Separateness Quotes

“Love rests on two pillars: surrender and autonomy. Our need for togetherness exists alongside our need for separateness.”
― Esther Perel, Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic

“So what do you want? Does what happens inside show on the outside? There is such a great fire in one’s soul, and yet nobody ever comes to warm themselves there, and passersby see nothing but a little smoke coming from the top of the chimney, and go on their way.”
― Vincent van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

“Here we have the paradox, the potentially tragic paradox, that our relatedness to others is an essential aspect of our being, as is our separateness, but any particular person is not a necessary part of our being.”
― R. D. Laing

“Let me be me, or let me be.”
― Anthony Liccione

“I used to be lost in us. Blurred were the lines that separated us. But now, I see our togetherness in our separateness. I see the you in me and the me in you. We are two independent beings who complement one another like photographs that are beautiful on their own but are enhanced when juxtaposed, creating an altogether new photograph.”
― Kamand Kojouri

“[Quoting Miss Harty:]

"People come here from all over the country and fall in love with Savannah. Then they move here and pretty soon they’re telling us how much more lively and prosperous Savannah could be if we only knew what we had and how to take advantage of it. I call these people ‘Gucci carpetbaggers.”
― John Berendt, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

“And the supreme mystery was simply this: here was one room; there another. Did religion solve that, or love?”
― Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

“This is the way it is with me, always looking in or looking out, a chilly pane of glass between me and a remote and longed-for world.”
― John Banville, The Blue Guitar

“We're only travelers, singing songs whose meanings are obscure, wandering through the dark sky. That is all.”
― Hao Jingfang, Invisible Planets: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation

“Is there any greater mystery than the separateness of each person?”
― Laura van den Berg, Find Me

“Geniusz to brak przystosowania.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin

“This world is of a single piece; yet, we invent nets to trap it for our inspection. Then we mistake our nets for the reality of the piece. In these nets we catch the fishes of the intellect but the sea of wholeness forever eludes our grasp. So, we forget our original intent and then mistake the nets for the sea.

Three of these nets we have named Nature, Mathematics, and Art. We conclude they are different because we call them by different names. Thus, they are apt to remain forever separated with nothing bonding them together. It is not the nets that are at fault but rather our misunderstanding of their function as nets. They do catch the fishes but never the sea, and it is the sea that we ultimately desire.”
― Martha Boles, Universal Patterns

“[...] odrębność stanowi jedną z podstawowych cech życia. Jeżeli nie otacza nas powłoka cielesna, musimy umrzeć. Człowiek egzystuje tylko wtedy, kiedy jest odizolowany od otoczenia. Czaszka to nasz hełm kosmonauty. Musimy w niej tkwić, bo w przeciwnym razie czeka nas zguba. Śmierć zaś uwalnia i jednoczy. Chociaż przeniknięcie do natury może się wydawać kuszące, oznacza ono zarazem koniec naszej kruchej tożsamości.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin

“Enlightenment is the AWARENESS that ALL is ONE and ONE is ALL. Ignorance is the illusion of separateness.”
― Manprit Kaur

“Just as mind rises up and rebels at un unskillful attempt to subdue it in meditation, a relationship will fall apart if the partners are not respectful of each other's differences. <...> Separateness and connection make each other possible; they are not mutually exclusive.”
― Mark Epstein, Going to Pieces without Falling Apart: A Buddhist Perspective on Wholeness

“All conflict in the world is essentially about our differences in measurement.”
― Joseph Rain, The Unfinished Book About Who We Are

“In fact, to the extent that you can be separate from someone is the extent to which you can truly love him or her.”
― Henry Cloud, Boundaries with Kids: How Healthy Choices Grow Healthy Children

“I would forget that I'm just talking as a human being to fellow human beings. I would think of myself as something special, and that kind of thinking would make me feel isolated. It is this sense of separateness that isolates us from other people. In fact, this kind of arrogant way of thinking creates a sense of loneliness, and then anxiety.”
― Dalai Lama XIV, Desmond Tutu, Douglas Abrams, The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

“Navigating between togetherness and separateness is every modern couple's biggest challenge, yet it's the only key to sustainable desire and passion.”
― Lebo Grand

“Living with Justin in his childhood home, my love and I had formed an island—a nation-state of two, sleepy and safe. We had only planned to stay with his family for a few weeks after the wedding—three months had passed. Days in our private culture were peaceful, smooth as a frozen lake, our souls stilled. This life with my in-laws was a comfortable hibernation, easy.”
― Aspen Matis, Your Blue Is Not My Blue: A Missing Person Memoir