privacy

Link	Quote	Tags	Author
13db51f	I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.	solitude company privacy	Henry David Thoreau
77e66cc	All human beings have three lives: public, private, and secret.	secrecy privacy public-image	Gabriel García Márquez
5c582c8	We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and private: and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship.	solitude friendship privacy	C.S. Lewis
ef6f5ee	Find meaning. Distinguish melancholy from sadness. Go out for a walk. It doesn't have to be a romantic walk in the park, spring at its most spectacular moment, flowers and smells and outstanding poetical imagery smoothly transferring you into another world. It doesn't have to be a walk during which you'll have multiple life epiphanies and discover meanings no other brain ever managed to encounter. Do not be afraid of spending quality time by yourself. Find meaning or don't find meaning but 'steal' some time and give it freely and exclusively to your own self. Opt for privacy and solitude. That doesn't make you antisocial or cause you to reject the rest of the world. But you need to breathe. And you need to be.	solitude meaning sadness privacy	Albert Camus
f9d6827	Friends don't spy; true friendship is about privacy, too.	friendship privacy	Stephen King
7564162	To be left alone is the most precious thing one can ask of the modern world.	solitude privacy	Anthony Burgess
e3d948d	If after I die, people want to write my biography, there is nothing simpler. They only need two dates: the date of my birth and the date of my death. Between one and another, every day is mine.	poetry death life privacy intimacy	Fernando Pessoa
64aebf5	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.	solitude friendship privacy companionship quietness peace	Virginia Woolf
588872b	But there are other words for privacy and independence. They are isolation and loneliness.	loneliness privacy isolation	Megan Whalen Turner
a5cda53	blindness is a private matter between a person and the eyes with which he or she was born.	inspiration privacy	José Saramago
0802998	You need to know things the others don't know. It's what no one knows about you that allows you to know yourself.	others privacy secrets	Don DeLillo
a218f88	But she has gathered that Americans, in spite of their public declarations of affection, in spite of their miniskirts and bikinis, in spite of their hand-holding on the street and lying on top of each other on the Cambridge Common, prefer their privacy.	jhumpa-lahiri the-namesake americans privacy	Jhumpa Lahiri
babbb62	[I]n a place with absolutely no private or personal life, with the incessant worship of a mediocre career-sadist as the only culture, where all citizens are the permanent property of the state, the highest form of pointlessness has been achieved.	worship deification personal-life sadism privacy kim-jong-il north-korea	Christopher Hitchens
ca53fcd	... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The jacket shifted. Geryon peered out.	privacy introversion	Anne Carson
408a9a3	'And so we exchange privacy for intimacy. We gamble with it, hoping that by exposing ourselves, someone will find a way in. This is why the human animal will always be vulnerable: because it wants to be.'	lexicon privacy vulnerability intimacy	Max Barry
fc6edc9	In our time, the symbol of state intrusion into the private life is the mandatory urine test.	urinalysis war-on-drugs liberty privacy drugs	Christopher Hitchens
998c9d8	Be quiet! Anyone can spit in my face, and call me a criminal and a prostitute. But no one has the right to judge my remorse.	feelings slander remorse privacy judgement insults	Jean-Paul Sartre
77dbd06	"There is a common superstition that "self-respect" is a kind of charm against snakes, something that keeps those who have it locked in some unblighted Eden, out of strange beds, ambivalent conversations, and trouble in general. It does not at all. It has nothing to do with the face of things, but concerns instead a separate peace, a private reconciliation."	reconciliation privacy peace self-respect	Joan Didion
dd93192	Privacy, in fact, was almost as desirable for physics as it was for sex.	privacy	Ursula K. Le Guin
6c80276	Eventually all things are known. And few matter.	politics privacy	Gore Vidal
25c8f8c	Il n'est si homme de bien, qu'il mette a l'examen des loix toutes ses actions et pensees, qui ne soit pendable dix fois en sa vie. (There is no man so good that if he placed all his actions and thoughts under the scrutiny of the laws, he would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.)	thoughts goodness privacy laws guilt	Michel de Montaigne
f5d87ab	There are skeletons in everyone's closet, things no one ever wants the world to discover.	secret wisdom privacy	Jodi Picoult
23d613b	But secluding my experience during that early period was both cowardly and wise. Some things are too fragile, too vulnerable to bring into the public eye. Tender things with tiny roots tend to wither in the glare of public scrutiny. By holding my awakening within, I contained the energy of it, and it fed me the way blood feeds muscle. It fed me a certain propelling energy, and I kept moving forward.	privacy	Sue Monk Kidd
2146d9c	New Rule: You don't need a paper shredder. I've seen your mail--it's not that interesting. What are you worried about, that the magazine from the auto club might fall into the wrong hands? I hate to break it to you 007, but the Victoria's Secret catalog isn't actually a secret.	privacy	Bill Maher
