinking, Might, Way

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• Changeable women are more endurable that monotonous ones; they are sometimes murdered but never deserted.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Women, Sometimes, Monotonous

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