Solitude Quotes - Page 5

In solitude every fear, every longing, becomes exaggerated.

This is a new nonnegotiable: to feel safe, you have to be connected.

We have testimony about solitude from the most creative among us. For Mozart, "When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone, and of good cheer -- say, traveling in a carriage or walking after a good meal or during the night when I cannot sleep -- it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly." For Kafka, "You need not leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. You need not even listen, simply wait, just learn to become quiet, and still, and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked." For Thomas Mann, "Solitude gives birth the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous -- to poetry." For Picasso, "Without great solitude, no serious work is possible.

Sherry Turkle

It is true that many young people who wrongly, that is, simply with abandon and unsolitarily, feel the oppressiveness of a failure and want to make the situation in which they have landed viable and fruitful in their own personal way—; for their nature tells them that, less even than all else that is important, can questions of love be solved publicly and according to this or that agreement; that they are questions, intimate questions from one human being to another, which in any case demand a new, special, only personal answer—: but how should they, who have already flung themselves together and no longer mark off and distinguish themselves from each other, who therefore no longer possess anything of their own selves, be able to find a way out of themselves, out of the depth of their already shattered solitude?

Rainer Maria Rilke

In his history of solitude, Anthony Storr writes about the importance of being able to feel at peace in one's own company. But many find that, trained by the Net, they cannot find solitude even at a lake or beach or on a hike. Stillness makes them anxious. I see the beginnings of a backlash as some young people become disillusioned with social media. There is,. too, the renewed interest in yoga, Eastern religions, meditating, and "slowness.

Sherry Turkle

Increasingly, people feel as though they must have a reason for taking time alone, a reason not to be available.

Sherry Turkle

Whenever one speaks of lonely people one takes too much for granted. One thinks people all know what they're dealing with. No, they do not. They've never seen a lonely person, they've simply hated him without knowing him. They've been his neighbours who've used him up, they were the voices in the next room who tempted him. They roused things up against him, getting them to make a din and drown him out. Children ganged up against him when he was a tender child, and at every stage of his growing up he grew hostile to grown-ups . They tracked him to his hiding-place like an animal of chase and throughout his long youth there was no closed season. And when he didn't allow himself to be worn out so that he got away they yelled about what came forth from him and called it ugly and were suspicious of it. And as he didn't stop they grew more obvious and gobbled up his food and breathed up his air and spat into his poverty so that he himself became disgusted at it. They brought him into disrepute as if he were a contagion and threw stones at him to speed his departure. And they were right to follow their age-old instinct: because he really was their enemy. But then when he didn't look up they had second thoughts. They suspected that in all of this they had acted as he had willed them to act; they had strengthened him in his solitude and had helped him separate himself from them for ever.

Rainer Maria Rilke

People give me looks of pity and ask me why I want to wallow in my disconnection from a very connected world. It is simple. The world seems way too connected to me now. It seems to be ruining the lives of teenagers and bringing out the bestial cruelty in those who can hide their vileness under the mask of some idiotic pseudonym. I like to sit alone and think about things. Solitude is as precious as coin silver and it takes labor to attain it.

Pat Conroy

From our solitudewe shall create,forge songs ,pour in the reflectionof the stars and refresh the mindabout the silk-ridden roads that wait for them who have forgotten to feel.

Tara Estacaan

In solitude we can come to the realization that we are not driven together but brought together. In solitude we come to know our fellow human beings not as partners who can satisfy our deepest needs, but as brothers and sisters with whom we are called to give visibility to God's all-embracing love. In solitude we discover that community is not a common ideology, but a response to a common call. In solitude we indeed realize that community is not made but given.

Henri J.M. Nouwen

...still, I’m lucky: I feast on solitude, I will never miss the crowd. I could read the great books but the great books don’t interest me. I sit in bed and wait for the whole thing to go one way or the other. just like everybody else.

Charles Bukowski

I've always had the sense that my life is run by other people. Except for a few years after Martin died. Those were the toughest years, I was alone with my children, I had to cope by myself. Complete poverty. You won't believe this, but nowadays when I look back, those are my happiest years.

Milan Kundera

In a lot of ways, living with Charlie was like having my own place, and I found myself reveling in the aloneness instead of being lonely.

Stephenie Meyer

She dried her tears, and they did smileTo see her cheeks’ returning glow;Nor did discern how all the whileThat full heart throbbed to overflow.With that sweet look and lively tone,And bright eye shining all the day,They could not guess, at midnight loneHow she would weep the time away.

Emily Brontë

Loneliness is the way by which destiny endeavors to lead man to himself.

