Popular quotes about Solitude! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
One ought to love society, if he wishes to enjoy solitude. It is a social nature that solitude works upon with the most various power. If one is misanthropic, and betakes himself to loneliness that he may get away from hateful things, solitude is a silent emptiness to him.
Johann Georg Ritter von ZimmermannIt's practically my subject, my theme: solitude and community; the weirdness and terrors of solitude: the stifling and consolations of community. Also, the consolations of solitude.
Derek MahonIt is in solitude that the works of hand, heart and mind are always conceived, and in solitude that individuality must be affirmed.
Robert M. LindnerWhen 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 IldanThere is a difference between solitude and isolation. One is connected and one isn't. Solitude replenishes, isolation diminishes.
Henry CloudI think the call of the inward life starts here. Solitude helps you differentiate, define the borders of the self. Solitude helps you figure our where everybody else stops and you begins.
Jeanne Marie LaskasSelf Esteem::"It is very easy in the world to live by the opinion of the world. It is very easy in solitude to be self-centered. But the finished man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. I knew a man of simple habits and earnest character who never put out his hands nor opened his lips to court the public, and having survived several rotten reputations of younger men, honor came at last and sat down with him upon his private bench from which he had never stirred."
Ralph Waldo EmersonI can tell you that solitude Is not all exaltation, inner space Where the soul breathes and work can be done. Solitude exposes the nerve, Raises up ghosts. The past, never at rest, flows through it.
May SartonThe mark of solitude is silence, as speech is the mark of community. Silence and speech have the same inner correspondence and difference as do solitude and community. One does not exist without the other. Right speech comes out of silence, and right silence comes out of speech.
Dietrich BonhoefferIt is, indeed, a fact that, in the midst of society and sociability every evil inclination has to place itself under such great restraint, don so many masks, lay itself so often on the procrustean bed of virtue, that one could well speak of a martyrdom of the evil man. In solitude all this falls away. He who is evil is at his most evil in solitude: which is where he is at his best - and thus to the eye of him who sees everywhere only a spectacle also at his most beautiful.
Friedrich NietzscheI think writers have to be able to enjoy solitude rather than just endure it. I've always enjoyed being left alone with my imagination, ever since I was a kid.
Peter RobinsonOur religious activities should be ordered in such a way as to have plenty of time for the cultivation of the fruits of solitude and silence.
Aiden Wilson TozerOne 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.
Frank ChurchSolitude does not pull us away from our fellow human beings but instead makes real fellowship possible.
Henri NouwenShe 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.
Adeline Yen MahI feel strongly that the God we meet in solitude is always the God who calls us to community.
Henri NouwenThere 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 DiderotGiven enough time, you could convince yourself that loneliness was something better, that it was solitude, the ideal condition for reflection, even a kind of freedom. Once you were thus convinced, you were foolish to open the door and let anyone in, not all the way in. You risked the hard-won equilibrium, that tranquility that you called peace
Dean KoontzI have an immense appetite for solitude, like an infant for sleep, and if I don't get enough for this year, I shall cry all the next.
Henry David ThoreauI 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 PattersonYour solitude will expand and become a place where you can live in the twilight, where the noise of other people passes, far in the distance.
Rainer Maria RilkeThe voice of the sea is seductive, never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander in abysses of solitude.
Kate ChopinThe 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 GreatImagine 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 AldrichThe most incredible thing is that so much happens outside of the will. You can't will anything. Not even solitude is an act of will. You simply endure it. You must hold on until the very end, without weakening. You can do nothing else. But you must not believe that because you accept being nothing, you are anyone special.
Bram van VeldeI 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 HirshfieldThe ancient spiritual tradition is that God gives himself fully to us in silence and solitude.
Brennan ManningReally living like Christ will not mean reward, social recognition, and an assured income, but difficulties, discrimination, solitude, anxiety. Here, too, the basic experience of the cross applies: the wider we open our hearts to others, the more audibly we intervene against the injustice that rules over us, the more difficult our lives in the rich unjust society will become.
Dorothee SolleI crawled back into myself all alone, just delighted to observe that I was even more miserable than before, because I had brought a new kind of distress and something that resembled true feeling into my solitude.
Louis-Ferdinand CelineSolitude is fine when you are at peace with yourself and have something definite to do.
Johann Wolfgang von GoetheIsolation, 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 ThompsonThe more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.
Aldous HuxleyMy 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 Yoakam