After all, human beings are like that. When they are alone they want to be with others, and when they are with others they want to be alone.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- Humans have conflicting social desires, seeking companionship when alone and solitude when with others. This highlights the paradox of human social needs.
- In plain terms
- People want company when alone but want to be alone when with others.
- What can you take from it?
- Human social needs are contradictory.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- Do you feel this way often?
- How do you balance alone time and social time?
Another view
Not everyone fits this pattern; some prefer constant company or constant solitude.
More from Gertrude Stein
After all, everybody, that is, everybody who writes is interested in living inside themselves in order to tell what is inside themselves. That is why writers h…
Permalink to quote #90 But as they all say if we sell our home what will we have for it, money, and what is the use of that money, money goes and after it is gone then where are we, …
Permalink to quote #92 The surrealists still see things as everyone sees them, they complicate them in a different way but the vision is that of everyone else, in short the complicat…
Permalink to quote #89
Related quotes
Commonly we say a judgement falls upon a man for something in him we cannot abide.
John SeldenJohn Selden quote #5 All men naturally hate one another; there could not be four friends in the world. (101)
Blaise PascalBlaise Pascal quote #7 She never liked the constant presence of her husbands or lovers and did not like, she soon found out, to be alone - a dilemma in one shape or another common to…
Elizabeth HardwickElizabeth Hardwick quote #10