He had noticed that events were cowards: they didn't occur singly, but instead they would run in packs and leap out at him all at once.
Misfortunes never come singly.
Murder, considered a crime when people commit it singly, is transformed into a virtue when they do it en masse.
A certain motion becomes understood when it is referred to a force; certain sensations, to matter; certain changes outside, to law; certain changes in thought, to mind; certain order singly, to causation - and joined to time, to law.
The goal and target of our life is He, the Christ who awaits us -- each one singly and altogether -- to lead us across the boundaries of time to the eternal embrace of the God who loves us.
Wolves don't hunt singly, but always in pairs. The lone wolf was a myth.
The good things of life are not to be had singly, but come to us with a mixture; like a school-boy's holiday, with a task affixed to the tail of it.
Troubles never come singly.
Virginians were nice, they confided to each other, if caught singly. Two Virginians, of course, talked horses.
So disasters come not singly; But as if they watched and waited, Scanning one another's motions, When the first descends, the others Follow, follow, gathering flock-wiseRound their victim, sick and wounded, First a shadow, then a sorrow, Till the air is dark with anguish.
The disappointments of life can never, any more than its pleasures, be estimated singly; and the healthiest and most agreeable of men is exposed to that coincidence of various vexations, each heightening the effect of the other, which may produce in him something corresponding to the spontaneous and externally unaccountable moodiness of the morbid and disagreeable.
Inference is founded upon obvious reasons. Regard to reputation has a less active influence, when the infamy of a bad action is to be divided upon a number, than when it is to fall singly upon one. A spirit of faction. . . will often hurry the persons of whom they were composed into improprieties and excesses for which they would blush in a private capacity.
