Secluded Quotes

We should forgive and forget the faults of others. Anger is the enemy of every spiritual aspirant. Anger causes loss of power through every pore of our body. In circumstances when the mind is tempted to get angry, we should control ourselves and resolve firmly, 'No.' We can go to a secluded spot and chant our mantra. The mind will become quiet by itself. ~ Mata Amritanandamayi

A critical analysis of the present global constellation-one which offers no clear solution, no "practical" advice on what to do, and provides no light at the end of the tunnel, since one is well aware that this light might belong to a train crashing towards us-usually meets with reproach: "Do you mean we should do nothing? Just sit and wait?" One should gather the courage to answer: "YES, precisely that!" There are situations when the only true "practical" thing to do is to resist the temptation to engage immediately and to "wait and see" by means of a patient, critical analysis. Engagement seems to exert its pressure on us from all directions. In a well-known passage from his 'Existentialism and Humanism', Sartre deployed the dilemma of a young man in France in 1942, torn between the duty to help his lone, ill mother and the duty to enter the war and fight the Germans; Sartre's point is, of course, that there is no a priori answer to this dilemma. The young man needs to make a decision grounded only in his own abyssal freedom and assume full responsibility for it.

An obscene third way out of this dilemma would have been to advise the young man to tell his mother that he will join the Resistance, and to tell his Resistance friends that he will take care of his mother, while, in reality, withdrawing to a secluded place and studying.

There is more than cheap cynicism in this advice. It brings to mind a well-known Soviet joke about Lenin. Under socialism; L ~ Slavoj Zizek

I appreciate all of the attention I get in my career. I am a loner and live a rather secluded life so sometimes I do get overwhelmed, but I am always very appreciative of everything, and honored. ~ Kim Elizabeth

Author:
A common gadabout who freely wanders over the landscape with wanton disregard. His days are spent picking up all the stray free words he can handle and squirreling them away for later use.
Subsequently, (days, months or years later) working by candlelight and hidden away in his dank, musty secluded lair, the rogue simply rearranges the collected words on yellowed bond with a sharpened quill ink pen fashioned from the tail feather of a bald-headed vulture.
Once finished, the dastardly cur audaciously attempts to sell those assembled pages for fleeting fame and profit. ~ Leopold Throckmorton

You fight your superficiality, your shallowness, so as to try to come at people without unreal expectations, without an overload of bias or hope or arrogance, as untanklike as you can be, sans cannon and machine guns and steel plating half a foot thick; you come at them unmenacingly on your own ten toes instead of tearing up the turf with your caterpillar treads, take them on with an open mind, as equals, man to man, as we used to say, and yet you never fail to get them wrong. You might as well have the "brain" of a tank. You get them wrong before you meet them, while you're anticipating meeting them; you get them wrong while you're with them; and then you go home to tell somebody else about the meeting and you get them all wrong again. Since the same generally goes for them with you, the whole thing is really a dazzling illusion empty of all perception, an astonishing farce of misperception. And yet what are we to do about this terribly significant business of "other people," which gets bled of the significance we think it has and takes on instead a significance that is ludicrous, so ill-equipped are we all to envision one another's interior workings and invisible aims? Is everyone to go off and lock the door and sit secluded like the lonely writers do, in a soundproof cell, summoning people out of words and then proposing that these word people are closer to the real thing than the real people that we mangle with our ignorance every day? The fact remains that getting people ~ Philip Roth

Since the beginning of storytelling, he explained, Death has called on the unwitting. In one tale or another, it arrives quietly in town and takes a room at an inn, or lurks in an alleyway, or lingers in the marketplace, surreptitiously. Then just when the hero has a moment of respite from his daily affairs, Death pays him a visit. This is all well and good, allowed the Count. But what is rarely related is the fact that Life is every bit as devious as Death. It too can wear a hooded coat. It too can slip into town, lurk in an alley, or wait in the back of a tavern. Hadn't it paid such a visit to Mishka? Hadn't it found him hiding behind his books, lured him out of the library, and taken his hand on a secluded spot overlooking the Neva? ~ Amor Towles

A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one's neighbor - such is my idea of happiness. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Hours may have passed before I heard a throat clear behind us, saw Dad appear. His frame blocked out the sun, casting a cool shadow over where we lay.

