Hermit Quotes

I left home and tried to live the life of a hermit, but I was still fighting myself. I went to England and worked as a chainman on the road. It was better therapy than the shrinks. Building a two-mile road gave me internal peace. ~ Brian Strang

Reading from St. John Chrysostom that the life of a bishop should be more perfect than the life of a hermit. The reason he gave was that the holiness which the monk preserves in the desert must be preserved by the bishop into the midst of the evil of the world. ~ Fulton J. Sheen

I thrive best hermit style.
with a beard and a pipe. ~ Bjork

Observation performed merely on its own is no more than what a machine can do - a surveillance camera, for instance. And imagination on its own, practiced by itself for too long, can cut you off from the world. You might wander away, like a hermit to a cave, becoming only a spirit to the rest of humanity. However, if you remain in the world, and you train yourself to combine observation and imagination in proper proportion...then you may change the world itself. ~ Chris Raschka

I am alone
and my heart
is my own.

Loneliness.
Solitude.
The first is a curse,
the second a blessing.
I would rather be a hermit
than live with a stranger
who would make me feel
even more lonely
than when I am
truly
alone. ~ Margarita Engle

Consciousness is a born hermit. ~ George Santayana

An Anchorite was a girl who lived like a hermit in a cell, but in the wall of a church. A living human sacrifice, in a way. ~ David Mitchell

If I wasn't in the theater, I would be a hermit. ~ Richard Foreman

HERMIT, n. A person whose vices and follies are not sociable. ~ Ambrose Bierce

A hermit who has been shut up in his cell in a college has contracted a sort of mould and rust upon his soul. ~ Isaac Watts

I don't socialize. I'm kind of a hermit. The life of an actor can be very lonely. ~ Peter Dinklage

Howard, instead of trying to explain the hermit's existence in terms of hearth fires and trappers' shacks, preferred the blank space the old man actually seemed to inhabit; he liked to think of some fold in the woods, some seam that only the hermit could sense and slip into, where the ice and snow, where the frozen forest itself, would accept him and he would no longer need fire or wool blankets, but instead flourish wreathed in snow, spun in frost, with limbs like cold wood and blood like frigid sap. ~ Paul Harding

Hollywood's two polar types are the cynically drunken writer aggressively nursing a ten-year-old reputation and the theatrically self-conscious hermit who strides the boulevard in sandals, home-made shorts and a prophetic beard, muttering against the Age of the Machines. ~ Christopher Isherwood

Finally, the tern 'asceticism' is also susceptible to being misunderstood by those who view Buddhism from the outside. Evola reminds his readers that the original meaning of the term asceticism is "practical exercise," or 'discipline' - one could even say 'learning.' It certainly does not mean, as some are inclined to think, a willingness to mortify the body that derives from the idea of penance, and even leads to the practice of self-flagellation, since it is believed that one must suffer in order to expiate one's sins. Asceticism is rather a school of the will, a pure heroism (that is, it is disinterested) that Evola, a real expert in this subject, compares to the efforts of a mountain climber. To the layman, mountain climbing may be a pointless effort, but to the climber it is a challenge in which the test of courage, perseverance, and hero-ism is its only purpose. In this we recognize an attitude that Brahmanism knew under certain forms of yoga and Tantrism.

In the spiritual domain, the procedure is the same. Buddha, as we know, was tempted early in his life by a form of asceticism that was similar to that of a hermit living in the desert. This approach involved prolonged fasts and techniques aimed at breaking the body's resistance. Siddhartha, however, realized himself and achieved the Awakening only when he understood this type of asceticism to be a dead end. Turning away from the indignant protests of his early companions, he stopped mortifying his body, ~ Jean Varenne

Evening Primrose

When once the sun sinks in the west,
And dewdrops pearl the evening's breast;
Almost as pale as moonbeams are,
Or its companionable star,
The evening primrose opes anew
Its delicate blossoms to the dew;
And, hermit-like, shunning the light,
Wastes its fair bloom upon the night,
Who, blindfold to its fond caresses,
Knows not the beauty it possesses;
Thus it blooms on while night is by;
When day looks out with open eye,
Bashed at the gaze it cannot shun,
It faints and withers and is gone. ~ John Clare

