To be left alone is the most precious thing one can ask of the modern world.

Burgess’s line frames solitude not as loneliness but as a scarce luxury in a crowded, noisy, administratively intrusive “modern world.” The phrasing suggests a society of constant demands—social, commercial, and bureaucratic—where attention is continually claimed and privacy eroded. “To be left alone” becomes a plea for autonomy: the right to think, create, and live without surveillance, interruption, or compulsory participation. The quote also carries an implicit critique of modernity’s conflation of connectivity with well-being; it implies that genuine freedom may consist less in acquiring new options than in securing the negative liberty of non-interference. Its poignancy lies in treating withdrawal as a precious good rather than a failure of sociability.