Popular quotes about Solitude! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
Boys need to learn the value of spiritual solitude. For the soul to grow, it needs those moments of no-stimulation, of wakeful peace. Because we adults don't usually practice enough solitudeโbecause we are always 'doing' thingsโwe often neglect to teach our boys to find solitude
Michael GurianIt is in solitude that the works of hand, heart and mind are always conceived, and in solitude that individuality must be affirmed.
Robert M. LindnerNothing can be done without solitude. I've created my own solitude which nobody suspects
Pablo PicassoNo general description of the mode of advance of human knowledge can be just which leaves out of account the social aspect of knowledge. That is of its very essence. What a thing society is! The workingman, with his trade union, knows that. Men and women moving in polite society understand it, still better. But Bohemians, like me, whose work is done in solitude, are apt to forget that not only is a man as a whole little better than a brute in solitude, but also that everything that bears any important meaning to him must receive its interpretation from social considerations.
Charles Sanders PeirceSolitude is the furnace of transformation. Without solitude we remain victims of our society and continue to be entangled in the illusions of the false self.
Henri NouwenEven though I get a lot done with my solitude, and I make the best use of it possible, I always think solitude is an interlude in a period of time, which is populated by others.
Richard FordShe frowned at him. 'You are in love with solitude.' 'Is there a better cure for the world than solitude?
Meg RosoffWe enter solitude, in which also we lose loneliness. True solitude is found in the wild places, where one is without human obligation. Oneโs inner voices become audible. One feels the attraction of oneโs most intimate sources. In consequence, one responds more clearly to other lives. The more coherent one becomes within oneself as a creature, the more fully one enters into the communion of all creatures.
Wendell BerryShe had dreamed some brilliant dreams during the past winter and now they lay in the dust around her. In her present mood of self-disgust, she could not immediately begin dreaming again. And she discovered that, while solitude with dreams is glorious, solitude without them has few charms.
Lucy Maud MontgomerySolitude produces originality, bold and astonishing beauty, poetry. But solitude also produces perverseness, the disproportianate, the absurd and the forbidden.
Thomas MannThere is nothing worse than solitude. Solitude can help a man realize himself; but it destroys a woman
Coco ChanelSolitude, though it may be silent as light, is like light, the mightiest of agencies; for solitude is essential to man. All men come into this world alone and leave it alone.
Thomas de QuinceyIt is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
Ralph Waldo EmersonIn solitude, you accumulate energy to spend in crowds; and in crowds, you accumulate energy to spend in solitude!
Mehmet Murat IldanSolitude in the presence of natural beauty and grandeur is the cradle of thought and aspirations which are not only good for the individual, but which society can ill do without.
John Stuart MillI needed to be in the bush. There I find solitude and beauty and purity and focus. That's where my heart lies.
Mark BurnettThe thought of attention made me want to hide in a closet. I wasn't a kid who liked attention. I liked solitude and I still kind of do.
Daria WerbowyConcerning the factors of silence, solitude and darkness, we can only say that they are actually elements in the production of the infantile anxiety from which the majority of human beings have never become quite free.
Sigmund FreudTo the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free, when men are different from one another and do not live aloneโ to a time when truth exists and what is done cannot be undone: From the age of uniformity, from the age of solitude, from the age of Big Brother, from the age of doublethink โ greetings!
George OrwellSolitude does not pull us away from our fellow human beings but instead makes real fellowship possible.
Henri NouwenI feel strongly that the God we meet in solitude is always the God who calls us to community.
Henri NouwenMultitude, solitude: equal and interchangeable terms for the active and prolific poet.
Charles BaudelaireThis was not my moment to be seeking romance and (as day follows night) to further complicate my already knotty life. This was my moment to look for the kind of healing and peace that can only come from solitude.
Elizabeth GilbertThe artist is a strange being. I think it's safe to say that a real artist is conscious of having a personal singularity that is partly a blessing and partly a curse. An artist enjoys and suffers from isolation. As solitude, isolation can nurture. It can also destroy.