Hermann Hesse

Being a lone wolf is sometimes better than being in a pack.

PureDragonWolf

I used up most of my passions and energies during the years I've mentioned, and though I don't talk much about it, the chief thing I've asked from the world since then is to leave me alone.

James Hilton

Believe me, friend Hellishnoise: the greatest events—they are not our loudest but our stillest hours.

Friedrich Nietzsche

He walked up to me with his heart on his sleeve,Asking, 'Where'd we go wrong on the way?For I've wandered this city and oh its a pity,They talk but have nothing to say,"I told him that's true about cities like ours;Cities of footsteps and phones.It could be only me and the wild open sea,And I still wouldn't fee as alone.

Emily Hanson

Clara looked at Maria and tried to understand what she must do so that Maria would be able to see her. But the little French girl cast all around her the bronze of infinite solitude.

Muriel Barbery

For a long while, he sat on the steps and sharpened the chain-saw blade with a round file, dipping it in bar-and-chain oil and raking it over each tooth with sleek, grating sounds. He lost himself in the rhythm of the labor. A victory over tears is a small thing, but it was his. The sky went from indigo to blackness, and he saw nothing ominous in it, nothing but cold stars wheeling in their course, a course determined by the same firm hand he hoped was guiding his own. But satellites, too, crossed the sky in sly, winking arcs. Sull knew that. He could not let himself be confounded. He went inside, to sleep beside his wife.

Matthew Neill Null

Solitude was a spell that freed her.

Robert Crais

Solitude is sanity.

Lailah Gifty Akita

In solitude, you listen to the sacred voice.

Lailah Gifty Akita

What is the sweetness of flowers compared to the savour of dust and confinement?

Peter Ackroyd

I covet solitude and storms…and rain, with its geography of dark silence and distance

John J. Geddes

We are living in an era where mental health has become equated with, and measured by, the success of our interpersonal relationships, particularly the extent to which they bring us happiness. Yet as important as it is to be able to live peaceably with others, mental and interpersonal health ultimately require the ability to be at peace in the solitude of oneself and to enjoy, and be enriched by, the company of one’s own thoughts.

James Castleton

The acts of observing and judging are necessarily solitary acts.

Mike Klepper

The American essayist William Deresiewicz wrote that "no real excellence, personal or social, artistic, philosophical, scientific, or moral, can arise without solitude.

Michael Finkel

He'd drop his clothes and slip into the water. The lake's top few inches, after cooking all day in the sun, would be nearly bath warm. "I'd stretch out in the water, " he said, "and lie flat on my back, and look at the stars.

Michael Finkel

Near me nothing but distances.

Antonio Porchia

How difficult it is to find solitude in a world that constantly demands your attention.

Joyce Rachelle

I need to be alone. After a full day of talking, smiling, listening, showing, nodding, translating, I want to be alone. I want simply to come home, close the door, and sit in silence, gathering up the bits of myself that have come loose. I want to think, or not think. I want to rest.

Jamie Zeppa

If you can find no way of getting the Notes duplicated, why not try the Ministry of Cultural Affairs, who might be sympathetic (provided they do not actually read them)? I must, however, confess to a rooted dislike—perhaps you share it?—of seeking the help of Official (particularly Government) Bodies. Whenever anyone addresses me in his official capacity, I am at once filled with a desire to attack the Official Body he represents. I have every sympathy with the Irishman who, on being fined five shillings for Contempt of Court, asked the Magistrate to make it ten shillings; 'Five shillings' he explained 'do not adequately express the Contempt I have for this Court'. I am quite unable to identify myself with any organized body or cause (even if it is a body of opposition or a lost cause). I am a born blackleg. I thoroughly approve of E. M. Forster's declaration, 'If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country'. For me, there is no doubt that the very small word in the centre of the blank canvas at the end of 'The Artist at Work' is solitaire, not solidaire.

Nanavira Thera

A person realizes inner calm and a state of rapturous peacefulness with nature whenever they stand in solitude and contemplate their existence in an infinite world filled with multiple galaxies.

Kilroy J. Oldster

All the world's a stage, and all the men and women actors on it" says Shakespeare. But actually only the men and women in the public gaze are actors on it. I, for instance, whom — and this I hold one of my greatest blessings while it is so — the public does not gaze on, am not an actor, but only a scene-shifter: the stage is curtained when I and those like me move on it. (Addition:) Or that is how I should like it to be always

Nanamoli Thera

Genuine tranquility of the heart and perfect peace of mind, the highest blessings on earth after health, are to be found only in solitude and, as a permanent disposition, only in the deepest seclusion.