I'm a raging extrovert stuck in an introvert's body! ~ E.M. Collyer

This world is so full of hypocrisy, the only way you can be honest is to be a hermit. ~ Pete Seeger

I who know many present things by my art," replied the Hermit with a smile, "have yet little knowledge of things future. Therefore I do not know whether any man or woman or beast in the whole world will be alive when the sun sets tonight. But be of good hope. The damsel is likely to live as long as any her age. ~ C.S. Lewis

The grotto itself comprises its own slick universe, and inside this universe spin countless galaxies: here, in the upturned half of a single mussel shell, lives a barnacle and a tiny spindle shell occupied by a still smaller hermit crab. And on the shell of the crab? A yet smaller barnacle. And on that barnacle? ~ Anthony Doerr

Brian Myers takes a fresh approach. He largely ignores what the regime tells the outside world about itself, but concentrates instead on what North Koreans themselves are supposed to believe, paying special attention to the North Korean narratives and mass culture, including movies and television shows. ( ... ) There are few books that can give the world a peek into the Hermit Kingdom. The Cleanest Race provides a reason to care about how those in North Korea see themselves and the West. It is possibly the best addition to that small library. ~ Andrei Lankov

You. Killed. A. Hermit. You. Weird. Sweaty. Bastard! ~ Lev Grossman

Of course, I'm not quite ready to forsake all the products of society, just yet. I have my clothes, my books, etc ... But more and more I can see myself leaving much of the rest behind - leaving their makers, and the crucible from which they proceed. If at times, after all, I might benefit by the rays of the sun, must I seek also to reside in its nuclear core? ~ Mark X.

Hence one should follow the advice of the hermit to whom a youth complained that he rather often experienced imaginations concerned with lusts and other sins and to whom the old man replied: "You cannot prevent the birds from flying over your head. But let them only fly and do not let them build nests in the hair of your head. Let them be thoughts and remain such; but do not let them become conclusions."32 ~ Martin Luther

The house had a private walk down to a private spit of beach, and in the mornings the four of them would troop downhill and swim - even he did, in his pants and undershirt and an old oxford shirt, which no one bothered him about - and then lie on the sand baking, the wet clothes ungluing themselves from his body as they dried. Sometimes Harold would come and watch them, or swim as well. In the afternoons, Malcolm and JB would pedal off through the dunes on bicycles, and he and Willem would follow on foot, picking up bits of shaley shells and the sad carapaces of long-nibbled-away hermit crabs as they went, Willem slowing his pace to match his own. In the evenings, when the air was soft, JB and Malcolm sketched and he and Willem read. He felt doped, on sun and food and salt and contentment, and at night he fell asleep quickly and early, and in the mornings he woke before the others so he could stand on the back porch alone looking over the sea. ~ Hanya Yanagihara

Many love stories are like the shells of hermit crabs, though others are more like chambered nautiluses, whose architecture grows with the inhabitant and whose abandoned smaller chambers are lighter than water and let them float in the sea. ~ Rebecca Solnit

Your wife," said Arthur, looking around, "mentioned some toothpicks." He said it with a hunted look, as if he was worried that she might suddenly leap out from behind a door and mention them again.

Wonko the Sane laughed. It was a light easy laugh, and sounded like one he had used a lot before and was happy with.

"Ah yes," he said, "that's to do with the day I finally realized that the world had gone totally mad and built the Asylum to put it in, poor thing, and hoped it would get better."

This was the point at which Arthur began to feel a little nervous again.

"Here," said Wonko the Sane, "we are outside the Asylum." He pointed again at the rough brickwork, the pointing, and the gutters. "Go through that door" - he pointed at the first door through which they had originally entered - "and you go into the Asylum. I've tried to decorate it nicely to keep the inmates happy, but there's very little one can do. I never go in there myself. If I ever am tempted, which these days I rarely am, I simply look at the sign written over the door and I shy away."

