Popular quotes about Solitude! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
It was solitude, but it was solitude that wasn't lonely. Solitude that could sort things out. And he hadn't had that in ages.
Patrick NessAnyway, solitary people interest me. There are so many different ways of being solitary.' 'I know just what you mean,' said X. 'I know exactly what you're going to say. Different kinds of solitude. Enforced solitude and voluntary solitude.' 'Quite,' said Viktoria. 'There's no need to go into it further. But when people understand one another without speaking, it can often leave them with very little to talk about, don't you think?
Tove JanssonCommunity always calls us back to solitude, and solitude always calls us to community. Community and solitude, both, are essential elements of ministry and witnessing.
Henri NouwenThe spiritual journey is one that we must take "alone together," in the same way that a good marriage involves a dance between solitude and communion. The life of the spirit entails a continuous alternation between retreating into oneself and going out into the world: it's an inward-outward journey. There is a solitary part to it, but that solitude helps us to develop richer and more in-depth relationships with our friends, our children, our community, and the political world.
Sam KeenBecause I cannot work except in solitude, it is necessary that I live my work and that is impossible except in solitude.
Pablo PicassoLoneliness and solitude are two different things. When you are lonely, it is easy to delude yourself into believing that you are on the right path. Solitude is better for us, as it means being alone without feeling lonely. But eventually it is best to find a person, the person who will be your mirror. Remember, only in another person's heart can you truly see yourself and the presence of God within you.
Elif SafakMy own study of the networked life has left me thinking about intimacy - about being with people in person, hearing their voices and seeing their faces, trying to know their hearts. And it has left me thinking about solitude - the kind that refreshes and restores. Loneliness is failed solitude.
Sherry TurkleApply yourself to solitude. One who is given to solitude knows things as they really are.
Gautama BuddhaThere is no insurmountable solitude. All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are. And we must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence in order to reach forth to the enchanted place where we can dance our clumsy dance and sing our sorrowful song - but in this dance or in this song there are fulfilled the most ancient rites of our conscience in the awareness of being human and of believing in a common destiny.
Pablo NerudaSolitude 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 ChanelI'm pretty social so it's hard for me to find solitude, but I need to have solitude to write.
Catie CurtisWhat I must do is all that concerns me, not what people think. This rule,equally arduous in actual and intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It 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 EmersonI think solitude is a really positive thing. I cherish solitude immensely. In todayโs society, thereโs so much pressure to communicate, eat out, be friends with people. Why canโt you read a book on your own? Why have you got to have a book club?
Nicky WireI hold the most archaic values on earth ... the fertility of the soul, the magic of the animals, the power-vision in solitude.... the love and ecstasy of the dance, the common work of the tribe.
Gary SnyderOne man runs to his neighbor because he is looking for himself, and another because he wants to loose himself. Your bad love of yourselves makes solitude a prison for you.
Friedrich NietzscheThe weight of the world is love. Under the burden of solitude, under the burden of dissatisfaction.
Allen GinsbergSelden and Lily stood still, accepting the unreality of the scene as a part of their own dream-like sensations. It would not have surprised them to feel a summer breeze on their faces, or to see the lights among the boughs reduplicated in the arch of a starry sky. The strange solitude about them was no stranger than the sweetness of being alone in it together.
Edith WhartonThe men who have had the most to give to their fellow men are those who have enriched their minds and hearts in solitude. It is a poor education that does not fit a man to be alone with himself.
Joel Henry HildebrandWhat now on the other hand makes people sociable is their incapacity to endure solitude and thus themselves.
Arthur SchopenhauerI think a lot about the poems I wasn't able to write...I masturbrated...Solitude is essentially a matter of pride; you bury yourself in your own scent. The issue is the same for all real poets. If you've been happy for too long, you become banal. By the same token, if you've been unhappy for a long time, you lose your poetic power...Happiness and poverty can only coexist for the briefest time. Afterword either happiness coarsens the poet or the poem is so true it destroys his happiness.
Orhan PamukThe Spiritual Disciplines are things that we do. We must never lose sight of this fact. It is one thing to talk piously about 'the solitude of the heart,' but if that does not somehow work its way into our experience, then we have missed the point of the Disciplines. We are dealing with actions, not merely states of mind.
Richard J. FosterThe person who abides in solitude and quiet is delivered from fighting three battles: hearing, speech, and sight. Then there remains one battle to fight-the battle of the heart.
Anthony the GreatThere are beauties of character which, like the night-blooming cereus, are closed against the glare and turbulence of every-day life, and bloom only in shade and solitude, and beneath the quiet stars.
Henry Theodore TuckermanI'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 WoodsKaren, her elbows folded on the deck-rail, wanted to share with someone the pleasure in being alone: this is the paradox of any happy solitude. She had never landed at Cork, so this hill and that hill beyond were as unexpected as pictures at which you say "Oh look!" Nobody was beside her to share the moment, which would have been imperfect with anyone else there.
Elizabeth BowenThat'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 SackhoffIt is not the conscience which raises a blush, for a man may sincerely regret some slight fault committed in solitude, or he may suffer the deepest remorse for an undetected crime, but he will not blush... It is not the sense of guilt, but the thought that others think or know us to be guilty which crimsons the face.
Charles DarwinFear can supplant our real problems only to the extent -unwilling either to assimilate or to exhaust it -we perpetuate it within ourselves like a temptation and enthrone it at the very heart of our solitude.
Emile M. CioranSolitude bears the same relation to the mind that sleep does to the body. It affords it the necessary opportunities for repose and recovery.
William Gilmore SimmsIf I'm going to continue to be any kind of spiritual teacher, I've got to go deeper myself. And so for me, [I am] preserving long periods of solitude, silence, prayer, journaling, study, writing. I don't turn on music or the TV unless I really need to.
Richard RohrThe Tao gives birth to One. One gives birth to Two. Two gives birth to Three. Three gives birth to all things. All things have their backs to the female and stand facing the male. When male and female combine, all things achieve harmony. Ordinary men hate solitude. But the Master makes use of it, embracing his aloneness, realizing he is one with the whole universe.
LaoziWe need society, and we need solitude also, as we need summer and winter, day and night, exercise and rest.
Philip Gilbert HamertonIsolation, not solitude, breaks men. If I could not find the means to deal with the isolation, then my options were severely limited. I began to call up memories of places, people, events, food-anything I could do to occupy my mind and remind myself that, even if I was being treated like an animal, I was still a living breathing human being.
Shawn ThompsonWe must die alone. To the very verge of the stream our friends may accompany us; they may bend over us, they may cling to us there; but that one long wave from the sea of eternity washes up to the lips, sweeps us from the shore, and we go forth alone! In that untried and utter solitude, then, what can there be for us but the pulsation of that assurance, "I am not alone, because the Father is with me!
Edwin Hubbel ChapinA perfect life is like that of a ship of war which has its own place in the fleet and can share in its strength and discipline, but can also go forth alone in the solitude of the infinite sea. We ought to belong to society, to have our place in it, and yet be capable of a complete individual existence outside of it.
Philip Gilbert HamertonOnly when one is connected to one's own core is one connected to others, I am beginning to discover. And, for me, the core, the inner spring, can best be refound through solitude.
Anne Morrow LindberghOrdinary men hate solitude. But the Master makes use of it, embracing his aloneness, realizing he is one with the whole universe.
LaoziWe must get to the place of real solitude with Christ. He is our mountain-height and our sea-calm.
Oswald Chambers