Private Life Quotes

“Always remember that you were once alone, and the crowd you see in your life today are just as unecessary as when you were alone.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson

“If the private life of the sea could ever be transposed onto paper, it would talk not about rivers or rain or glaciers or of molecules of oxygen and hydrogen, but of the millions of encounters its waters have shared with creatures of another nature.”
― Federico Chini, The Sea Of Forgotten Memories

“It's all mine, it's all sacred.”
― Jamie Weise

“Wearing a mask can thus be a strange thing: sometimes, more often than we tend to believe, there is more truth in the mask that in what we assume to be our "real self.”
― Slavoj Žižek

“Tact by its nature entails staying mum, prudently electing to forgo urging other people to pursue an alternative course of action. Creation of silent spaces in our own life and equitable distribution of periods of respite that allow for periods of equable inner reflection is necessary to spur personal growth. It is equally important to honor other people’s intrinsic need for periods of introspection, uninterrupted by unsolicited advice”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Plants and flowers taught me how to grow, by growing in secret and in silence.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, Song of a Nature Lover

“They should hand out vibrators if they're going to demand so much of you that you can't find time for a private life.”
― Meg Wolitzer, The Interestings

“When we keep private matters to our self, then we never have to worry about unwanted voices discussing these matters when we’re not listening.”
― Ron Baratono

“The lesson? To respond to the unexpected and hurtful behavior of others with something more than a wipe of the glasses, to see it as a chance to expand our understanding, even if, as Proust warns is, 'when we discover the true lives of other people, the real world beneath the world of appearance, we get as many surprises as on visiting a house of plain exterior which is full of hidden treasures, torture-chambers or skeletons.”
― Alain de Botton, How Proust Can Change Your Life

“The lesser we have to care about whether someone is a narcissist or not, the better we will end up improving our private lives.”
― Mwanandeke Kindembo, Treatise Upon The Misconceptions of Narcissism

“Many people say the right thing in public because they do not want to be seen as mean. However, it is what we say in private, to our best friends, supporters, and colleagues, that truly forms us. It makes up our energy field and defines us. Although we think people do not know what we say and do, others do know. They often find out. And even if they don’t know the specific details, they can sense our integrity or lack of it.”
― Donna Goddard, Love's Longing

“There were three sides to a marriage: public and private and who-fucking-knows, one lived and one performed and one a thundering mystery.”
― Laura van den Berg, The Third Hotel

“He wondered now if everyone had a private life. He wondered if his wife had one. It was possible that all those years he had been alone, never knowing that a complete world existed and no one spoke of it.”
― Ann Patchett, Bel Canto

“The idea of personal space, which seems so natural to us now, was a revelation. People couldn’t get enough of it. Soon it wasn’t merely sufficient to live apart from one’s inferiors, it was necessary to have time apart from one’s equals, too. As houses sprouted wings and spread, and domestic arrangements grew more complex, words were created or adapted to describe all the new room types: study, bedchamber, privy chamber, closet, oratory (for a place of prayer), parlour, withdrawing chamber and library (in a domestic as opposed to institutional sense) all date from the fourteenth century or a little earlier. Others followed soon after: gallery, long gallery, presence chamber, tiring (for attiring) chamber, salon or saloon, apartment, lodgings and suite. ‘How widely different is all this from the ancient custom of the whole household living by day and night in the great hall!’ wrote Gotch in a moment of rare exuberance. One new type not mentioned by Gotch was boudoir, literally ‘a room to sulk in’, which from its earliest days was associated with sexual intrigue. Even with the growth of comparative privacy, life remained much more communal and exposed than today. Toilets often had multiple seats, for ease of conversation, and paintings regularly showed couples in bed or a bath in an attitude of casual friskiness while attendants waited on them and their friends sat amiably nearby, playing cards or conversing but comfortably within sight and earshot.”
― Bill Bryson, At Home: A Short History of Private Life

“Just because YOU don’t know what someone is doing in their life, doesn’t mean they aren’t doing something. Perhaps you were the nobody that they thought it wasn’t worth sharing with”
― Niedria D. Kenny

“The individual citizen had no chance to voice his protest or his opinion, not even his fear. He could only leave the country - and so people did. Those who used 'I' instead of 'we' in their language had to escape. It was this fatal difference in grammar that divided them from the rest of their compatriots. As a consequence of this 'us', no civic society developed. The little there was, in the form of small, isolated, and marginalised groups, was soon swallowed up by the national homogenisation that did not permit any differences, any individualism. As under communism, individualism was punished - individuals speaking out against the war, or against nationalism, were singled out as 'traitors'.
How does a person who is a product of a totalitarian society learn responsibility, individuality, initiative? by saying 'no'. But this begins with saying 'I', thinking 'I' and doing 'I' - in public as well as in private. Individuality, the first-person singular, always existed under communism, it was just exiled from public and political life and exercised in private. Thus the terrible hypocrisy with which we learned to live in order to survive is having its backlash now: it is very difficult to connect the private and public 'I'; to start believing that an individual opinion, initiative, or vote could make a difference. There is still too big a danger that the citizen will withdraw into an anonymous, safe 'us'.”
― Slavenka Drakulić, Café Europa: Life After Communism

“You can never tell who is gay if they are ‘in the closet’.”
― Steven Magee

“ME is a simple word but it takes a lifetime to find the words that go with it. I had a library version of myself--a sound hardback copy of ME that the public could borrow and read. And then they were sure that they knew me, and then I felt safe.