I registered only once he was there that I had slowly shifted so I was lying with my head on Elliot's stomach, in our secluded stretch of sand. I pushed to sit up, awkwardly.

"What are you guys doing?"

"Nothing," we said in unison.

I could hear immediately how guilty our joined answer made us sound.

"Really?" Dad asked.

"Really," I answered, but he wasn't looking at me anymore. He and Elliot were having some kind of male Windtalker exchange that included prolonged eye contact, throat clearing, and probably some mysterious form of direct communication between their Y chromosomes.

"We were just reading," Elliot said finally, his voice shifting deeper midway through the sentence. I'm not sure if this sign of his impending manliness was reassuring or damning as far as my dad was concerned.

"Seriously, Dad," I said.

His eyes flickered to mine.

"Okay." Finally he seemed to relax and squatted down next to me. "What are you reading?"

"A Wrinkle in Time."

"Again?"

"It's so good. ~ Christina Lauren

For history is a pattern Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails On a winter's afternoon, in a secluded chapel History is now and England. ~ T. S. Eliot

Life in the silent, secluded little mansion in Passy was as smooth and regular as the gentle ticking of its antiquated clocks. (89) ~ Emile Zola

I dug the untraceable phone Patch had given me out of my handbag and dialled his number.
"I have a free couple of hours," I told him, walking toward my car, which was parked on the next block. "There's a very dark, very secluded barn in Lookout Hill Park behind the carousel. I could be there in fifteen minutes."
I heard the smile in his voice."You want me bad."
"I need and an endorphin boost."
"And making out in an abandoned barn with me will give you one?"
"No, it will probably put me in an endorphin coma, and I'm more than happy to test the theory. ~ Becca Fitzpatrick

On hashish, he saw the elaborate furnishings of the nineteenth-century bourgeois interior concentrating to satanic contentment, satanic knowing, satanic calm ... To live in these interiors was to have woven a dense fabric about oneself, to have secluded oneself within a spider's web, in whose toils world events hang loosely suspended like so many insect bodies sucked dry. ~ Daniel Pinchbeck

As evening approached, I came down from the heights of the island, and I liked then to go and sit on the shingle in some secluded spot by the lake; there the noise of the waves and the movement of the water, taking hold of my senses and driving all other agitation from my soul, would plunge me into delicious reverie in which night often stole upon me unawares. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I found that I faced a highly complex situation, and that I couldnt hope to change it until I had armed myself with the necessary psychological and intellectual capacity. My contemplation of life and human nature in that secluded place had taught me that he who cannot change the very fabric of his thought will never be able to change reality, and will never, therefore, make any process. ~ Anwar Sadat

To live a remote, retired, secluded life is the antipodes of spirituality as Jesus Christ taught it. The test of our spirituality comes when we come up against injustice and meanness and ingratitude and turmoil, all of which have the tendency to make us spiritual sluggards. ~ Oswald Chambers

Survival Movement in Hostile Areas," most of which he could have quoted verbatim if somebody asked him, but really all you had to know was the acronym BLISS: B - Blends in with the surroundings L - Low in silhouette I - Irregular in shape S - Small in size S - Secluded ~ T.C. Boyle

They ignored her because of their headphones, a thousand people marching to fifteen hundred different drummers, effectively secluded but for a very basic instinct not to bump into one another. Those that were unplugged rushed from place to place and were never actually anywhere other than somewhere else. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

How does one proceed in a situation like this? If only the discovery of mutual admiration could lead promptly into making out. If only I could say, 'Listen. I like you, and you like me, so let's go find a secluded park and touch each other. ~ Stephanie Perkins

I gave myself up to fruitless speculation, and was always looking for secluded places. I became particularly fond of the ruined greenhouse. I used to climb, I remember, on to the high wall, settle myself on it and sit there, a youth afflicted by such misery, solitude and grief that I would be overcome with self-pity. How I reveled in these melancholy feelings - how I adored them. ~ Ivan Turgenev

An unusual problem developed when a case of smallpox was brought to the hospital. Smallpox was too contagious to be allowed on the wards. Its victims had to be specially isolated. But where? Osler drove the patient up to the mayor of Hamilton's home, a sure way of getting action. Special accommodation was arranged in a secluded house. Osler visited the patient twice a day until he died, and then did an autopsy on the spot, helped by the German housekeeper. ~ Michael Bliss

