Solitude Quotes - Page 3

Often people request prayers for deliverance, inner healing, or physical healing. But more frequently they simply want a man or woman to whom they can turn--not because of what this person is able to do but because of what he or she is: a person who makes them feel wanted, a friend to love them, one who generates an atmosphere of warmth and trust in which they are able to love in return.

Brennan Manning

Only lost photographs that were never taken know what my mind speaks of when we are alone together.

Daniel J. Rice

Where solitude endeth, there beginneth the market-place; and where the market-place beginneth, there beginneth also the noise of the great actors, and the buzzing of the poison-flies.

Friedrich Nietzsche

you know the way of the wind in the night—the desolate alleys my soul takes

John Geddes

In solitude, you will find yourself; in crowds, you will find others! You need both of them: Solitude and crowds; yourself and others! Without others, what to do with yourself? Without yourself, what to do with others?

Mehmet Murat ildan

Solitude is the rebel of the freedom.

Mehmet Murat ildan

We all are individual and lonely, like stars which appear so close but millions of miles apart.

Santosh Kalwar

She has always said that talking makes everyone feel better. He says talking is the equivalent of grooming. The tongue and fingers are governed by the same parts of the brain. He marvels at how close they can be some nights on the phone and how words really are the equal of touch. Bakelite pressed hard against his ear.She says it's not just the freedom from him and from their daughter. I feel some sort of opening. I saw things so clearly today.He thinks about the solitary figure in every religion, the monks, saints and shamans in every tradition who walk out into wilderness on their own and find revelation.It's what solitude does to a social animal he says.People talk of recognizing something greater than themselves when they're alone because we finally have to realize how helpless we are as individuals. There's a freedom, a sense of wonder in feeling for a moment that we don't have to please anyone or adjust to the needs of others. And there's a fear in realizing how small we are, how much those distant others normally insulate us from seeing the limits of our mostly incompetent bodies. When we're on our own we seek solutions and speculate and fictionalize because that's what we do when we're confronted with survival. That's revelation.Maybe she says, I'm just saying I'd like to eat less meat. We could have fish.

Colin McAdam

To love can mean 'to love oneself,' and often love is no more than a juxtaposition of two solitudes.

Pope Paul VI

For the first time after so many years I come back to cry aloud in the desert. Because this is the mission of the intellectual who is truly a prophet—to cry in the desert. The greatest of the prophets, Isaiah, made it notable, of course, when he spoke of himself as the voice of one "crying in the wilderness." Because the mission of the intellectual is to be the man who, from his desert, his basic solitude—and man is only man amid his truth, only himself when he is alone—cries aloud to others and invites them to each into his own solitude.

José Ortega y Gasset

I choose solitude over cold kisses. If it isn't love, it is poison.

Anita Krizzan

I've learnt that solitude is sometimes a path that leads to peace

Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Any human companionship, even the dearest and most perfect, would have been alien to her then. She was sufficient unto herself, needing not love nor comradeship nor any human emotion to round out her felicity. Such moments come rarely in any life, but when they do come they are inexpressibly wonderful - as if the finite were for a second infinity - as if humanity were for a space uplifted into divinity - as if all ugliness had vanished, leaving only flawless beauty.

L.M. Montgomery

A man thinking or working will always be alone, let him be where he will.

Henry David Thoreau

In solitude, struggles occur that no one else knows about. Inner battles are fought here that seldom become fodder for sermons or illustrations for books. God, who probes our deepest thoughts during protracted segments of solitude, opens our eyes to things that need attention. It is here He makes us aware of those things we try to hide from others.

Charles R. Swindoll

Live by yourself and you bound to talk yourself and when ye commence that folks start it up that you're light in the head. But I reckon it's all right to talk to a dog since most folks do even if a dog don't understand and cain't answer if he did.

Cormac McCarthy

Arcadio had seen her many times working in her parents' small food store but he had never taken a good look at her because she had that rare virtue of never existing completely except at the opportune moment.

Gabriel García Márquez

On re-entering cultivated lands, the agitation, perplexity, and turmoil of civilization oppressed and suffocated us; the air seemed to fail us, and we felt every moment as if about to die of asphyxia.

Évariste Régis Huc

Though solitude, endured too long,Bids youthful joys too soon decay,Makes mirth a stranger to my tongue,And overclouds my noon of day;When kindly thoughts that would have way,Flow back discouraged to my breast;I know there is, though far away,A home where heart and soul may rest.Warm hands are there, that, clasped in mine,The warmer heart will not belie;While mirth, and truth, and friendship shineIn smiling lip and earnest eye.The ice that gathers round my heartMay there be thawed; and sweetly, then,The joys of youth, that now depart,Will come to cheer my soul again.

