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.

Our equal and opposite needs for solitude and community constitute a great paradox. When it is torn apart, both of these life-giving states of being degenerate into deathly specters of themselves. Solitude split off from community is no longer a rich and fulfilling experience of inwardness; now it becomes loneliness, a terrible isolation. Community split off from solitude is no longer a nurturing network of relationships; now it becomes a crowd, an alienating buzz of too many people and too much noise.

The love of solitude, when cultivated in the morn of life, elevates the mind to a noble independence, but to acquire the advantages which solitude is capable of affording, the mind must not be impelled to it by melancholy and discontent, but by a real distaste to the idle pleasures of the world, a rational contempt for the deceitful joys of life, and just apprehensions of being corrupted and seduced by its insinuating and destructive gayeties.

The ideal person is he who, in the midst of the greatest silence and solitude, finds the intensest activity, and in the midst of the intensest activity finds the silence and solitude of the desert.

All humans are frightened of their own solitude. But only in solitude can we learn to know ourselves, learn to handle our own eternal aloneness.

It 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.

Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone, and the only one who seeks out another. His nature - if that word can be used in reference to man, who has ‘invented’ himself by saying ‘no’ to nature - consists in his longing to realize himself in another. Man is nostalgia and a search for communion. Therefore, when he is aware of himself he is aware of his lack of another, that is, of his solitude.

It's not easy to sit and trust that in solitude God will speak to you - not as a magical voice but that God will let you know something gradually over the years. And in that word from God you will find the inner place from which to live your life. Solitude is where spiritual ministry begins. That's where Jesus listened to God. That's where we listen to God.

There 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.

Alone let him constantly meditate in solitude on that which is salutary for his soul, for he who meditates in solitude attains supreme bliss.

Solitude 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. In ancient times, purposeful solitude was both palliative and preventative. It was used to heal fatigue and to prevent weariness. It was also used as an oracle, as a way of listening to the inner self to solicit advice and guidance otherwise impossible to hear in the din of daily life.

As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.

She frowned at him. 'You are in love with solitude.' 'Is there a better cure for the world than solitude?

What'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.

My own study of the networked life has left me thinking about intimacy - about being with people in person, hearing their voices and seeing their faces, trying to know their hearts. And it has left me thinking about solitude - the kind that refreshes and restores. Loneliness is failed solitude.

There is nothing worse than solitude. Solitude can help a man realize himself; but it destroys a woman

I'm pretty social so it's hard for me to find solitude, but I need to have solitude to write.

When society is made up of men who know no interior solitude it can no longer be held together by love: and consequently it is held together by a violent and abusive authority. But when men are violently deprived of the solitude and freedom which are their due, then society in which they live becomes putrid, it festers with servility, resentment and hate.

Not only does democracy make every man forget his ancestors, but also clouds their view of their descendants and isolates them from their contemporaries. Each man is for ever thrown back on himself alone, and there is danger that he may be shut up in the solitude of his own heart.

They make solitude, which they call peace.

In solitude we give passionate attention to our lives, to our memories, to the details around us.

I do not want to be admired. I want to give, to be given, and solitude in which to unfold my possessions.

To go out with the setting sun on an empty beach is to truly embrace your solitude.

To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free, when men are different from one another and do not live alone— to a time when truth exists and what is done cannot be undone: From the age of uniformity, from the age of solitude, from the age of Big Brother, from the age of doublethink — greetings!

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.

I feel strongly that the God we meet in solitude is always the God who calls us to community.

It'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.

So the only environment the artist needs is whatever peace, whatever solitude, and whatever pleasure he can get at not too high a cost. All the wrong environment will do is run his blood pressure up; he will spend more time being frustrated or outraged. My own experience has been that the tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whiskey.

Solitude is bearable only with God.

Multitude, solitude: equal and interchangeable terms for the active and prolific poet.

And if at times you renounce experience and mind's heavy logic, it seems that the world has rushed along on its orbit, leaving you alone flying above a forgotten cloud bank, somewhere in the solitude of interstellar space.

Life is a solitude.

Karamakate says, "to become a warrior, every Cohiuano man must leave everything behind and go into the jungle, guided only by his dreams. In that journey, he has to discover, in solitude and silence, who he really is."

Can you be alone without being lonely? Can you spend time by yourself without craving noise or company of other people? Have you discovered the glory of quiet time spent alone, time spent listening to your soul? Solitude brings with it gifts that come from nowhere else.

As the truest society approaches always nearer to solitude, so the most excellent speech finally falls into Silence. Silence is audible to all men, at all times, and in all places. She is when we hear inwardly, sound when we hear outwardly. Creation has not displaced her, but is her visible framework and foil. All sounds are her servants, and purveyors, proclaiming not only that their mistress is, but is a rare mistress, and earnestly to be sought after.

A great city is a great solitude.

Quiet solitude is a nutritional need of the ascending body.

In giving you are throwing a bridge across the chasm of your solitude.

To 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.

Only what touches us closely preoccupies us. We prepare in solitude to face it. (The Little Book of Unsuspected Subversion)

However softly we speak, God is so close to us that he can hear us; nor do we need wings to go in search of him, but merely to seek solitude and contemplate him within ourselves, without being surprised to find such a good Guest there.

I went to collect the few personal belongings which...I held to be invaluable: my cat, my resolve to travel, and my solitude.

I 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.

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

Loneliness can be conquered only by those who can bear solitude.

We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and private: and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship.

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

Solitude is independence. It had been my wish and with the years I had attained it. It was cold. Oh, cold enough! But it was also still, wonderfully still and vast like the cold stillness of space in which the stars revolve.