Along some northern coast at sundown a beaten gold light is waterborne, sweeping across lakes and tracing zigzag rivers to the sea, and we know we're in transit again, half numb to the secluded beauty down there, the slate land we're leaving behind, the peneplain, to cross these rainbands in deep night. This is time totally lost to us. We don't remember it. We take no sense impressions with us, no voices, none of the windy blast of the aircraft on the tarmac, or the white noise of flight, or the hours waiting. Nothing sticks to us but smoke in our hair and clothes. It is dead time. It never happened until it happens again. Then it never happened. ~ Don DeLillo

I want to get a farm where I am going to live for the rest of my life. I like the idea of a secluded place. ~ Gisele Bundchen

You can't live in your own secluded world. If you're not on the Tube, on the bus doing normal things, how can you relate to people? ~ Andrea Corr

... [T]he whole thing is really a dazzling illusion empty of all perception, an astonishing farce of misperception. And yet what are we to do about this terribly significant business of other people, which gets bled of the significance we think it has and takes on instead a significance that is ludicrous, so ill-equipped are we all to envision one another's interior workings and invisible aims? Is everyone to go off and lock the door and sit secluded like the lonely writers do, in a soundproof cell, summoning people out of words and then proposing that these word people are closer to the real thing than the real people that we mangle with our ignorance every day? ~ Philip Roth

I'm probably never happier than when I'm by myself in the water. What I've worked and sacrificed for is not to be on stage playing music but to surf in some secluded place. It's a grounding element. Waves don't care who you are. ~ Eddie Vedder

Surprises are one of the secrets of a good relationship. Find someone who, out of the blue, will grab you, and a blanket, take you to a secluded spot and canoodle as the sun rises... ~ Virginia Alison

Q: Which party had wildest celebration and how did it play out?

1) The 1972 Dolphins Super Bowl watching party for the David Tyree catch?

2) The Jack Nicklaus day after Thanksgiving morning in 2009?

3) The NFL referee Monday night football watching party at Ed Hochuli's house for the Seattle/Green Bay game?
- Steve G., Salt Lake City

SG: Here's my theory on the day after Thanksgiving in 2009: I think Jack Nicklaus heard the news, went out and bought a bottle of 20-year-old Pappy Van Winkle, found an antique shotgun with 300 rounds of ammo, then drove to a secluded spot in the woods 25 miles away from any other human being. He got out of his car, started jumping around and screaming like he won the Super Bowl, did this for 20 solid minutes, then started swigging whiskey and shooting at things while whooping it up. Eventually, he drank the entire bottle, got back into his car and just started happily ramming into trees until the car stopped moving. Then he passed out in the driver's seat, woke up the next morning and walked home. Anyway, my answer is Jack Nicklaus. ~ Bill Simmons Grantland Mailbag Oct. 28 2012

My Serinity,
Thee, my serenity, one can not bear,
Seeing thee befuddled, bereaved,
Dimmed like the midnight, secluded, darkened,
Thee, my serenity,
A window to my eyes,
A window to laughter, and peace of mind,
Thee, my serenity, one can not bear,
Seeing thee wail, whine, cry,
Like a gloomy, mourning brume,
Thee, my serenity,
Soared through fervor and delight,
To the crown of heavens, the Almighty Myth,
One can not bear,
Seeing thee prostrate, razed, demure,
Upon the dimmed streets, crawling, for a sight of the lune,
Thee, my birdy in love,
What befall to thy song,
The very chant of my life,
Cut short, stopped, along with all I gasp,
Thee, my serenity, one can not bear,
Seeing thee, caged in thy own night,
Encumbered, through thy own heart,
Lean on my shoulders now,
My beautiful, wonderful Lily,
That thee shall not fear, the sorrow of,
Of being lonely, apart, not having a peer,
As I promise, to my most dear,
The girl to my heart, always near,
Come what may, don't age a year,
That I will be, forever here, ~ Hamidreza Bagheri

grew up reading books where vampires were scary. This novel is an attempt to make them scary again. When I thought of the premise that became DRACULAS, I knew it needed to be a group project. Take four well-known horror authors, let them each create their own unique characters, and have them fight for their lives during a vampire outbreak at a secluded, rural hospital. This is NOT a collection of short stories. It's a single, complete novel. And it's going to freak you out. If you're easily disturbed, have a weak stomach, or are prone to nightmares, stop reading right now. There are no sexy teen heartthrobs herein. You have been warned. ~ Blake Crouch

