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 solitude—because we are always 'doing' things—we often neglect to teach our boys to find solitude
Michael GurianThe fruit of solitude is increased sensitivity and compassion for others. There comes a new freedom to be with people. There is new attentiveness to their needs, new responsiveness to their hurts. Thomas Merton observes, 'It is in deep solitude that I find the gentleness with which I can truly love my brothers. The more solitary I am the more affection I have for them.... Solitude and silence teach me to love my brothers for what they are, not for what they say.
Richard J. FosterSolitude 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 OrtbergNo 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.
Charles Sanders PeirceAfter all, when you take a walk you're after solitude, and if the solitude won't come to you, you must go to it.
Elfriede JelinekThere are times when you seek your solitude, and your solitude just wants to be left alone.
Robert BreaultAn 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 CameronThanks to the night, we long for the day; thanks to the day, we long for the night! The purpose of the opposites is to make us long for something! Thanks to the crowds, we long for the solitude; thanks to the solitude, we long for the crowds!
Mehmet Murat IldanEvery season is likeable, and wet days and fine, red wine and white, company and solitude. Even sleep, that deplorable curtailment of the joy of life, can be full of dreams; and the most common actions──a walk, a talk, solitude in one’s own orchard──can be enhanced and lit up by the association of the mind. Beauty is everywhere, and beauty is only two finger’s-breadth from goodness.
Virginia WoolfIt 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 EmersonIt 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 NietzscheNot 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.
Alexis de TocquevilleI am alone so I dream of the being who has cured my solitude, who would be cured by solitudes. With its life, it brought me the idealizations of life, all the idealizations which give life a double, which lead life toward it summits, which make the dreamer too live by splitting.
Gaston BachelardI 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 RobinsonThe nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired. Only after death, only in solitude, does a man’s true nature emerge. In death, as on the chimney sweep’s Saturday night, the soot gets washed from his body.
Franz KafkaNot that she objected to solitude. Quite the contrary. She had books, thank Heaven, quantities of books. All sorts of books.
Jean RhysCrowded places, I shunned them as noises too rude / And flew to the silence of sweet solitude.
John ClareInward solitude has outward manifestations. There is the freedom to be alone, not in order to be away from people but in order to hear the divine Whisper better.
Richard J. FosterLove is made by two people, in different kinds of solitude. It can be in a crowd, but in an oblivious crowd.
Louis AragonO Holy Spirit of God, abide with us; inspire all our thoughts; pervade our imaginations; suggest all our decisions; order all our doings. Be with us in our silence and in our speech, in our haste and in our leisure, in company and in solitude, in the freshness of the morning and in the weariness of the evening; and give us grace at all times humbly to rejoice in Thy mysterious companionship.
John BaillieWhat Independence Has Come to Mean to Me: The Pain of Solitude. The Pleasure of Self-Knowledge
Vivian GornickLeisure, the highest happiness upon earth, is seldom enjoyed with perfect satisfaction, except in solitude. Indolence and indifference do not always afford leisure; for true leisure is frequently found in that interval of relaxation which divides a painful duty from an agreeable recreation; a toilsome business from the more agreeable occupations of literature and philosophy.
Johann Georg Ritter von ZimmermannI have only one desire, and that is the desire for solitude-to disappear into God, to be submerged in His peace, to be lost in the secret of His Face.
Thomas MertonI guess part of the hit-man appeal is the solitude. Everybody is lured to the idea of the solitary life.
Bill NighyThe birth of love is always accompanied by the idea of solitude. A single being appears, and the rest of the world grows empty.
Marthe BibescoMy favorite books are actually very complicated - 'One Hundred Years of Solitude', 'Ulysses'.
James PattersonSolitude is a silent storm that breaks down all our dead branches; yet it sends our living roots deeper into the living heart of the living earth.
Khalil GibranYour 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 RilkeCherish your solitude. Take trains by yourself to places you have never been. Sleep out alone under the stars.
Eve EnslerThe only environment the artist needs is whatever peace, whatever solitude, and whatever pleasure he can get at not too high a cost.
William FaulknerThe 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 GreatJust like unrestrained economic liberalism, and for similar reasons, sexual liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperization. Some men make love every day; others five or six times in their life, or never. Some make love with dozens of women, others with none. It’s what’s known as ‘the law of the market’… In a totally liberal sexual system certain people have a varied and exciting erotic life; others are reduced to masturbation and solitude.
Michel HouellebecqWe live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. [...] By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies - all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable.
Aldous HuxleyThat's a terrifying prospect for myself, and I'm sure many other people, as well. We leave TVs on in our house. I listen to my record player, constantly, to just hear music. I'm really intrigued by the idea of solitude. I'm excited about that.
Katee SackhoffGod is not solitude, but perfect communion. For this reason the human person, the image of God, realizes himself or herself in love, which is a sincere gift of self.
Pope Benedict XVIFear can supplant our real problems only to the extent -unwilling either to assimilate or to exhaust it -we perpetuate it within ourselves like a temptation and enthrone it at the very heart of our solitude.
Emile M. CioranIf 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 RohrFind 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.
Nachman of Breslov