privateness

Objects smaller than the human body, says the dean, possess the quality of privateness.

I'm closer to him than anybody, and there are still great pockets of isolation and privateness."

But he described the essential qualities of Englishness as "gentleness" and "privateness".

They all came spilling forth, organs he could not begin to identify, the sacred privateness of the creature he had killed.

Surfers, sunbathers, and fishermen especially enjoy the privateness of Ho Hum Beach.

It was an untidy, untended part of the property, this bit of patio workspace tucked in behind the house, and its privateness comforted Maria.

Their chief use for delight, is in privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgment, and disposition of business.

A man's nature is best perceived in privateness, for there is no affectation; in passion, for that putteth a man out of his precepts; and in a new case or experiment, for there custom leaveth him.

Nay, retire men cannot when they would, neither will they, when it were reason; but are impatient of privateness, even in age and sickness, which require the shadow; like old townsmen, that will be still sitting at their street door, though thereby they offer age to scorn.

What it does link up with, however, is another English characteristic which is so much a part of us that we barely notice it, and that is the addiction to hobbies and spare-time occupations, the PRIVATENESS of English life.

'If art teaches anything,' said Joseph Brodsky, the expatriate Russian poet in his Nobel Acceptance Speech of 1987, '.it is the privateness of the human condition,'and this privateness is maintained even when the experience is reenacted in public, or semi-public, surroundings.