"That one?" said Fenchurch, pointing, rather puzzled, at a blue plaque with some instructions written on it.

"Yes. They are the words that finally turned me into the hermit I have now become. It was quite sudden. I saw them, and I knew what I had to do."

The sign read:

"Hold stick near center of its length. Moisten pointed end in mouth. Ins ~ Douglas Adams

I have thought of you much, and have shared with you in thought much that has been elevating, stirring, and gay, so much so that it has been like living with my dear friends. If only you know how novel and strange that seems to an old hermit like me? How often it has made me laugh at myself! ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

With the first jolt he was in daylight; they had left the gateways of King's Cross, and were under blue sky. Tunnels followed, and after each the sky grew bluer, and from the embankment at Finsbury Park he had his first sight of the sun. It rolled along behind the eastern smokes - a wheel, whose fellow was the descending moon - and as yet it seemed the servant of the blue sky, not its lord. He dozed again. Over Tewin Water it was day. To the left fell the shadow of the embankment and its arches; to the right Leonard saw up into the Tewin Woods and towards the church, with its wild legend of immortality. Six forest trees - that is a fact - grow out of one of the graves in Tewin churchyard. The grave's occupant - that is the legend - is an atheist, who declared that if God existed, six forest trees would grow out of her grave. These things in Hertfordshire; and farther afield lay the house of a hermit - Mrs. Wilcox had known him - who barred himself up, and wrote prophecies, and gave all he had to the poor. While, powdered in between, were the villas of business men, who saw life more steadily, though with the steadiness of the half-closed eye. Over all the sun was streaming, to all the birds were singing, to all the primroses were yellow, and the speedwell blue, and the country, however they interpreted her, was uttering her cry of "now. " She did not free Leonard yet, and the knife plunged deeper into his heart as the train drew up at Hilton. But remorse had b ~ E.M. Forster

I wasn't terribly surprised to find Greg standing outside the door to my suite. But I was impressed when he handed me a mug of hot coffee.

"I don't know what a xenophobic hermit requires in the morning, so I made coffee." His voice was hushed.

"Coffee works," I whispered and took a sip of the black liquid, found it magnificently strong, "as long as it was made with the tears of women and children."

Greg flashed me a grin that made my stomach do backflips. "Is there any other way to make coffee? ~ Penny Reid

This individual must focus on idealistic callings and activities that uplift others, cultivating faith and spirituality. This is the Mystic, Hermit, Visionary, and Intuitive. ~ Celeste Teal

When he had ended, the holy hermit was a moment silent, then said: My son, I have attended to thy story and I know the maiden. I have myself seen her, as have many. Know, then, that she is capricious for she imposeth conditions that man cannot fulfill, and delinquency is punished by desertion. She cometh only when unsought, and will not be questioned. One manifestation of curiosity, one sign of doubt, one expression of misgiving, and she is away! ~ Ambrose Bierce

After the torchlight red on sweaty faces
After the frosty silence in the gardens
After the agony in stony places
The shouting and the crying
Prison and palace and reverberation
Of thunder of spring over distant mountains
He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience

Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
If there were water we should stop and drink
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
If there were only water amongst the rock
Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit
There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain
There is not even solitude in the mountains
But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
From doors of mudcracked houses
If there were water
And no rock
If there were rock
And also water
And water
A spring
A pool among the rock
If there were the sound of water only
Not the cicada
And dry grass singing
But sound of water over a rock
Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees
Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop
But there is no water
- The Waste Land (ll. 322-358) ~ T.S. Eliot

