On Solitude Quotes

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

Ratio et prudentia curas,
Non locus effusi late maris arbiter, aufert.
[it is reason and wisdom which take away cares, not places affording wide views over the sea.] ~ Horace

I hate all electronic toys: cell phones, e-mail, PalmPilots, handheld Global Positioning System equipment, and the whole raft of gadgets that intrude on solitude.
When I was a kid I used to disappear into the woods all day. Now I can walk in the wilderness without wasting my valuable time. As I hike along I can call anyone in the world, schedule an appointment, take a picture of me standing next to a tree and then send the person a map so he or she can join me there. Solitude has been snuffed out. ~ David Skibbins

The average mind cannot enjoy solitude. It requires courage to rise above average. ~ Nitin Namdeo

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 look like a man in a death camp.
I
am.
still, I'm lucky: I feat on solitude, I
will never miss the crowd. ~ Charles Bukowski

Solitude is a chosen separation for refining your soul. Isolation is what you crave when you neglect the first. ~ Wayne Cordeiro

The theologian Paul Tillich wrote that "loneliness can be conquered only by those who can bear solitude." Because the borderline finds solitude so difficult to tolerate, she is trapped in a relentless metaphysical loneliness from which the the only relief comes from of the physical presence of others. So she will often rush to singles bars or with crowded haunts, often with disappointing--or even violent--results. ~ Jerold J. Kreisman

Art for the most part, is about concentration, solitude and determination. It's really not about other people's needs and assumptions. I'm not interested in the notion that art serves something. Art is useless, not useful. ~ Richard Serra

I often sit over against myself, as before a stranger, and wonder how the unnameable active principle that calls itself to life has adapted itself even to this form. All other expressions lie in a winter sleep, life is simply one continual watch against the menace of death; - it has transformed us into unthinking animals in order to give us the weapon of instinct - it has reinforced us with dullness, so that we do not go to pieces before the horror, which would overwhelm us if we had clear, conscious thought - it has awakened in us the sense of comradeship, so that we escape the abyss of solitude - it has lent us the indifference of wild creatures, so that in spite of all, we perceive the positive in every moment, and store it up as a reserve against the onslaught of nothingness. Thus we live a closed, hard existence of the utmost superficiality, and rarely does an incident strike out a spark. But then unexpectedly a flame of grievous and terrible yearning flares up. Those ~ Erich Maria Remarque

Joss's ears perked up. He loved libraries. Nowhere else in the world felt so safe and homey. Nowhere else smelled like books and dust and happy solitude quite like a library did. ~ Heather Brewer

I'm afraid my closely guarded solitude causes some hurt feelings now and then. But how to explain, without wounding someone, that you want to be wholly in the world you are writing about, that it would take two days to get the visitor's voice out of the house so that you could listen to your own characters again? ~ Margaret Bourke-White

Nothing is achieved without solitude. ~ Jean-Baptiste Henri Lacordaire

What would a man do, if he were compelled to live always in the sultry heat of society, and could never bathe himself in cool solitude? ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

I have found no other cure for loneliness than to befriend it. ~ Charlotte Eriksson

Love makes me naked;
Propinquity's a harsh master;
O the songs we hide singing to ourselves! ~ Theodore Roethke

African-Americans assume I'm named after the notorious Soledad prison or Mount Soledad in California. Latinos want to know if I'm lonely. That doesn't fit, because I grew up with five siblings, and I have four kids of my own, so I'm not lonely at all, though I do often seek solitude, the actual meaning of my name. ~ Soledad O'Brien

It's not 'natural' to speak well, eloquently, in an interesting, articulate way. People living in groups, families, communes say little - have few verbal means. Eloquence - thinking in words - is a byproduct of solitude, deracination, a heightened painful individuality. In groups, it's more natural to sing, to dance, to pray: given, rather than invented (individual) speech. ~ Susan Sontag

Nook people are those of us who need solitude, but also the sound of someone puttering in the next room. ~ Durga Chew-Bose

I was too much in solitude, and consequently was obliged to be in continual burning of thought, as an only resource. ~ John Keats

Thanks 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 Ildan

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. ~ William Faulkner

It's bad to be unable to stand solitude. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Where should the scholar live? In solitude, or in society? in the green stillness of the country, where he can hear the heart of Nature beat, or in the dark, gray town where he can hear and feel the throbbing heart of man? ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Long ago the word alone was treated as two words, all one. To be all one meant to be wholly one, to be in oneness, either essentially or temporarily. That is precisely the goal of solitude, to be all one. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Your inner voice is the voice of divinity. To hear it, we need to be in solitude, even in crowded places. ~ A.R. Rahman

They make solitude, which they call peace. ~ Tacitus

I must have been a poet,
that might justify
the high sensibility drifted apart.
But then, I ask myself:
"What is a poet
without his voice of happiness?"
"What is a poet
when his sensibility
is found in nothing
but fatal solitude and deep melancholy?!"
My beliefs pour into unfounded questions
of my soul's floated songs.