Schopenhauer

She had headed towards town aimlessly, looking for the kind of escape that could be found only in a solitary walk through a crowd.

Jade Chang

When you want to be alone, even few people around you will seem like a tremendous crowd to you!

Mehmet Murat ildan

Once a person has become detached from his possessions, his customary duties, his moments of solitude, where is he? What is he?

Patricia Highsmith

I have always been a loner. Even as a child, when my family and friends were off attending parties I would be sequestered in my room, sketchpad in hand, stereo by my side, listening to seductive R&B. Solitude was something I took for granted. Coming from a large family I needed solitude in order to think straight and paint my way out of confusion. My parents were accepting of the fact that I kept to myself and they respected my decision even though it went against my Somali upbringing, a culture rooted in boisterousness and joie de vivre.

Diriye Osman

If people never learned the truth about him, then they couldn't turn around and use it against him. The lie was a way of buying protection.

Paul Auster

To imbibe so much quiet is to become the music inside it.

Aditya Bhaskara

But I need solitude--which is to say, recovery, return to myself, the breath of a free, light, playful air.

Friedrich Nietzsche

I begin to be impatient of solitude - to feel its draperies hang sweltering, unwholesome about me.

Virginia Woolf

Solitude is the path to visit yourself, it is the path to yourself!

Mehmet Murat ildan

The more we frequent men, the blacker our thoughts; and when, to clarify them, we return to our solitude, we find there the shadow they have cast.

Emil M. Cioran

The cynicism of utter solitude is a calvary relieved by insolence.

Emil M. Cioran

Be open minded to the empowering nature of being alone.

Dee Waldeck

The armchairs, with their flat, sedentary cushions, were designed for society, but the bed was made for solitude. It had a straitened and measured narrowness, an austere frame made to contain the curves of a single body, to circumscribe it, carry it, give it a place, and when I slept at night, I possessed it entirely.

Amit Chaudhuri

You are the richest person if you own the treasures of both the solitude and the togetherness!

Mehmet Murat ildan

The most perfect solitude must entail the absence of all beings, but it must also tremble with the light of life. For example, a perfect solitude may find itself haunted by lives born of the imagination, characters lying on shelves in rows of books, or accompanied by figures waiting in dreams. The perfect solitude pushes one to sense the pulse of solitude itself; for example, a perfect solitude may be marked with the beat of one’s heart.

Meia Geddes

Unerring solitude forces a person to confront their morality and aloneness. Solitude makes personal confession possible.

Kilroy J. Oldster

The psyche of some people, whether through innate structure or via adaption to personal experiences, is uniquely adept for absolute aloneness.

Kilroy J. Oldster

Wrong solitude vinegars the soul, right solitude oils it.

Jane Hirshfield

The farm is a base of operations–a stronghold. You can withdraw into yourself there. Solitude for reflection is an essential ingredient in self-development. I think a person has to be withdrawn into himself to gather inspiration so that he is somebody when he comes out again among folks–when he “comes to market’ with himself. He learns that he’s got to be almost wastefully alone.

Robert Frost

It turned out plant collecting was a solitary occupation. In the past Robert had enjoyed being alone, or so he thought. Actually he had rarely been alone for long: working in hotels, in stables, on ranches and farms, and as a miner, he had always been around others. Now, out in the woods or up in the hills or out on the flat central plain, he could go for days without speaking to anyone. His throat seemed to close up and he had to keep clearing it, singing songs aloud or reciting the Latin names of plants, just to check that he still had a voice. 'Araucaria imbricata. Sequoia sempervirens. Pinus lambertiana. Abies magnifica'. He was surprised at how much he missed people..

Tracy Chevalier

It never ceased to amaze me, until suddenly one day I felt beautiful and holy for having had the courage to hold on to my sanity after all I'd seen and been through, body and soul, in too loud a solitude, and slowly I came to the realization that my work was hurtling me headlong into an infinite field of omnipotence.

Bohumil Hrabal

Solitary writers come out of nowhere and do not belong anywhere. They are not domesticated or socialized, not as writers. Their subject is not the world about them but the one within them. From story to story or poem to poem, they repeat themselves because all they have to work with are themselves and their dreams, which are strange dreams and often bad dreams. As anyone knows, nothing is more troublesome to communicate than yourself and your dreams, the feelings and visions that have molded you into what you are.

Thomas Ligotti

There was no one to complain to in the woods, so I did not complain,' Knight said.

Michael Finkel

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Solitude Quotes - Page 5

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