In my deepest troubles, I frequently would wrench myself from the persons around me and retire to some secluded part of our noble forests. ~ John James Audubon

For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation. For this reason young people, who are beginners in everything, cannot yet know love: they have to learn it. With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered close about their lonely timid, upward-beating heart, they must learn to love. But learning-time is always a long, secluded time, and, so loving, for a long while ahead and far on into life, is - solitude, intensified and deepened loneness for him who loves. Love is at first not anything that means merging, giving over, and uniting with another (for what would a union be of something unclarified and unfinished, still subordinate - ?), it is a high inducement to the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world, to become world for himself for another's sake, it is great exacting claim upon him, something that chooses him out and calls him to vast things. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Victoria spent most of the morning in the town house's private garden. It was a cool, humid day, the sky liberally laced with clouds, the air stirring with mild breezes. She sat at the stone table and read for a while, then wandered along graveled paths bordered with boxes of lilac, jessamine, and Russian honeysuckle. The carefully tended garden was bordered by poplar hedges and ivy-covered walls. Well-stocked beds of flowering and fruit-bearing paths and filled the air with perfume.
In this small, secluded world, it seemed as if the city were a hundred miles away. It was difficult not to be contented in such beautiful surroundings. ~ Lisa Kleypas

Let the night take you. Let the stars evaporate into your dreams. Let sleep be the only comfort for you to believe. ~ Anthony Liccione

As when on some secluded branch in forest far and wide sits perched an owl, who, full of self-conceit and self-created wisdom, explains, comments, condemns, ordains and order things not understood, yet full of importance still holds forth to stocks and stones around - so sits and scribbles Mike. ~ Michael Faraday

In Los Angeles, individuality is very big, because people live in secluded bubbles. People don't walk around. They're very insular, and that allows for people to be whatever they want. ~ Mario Testino

I see something like fear on his face. What if I'm an alien invader trying to lure him to a secluded place so I can suck his brains out? Or a vampire, ravenous for his blood? ~ Cynthia Hand

The birds sang in the dust
in an elaborate weave, ambiguous,
deafening, prey to existence
poor passions lost between the modest
summits of groves of mulberry and elder;
and I, like them, in secluded places
reserved for the lost and pure,
would wait for evening to fall,
for the silent smells of fire
and joyous misery to fill the air,
for the Angelus bell to toll, veiled
in the new peasant mystery
fulfilled in the ancient mystery. ~ Pier Paolo Pasolini

On July 2, McCandless finished reading Tolstoy's "Family Happiness", having marked several passages that moved him:
"He was right in saying that the only certain happiness in life is to live for others ...
I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books , music, love for one's neighbor - such is my idea of happiness. And then, on top of all that, you for a mate, and children, perhaps - what more can the heart of a man desire?" ... ~ Jon Krakauer

Danilo's was the kind of place where many drinking men come to hide, be it from their wives, in-laws, their jobs or life in general. it was where men and women can come to drink poison as if it was the only form of medicine available to remedy the migraine headache called life. The lighting dim and secluded, mostly covering the tables, counters and the door to the bathroom. The walls were decorated in decades of memories, favorite sports teams and other miscellaneous decor that was typical of small bars such as this one. It was too dark to tell what they were from a distance.
There was a thick layer of smoke hovering in the air around the ceiling lights, the place was smothered in it but was strongest above everyone's heads. The smell was the classic stale bar odor of cigarettes and cheap cigars. ~ J.C. Joranco

She compares the deepest wells of depression to gestation, to a time enclosed, a secluded lightlessness in which, unknown and unforced, we grow. ~ Louise Erdrich

It's in its own little area . . . secluded . . . steamy." Ty began to smile, but he held his ground, shaking his head. "You kinky little exhibitionist, you." "I'm just suggesting that a hot soak would feel really good for aching muscles." "I ~ Abigail Roux