Doc was collecting marine animals in the Great Tide Pool on the tip of the Peninsula. It is a fabulous place: when the tide is in, a wave-churned basin, creamy with foam, whipped by the combers that roll in from the whistling buoy on the reef. But when the tide goes out the little water world becomes quiet and lovely. The sea is very clear and the bottom becomes fantastic with hurrying, fighting, feeding, breeding animals. Crabs rush from frond to frond of the waving algae. Starfish squat over mussels and limpets, attach their million little suckers and then slowly lift with incredible power until the prey is broken from the rock. And then the starfish stomach comes out and envelops its food. Orange and speckled and fluted nudibranchs slide gracefully over the rocks, their skirts waving like the dresses of Spanish dancers. And black eels poke their heads out of crevices and wait for prey. The snapping shrimps with their trigger claws pop loudly. The lovely, colored world is glassed over. Hermit crabs like frantic children scamper on the bottom sand. And now one, finding an empty snail shell he likes better than his own, creeps out, exposing his soft body to the enemy for a moment, and then pops into the new shell. A wave breaks over the barrier, and churns the glassy water for a moment and mixes bubbles into the pool, and then it clears and is tranquil and lovely and murderous again. Here a crab tears a leg from his brother. The anemones expand like soft and brilliant flowers ~ John Steinbeck

If performance of duty is part of excellence, then it should give satisfaction and happiness. ~ Anuj Bajaj

Not too long ago thousands spent their lives as recluses to find spiritual vision in the solitude of nature. Modern man need not become a hermit to achieve this goal, for it is neither ecstasy nor world-estranged mysticism his era demands, but a balance between quantitative and qualitative reality. Modern man, with his reduced capacity for intuitive perception, is unlikely to benefit from the contemplative life of a hermit in the wilderness. But what he can do is to give undivided attention, at times, to a natural phenomenon, observing it in detail, and recalling all the scientific facts about it he may remember. Gradually, however, he must silence his thoughts and, for moments at least, forget all his personal cares and desires, until nothing remains in his soul but awe for the miracle before him. Such efforts are like journeys beyond the boundaries of narrow self-love and, although the process of intuitive awakening is laborious and slow, its rewards are noticeable from the very first. If pursued through the course of years, something will begin to stir in the human soul, a sense of kinship with the forces of life consciousness which rule the world of plants and animals, and with the powers which determine the laws of matter. While analytical intellect may well be called the most precious fruit of the Modern Age, it must not be allowed to rule supreme in matters of cognition. If science is to bring happiness and real progress to the world, it needs the warmth of man's heart ~ Franz Winkler

You cannot succeed by yourself. It's hard to find a rich hermit. ~ Jim Rohn

The mind is not a hermit's cell, but a place of hospitality and intercourse. ~ Charles Horton Cooley

The only way to avoid all frightening choices is to leave society and become a hermit, and that is a frightening choice. ~ Richard Bach

I sort of ended up in Los Angeles by accident. And it was sort of terrible to be jostled into this position of a fame-hungry starlet. Which is so honestly not me! In fact, I could use a bit more of that because I am such a hermit! So I allowed myself to get really bothered. ~ Kate Beckinsale

[On sociability in Italy:] You may be a hermit or an innkeeper. ~ Elizabeth Hardwick

The time has come to set out for sacred ground...that will stir our sense of wonder. It is down the path to the deeply real where time stops and we are seized by the mysteries. This is the journey that we cannot Not take.

The old hermit along the side of the road whispers, Stranger, Pass bythat which you donot love. ~ Phil Cousineau

I kind of live a private life. I am out a lot, I have amazing friends and see a lot, so it's not like I'm a hermit. But I just know what I do for a living and that there are certain sensitivities. ~ Joanna Garcia

I do hang out with girls, I do relax. But I am a hermit sometimes and get a bit too introverted, too 'Jean-Paul Sartre' and intellectual in my head. And it's like a Kafka novel in there, things get nuts. Then I have to remind myself to get out and I will go and play ice hockey with my friends. ~ Josh Peck

Lesser, greater, middling, it's all the same. Proportions are negotiated, boundaries blurred. I'm not a pious hermit, I haven't done only good in my life. But if I'm to choose between one evil and another, then I prefer not to choose at all. ~ Andrzej Sapkowski