Anne Brontë

Sometimes the stage terrifies me,” I confessed. “But being here alone like this, it’s freeing.”Solitude can be freeing,” he said.

Lesa Howard

Humans are all too happy to keep company until the company turns out to be less appealing than solitude.

Thor Benson

But there remained a reflective solitude behind that laughter, that nagging sense of completion that didn't sit well on the shoulders of a woman who had just begun to open her eyes to the wide world.

R.A. Salvatore

Father and Ivy used to go off on their excursions, never knowing that I was relieved when they were gone. That I'd wear my nightgowns all day and read from dawn till dusk.

Suzanne Palmieri

Solitude is a condition best enjoyed in company.

Eleanor Catton

Grieving, like being blind, is a strange business; you have to learn how to do it. We seek company in mourning, but after the early bursts of tears, after the praises have been spoken, and the good days remembered, and the lament cried, and the grave closed, there is no company in grief. It is a burden borne alone.

Ursula K Le Guin

Solitude appeared to me as the only fit state of man.

Walter Benjamin

If truth is what you seek, then the examined life will only take you on a long ride to the limits of solitude and leave you by the side of the road with your truth and nothing else.

Thomas Ligotti

People who need people are threatened by people who don’t. The idea of seeking contentment alone is heretical, for society steadfastly decrees that our completeness lies in others.

Lionel Fisher

Writers are solitaries by vocation and necessity. I sometimes think the test is not so much talent, which is not as rare as people think, but purpose or vocation, which manifests in part as the ability to endure a lot of solitude and keep working. Before writers are writers they are readers, living in books, through books, in the lives of others that are also the heads of others, in that act that is so intimate and yet so alone.

Rebecca Solnit

O take me from the busy crowd,I cannot bear the noise!For Nature's voice is never loud;I seek for quiet joys.The book I love is everywhere,And not in idle words;The book I love is known to all,And better lore affords.

John Clare

The measure of your solitude is the measure of your capacity for communion.

Henri J.M. Nouwen

The wise oyster stays in its shell.

Marty Rubin

The only exercise that Tess took at this time was after dark; and it was then, when out in the woods, that she seemed least solitary... She had no fear of the shadows; her sole idea seemed to be to shun mankind—or rather that cold accretion called the world, which, so terrible in the mass, is so unformidable, even pitiable, in its units.

Thomas Hardy

Mr. Collins was to attend them, at the request of Mr. Bennet, who was most anxious to get rid of him, and have his library to himself

Jane Austen

There is a charm in Solitude that cheersA feeling that the world knows nothing ofA green delight the wounded mind endearsAfter the hustling world is broken off

John Clare

Only a few have learned to savor the significance of solitude. Those who can glory in being alone on occasion are the saint or poet or explorer.

William P. Barker

Looking at the rain through my window,I can’t find an answer to this merciless solitude—The same solitude that sprouts from my eyes,A bittersweet tear which haunts me like a shadow.During evenings like this my life is about sad memories.At times I believe you’re so evil, but at end of the day you make the effort to change what my mind tells.Why don’t you turn away and let me find the love that I need?I hope you will never abandon my life and when that beautiful day comesI am going to thank you for being my lovely company.You! Eternal loneliness that poisons me-Don’t feel miserable due to these words,I only use you to drown my sorrows, to not die alone in omission.

Julieth Figueroa R.

my dearest agony let us be together, i am not seasoned for this solitude.

Nation C White

In a soulmate we find not company, but a completed solitude.

Robert Brault

It's solitary drinking that makes drunkards.

Nathanael West

In the case of the solitary, his seclusion, even when it is absolute and ends only with life itself, has often as its primary cause a disordered love of the crowd, which so far overruled every other feeling that, not being able to win, when he goes out, the admiration of his hall-porter, of the passers-by, of the cabman whom he hails, he prefers not to be seen by them at all, and with that object abandons every activity that would oblige him to go out of doors.

Marcel Proust

For her a day of pampering meant comic books, black liquorice, serious exercise, veggie curry and, above all, solitude.

Salla Simukka

Tried a lot,but can't find a companion like you my dear solitude. Let us shake our hands again.

sandeep bhat

Still, how I nearly felt. In the midst of all that looking.

David Markson

The black land slid by and he was going into the country among the hills. For the first time in a dozen years the stars were coming out above him, in great processions of wheeling fire. He saw a great juggernaut of stars form in the sky and threaten to roll over and crush him... the river was mild and leisurely, going away from the people who ate shadows for breakfast and steam for lunch and vapors for supper. The river was very real; it held him comfortably and gave him the time at last, the leisure, to consider this month, this year, and a lifetime of years. He listened to his heart slow. His thoughts stopped rushing with his blood.