I'm so secluded. Very alone. ~ Yves Saint-Laurent

Every morning they made sure that they had removed all clues to their presence, then set off to find another lonely and secluded spot, traveling by Apparition to more woods, to the shadowy crevices of cliffs, to purple moors, gorse-covered mountainsides, and once a sheltered and pebbly cove. Every twelve hours or so they passed the Horcrux between them as though they were playing some perverse, slow-motion game of pass-the-parcel, where they dreaded the music stopping because the reward was twelve hours of increased fear and anxiety. ~ J.K. Rowling

I live a very secluded life, a very contemplative life and a very meditative one. That is my ideal life. ~ Alice Walker

To live a distant, withdrawn, and secluded life is diametrically opposed to spirituality as Jesus Christ taught it. The true test of our spirituality occurs when we come up against injustice, degradation, ingratitude, and turmoil, all of which have the tendency to make us spiritually lazy. While being tested, we want to use prayer and Bible reading for the purpose of finding a quiet retreat. We use God only for the sake of getting peace and joy. We seek only our enjoyment of Jesus Christ, not a true realization of Him. This is the first step in the wrong direction. All these things we are seeking are simply effects, and yet we try to make them causes. ~ Oswald Chambers

And last are the few whose delight is in meditation and understanding; who yearn not for goods, nor for victory, but for knowledge; who leave both market and battlefield to lose themselves in the quiet clarity of secluded thought; whose will is a light rather than a fire, whose haven is not power but truth: these are the men of wisdom, who stand aside unused by the world. ~ Will Durant

I have a free couple of hours," I told him, walking toward my car, which was parked on the next block. "There's a very private, very secluded barn in Lookout Hill Park behind the carousel. I could be there in fifteen minutes."
I heard the smile in his voice. "You want me bad. ~ Becca Fitzpatrick

No, Mistress of Doubts, I've brought you here to this secluded corner of the city for the nefarious purpose of cooking your dinner myself. ~ Scott Lynch

I've spent my entire life reading about the lives other people are having. My world has been ... very small. No one believes I would thrive if I weren't kept secluded and protected. Like a flower in a glasshouse. If I marry one of my kind, as you put it, no one will ever see me as I am. Only what I'm supposed to be. ~ Lisa Kleypas

Peter suspects that the caltrop is evolving in response to the finches. Where the struggle for existence is fierce, the caltrop that is likeliest to succeed is the plant that puts more energy into spines and less into seeds; but in the safer, more secluded spot, the fittest plants are the ones that put more energy into making seeds and less energy into protecting them. The finches may be driving the evolution of caltrop while caltrop is driving the evolution of the finches. ~ Jonathan Weiner

You have only to creep into a secluded corner or into a crocodile, to shut your eyes, and you immediately devise a perfect millennium for mankind. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Furthermore, even if ideas were gettable - say, stacked in a secluded cave like the Dead Sea scrolls - I wouldn't go there. An 'idea,' especially one adhered to from start to finish, can be disastrous for a compelling piece of fiction. ~ Ron Rash

And it is sheer folly for a man who lives secluded from the world in his lowly hut, spending his days in idle delight in his garden, to pass off such matters as irrelevant to himself. Do you imagine that the enemy Impermanence will not come forcing its way into your peaceful mountain retreat? The recluse faces death as surely as the soldier setting forth to battle. ~ Yoshida Kenko

A wealth you cannot imagine flows through you. Do not consider what strangers say. Be secluded in your secret heart-house, that bowl of silence. Talking, no matter how humble-seeming, is really a kind of bragging. Let silence be the art you practice. #54, I SEE THE FACE ~ Rumi

College is a secluded life of scholastic vegetation ~ Vera Brittain

She sat in a secluded room, she was mad, but she could not accept it; so she was neither sane nor insane. She could not be either until she knew herself, so in limbo she must die. She kept stuffing toilet roll into her mouth. They found her choked to death! ~ Stephen Richards

Retreating from the world
will not liberate you.
Happiness is not found in
a secluded forest hut or isolated cave.
Enlightenment comes when you
connect to the world.
Only when you truly connect with everyone
and everything else do you become Enlightened.
Only by going deeply and fully into the world
do you attain liberation. ~ Guo Jun