He couldn't help but wonder if Moses Levy had experienced this same heat, if true images burned their maker. He wondered, too, if the hermit at that riverside was right, if there wasn't some element of capturing a soul in each photograph, if he wasn't responsible for those whose images he caught. ~ Alice Hoffman

It's quite simple, they poisoned it with smoke, chemicals and pollution from factories and cars, and power stations. Silly humans knew what they were doing, but carried on poisoning the planet anyway. ~ Richard J. Ward

I don't write poetry for the page because my inclination in that area is satisfied by songwriting. "Ornamental Hermit" was a comparatively effortless song to write, which is rare for me. ~ David Grubbs

I think everybody's political. The act of being alive is political. Unless you choose to be a hermit, you're automatically political because you're part of a community. ~ Julianne Moore

If I could live anywhere, I'd live up in the Mountains where it's cool, and far away from everything. I'd live like a hermit and write like a fiend. ~ G.M. Barlean

I once watched a small hermit crab crawl out of its shell and into a larger one nearby. Maybe we are no different. There were those before us and there will be some after us. All we can do is cultivate what is given to us. Maybe our lot in this life is to leave our shells better than when we found them so that the next soul will flourish here. ~ Jennifer Arnett

I and me are always too deeply in conversation: how could I endure it,
if there were not a friend?
The friend of the hermit is always the third one: the third one is the float which prevents the conversation of the two from sinking into the depth. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Jade blinked. It was only for a fraction of a second but she could have sworn the the house had changed shape. ~ Richard J. Ward

I wish I could be built so that stupidity and dullness wouldn't bother me as much, but I just can't help it. It may sound paradoxical, but with time one wishes to be a hermit instead of always being around people. - Doctor Doris Maza ~ Sarah Helm

You really know how to make a person sound like a hermit."
"If the sagging spot on the couch fits. ~ Ottilie Weber

A hermit said, "Do not judge an adulterer if you are chaste or you will break the law of God just as much as he does. For he who said 'Do not commit adultery' also said 'Do not judge. ~ Rowan Williams

Gonzo, the enlightened hippy-biker island god, was a hermit in every sense of the word; a hermit crab and this island was his shell. ~ Jonathan Dunne

It doesn't seem too unusual to have a live hermit crab here in Atlantic City, but when you think I brought it all the way from Texas, it's unusual. ~ Phyllis George

The hermit keeps a window open onto the sky, without which the world would perish from suffocation, ugliness and boredom. He is the only one, along with the poet, who still speaks the language of the beyond, who makes existence sacred, who gives life this verticality without which humanity is buffeted about beneath itself. He is a rampart against the assaults of mediocrity, nastiness, hatred that is intolerant of its opposite. He is this force, made out of weakness, that warms the atmosphere, melts the winter of the world. For men turned toward secondary things, his presence recalls the existence of the essential things: the order of the world, knowledge, the priority of salvation and the adoration of the Supreme, by imitating the sunflower whose heliotropism has much to teach us, who never turns away from the trisolar brightness. Model and prototype, the hermit represents, in a chaotic and dehumanized world, a final landmark, an ultimate axis for reference. He allows man to remain standing by recalling the Absolute; when deprived of the Totality, man becomes totalitarian by compensation. ~ Jean Biès

Jules: A house with Emma; laughing by a fire together.
All that would make it better would be his brothers and sisters somewhere nearby, where he could see them every day, where he could fence with Livvy and watch movies with Dru and help Tavvy learn the crossbow. Where he could look for animals with Ty, hermit crabs down by the edge of the water, scuttling under their shells. Where he could cook massive dinners with Mark and Helen and Aline and they'd all eat them together, out under the stars in the desert air. ~ Cassandra Clare

