Quotes About Solitude

It is this nothingness (in solitude) that I have to face in my solitude, a nothingness so dreadful that everything in me wants to run to my friends, my work, and my distractions so that I can forget my nothingness and make myself believe that I am worth something. The task is to persevere in my solitude, to stay in my cell until all my seductive visitors get tired of pounding on my door and leave me alone. The wisdom of the desert is that the confrontation with our own frightening nothingness forces us to surrender ourselves totally and unconditionally to the Lord Jesus Christ.

In certain areas of my life, I actively seek out solitude. Especially for someone in my line of work, solitude is, more or less, an inevitable circumstance. Sometimes, however, this sense of isolation, like acid spilling out of a bottle, can unconsciously eat away at a person's heart and dissolve it. You could see it, too, as a kind of double-edged sword. It protects me, but at the same time steadily cuts away at me from the inside.

There is no doubt that solitude is a challenge and to maintain balance within it a precarious business. But I must not forget that, for me, being with people or even with one beloved person for any length of time without solitude is even worse. I lose my center. I feel dispersed, scattered, in pieces. I must have time alone in which to mull over my encounter, and to extract its juice, its essence, to understand what has really happened to me as a consequence of it.

No 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.

The fear of your own solitude, of its vast surface and its infinity… Remorse is the voice of solitude. And what does this whispering voice say? Everything in us that is not human anymore.

Apply yourself to solitude. One who is given to solitude knows things as they really are.

The city does not take away, neither does the country give, solitude; solitude is within us.

An 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.

I highly recommend setting aside pockets of time during each day for solitude. You might have only five or ten minutes, but be alone and uninterrupted. And then sometime each week devote an extended time - at least one hour - to reconnect with your soul. How and when you do it is a very personal thing, but plan it because solitude doesn't happen on its own. Make it a priority in your life.

There is a fellowship more quiet even than solitude, and which, rightly understood, is solitude made perfect.

What is necessary, after all, is only this: solitude, vast inner solitude. To walk inside yourself and meet no one for hours-that is what you must be able to attain. To be solitary as you were when you were a child.

A creation of importance can only be produced when its author isolates himself, it is a child of solitude.

Solitude 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.

Concerning 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.

Of all the conditions we experience, solitude is perhaps the most misunderstood.

One would think America big enough to set aside wilderness preserves for the many of our citizens who seek to escape the incessant crowd, to search for solace in solitude amidst a sanctuary far removed from the banality of beer ads and cigarette commercials.

She was bedridden falling a fall which broke her hip. X-rays showed that she had cancer of the colon which had already spreed. To my surprise I found her cheerful and free of pain, perhaps because of the small doses of morphine she was being given. She was surrounded by neighbours and friends who congregated at her bedside day and night. In this cosy, noisy, gregarious world of the "all-chinese" sickbed, so different from the stark, sterile solitude of the American hospital room, her life had assumed the astounding quality of a continuous farewell party.

I write in order to find out what I truly know and how I really feel about certain things. Writing requires me to go much deeper into my thoughts and memories than conversation does. Writing provides the solitude necessary to reflect on being in this world.

I liked the solitude and the silence of the woods and the hills. I felt there the sense of a presence, something undefined and mysterious, which was reflected in the faces of the flowers and the movements of birds and animals, in the sunlight falling through the leaves and in the sound of running water, in the wind blowing on the hills and the wide expanse of earth and sky.

Life is a solitude.

The 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.

Yes, in my life, since we must call it so, there were three things, the inability to speak, the inability to be silent, and solitude, that’s what I’ve had to make the best of.

Solitude is the nurse of enthusiasm, enthusiasm is the true part of genius.

He who lives in solitude may make his own laws.

The voice of the sea is seductive, never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander in abysses of solitude.

Jamie enjoyed solitude, but loneliness was a constant ache.

There 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.

When I think of this life I have led; the desolation of solitude it has been; the masoned, walled-town of a Captain's exclusiveness, which admits but small entrance to any sympathy from the green country without - oh, weariness! heaviness! Guinea-coast slavery of solitary command!

And I watch my words from a long way off. They are more yours than mine. They climb on my old suffering like ivy. It climbs the same way on damp walls. You are to blame for this cruel sport. They are fleeing from my dark lair. You fill everything, you fill everything. Before you they peopled the solitude that you occupy, and they are more used to my sadness than you are. Now I want them to say what I want to say to you to make you hear as I want you to hear me.

God is the solitude of men. There was only me: I alone decided to commit Evil; alone, I invented Good. I am the one who cheated, I am the one who performed miracles, I am the one accusing myself today, I alone can absolve myself; me, the man.

Whenever 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.

Love is nothing but the fear of mortal man at the thought of solitude.

Find a day for yourself-better yet, late at night. Go to the forest or to the field, or lock yourself in a room ... You will meet solitude there. There you will be able to listen attentively to the noise of the wind first, to birds singing, to see wonderful nature and to notice yourself in it ... and to come back to harmonic connection with the world and its Creator.

As an introvert, you can be your own best friend or your worst enemy. The good news is we generally like our own company, a quality that extroverts often envy. We find comfort in solitude and know how to soothe ourselves. Even our willingness to look at ourselves critically is often helpful.But, we can go too far. We can hoard responsibility and overlook the role others play. We can kick ourselves when we're down. How many times have you felt lousy about something, only to get mad at yourself for feeling lousy?

Solitude is a necessary protest to the incursions and the false alarms of society's hysteria, a period of cure and recovery.

Christ choosing solitude for private prayer, doth not only hint to us the danger of distraction and deviation of thoughts in prayer, but how necessary it is for us to choose the most convenient places we can for private prayer. Our own fickleness and Satan's restlessness call upon us to get into such places where we may freely pour out our soul into the bosom of God [Mark 1.35].

I am but a stranger ... as we all are. Lonely inside our separate skins, we cannot know each others pain and must bear our own in solitude. For my part, I have found that walking soothes it; and that, given luck, sometimes we find one to walk besides us ... at least for a little way.

Sovereignty, loyalty, and solitude.

Moments of solitude are the holiest moments to think wisely!

A book is solitude, privacy; it is a way of holding the self apart from the crush of the outer world.

Hour of nostalgia, hour of happiness, hour of solitude.

Beauty beheld in solitude is even more lethal.

i am a trickster who doesn't know solitude

Solitude is indeed dangerous for a working intelligence. We need to have around us people who think and speak. When we are alone for a long time we people the void with phantoms

A place of solitude offers a retreat from the opposing forces and diverse demands of living, an entry into a state of peace and unity. Mind and body can retire from confusion and conflict to a sanctuary of clarity and harmony

Solitude is my element, and the reason is that extreme awareness of other people... precludes awareness of one's self so that after a while the self no longer knows that it exists.

It's not 'natural' to speak well, eloquently, in an interesting, articulate way. People living in groups, families, communes say little - have few verbal means. Eloquence - thinking in words - is a byproduct of solitude, deracination, a heightened painful individuality. In groups, it's more natural to sing, to dance, to pray: given, rather than invented (individual) speech.

It is a difficult lesson to learn today-to leave one's friends and family and deliberately practice the art of solitude for an hour or a day or a week. And yet, once it is done, I find there is a quality to being alone that is incredibly precious. Life rushes back into the void, richer, more vivid, fuller than before.