Dad used to say lots of funny things - like he was speaking his own language sometimes. Twenty-three skidoo, salad days, nosey parker, bandbox fresh, the catbird seat, chocolate teapot, and something about Grandma sucking eggs. One of his favourites was 'safe as houses'. Teaching me to ride a bike, my mother worrying in the doorway: "Calm down, Linda, this street is as safe as houses." Convincing Jamie to sleep without his nightlight: "It's as safe as houses in here, son, not a monster for miles."
Then overnight the world turned into a hideous nightmare, and the phrase became a black joke to Jamie and me. Houses were the most dangerous places we knew.
Hiding in a patch of scrubby pines, watching a car pull out from the garage of a secluded home, deciding whether to make a food run, whether it was too dicey. "Do you think the parasites'll be long gone?" "No way - that place is as safe as houses. Let's get out of here."
And now I can sit here and watch TV like it is five years ago and Mom and Dad are in the other room and i've never spent a night hiding in a drainpipe with Jamie and a bunch of rats while bodysnatchers with spotlights search for the thieves who made off with a bag of dried beans and a bowl of cold spaghetti.
I know that if Jamie and I survived alone for twenty years we would never find this feeling on our own. The feeling of safety. More than safety, even - happiness. Safe and happy, two things I thought i'd never feel again. Jared made us ~ Stephenie Meyer

To avoid sounding like a cliche, I won't say I want to get proposed to in Paris, but Paris. I want it to happen somewhere public where people can be excited that I just got proposed to, and everyone applauds, like in a restaurant - that, or somewhere totally secluded ... in Paris. ~ Betty Who

The first two things Gaudencio Rivera was made aware of
within hours of arriving by carabao-drawn cart at the secluded town of Tagbaoran on the island province of Palawan
were these: that the most beautiful woman in creation dwelt by the river, and that it was pointless to even dream of being loved by her. ~ Dean Francis Alfar

I could be the Greta Garbo of comedy, very secluded, but Garbo had a man who was beyond rich to support her. ~ Joan Rivers

What I do requires fantastic concentration ... but you can't be totally alone, or you lose all contact with reality, so even when I'm engrossed and secluded, Jack Dunphy can be there. He's my oldest and best friend, and best critic too. ~ Truman Capote

Your life is an island separated from all other islands and continents. Regardless of how many boats you send to other shores or how many ships arrive upon your shores, you yourself are an island separated by its own pains, secluded in its happiness ~ Khalil Gibran

It's very strange to go from being completely secluded and doing your own work for yourself, to having an audience - and having an audience that's aware of what you do and expects you to do things that they like. It can make things difficult. ~ Jhonen Vasquez

Deceived on all sides, overwhelmed with injustice, I will fly from an abyss where vice is triumphant, and seek out some small secluded nook on earth, where on may enjoy the freedom of being an honest man. ~ Moliere

I am a night creature, and I write from midnight till dawn, secluded in my office and surrounded by my collection of dragons (I have 400 of them). I only use Macintosh computers, which I name in dynastic order. Right now I'm using MacDragon 5. Only the devil is able to decipher my handwriting. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

He went to India with his capital, and there, according to a wild legend in our family, he was once seen riding on an elephant, in company with a Baboon; but I think it must have been a Baboo - or a Begum. Anyhow, from India tidings of his death reached home, within ten years. How they affected my aunt, nobody knew; for immediately upon the separation, she took her maiden name again, bought a cottage in a hamlet on the sea-coast a long way off, established herself there as a single woman with one servant, and was understood to live secluded, ~ Charles Dickens

Some of the greatest and most lasting effects of genuine oratory have gone forth from secluded lecture desks into the hearts of quiet groups of students. ~ Woodrow Wilson

Pilgrims

Tuscan reds and ochre hues
Olive greens and skies of blue
Sunlit valleys full of charm
Secluded homestead and hilltop farm

Over hills skim birds in flight
Aromas whet the appetite
Autumn rustle fills the air
Revealing grace of trees laid bare

Pathways meander through the vale
Inviting travelers its height to scale
Sunset rewards as evening ends
And pilgrims to the night descend ~ Collette O'Mahony