The Queen is controlling, the Witch is sadistic, the Hermit is fearful, and the Waif is helpless.
And each requires a different approach. Don't let the Queen get the upper hand; be wary even of accepting gifts because it engenders expectations. Don't internalize the Hermit's fears or become limited by them. Don't allow yourself to be alone with the Witch; maintain distance for your own emotional and physical safety. And with the Waif, don't get pulled into her crises and sense of victimization. Pay attention to your own tendencies to want to rescue her, which just feeds the dynamic. ~ Christine Ann Lawson

People call me a hermit. But I'm happy. ~ Sage Stallone

When I'm at home in Virginia, I become more hermit-like. I like my own home. ~ Robert Duvall

In Saint Stylites, the famous Christian hermit of old times, who built him a lofty stone pillar in the desert and spent the whole latter portion of his life on its summit, hoisting his food from the ground with a tackle; in him we have a remarkable instance of a dauntless stander-of-mast-heads; ~ Herman Melville

Hadn't one of my all-time favorite reveries been to become a cranky hermit, live unperturbed in my house, and have things brought to me like a monarch or tribal lord? ~ Laurie Notaro

The World card shows the fully balanced and integrated human as the Wiseone pictured in the Hermit card. Wiseones are those human beings who have married their Selves and become fully unified, living, flesh-and-blood manifestations of the Divine presence, described in the Qabalah as the Shekinah, derived from the Hebrew verb shakhan, "to dwell." Persons of this stature live on Earth, yet are validated by and depend upon the greater world (the universe) alone, shown by the fact that they are supported by and dance on air (another reference to the Fool and Spirit). They continually turn inward and upward to their God/dess Self and the Source, while turning outward and downward to the work of the everyday world at hand. Wiseones embody the concept "Trust in the universe and it will support you! ~ Joseph P. Nolen

You know that book 'Quiet: the Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking', by Susan Cain? That's like my manifesto. The older I get, the more I think I could be a hermit. ~ Jessica Raine

-A hermit always longs for visitors, said Loring,until they come, and then he wishes them gone. ~ Jesse Ball

Grand, gloomy, and peculiar, he sat upon the throne a sceptred hermit, wrapped in the solitude of his own originality. ~ Charles Phillips

When the devil grows old he turns hermit. ~ Ludovico Ariosto

How could I fail to be a lone wolf, and an uncouth hermit, as I did not share one of its aims nor understand one of its pleasures? ~ Hermann Hesse

He needed his solitude at times, but he wasn't a hermit. He did a lot of socializing. Sometimes I think it was like he was storing up company for the times when he knew nobody would be around. ~ Jon Krakauer

I don the robe of hermit without a cry. ~ Richard Matheson

The word introvert is not a synonym for hermit or misanthrope. ~ Susan Cain

A hermit is simply a person to whom civilization has failed to adjust itself. ~ Will Cuppy

I'm kind of a hermit. Left to my own devices, I won't submerge myself in anything further afield than the driveway. ~ John Darnielle

If I were to choose the sights, the sounds, the fragrances I most would want to see and hear and smell
among all the delights of the open world
on a final day on earth, I think I would choose these: the clear, ethereal song of a white-throated sparrow singing at dawn; the smell of pine trees in the heat of the noon; the lonely calling of Canada geese; the sight of a dragon-fly glinting in the sunshine; the voice of a hermit thrush far in a darkening woods at evening; and
most spiritual and moving of sights
the white cathedral of a cumulus cloud floating serenely in the blue of the sky. ~ Edwin Way Teale

The mind can weave itself warmly in the cocoon of its own thoughts, and dwell a hermit anywhere. ~ James Russell Lowell

Homer looked back at me. 'Pete, can I tell ya somethin' real important?'

'Sure, what is it?' I couldn't imagine what Homer was about to say.

He sat down on a rounded rock. I sat down too.

'One thing I've learned is that ya never know what's gonna happen to ya in this old life. Everything can change, just like that.' He snapped his fingers, loud and fast. 'You never know what might happen to ya and that dawg ah yers. Ya know what you should do? You ought to settle down here ... On my mountain.' His words were coming quickly and eagerly. 'I'll teach ya all the ways of livin' up here, and someday when ya get a place built, you can have yerself a family.'