d9fed06	Oh, tell me, who first declared, who first proclaimed that man only does nasty things because he does not know his own real interests; and that if he were enlightened, if his eyes were opened to his real normal interests, man would at once cease to do nasty things, would at once become good and noble because, being enlightened and understanding his real advantage, he would see his own advantage in the good and nothing else... . Oh, the babe! Oh, the pure, innocent child!	liberation reticence privacy innocence self-interest shame	Fyodor Dostoyevsky
01496a1	For Sabina, living in truth, lying neither to ourselves not others, was possible only away from the public: the moment someone keeps an eye on what we do, we involuntarily make allowances for that eye, and nothing we do is truthful. Having a public, keeping a public in mind, means living in lies. Sabina despised literature in which people give away all kinds of intimate secrets about themselves and their friends. A man who loses his privacy loses everything, Sabina thought. And a man who gives it up on his own free will is a monster. That is why Sabina did not suffer in the least from having to keep her love a secret. On the contrary, only by doing so could she live the truth.	truth public private privacy secrets	Milan Kundera
c77cbee	I wouldn't live in a colony like that, myself, for a thousand dollars an hour. I wouldn't want it next door. I'm not too happy it's within ten miles. Why? Because their soft-headedness irritates me. Because their beautiful thinking ignores both history and human nature. Because they'd spoil my thing with their thing. Because I don't think any of them is wise enough to play God and create a human society. Look. I like privacy, I don't like crowds, I don't like noise, I don't like anarchy, I don't even like discussion all that much. I prefer study, which is very different from meditation-not better, different. I don't like children who are part of the wild life. So are polecats and rats and other sorts of hostile and untrained vermin. I want to make a distinction between civilization and the wild life. I want a society that will protect the wild life without confusing itself with it.	history idealism commune colonization crowds civilization wild study society privacy noise human-nature	Wallace Stegner
1efda71	Or was Chris thinking, as I was, that if we went to the police and told our story, our faces would be splashed on the front pages of every newspaper in the country? Would the glare of publicity make up for what we'd lose? Our privacy-our need to stay together? Could we lose each other just to get even?	story front-page newpaper faces lose together privacy newspapers thinking police stories	V.C. Andrews
871307b	And do you know the story about Haydn's head? They cut it away from the still-warm cadaver so some insane scientist could take apart the brain and pinpoint the location of musical genius. And the Einstein Story? He'd carefully written his will with instructions to cremate him. They followed his orders, but his disciple, ever loyal and devoted, refused to live without the master's gaze on him. Before the cremation, he took the eyes of the cadaver and put them in a bottle of alcohol to keep them watching him until the moment he should die himself. That's why I said that the crematory fire is the only way our bodies can escape them. It's the only absolute death. And I don't want any other. Jean-Marc, I want an absolute death.	privacy	Milan Kundera
91d2a88	There are many ways to honor America. This book is mine. I have completed this journey of self-education in the belief that the most terrifying possibility since 9/11 has not been terrorism--as frightening as that is--but the prospect that Americans will give up their rights in pursuing the chimera of security.	political patriotic security terrorism privacy rights	David K. Shipler
7a88aac	It's idealistic, it's for love and gentleness, it's close to nature, it hurts nobody, it's voluntary. I can't see anything wrong with any of that.' 'Neither can I. The only trouble is, this commune will be inhabited by and surrounded by members of the human race.	individuality idealism humanity crowds privacy	Wallace Stegner
24cfcd4	Within perfect walls there is nothing worth protecting. There is, in fact, nothing. And so we exchange privacy for intimacy.	loneliness privacy	Max Barry
2d5955b	Julie started the engine, and the air around the BSA danced to life, this time enclosing them in a roaring privacy - a momentary country, trembling at the curb. Outside, beyond their borders, the honey-slow twilight was thinning and quickening to a cold, dusty lavender. Skateboarders hurtled past like moths, urgently contorted, one-dimensional in the pale headlights rushing up the hill toward them.	skateboarders motorcycle privacy twilight	Peter S. Beagle
1dc8c7d	He knew what they said of him locally: Oh, he likes to keep himself to himself. The phrase was descriptive, not judgemental. It was a principle of life the English still respected. And it wasn't just about privacy, about an Englishman's home--even a pebbledash semi--being his castle. It was about something more: about the self, and where you kept it, and who, if anyone, was allowed to fully see it.	inner-life the-only-story julian-barnes englishman the-self privacy	Julian Barnes
d37e69f	"Mr. de Pinto, the dog who protects sheep quickly learns how to direct them, and it becomes a habit. The people have been trained by their 'watchmen' to jump, and to trample what the 'watchmen' want trampled. "I have found, that those who would guard the people are their governors. The government admits that it is a government. The press pretends that it is not. But what a pretense! You orchestrate entire populations. And who elected you? No one. You are self-appointed, you speak for no one, and therefore you have no right to question me as if you represent the common good."	press privacy	Mark Helprin

