Popular quotes about Solitude! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
Community 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 NouwenI have been trying, for some time now, to find dignity in my loneliness. I have been finding this hard to do. It is easier, of course, to find dignity in one's solitude. Loneliness is solitude with a problem.
Maggie NelsonWhen you are alone, bless the solitude; when you are with someone, bless the togetherness! Think of the seagull: It flies alone happily; it flies with another happily too! Solitude is a food; togetherness is a food; man needs both and he must be happy with both!
Mehmet Murat IldanNothing can be done without solitude. I've created my own solitude which nobody suspects
Pablo PicassoEveryone needs solitude, especially a person who is used to thinking about what she experiences. Solitude is very important in my work as a mode of inspiration, but isolation is not good in this respect. I am not writing poetry about isolation.
Wislawa SzymborskaSolitude is such a potential thing. We hear voices in solitude, we never hear in the hurry and turmoil of life; we receive counsels and comforts, we get under no other condition.
Amelia BarrWhat's agitating about solitude is the inner voice telling you that you should be mated to somebody, that solitude is a mistake. The inner voice doesn't care about who you find. It just keeps pestering you, tormenting you--if you happen to be me--with homecoming queens first, then girls next door, and finally anybody who might be pleased to see you now and then at the dinner table and in bed on occasion. You look up from reading the newspaper and realize that no one loves you, and no one burns for you.
Charles BaxterThere 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, 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 QuinceyAn artist requires the upkeep of creative solitude. An artist requires the healing of time alone. Without this period of recharging, our artist becomes depleted. Until we experience the freedom of solitude, we cannot connect authentically. We may be enmeshed, but we are not encountered. Art lies in the moment of encounter. We meet our truth and we meet ourselves and we meet our self-expression.
Julia CameronI'm pretty social so it's hard for me to find solitude, but I need to have solitude to write.
Catie CurtisThe 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 WerbowySolitude does not pull us away from our fellow human beings but instead makes real fellowship possible.
Henri NouwenIt's been a very remarkable year, and I feel very blessed. I lived an isolated lifestyle before the media. I lived a life of solitude and loyalty and commitment to my work. I just don't prioritize my life in the same way that other people do. The only thing that matters is my music and my performance.
Lady GagaMultitude, solitude: equal and interchangeable terms for the active and prolific poet.
Charles BaudelaireWhat Independence Has Come to Mean to Me: The Pain of Solitude. The Pleasure of Self-Knowledge
Vivian GornickI have only one desire, and that is the desire for solitude-to disappear into God, to be submerged in His peace, to be lost in the secret of His Face.
Thomas MertonThe misfortune is that although everyone must come to [death], each experiences the adventure in solitude. We never left Maman during those last days... and yet we were profoundly separated from her.
Simone de BeauvoirHuman beings can reach such desperate solitude that they may cross a boundary beyond which words cannot serve, and at such moments there is nothing left for them but to bark.
Anais NinMy favorite books are actually very complicated - 'One Hundred Years of Solitude', 'Ulysses'.
James PattersonEach of us is born with a share of purity, predestined to be corrupted by our commerce with mankind, by that sin against solitude.
Emile M. CioranAll my life, I will continue obstinately to write about love, solitude and passion among the kind of people I know. The rest don't interest me.
Francoise SaganThe world doesnโt fully make sense until the writer has secured his version of it on the page. And the act of writing is strangely more lifelike than lifeโฆ.every person who does serious time with a keyboard is attempting to translate his version of the world into words so that he might be understoodโฆ. Your job is to marshal the talent you do have and find people who believe in your work. Whatโs important, finally, is that you create, and that those creations define for you what matters most, that which cannot be extinguished even in the face of silence, solitude, and rejection.
Betsy LernerThe 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 very fine line between loneliness and solitude, reflection; being alone, always appealed to me when I was a kid.
Brad MehldauImagine all human beings swept off the face of the earth, excepting one man. Imagine this man in some vast city, New York or London. Imagine him on the third or fourth day of his solitude sitting in a house and hearing a ring at the door-bell!
Thomas Bailey AldrichLeisure, the highest happiness on earth, is seldom enjoyed with perfect satisfaction, except in solitude.
George ZimmermanVirtue could see to do what virtue would By her own radiant light, though sun and moon Were in the flat sea sunk. And Wisdom's self Oft seeks to sweet retired solitude, Where with her best nurse Contemplation She plumes her feathers and lets grow her wings, That in the various bustle of resort Were all-to ruffled, and sometimes impair'd. He that has light within his own clear breast May sit i' th' centre and enjoy bright day; But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts Benighted walks under the midday sun.
John MiltonMake your judgment trustworthy by trusting it. Cultivate regular periods of silence and meditation. The best time to build judgment is in solitude, when you can think out things for yourself without the probability of interruption.
Grenville Kleisera good marriage is that in which each appoints the other guardian of his solitude
Rainer Maria RilkeSorrow preys upon Its solitude, and nothing more diverts it From its sad visions of the other world Than calling it at moments back to this. The busy have no time for tears.
Lord ByronNo Christian and, indeed, no historian could accept the epigram which defines religion as 'what a man does with his solitude.'
C. S. LewisFly-fishing is a magic way to recapture the rapture of solitude without the pangs of loneliness.
John D. VoelkerTo understand one's world, one must sometimes turn away from it! To serve better, one must briefly hold it at a distance. Where can the necessary solitude be found, the long breathing space in which mind gathers its strength and takes stock of its courage.
Albert CamusMy music is very personal. I've created it in solitude. I face a white wall and beller. I like that sound - the expression of loneliness. That's what it's all about.
Dwight YoakamUnless you really understand the water, and understand the reason for being on it, and understand the love of sailing and the feeling of quietness and solitude, you don't really belong on a boat anyway. I think Hemingway said one time that the sea is the last free place on earth.
Humphrey BogartWhat one writer can make in the solitude of one room is something no power can easily destroy.
Salman RushdieIt struck him as a bit unfair that, at the age of eight, he should have manifested the same sense of solitude that haunted him at forty-three.
John le CarreNature is the clearest source of solitude. The greatness of nature can overwhelm the insignificant chatter by which we measure most of our days. If you have the wisdom and the courage to go to nature alone, the larger rhythms, the eternal hum, will make itself known all the sooner. When you have found it, it will always be there for you. The peace without will become the peace within, and you will be able to return to it in your heart wherever you find yourself.
Kent NerburnO solitude, where are the charms That sages have seen in thy face? Better dwell in the midst of alarms, Than reign in this horrible place.
William CowperA masterwork. A particularly American magic realism that touches the heart of race and childhood in our country; it's 100 Years of Solitude for an entire generation of American Baby Boomers, and deserves the widest possible audience.
Ellen Kushner