Peter SchjeldahlThe elegance of dress, of motion, and of manners gives a lustre to beauty, and inflames the senses through the imagination. Luxurious entertainments, midnight dances, and licentious spectacles, present at once temptation and opportunity to female frailty. From such dangers the unpolished wives of the barbarians were secured by poverty, solitude, and the painful cares of a domestic life.
Edward GibbonWe enter into solitude first of all to meet our Lord and to be with him and him alone. Only in the context of grace can we face our sin; only in the place of healing do we dare to show our wounds; only with a singleminded attention to Christ can we give up our clinging fears and face our own true nature.
Henri NouwenThe most important thing is to hold on, hold out, for your creative life, for your solitude, for your time to be and do, for your very life.
Clarissa Pinkola EstesI'm as much my own master as anyone can be, without being the master of others. I can write anywhere - all I need is a couple of hours of solitude and a computer, and I can write a chapter. Since my work is portable, I can live anywhere I like.
Stuart WoodsImagination is strong in a man when that particular function of the brain which enables him to observe is roused to activity without any necessary excitement of the sense. Accordingly, we find that imagination is active just in proportion as our sense are not excited by external objects. A long period of solitude, whether in prison or in a sick room; quiet, twilight, darkness-these are the things that promote its activity; and under their influence it comes into play of itself.
Arthur Schopenhauera good marriage is that in which each appoints the other guardian of his solitude
Rainer Maria RilkeThat's a terrifying prospect for myself, and I'm sure many other people, as well. We leave TVs on in our house. I listen to my record player, constantly, to just hear music. I'm really intrigued by the idea of solitude. I'm excited about that.
Katee SackhoffThe solitude of the poet is the uniqueness of his experience, and the particulaity of his sensitivity and imagination.
Mieczyslaw JastrunO Lord, please fill my mouth with worthwhile stuff, and nudge me when I've said enough. Enlightenment is the "quiet acceptance of what is" I believe the truly enlightened beings are those who refuse to allow themselves to be distressed over things that simply are the way they are. - Wayne Dyer Learn the richness of solitude and quiet. That "still small voice" is yearning to be heard.
Susan JeffersYou get good at being by yourself and you're condemned to a life sentence of solitude. You think, "Wait a minute! I should have been a tap dancer or something". But in my life, I feel like I take my stories to people orally.
Sandra CisnerosA man should keep for himself a little back shop, all his own, quite unadulterated, in which he establishes his true freedom and chief place of seclusion and solitude.
Michel de MontaigneI love the tempestuousness of oceans and the calmness and solitude of lakes. Also, sensuality that drips and runs down the spine. And I'm not afraid to cry. Tears are a form of expression, and that's sexy.
David BoreanazJanuary 8 has been a lucky day for me. I have started all my books on that day, and all of them have been well received by the readers. I write eight to ten hours a day until I have a first draft, then I can relax a little. I am very disciplined. I write in silence and solitude. I light a candle to call inspiration and the muses, and I surround myself with pictures of the people I love, dead and alive.
Isabel AllendeTo give thanks in solitude is enough. Thanksgiving has wings and goes where it must go. Your prayer knows much more about it than you do.
Victor HugoShe was waiting, but she didn't know for what. She was aware only of her solitude, and of the penetrating cold, and of a greater weight in the region of her heart.
Albert CamusOne sees that dead, vacant look steal over the rarest, finest of women's faces . . . in the very midst, it may be, of their warmest summer's day; and then one can guess at the secret of intolerable solitude that lies hid beneath the delicate laces . . .
Rebecca Harding Davisas a writer you are free. You are about the freest person that ever was. Your freedom is what you have bought with your solitude, your loneliness. You are in the country where you make up the rules, the laws. You are both dictator and obedient populace. It is a country nobody has ever explored before. It is up to you to make the maps, to build the cities. Nobody else in the world can do it, or ever could do it, or ever will be able to do it again.
Ursula K. Le Guin