Homer wasn't kidding me.

'And, besides, ya know I ain't gonna be here forever. When I leave, then you can take care of this place for me. You understand more than anyone why I love this place so much. I know ya wouldn't let them lumbermen and hunters come up here and hurt my place.'

There was a shell around Homer and reaching his heart was like breaking a granite boulder with your bare hands. But now, Homer's heart was breaking. After he finished he turned away from me. When he turned back, his questioning eyes were teary.

'Homer, what you just said was beautiful.' I looked down at my boots and rolled a rock back and forth under my heel. 'But, I don't know. I'll have to give it some serious thought, okay?'

As quickly as Homer had broken his s ~ Peter Jenkins

FALL, SIERRA NEVADA

This morning the hermit thrush was absent at breakfast,
His place was taken by a family of chickadees;
At noon a flock of humming birds passed south,
Whirling in the wind up over the saddle between
Ritter and Banner, following the migration lane
Of the Sierra crest southward to Guatemala.
All day cloud shadows have moved over the face of the mountain,
The shadow of a golden eagle weaving between them
Over the face of the glacier.
At sunset the half-moon rides on the bent back of the Scorpion,
The Great Bear kneels on the mountain.
Ten degrees below the moon
Venus sets in the haze arising from the Great Valley.
Jupiter, in opposition to the sun, rises in the alpenglow
Between the burnt peaks. The ventriloquial belling
Of an owl mingles with the bells of the waterfall.
Now there is distant thunder on the east wind.
The east face of the mountain above me
Is lit with far off lightnings and the sky
Above the pass blazes momentarily like an aurora.
It is storming in the White Mountains,
On the arid fourteen-thousand-foot peaks;
Rain is falling on the narrow gray ranges
And dark sedge meadows and white salt flats of Nevada.
Just before moonset a small dense cumulus cloud,
Gleaming like a grape cluster of metal,
Moves over the Sierra crest and grows down the westward slope.
Frost, the color and quality of ~ Kenneth Rexroth

I am quite a wise old bird, but I am no desert hermit who can only prophesy when his guts are knotted with hunger. I am deep in the old man's puzzle, trying to link the wisdom of the body with the wisdom of the spirit until the two are one. ~ Robertson Davies

I tend to stay in one place and become a hermit and not leave. Work, work, work, and collect things, create and curate a space. ~ Kesh

We were all like a gaggle of hermit crabs without shells, flopping around trying to find ourselves. Instead we found each other, and that's just as good, I guess. ~ Hollis Gillespie

I understand I've made an unusual lifestyle choice. But the label 'crazy' bothers me. Annoys me. Because it prevents response. When someone asks if you're crazy, Knight lamented, you can either say yes, which makes you crazy, or you can say no, which makes you sound defensive, as if you fear that you really are crazy. There's no good answer. ~ Michael Finkel

Now it's computers and more computers
and soon everybody will have one,
3-year-olds will have computers
and everybody will know everything
about everybody else
long before they meet them.
nobody will want to meet anybody
else ever again
and everybody will be
a recluse
like I am now. ~ Charles Bukowski

Soon she was going to have to relinquish her self-image as a hermit. ~ Nevada Barr

What do you do?" Leon leaned forward. "You left the Army and disappeared. How come?"
"Leon," Mother warned.
"Is it because of the war?" Lina asked. "People on Herald say you have PTSD and you became a hermit like a monk because of it."
"Either a hermit or a monk, not both," I corrected out of habit.
"Herald also said he was disfigured." Arabella made big eyes.
"Yes, I'm a hermit. Mostly I brood," Mad Rogan said. "Also I'm very good at wallowing in self-pity. I spend my days steeped in melancholy, looking out the window. Occasionally a single tear quietly rolls down my cheek."
Arabella and Lina snickered in unison.
"Do you also brush a white orchid against your lips?" Arabella put in.
"While sad music plays in the background?" Lina grinned.
"Perhaps," Mad Rogan said.
"Do you have a girlfriend?" Grandma Frida asked.
I put my hand over my face.
"No," Mad Rogan said.
"A boyfriend?" Grandma Frida asked.
"No."
"What about . . ."
"No," Mom and I said in unison.
"But you don't even know what I wanted to ask!"
"No," we said again together.
"Party poopers. ~ Ilona Andrews