(Excerpted from Tears of pain, chapter Pain) ~ Claudia Pavel

You get good at being by yourself and you're condemned to a life sentence of solitude. You think, "Wait a minute! I should have been a tap dancer or something". But in my life, I feel like I take my stories to people orally. ~ Sandra Cisneros

Selfish desire ultimately desires itself You find yourselfin your desire, so do not say that desire is vain. Ifyou desire yoursel£ you produce the divine son in your embrace with yourself Your desire is the father of the God, your self is the mother of the God, but the son is the new God, your master.
If you embrace your sel£ then it will appear to you as if the world has become cold and empty The cOlning God moves into this emptiness.
If you are in your solitude, and all the space around you has become cold and unending, then you have moved far from men, and at the same time you have come near to them as never before. Selfish desire only" apparently led you to men, but in reality it led you away from them and in the end to yoursel£ which to you and to others was the most remote. But now, if you are in solitude, your God leads you to the God of others, and through that to the true neighbor, to the neighbor of the self in others.
If you are in yoursel£ you become aware of your incapacity. You will see how little capable you are of imitating the heroes and ofbeing a hero yourself So you will also no longer force others to become heroes. Like you, they suffer from incapacity Incapacity; too, wants to live, but it will overthrow your Gods. ~ C.G. Jung

How can you hear your soul if everyone is talking? ~ Mary Doria Russell

O, in the solitude of those mountains I feel free, free as the air, like a light blasting unharnessed through space. A thousand cities, a thousand palaces I would give just for a corner of the Philippines where far away from man I could feel truly free! ~ Jose Rizal

A writer needs solitude : moments that he can spend in introspection and in reflection. These moments make him pensive and thoughtful and help him write his thoughts with clarity. A life of devotion to one's passion gives us meaning to our life. ~ Avijeet Das

Even in your way of forgetting there is something beautiful. I thought all forgetting was darkness, but your forgetting is luminous, like a great radiance. Like the dawn wiping out the stars! - Dulce María Loynaz, from "Poem LXXII," trans. James O'Connor, Absolute Solitude: Selected Prose Poems (First Archipelago, 2016) ~ Dulce María Loynaz

I preferred solitude anyway; it was the medium in which I had been raised, in which I swam comfortably. ~ Elizabeth Kostova

Oh! why was I born with a different face? why was I not born like the rest of my race? when
I look,each one starts! when I speak, I offend; then Im silent & passive & lose every friend. Then
my verse I dishonour, my pictures despise, my person degrade & my temper chastise; and the pen is my terror, the pencil my shame; all my talents I bury, and dead is my fame. Im either too low or too highly prized; when elate I m envy'd, when meek Im despis'd ~ William Blake

The life of this alien city was lived under the cathedral dome of the sky. People ate where the birds could share their food and gambled where any cutpurse could steal their winnings, they kissed in full view of strangers and even fucked in the shadows if they wanted to. What did it mean to be a man so completely among men, and women too? When solitude was banished, did one become more oneself, or less? Did the crowd enhance one's selfhood or erase it? ~ Salman Rushdie

Only in solitude do we find ourselves; and in finding ourselves, we find in ourselves all our brothers in solitude. ~ Miguel De Unamuno

Solitude is the playfield of Satan. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

And yet my life seemed to be just one big mass of people. I would never ask some people in for tea to fill up time. I just never would do it. Whenever I seemed to have a quiet hole, I would paint. That was what I would choose to do to fill up the time. ~ Myfanwy Pavelic

Rare and precious moments, how I long to live with you eternally! If only your sweetness never ceased to touch my lips, and the flutters you evoke nevermore faded away. I dream of your arm extended immeasurably to keep hold of my reaching hand.
But Father Time, being a cruel master, will not grant such a wish.
And so I tuck you away as cherished memories, stored in a treasure box buried in my heart. And in times of solitude, I shall bring you out to view like rainbows. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich