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To find themselves utterly alone at night where company is desirable and expected makes some people fearful; but a case more trying by far to the nerves is to discover some mysterious companionship when intuition, sensation, memory, analogy, testimony, probability, induction - every kind of evidence in the logician's list - have united to persuade consciousness that it is quite in isolation.

Thomas Hardy#39

HardyFearIsolationNightUncertainty

About this quote

What does it mean?
Being alone at night is scary, but being convinced you are alone when you sense someone else nearby is even more disturbing.
In plain terms
It is scarier to think you are alone when you feel a presence.
What can you take from it?
Uncertainty about isolation creates deep fear.

Where it applies

  • sleeping alone
  • feeling watched
  • facing fears

Putting it to work

  • grounding exercises
  • acknowledging intuition

Questions to consider

  • Have you ever felt watched when alone?
  • What scares you more: noise or silence?

Another view

It focuses on a specific type of fear that not everyone experiences.

More from Thomas Hardy

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  2. A nice unparticular man.

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  3. Or, to state his character as it stood in the scale of public opinion, when his friends and critics were in tantrums, he was considered rather a bad man; when …

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