Occasionally I hear a band that blows me away. For instance, there's a musician in Oakland named Weasel Walter who has a band called the Flying Luttenbachers. Go see the Flying Luttenbachers when they're in your town. He's one of the greatest rock composers who ever lived, and he's struggling and living like a poverty-stricken hermit. ~ Glenn Branca

I'm not a hermit. I'm just an introvert, which means I like people, but I don't find parties exciting. They tire me out. ~ Jane Porter

Maybe I am becoming a hermit,
opening the door for only
a few special animals?
Maybe my skull is too crowded
and it has no opening through which
to feed it soup? ~ Anne Sexton

I had taken a partner once before - but, damnation, no matter how many times you get your fingers burned, you have to trust people. Otherwise you are a hermit in a cave, sleeping with one eye
open. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

Hush! With sudden gush As from a fountain sings in yonder bush The Hermit Thrush. ~ John B. Tabb

I'm smart in some ways- pretty good vocabulary, solid at math – but I am definitely the stupidest smart person there is… I was going to be the worst friend in the history of dying girls… Because I don't really have a moral compass and I need to rely on (Earl) for guidance, or else I might accidentally become like a hermit or a terrorist or something. How fucked up is that. ~ Jesse Andrews

Magnificent autumn! He comes not like a pilgrim, clad in russet weeds; not like a hermit, clad in gray; but like a warrior with the stain of blood in his brazen mail. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Etiquette is all human social behavior. If you're a hermit on a mountain, you don't have to worry about etiquette; if somebody comes up the mountain, then you've got a problem. It matters because we want to live in reasonably harmonious communities. ~ Judith Martin

[ ... ]And his head is on fire with new things[ ... ]he called himself the little blue hermit, scuttling across the sand in search of a new shell, but now he looks at the sky and knows that no shell will ever be big enough, ever. ~ Terry Pratchett

The biggest problem I have doing my acting is having to interact with other people. I think if it wasn't for my wife and my kids, I'd probably be a hermit. ~ John Gordon Sinclair

Narcissus knew only too well what a charming golden bird had flown to him. This hermit soon sensed a kindred soul in Goldmund, in spite of their apparent contrasts. Narcissus was dark and spare; Goldmund, a radiant youth. Narcissus was analytical, a thinker; Goldmund, a dreamer with the soul of a child. But something they had in common bridged these contrasts: both were refined; both were different from the others because of obvious gifts and signs; both bore the special mark of fate. ~ Hermann Hesse

I don't think you'll believe what I found," he says. "A word, razbliuto. We don't have a word to match it but we should. We should develop it tonight because the word means, 'the feelings one retains for someone he once loved.' "Hate?" Jude says.
"No, not that feeling," my grandfather answers and looks and Jude with disappointment.
"Betrayal," my mother says without looking away from her book.
"No," my grandfather says. "It's the little house loved moved out of, maybe a hermit crab moves in and carries the house across the floor of a tidal pool. the lover see the old love moving and it looks like it's alive again."
They are all wrong. There's a reason why we have no word for it. You don't get to keep the feelings for someone you once loved. Once you've washed your hands of that person, all those feelings, all that dirty water is washed out to sea. There is no word for that dirty water. ~ Samantha Hunt

When you think like a hermit, you forget what you know. ~ Will Oldham

A solitary ascetic is a symbol of the most cowardly egotism; a hermit who flees from his brothers instead of helping them to carry the burden of life, to work for others, and to put their shoulders to the wheel of social life, is a coward who hides himself when the battle is on, and goes to sleep drunk on an opiate. ~ H. P. Blavatsky