In old grimy streets, in isolated and decaying houses, sometimes far from the Vieux Carre, in little used and secluded cemeteries, there still sluggishly circulates the ebbing blood of the past, of a vigorous and vividly hued past. ~ Clarence John Laughlin

I was kind of scared at first to do that [vice-over] because when you're on set, a lot of the things going on around you - the environment and playing off other actors - and that's what makes it easier and helps you to be in your character. So, realizing you're not going to have that and you're going to be secluded in this booth, it's like, "How am I going to be a character when I'm just in these walls?" ~ Elle Fanning

Theaters are always going to be around, and doing fine. With computers and technology, we're becoming more and more secluded from each other. And the movie theater is one of the last places where we can still gather and experience something together. I don't think the desire for that magic will ever go away. ~ Wolfgang Petersen

The thing is, I really can't relate to anyone my own age. Not in a superior way - an inferior way, if anything. Socially, I have no idea what my friends are talking about. I don't listen to any new music. I feel very secluded. ~ Michael Cera

To have a goddess like you in his arms and not appreciate it…"
He kissed her, unable to resist the lush, succulent mouth so close to his. He put everything he felt into it, so he could wipe out any hurt the Neds of the world had given her.
When he broke away, realizing he was treading dangerous ground, she said hoarsely, "You weren't always so…appreciative. When I said that men enjoyed my company, you said you found that hard to believe."
"What?" he retorted with a scowl. "I never said any such thing."
"Yes, you did, the day that I asked you to investigate my suitors. I remember it clearly."
"There's no way in hell I ever…" The conversation came back to him suddenly, and he shook his head. "You're remembering only part, sweeting. You said that men enjoyed your company and considered you easy to talk to. It was the last part I found hard to believe."
"Oh." She eyed him askance. "Why? You never seem to have trouble talking to me. Or rather, lecturing me."
"It's either lecture you or stop up your mouth with kisses," he said dryly. "Talking to you isn't easy, because every time I'm near you I burn to carry you off to some secluded spot and do any number of wicked things with you."
She blinked, then gazed at him with such softness that at made his chest hurt. "Then why don't you?"
"Because you're a marquess's daughter and my employer's sister."
"What does that signify? You're an assistant magistrate and a famous Bow Street Runner-" ~ Sabrina Jeffries

Her long hair is loosely tied back, her face very refined and intelligent-looking, with beautiful eyes and a shadowy smile playing over her lips, a smile whose sense of completeness is indescribable. It reminds me of a small, sunny spot, the special patch of sunlight you find only in some remote, secluded place. ~ Haruki Murakami

I repose in this quiet and secluded spot not from any natural preference for solitude, but finding other cemeteries limited as to race by charter rules, I have chosen this that I might illustrate in my death the principles which I advocated through a long life: EQUALITY OF MAN BEFORE HIS CREATOR. ~ Thaddeus Stevens

Some men of a secluded and studious life, have sent forth from their closet or their cloister, rays of intellectual light that have agitated courts, and revolutionized kingdoms; like the moon, that far removed from the ocean, and shining upon it with a serene and sober light, is the chief cause of all those ebbings and flowings which incessantly disturb that world of waters. ~ Charles Caleb Colton

If a woman is fair and amiable, she is praised for both qualities, but especially the former, by the bulk of mankind: if, on the other hand, she is disagreeable in person and character, her plainness is commonly inveighed against as her greatest crime, because, to common observers, it gives the greatest offence; while, if she is plain and good, provided she is a person of retired manners and secluded life, no one ever knows of her goodness, except her immediate connections ~ Anne Bronte

I should be able to get her to you by dawn."
"Good."
"And yes, you will be somewhere very secluded."
"Good."
"Do me a favour, though, and try not to break any retaining walls, please."
He smirked. "I'll try my best, but I can't make any promises."
"You know what? You're just going to buy this house from me. It's sure to sustain damage, and I'll never get the mental pictures out of my mind."
"Done."
"It's not her, mind you. Picturing her--"
"It's very important that you shut up now, Gavin. ~ Elizabeth Hunter

I braced for what lay ahead; my life could change profoundly in the next few moments. I was about to confirm - or deny - my suspicion that my husband was shacking up with his lover in one of the secluded homes. ~ Jack Erickson