Elsewhere, in a drawer, was the ME I was writing, quietly, and alone. It wasn't much of an adventure, though it was a mystery, because what is more mysterious to us than ourselves?”
― Jeanette Winterson, Night Side of the River

“Begitu santainya mengintip kini. Tak lagi ada was-was tepergok. Orang pun bisa memutar ulang apa yang diintip tiap kali dikehendaki. Intipan kini adalah komoditas. Berdesakan di rak-rak dan hamparan tikar dan plastik yang berderet di sepanjang tepi jalan raya, di hadapan pertokoan dan pasar. Dirubung pembeli. Bulan pernah dengan agak malu menjadi salah satu di antara yang merubung itu. Kini akankah dia dan Panca yang dirubung pembeli di pinggir-pinggir jalan dan emper toko, dari Glodok hingga kota-kota lain di pelosok?”
― Henny Purnama Sari, 69: Berkubang Liang

“At any case, you shall not judge my privacy and my private life”
― P.S. Jagadeesh Kumar

“Indeed, fascist regimes tried to redraw so radically the boundaries between private and public that the private sphere almost disappeared. Robert Ley, head of the Nazi Labor Office, said that in the Nazi state the only private individual was someone asleep. For some observers, this effort to have the public sphere swallow up the private sphere entirely is indeed the very essence of fascism. It is certainly a fundamental point on which fascist regimes differed most profoundly from authoritarian conservatism, and even more profoundly from classical liberalism.

There was no room in this vision of obligatory national unity for either free-thinking persons or for independent, autonomous subcommunities. Churches, Freemasonry, class-based unions or syndicates, political parties— all were suspect as subtracting something from the national will.121 Here were grounds for infinite conflict with conservatives as well as the Left.

In pursuit of their mission to unify the community within an all-consuming public sphere, fascist regimes dissolved unions and socialist parties. This radical amputation of what had been normal worker representation, encased as it was in a project of national fulfillment and managed economy, alienated public opinion less than pure military or police repression, as in traditional dictatorships. And indeed the fascists had some success in reconciling some workers to a world without unions or socialist parties, those for whom proletarian solidarity against capitalist bosses was willingly replaced by national identity against other peoples.

Brooding about cultural degeneracy was so important a fascist issue that some authors have put it at the center. Every fascist regime sought to control the national culture from the top, to purify it of foreign influences, and make it help carry the message of national unity and revival.
Decoding the cultural messages of fascist ceremonies, films, performances, and visual arts has today become the most active field of research on fascism. The “reading” of fascist stagecraft, however ingenious, should not mislead us into thinking that fascist regimes succeeded in establishing monolithic cultural homogeneity. Cultural life in fascist regimes remained a complex patchwork of official activities, spontaneous activities that the regimes tolerated, and even some illicit ones. Ninety percent of the films produced under the Nazi regime were light entertainment without overt propaganda content (not that it was innocent, of course). A few protected Jewish artists hung on remarkably late in Nazi
Germany, and the openly homosexual actor and director Gustav Gründgens remained active to the end.”
― Robert O. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism

“The ... conditions of democracy in the public sphere ... bear very directly upon the democratisation of personal life. Violent and abusive relationships are common in the sexual domain and between adults and children. Most such violence comes from men and is directed towards beings weaker than themselves. As an emancipatory ideal of democracy, the prohibition of violence is of basic importance. Coercive influences in relationships, however, obviously can take forms other than physical violence. Individuals may be prone, for example, to engage in emotional or verbal abuse of one another; marriage, so the saying goes, is a poor substitute for respect. Avoidance of emotional abuse is perhaps the most difficult aspect of the equalising of power in relationship; but the guiding principle is clearly respect for the independent views and personal traits of the other.”
― Anthony Giddens, The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies

“Our privacy can serve as a form of protection during times of crisis and can offer a polite boundary of respect and good manners during times of tranquility.”
― Christopher Manske, The Prepared Investor: How to Prevent the Next Crisis from Affecting Your Financial Independence

“Being a celebrity or to work in an entertainment industry is hard because you don’t have a personal life. Some people have work life and private life, but you don’t have that.You are accountable even for the things you do on your private personal time.”
― De Philosopher DJ Kyos

“Many people say the right thing in public because they do not want to be seen as mean. However, it is what we say in private, to our best friends, supporters, and colleagues, that truly forms us. It makes up our energy field and defines us.”
― Donna Goddard, Love's Longing

“Howard Ensign had joined the Congregational church after their revival and would testify at prayer meeting every Wednesday night. It seemed to me that the things between one and God should be between him and God like loving ones mother. One didn't go around saying, 'I love my mother, she has been so good to me.' One just loved her and did things that she liked one to do.”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder, Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography

“A leader represents, reflects, and mirrors the nation and the state; therefore, a leader's private life should be a symbol of moral values and an example of dignity; whenever the leader's privacy appears in public.”
― Ehsan Sehgal

“The whole catalogue of humanity was online, feeling entitled to their opinions and to their right to share. It could be brutal.”
― Lisa Unger, Secluded Cabin Sleeps Six

“From where I stand, hidden, watching them through the glass, they are the picture of the perfect family. But I know better. What people show the world is rarely the whole truth, especially these days when everything must be curated and cropped, filtered and brightened. Real life is messy and complicated. Ugly.”
― Lisa Unger, Secluded Cabin Sleeps Six

“Privacy is a basic human right, not a privilege.”
― Olawale Daniel