13db51f

I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.

solitude company privacy

Henry David Thoreau

77e66cc

All human beings have three lives: public, private, and secret.

secrecy privacy public-image

Gabriel García Márquez

5c582c8

We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and private: and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship.

solitude friendship privacy

C.S. Lewis

ef6f5ee

Find meaning. Distinguish melancholy from sadness. Go out for a walk. It doesn't have to be a romantic walk in the park, spring at its most spectacular moment, flowers and smells and outstanding poetical imagery smoothly transferring you into another world. It doesn't have to be a walk during which you'll have multiple life epiphanies and discover meanings no other brain ever managed to encounter. Do not be afraid of spending quality time by yourself. Find meaning or don't find meaning but 'steal' some time and give it freely and exclusively to your own self. Opt for privacy and solitude. That doesn't make you antisocial or cause you to reject the rest of the world. But you need to breathe. And you need to be.

solitude meaning sadness privacy

Albert Camus

f9d6827

Friends don't spy; true friendship is about privacy, too.

friendship privacy

Stephen King

7564162

To be left alone is the most precious thing one can ask of the modern world.

solitude privacy

Anthony Burgess

e3d948d

If after I die, people want to write my biography, there is nothing simpler. They only need two dates: the date of my birth and the date of my death. Between one and another, every day is mine.

poetry death life privacy intimacy

Fernando Pessoa

64aebf5

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.

solitude friendship privacy companionship quietness peace

Virginia Woolf

588872b

But there are other words for privacy and independence. They are isolation and loneliness.

loneliness privacy isolation

Megan Whalen Turner

a5cda53

blindness is a private matter between a person and the eyes with which he or she was born.

inspiration privacy

José Saramago

0802998

You need to know things the others don't know. It's what no one knows about you that allows you to know yourself.

others privacy secrets

Don DeLillo

a218f88

But she has gathered that Americans, in spite of their public declarations of affection, in spite of their miniskirts and bikinis, in spite of their hand-holding on the street and lying on top of each other on the Cambridge Common, prefer their privacy.