Learning has been as great a Loser by being shut up in Colleges and Cells, and secluded from the World and good Company. By that Means, every Thing of what we call Belles Lettres became totally barbarous, being cultivated by Men without any Taste of Life or Manners, and without that Liberty and Facility of Thought and Expression, which can only be acquir'd by Conversation. ~ David Hume

The rapacious white tribe who were arriving in increasing numbers, not only as convicts but also as settlers, wanted to own everything they touched. They slashed and burned the wilderness so that they might graze their sheep and grow their corn. They erected fences around the land they now called their own and which henceforth they were prepared to defend with muskets and sometimes even their lives. They built church steeples and prison walls and homes of granite hewn from the virgin rock and timber cut from the umbrageous mountain forests. They possessed everything upon the island, the wild beasts that grazed upon its surface, the birds that flew over it, the fish that swam in its rushing river torrents and the barking seals resting in the quiet bays and secluded inlets. Everything they thought worthwhile was attached to the notion of ownership. ~ Bryce Courtenay

I chew my bottom lip, urging myself to step up to the plate and tell Dorian how I really feel. "I feel like you're…doing something to me. Changing me, in a way. The day I met you, it's like, the earth shifted. Every bit of doubt and reluctance instantly dissolves whenever you're around me. Things make sense that ordinarily wouldn't. I don't fully understand it so it's incredibly difficult for me to even try to explain it to you. But I know something happened. I know what I felt."

Dorian's eyes darken a fraction, the makings of a dark storm brewing behind crystal blue. "You're overthinking it."

"Am I? Or am I not thinking about it enough?"

For several heated moments, we stare at each other, both our expressions guarded and defensive. He has secrets, just like I do. But while we may be hell bent on safeguarding the most secluded spaces of our psyches, the devastatingly strong attraction between us keeps penetrating the rouse. In our most intimate moments, he can't hide from me and I can't hide from him. And I don't want to, though I know it's extremely stupid of me to feel that way. ~ S.L. Jennings

Everything lives on earth according to the law of nature, and from that law emerges the glory and joy of liberty; but man is denied this fortune, because he set for the God-given soul a limited and earthly law of his own. He made for himself strict rules. Man built a narrow and painful prison in which he secluded his affections and desires. He dug out a deep grave in which he buried his heart and its purpose. If an individual, through the dictates of his soul, declares his withdrawal from society and violates the law, his fellowmen will say he is a rebel worthy of exile, or an infamous creature worthy only of execution. Will man remain a slave of self-confinement until the end of the world? Or will he be freed by the passing of time and live in the Spirit for the Spirit? Will man insist upon staring downward and backward at the earth? Or will he turn his eyes toward the sun so he will not see the shadow of his body amongst the skulls and thorns? ~ Kahlil Gibran

How could the Creator depend on anyone, or anything? How could God have the attributes of a human? How could a human have attributes of Allah? The Creator endowed His creation with the facilities of hearing and seeing, but their limited hearing and seeing was in no way comparable to the divine ability of the One above the heavens to hear and see all things. He heard all that was spoken in the far reaches of the earth or whispered in the most private of quarters, even in the most secluded homes, while having eminent knowledge and understanding of it all. He suffered no confusion or difficulty in comprehending or hearing the multitude of languages, subtleties, and conversation spoken all at once from the billions of humans upon the earth. Unlike His creation, His sight was all-encompassing, and He could see into the very breasts of humans while while having complete sight and control over the entire universe. His knowledge of the affairs of His creation was nothing like one could even hope to comprehend. ~ Umm Zakiyyah

Breakfast delivered on a tray every morning is joy, and so is a meal at noon if she doesn't go out. To dine every evening in an alcove of the inn set aside specially for the Morleys is a fore-taste of heaven. The alcove is large enough to entertain guests; they have use of a secluded parlor as well. Lydia could serve on committees, receive callers, go shopping, order a carriage whenever she felt like it, visit her children's houses and spoil her grandchildren without having them all congregate at the house and make chaos. ~ Ellen Cooney

Here's what I want you to do: Find a quiet, secluded place so you won't be tempted to role-play before God. Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense his grace. ~ Eugene H. Peterson