Ray Bradbury

The things I know, every man can know, but, oh, my heart is mine alone!

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

She wanted to ask about the McCaffreys' children, but the question seemed too personal. Westerners were private sorts, in Evangeline's judgment, with more than their share of secrets. "It scares me a little," she confessed. "The idea of being so alone, I mean."June-bug favored her with another smile. "Bein' alone ain't necessarily bad, you know. A person can come to understand herself real well that way. Some folks pass their whole lives without learnin' a thing about their own minds and spirits, but out here, all you've got to do is pay attention.

Linda Lael Miller

You end up isolated if you don't cultivate the capacity for solitude, the ability to be separate, to gather yourself. Solitude is where you find yourself so that you can reach out to other people and form real attachments. When we don't have the capacity for solitude, we turn to other people in order to feel less anxious or in order to feel alive. When this happens, we're not able to appreciate who they are. It's as though we're using them as spare parts to support our fragile sense of self. We slip into thinking that always being connected is going to make us feel less alone. But we're at risk, because actually it's the opposite that's true.

Sherry Turkle

Who are we without our addictions; without our media-induced hungers? So often the voices we hear echoing in our mind are not our own but that of our influencers. Isolation, while arguably going against human nature, is essential for mental and emotional health. Solitude is a detoxification of all that distorts our personality and misguides our path in life. It allows us to filter out the foreign opinions and hear our own voice—reach our authentic character—and practice fidelity to self.

L.M. Browning

But we-' she glanced at him as if to ascertain his position, 'we see each other only now and then-''Like lights in a storm-''In the midst of a hurricane,' she concluded, as the window shook beneath the pressure of the wind.

Virginia Woolf

A man with nothing to lend should refrain from borrowing.

Michel de Montaigne

True happiness is impossible without solitude. The fallen angel probably betrayed God because he longed for solitude, which angels do not know.

Anton Chekhov

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to live to yourself.

Michel de Montaigne

Souls are like stars. There are thousands upon thousands around us yet we only see a few hundred. We know the names of only a handful of them even though we see them every day. They are just there, they are constant. Some change over the years but some stay exactly the same. We can see that some are in pairs and their whole world revolves around each other. Yet there are stars that exist in solitude. They are alone in the big black vastness of space and they have no hope of reaching others in their lifetime. They burn bright; maybe brighter than most but they are alone. They might have a few things around them but those are insignificant and invisible to the outsider. Sometimes when two stars get closer to each other, they affect the other's course, they become brighter for each other but as time passes they get further and further from one another until they blend into the rest, they become strangers again. But the affect remains and their future will never be the same from then on.

Daniel Gyorki

Sometimes I look out the window out into the big, bright world and stare at people. Passers-by who live their ordinary lives and experience a full range of extraoridnary emotions. I stare at them for minutes, sometimes hours and then it makes me think, it makes me wonder. Are there people who are born healthy, who are born perfectly normal yet there is something wrong with them? Something nobody feels, nobody understands or questions, something that no one has ever even heard of? What if there are people among us who are capable of truly falling for someone, who are - in all biological, emotional, hormonal, chemical, philosophical senses - capable of loving someone with romantic love but no one in this wide world is capable of requiting that? Is it possible? Is it the fault of that person? Is it perhaps in the genes, the very DNA of someone? Is it perhaps destiny? And those passers-by go along happily without knowing anyone has ever asked something like this and they will probably never think about anything such because there might be only one person in this world who has to experience the feeling, the feeling that is so deeply rooted in a life alone.

Daniel Gyorki

I prize my downtime, count on it as a writer, a parent, a person. Sometimes I think of Woody Allen's remark about masturbation, that it is sex with someone he loves. I feel as though being alone is hanging out with someone I like.

Anna Quindlen

One of the rocks in my soulbag, a little grey rock that I had picked up on a certain day in a certain place in the hills above the river in the Silver Time, a little piece of my world, that became my world. Every night I took it out and held it in my hand while I lay in bed waiting to sleep, thinking of the sunlight on the hills above the river, listening to the soft shushing of the ship’s systems, like a mechanical sea.

Ursula K Le Guin

Company is a burden to those at home in the solitude of their souls.

Erika Robuck

Intimacy between people requires closeness as well as distance. It is like dancing. Sometimes we are very close, touching each other or holding each other; sometimes we move away from each other and let the space between us become an area where we can freely move.To keep the right balance between closeness and distance requires hard work, especially since the needs of the partners may be quite different at a given moment. One might desire closeness while the other wants distance. One might want to be held while the other looks for independence. A perfect balance seldom occurs, but the honest and open search for that balance can give birth to a beautiful dance, worthy to behold.

Henri J.M. Nouwen

Reading is solitude.

Italo Calvino

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Solitude Quotes - Page 3

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