jhumpa-lahiri the-namesake americans privacy

Jhumpa Lahiri

babbb62

[I]n a place with absolutely no private or personal life, with the incessant worship of a mediocre career-sadist as the only culture, where all citizens are the permanent property of the state, the highest form of pointlessness has been achieved.

worship deification personal-life sadism privacy kim-jong-il north-korea

Christopher Hitchens

ca53fcd

... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The jacket shifted. Geryon peered out.

privacy introversion

Anne Carson

408a9a3

'And so we exchange privacy for intimacy. We gamble with it, hoping that by exposing ourselves, someone will find a way in. This is why the human animal will always be vulnerable: because it wants to be.'

lexicon privacy vulnerability intimacy

Max Barry

fc6edc9

In our time, the symbol of state intrusion into the private life is the mandatory urine test.

urinalysis war-on-drugs liberty privacy drugs

Christopher Hitchens

998c9d8

Be quiet! Anyone can spit in my face, and call me a criminal and a prostitute. But no one has the right to judge my remorse.

feelings slander remorse privacy judgement insults

Jean-Paul Sartre

77dbd06

"There is a common superstition that "self-respect" is a kind of charm against snakes, something that keeps those who have it locked in some unblighted Eden, out of strange beds, ambivalent conversations, and trouble in general. It does not at all. It has nothing to do with the face of things, but concerns instead a separate peace, a private reconciliation."

reconciliation privacy peace self-respect

Joan Didion

dd93192

Privacy, in fact, was almost as desirable for physics as it was for sex.

privacy

Ursula K. Le Guin

6c80276

Eventually all things are known. And few matter.

politics privacy

Gore Vidal

25c8f8c

Il n'est si homme de bien, qu'il mette a l'examen des loix toutes ses actions et pensees, qui ne soit pendable dix fois en sa vie. (There is no man so good that if he placed all his actions and thoughts under the scrutiny of the laws, he would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.)

thoughts goodness privacy laws guilt

Michel de Montaigne

f5d87ab

There are skeletons in everyone's closet, things no one ever wants the world to discover.

secret wisdom privacy

Jodi Picoult

23d613b

But secluding my experience during that early period was both cowardly and wise. Some things are too fragile, too vulnerable to bring into the public eye. Tender things with tiny roots tend to wither in the glare of public scrutiny. By holding my awakening within, I contained the energy of it, and it fed me the way blood feeds muscle. It fed me a certain propelling energy, and I kept moving forward.

privacy

Sue Monk Kidd

2146d9c

New Rule: You don't need a paper shredder. I've seen your mail--it's not that interesting. What are you worried about, that the magazine from the auto club might fall into the wrong hands? I hate to break it to you 007, but the Victoria's Secret catalog isn't actually a secret.

privacy

Bill Maher

d9fed06

Oh, tell me, who first declared, who first proclaimed that man only does nasty things because he does not know his own real interests; and that if he were enlightened, if his eyes were opened to his real normal interests, man would at once cease to do nasty things, would at once become good and noble because, being enlightened and understanding his real advantage, he would see his own advantage in the good and nothing else... . Oh, the babe! Oh, the pure, innocent child!

liberation reticence privacy innocence self-interest shame

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

01496a1

For Sabina, living in truth, lying neither to ourselves not others, was possible only away from the public: the moment someone keeps an eye on what we do, we involuntarily make allowances for that eye, and nothing we do is truthful. Having a public, keeping a public in mind, means living in lies. Sabina despised literature in which people give away all kinds of intimate secrets about themselves and their friends. A man who loses his privacy loses everything, Sabina thought. And a man who gives it up on his own free will is a monster. That is why Sabina did not suffer in the least from having to keep her love a secret. On the contrary, only by doing so could she live the truth.

