Reader 246

“Real relief from loneliness requires the cooperation of at least one other person, and yet the more chronic our loneliness becomes, the less equipped we may be to entice such cooperation.”
― John T. Cacioppo, Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection

“I had no genius, no mission to fulfill, no great heart to bestow. I had nothing and I deserved nothing. But all the same I desired some sort of reward.”
― Henri Barbusse, Hell

“A man’s power to connect his thought with its proper symbol, and so to utter
it, depends on the simplicity of his character, that is, upon his love of truth,
and his desire to communicate it without loss. The corruption of man is followed
by the corruption of language. When simplicity of character and the sovereignty
of ideas is broken up by the prevalence of secondary desires, the desire of
riches, of pleasure, of power, and of praise, — and duplicity and falsehood
take place of simplicity and truth, the power over nature as an interpreter of
the will, is in a degree lost; new imagery ceases to be created, and old words
are perverted to stand for things which are not; a paper currency is employed,
when there is no bullion in the vaults. In due time, the fraud is manifest, and
words lose all power to stimulate the understanding or the affections. Hundreds
of writers may be found in every long-civilized nation, who for a short time
believe, and make others believe, that they see and utter truths, who do not of
themselves clothe one thought in its natural garment, but who feed unconsciously
on the language created by the primary writers of the country, those, namely,
who hold primarily on nature.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Complete Works: Enriched edition.

“When we are lonely we not only react more intensely to the negatives; we also experience less of a soothing uplift from the positives.”
― John T. Cacioppo, Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection