Popular quotes about Solitude! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
Solitude is a condition of peace that stands in direct opposition to loneliness. Loneliness is like sitting in an empty room and being aware of the space around you. It is a condition of separateness. Solitude is becoming one with the space around you. It is a condition of union. loneliness is small, solitude is large. loneliness closes in around you; solitude expands toward the infinite. loneliness has its roots in words, in an internal conversation that nodbody answers; solitude has it's roots in the great silence of eternity.
Kent NerburnEvery book is an image of solitude. It is a tangible object that one can pick up, put down, open, and close, and its words represent many months if not many years, of one manโs solitude, so that with each word one reads in a book one might say to himself that he is confronting a particle of that solitude
Paul AusterThere 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.
May SartonSolitude is the one place where we can gain freedom from the forces of society that will otherwise relentlessly mold us. Solitude requires relentless perseverance.
John OrtbergNothing can be done without solitude. I've created my own solitude which nobody suspects
Pablo PicassoSolitude in the city is about the lack of other people or rather their distance beyond a door or wall, but in remote places it isnโt an absence but the presence of something else, a kind of humming silence in which solitude seems as natural to your species as to any other, words strange rocks you may or may not turn over.
Rebecca SolnitIt is right that you have to have a tolerance for solitude. But when that solitude bears fruit, you can abandon it. You can be in the company of others.
Richard FordThere is an old proverb to the effect that 'all those who open their mouths, close their eyes!' The purpose of silence and solitude is to be able to see and hear. Control rather than no noise is the key to silence. James saw clearly that the person who could control his tounge is perfect (James 3:1-12). Under the Discipline of silence and solitude we learn when to speak and when to refrain from speaking.
Richard J. FosterSolitude 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 NouwenWhat 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 EmersonIn solitude, you accumulate energy to spend in crowds; and in crowds, you accumulate energy to spend in solitude!
Mehmet Murat IldanSolitude is not an absence of energy or action, as some believe, but is rather a boon of wild provisions transmitted to us from the soul.
Clarissa Pinkola EstesThe weight of the world is love. Under the burden of solitude, under the burden of dissatisfaction.
Allen GinsbergHe really had been through death, but he had returned because he could not bear the solitude.
Gabriel Garcia MarquezLittle as she was addicted to solitude, there had come to be moments when it seemed a welcome escape from the empty noises of her life.
Edith WhartonI guess part of the hit-man appeal is the solitude. Everybody is lured to the idea of the solitary life.
Bill NighyMy favorite books are actually very complicated - 'One Hundred Years of Solitude', 'Ulysses'.
James PattersonA little time separates us from those who depart - a time of tears, a time of sadness and solitude; but, that over, we go to rejoin them and to enjoy with them the society of the blessed. Oh, how sweetly the heart rests in this immortal hope!
Eugenie de GuerinI shall lead you through the loneliness, the solitude you will not understand; but it is my shortcut to your soul.
Thomas MertonJohnson is wise, Boswell foolish; Johnson warns and abstains, Boswell plunges; Johnson is rather a great man writing than a greatwriter, Boswell is a great writer and an ordinary man; and they are two of a kind, abysmal melancholics and compulsive socializers, afraid of solitude and afraid of death and dissolution, victims of themselves, meant for each other, needing each other, needing evidence and arguments (Boswell is a lawyer, Johnson magisterially dictates to him some of his briefs), making beautiful models of rational discourse out of the useful substance of all they know.
Marvin MudrickWhat now on the other hand makes people sociable is their incapacity to endure solitude and thus themselves.
Arthur SchopenhauerWhen 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!
Herman MelvilleLeisure, the highest happiness on earth, is seldom enjoyed with perfect satisfaction, except in solitude.
George ZimmermanKaren, 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 BowenTo rob, to ravage, to murder, in their imposing language, are the arts of civil policy. When they have made the world a solitude, they call it peace.
TacitusMake 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 KleiserI can be alone without being lonely. In fact, those times of solitude are necessary respite for a beleaguered soul, set upon by the pressures of life. I need to take whatever moments I can to just be still.
Steve GoodierThe cat makes himself the companion of your hours of solitude, melancholy and toil.
Theophile GautierSorrow 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 ByronIf 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 RohrJanuary 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 HugoWe need society, and we need solitude also, as we need summer and winter, day and night, exercise and rest.
Philip Gilbert HamertonOn the tree, Future, we build our nest; and in our solitude eagles shall bring us nourishment in their beaks!
Friedrich NietzscheHe was raised by three nurses: freedom, solitude and Mademoiselle. Together, the three of them provided him with an education. From them, he learned everything he believed it was possible to learn.
Timothee de FombelleA woman may live without a lover, but a lover once admitted, she never goes through life with only one. She is deserted, and cannot bear her anguish and solitude, and hence fills up the void with a second idol.
Henry Bulwer, 1st Baron Dalling and BulwerNothing could be more pleasant than to live in solitude, enjoy the spectacle of nature, and occasionally read some book.
Nikolai GogolTo me, no painter has ever quite understood the light, the distances, the aboriginal ghostliness of the American West as well as Maynard Dixon. The great mood of his work is solitude, the effect of land and space on people. While his work stands perfectly well on its claims to beauty, it offers a spiritual view of the West indispensable to anyone who would understand it.
Thomas McGuane