truth public private privacy secrets

Milan Kundera

c77cbee

I wouldn't live in a colony like that, myself, for a thousand dollars an hour. I wouldn't want it next door. I'm not too happy it's within ten miles. Why? Because their soft-headedness irritates me. Because their beautiful thinking ignores both history and human nature. Because they'd spoil my thing with their thing. Because I don't think any of them is wise enough to play God and create a human society. Look. I like privacy, I don't like crowds, I don't like noise, I don't like anarchy, I don't even like discussion all that much. I prefer study, which is very different from meditation-not better, different. I don't like children who are part of the wild life. So are polecats and rats and other sorts of hostile and untrained vermin. I want to make a distinction between civilization and the wild life. I want a society that will protect the wild life without confusing itself with it.

history idealism commune colonization crowds civilization wild study society privacy noise human-nature

Wallace Stegner

1efda71

Or was Chris thinking, as I was, that if we went to the police and told our story, our faces would be splashed on the front pages of every newspaper in the country? Would the glare of publicity make up for what we'd lose? Our privacy-our need to stay together? Could we lose each other just to get even?

story front-page newpaper faces lose together privacy newspapers thinking police stories

V.C. Andrews

871307b

And do you know the story about Haydn's head? They cut it away from the still-warm cadaver so some insane scientist could take apart the brain and pinpoint the location of musical genius. And the Einstein Story? He'd carefully written his will with instructions to cremate him. They followed his orders, but his disciple, ever loyal and devoted, refused to live without the master's gaze on him. Before the cremation, he took the eyes of the cadaver and put them in a bottle of alcohol to keep them watching him until the moment he should die himself. That's why I said that the crematory fire is the only way our bodies can escape them. It's the only absolute death. And I don't want any other. Jean-Marc, I want an absolute death.

privacy

Milan Kundera

91d2a88

There are many ways to honor America. This book is mine. I have completed this journey of self-education in the belief that the most terrifying possibility since 9/11 has not been terrorism--as frightening as that is--but the prospect that Americans will give up their rights in pursuing the chimera of security.

political patriotic security terrorism privacy rights

David K. Shipler

7a88aac

It's idealistic, it's for love and gentleness, it's close to nature, it hurts nobody, it's voluntary. I can't see anything wrong with any of that.' 'Neither can I. The only trouble is, this commune will be inhabited by and surrounded by members of the human race.

individuality idealism humanity crowds privacy

Wallace Stegner

24cfcd4

Within perfect walls there is nothing worth protecting. There is, in fact, nothing. And so we exchange privacy for intimacy.

loneliness privacy

Max Barry

2d5955b

Julie started the engine, and the air around the BSA danced to life, this time enclosing them in a roaring privacy - a momentary country, trembling at the curb. Outside, beyond their borders, the honey-slow twilight was thinning and quickening to a cold, dusty lavender. Skateboarders hurtled past like moths, urgently contorted, one-dimensional in the pale headlights rushing up the hill toward them.

skateboarders motorcycle privacy twilight

Peter S. Beagle

1dc8c7d

He knew what they said of him locally: Oh, he likes to keep himself to himself. The phrase was descriptive, not judgemental. It was a principle of life the English still respected. And it wasn't just about privacy, about an Englishman's home--even a pebbledash semi--being his castle. It was about something more: about the self, and where you kept it, and who, if anyone, was allowed to fully see it.

inner-life the-only-story julian-barnes englishman the-self privacy

Julian Barnes

d37e69f

"Mr. de Pinto, the dog who protects sheep quickly learns how to direct them, and it becomes a habit. The people have been trained by their 'watchmen' to jump, and to trample what the 'watchmen' want trampled. "I have found, that those who would guard the people are their governors. The government admits that it is a government. The press pretends that it is not. But what a pretense! You orchestrate entire populations. And who elected you? No one. You are self-appointed, you speak for no one, and therefore you have no right to question me as if you represent the common good."

press privacy

Mark Helprin