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 GurianThere is a solitude, which each and every one of us has always carried with him, more inaccessible than the ice-cold mountains, more profound than the midnight sea; the solitude of self. Our inner being, which we call ourself, no eye nor touch of man or angel has ever pierced.
Elizabeth Cady StantonSolitude is one of our great superpowers... Solitude is the key to being able to make effective decisions and then having the courage of convictions to stand behind those decisions.
Susan CainThe observations and encounters of a solitary, taciturn man are vaguer and at the same times more intense than those of a sociable man; his thoughts are deeper, odder and never without a touch of sadness. Images and perceptions that could be dismissed with a glance, a laugh, an exchange of opinions, occupy him unduly, become more intense in the silence, become significant, become an experience, an adventure, an emotion. Solitude produces originality, bold and astonishing beauty, poetry. But solitude also produces perverseness, the disproportionate, the absurd and the forbidden.
Thomas MannDeliberately seeking solitude-quality time spent away from family and friends-may seem selfish. It is not. Solitude is as necessary for our creative spirits to develop and flourish as are sleep and food for our bodies to survive.
Sarah Ban BreathnachSolitude produces originality, bold and astonishing beauty, poetry. But solitude also produces perverseness, the disproportianate, the absurd and the forbidden.
Thomas MannAn 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 CurtisWe Christians must simplify our lives or lose untold treasures on earth and in eternity. Modern civilization is so complex as to make the devotional life all but impossible. The need for solitude and quietness was never greater than it is today.
Aiden Wilson TozerIn the tumult of men and events, solitude was my temptation; now it is my friend. What other satisfaction can be sought once you have confronted History?
Charles de GaulleHe really had been through death, but he had returned because he could not bear the solitude.
Gabriel Garcia MarquezIt'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 GagaThere comes a moment during which almost every girl or boy falls into melancholy; they are tormented by a vague inquietude which rests on everything and finds nothing to calm it. They seek solitude; they weep; the silence to be found in cloister attracts them: the image of peace that seems to reign in religious houses seduces them. They mistake the first manifestations of a developing sexual nature for the voice of God calling them to Himself; and it is precisely when nature is inciting them that they embrace a fashion of life contrary to nature's wish.
Denis DiderotSpiritual superiority [consists in] deep dedication ... in the form of the most rigorous training, as commitment, resistance, solitude, and love.
Martin HeideggerThe 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 HildebrandYes, in my life, since we must call it so, there were three things, the inability to speak, the inability to be silent, and solitude, thatโs what Iโve had to make the best of.
Samuel BeckettI, too, seem to be a connoisseur of rain, but it does not fill me with joy; it allows me to steep myself in a solitude I nurse like a vice I've refused to vanquish.
Julia GlassThe 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 GibbonThe very fine line between loneliness and solitude, reflection; being alone, always appealed to me when I was a kid.
Brad MehldauI require silence to write the way an apple tree requires winter to make fruit. Being with people is intimate and joyous, but at some point, I'll wander off by myself. The paradox is that what began in childhood as an act of necessary solitude has led me straight to a life with others, in which I fly to China or Lithuania or northern Minnesota to read my poems and talk with other people who love language made into a lathe on which a life can be tuned and be turned.
Jane HirshfieldSolitude makes us tougher towards ourselves and tenderer towards others. In both ways it improves our character.
Friedrich Nietzschea good marriage is that in which each appoints the other guardian of his solitude
Rainer Maria RilkeWhenever I was with a woman, I always sort of want another one. So there was always another one. I can't explain this, but it means that these women, they were not sharing my solitude.
Klaus KinskiO 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 JeffersHuman relations are impossible. When they are real they are uncomfortable, and when they are comfortable they are unreal. It was for the journey into solitude that the human soul was created.
E. M. ForsterShe had wandered, without rule or guidance, into a moral wilderness... Her intellect and heart had their home, as it were, in desert places, where she roamed as freely as the wild Indian in his woods... The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachersโstern and wild onesโand they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Nathaniel HawthorneNothing is more capable of troubling our reason, and consuming our health, than secret notions of jealousy in solitude.
Aphra BehnFly-fishing is a magic way to recapture the rapture of solitude without the pangs of loneliness.
John D. VoelkerThe simplest spiritual discipline is some degree of solitude and silence. But it's the hardest, because none of us want to be with someone we don't love. Besides that, we invariably feel bored with ourselves, and all of our loneliness comes to the surface.We won't have the courage to go into that terrifying place without Love to protect us and lead us, without the light and love of God overriding our own self-doubt. Such silence is the most spacious and empowering technique in the world, yet it's not a technique at all. It's precisely the refusal of all technique.
Richard RohrSelf-reliance can turn a salesman into a merchant; a politician into a statesman; an attorney into a jurist; an unknown youth into a great leader. All are to be tomorrow's big leaders - those who in solitude sit above the clang and dust of time, with the world's secret trembling on their lips.
Newell Dwight HillisThe deepest and most organic death is death in solitude, when even light becomes a principle of death. In such moments you will be severed from life, from love, smiles, friends and even from death. And you will ask yourself if there is anything besides the nothingness of the world and your own nothingness.
Emile M. CioranOne day, quite some time ago, I happened on a photograph of Napoleonโs youngest brother, Jerome, taken in 1852. And I realized then, with an amazement I have not been able to lessen since: โI am looking at eyes that looked at the Emperor.โ Sometimes I would mention this amazement, but since no one seemed to share it, nor even to understand it (life consists of these little touches of solitude), I forgot about it.
Roland BarthesIt is a commonplace among artists and children at play that they're not aware of time or solitude while they're chasing their vision. The hours fly. The sculptress and the tree-climbing tyke both look up blinking when Mom calls, 'Suppertime!'
Steven PressfieldWe dress our garden, eat our dinners, discuss the household with our wives, and these things make no impression, are forgotten next week; but in the solitude to which every man is always returning, he has a sanity and revelations, which in his passage into new worlds he will carry with him. Never mind the ridicule, never mind the defeat: up again, old heart! โ it seems to say, โ there is victory yet for all justice; and the true romance which the world exists to realize, will be the transformation of genius into practical power.
Ralph Waldo EmersonSolitude, if rightly used, becomes not only a privilege but a necessity. Only a superficial soul fears to fraternize with itself.
Alice Hegan RiceA man can be himself only so long as he is alone; and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.
Arthur SchopenhauerEven if loving meant leaving, or solitude, or sorrow, love was worth every penny of its price.
Paulo CoelhoThe Sierra, a region so quiet and pristine that we have the sense of being the first human beings ever to set foot in it. We fall silent ourselves in its midst, as if conversation in a place of such primeval solitude would be like talking in church.
Jim FergusHe clings to his solitude, to his affected indifference and his grown-up ways, but it's just an act, so as never, never to show his real feelings.
Anne FrankAs our lives speed up more and more, so do our children's. We forget and thus they forget that there is nothing more important than the present moment. We forget and thus they forget to relax, to find spiritual solitude, to let go of the past, to quiet ambition, to fully enjoy the eating of a strawberry, the scent of a rose, the touch of a hand on a cheek...
Michael Gurian