Solitariness Quotes

I enjoyed the discipline and solitariness of long-distance running, which allowed me to escape from the hurly-burly of school life. ~ Nelson Mandela

What they have is science, and in science only that which is subject to the senses. The spiritual world, on the other hand, the loftier half of the man's being, is rejected altogether, cast out with a certain triumph, hatred even. The world has proclaimed freedom of theirs: nothing but servitude and suicide! For the world says: 'You have needs, so satisfy them, for you have the same rights as the wealthiest and most highly placed of men. Do not be afraid to satisfy them, but even multiply them'
that is the present-day teaching of the world. In that, too, they see freedom. And what is the result of this right to the multiplication of needs? Among the rich solitariness and spiritual suicide, and among the poor
envy and murder, for while they have been given rights, they have not yet been afforded the means with which to satisfy their needs. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

When they would return to one another from their solitariness, they returned gently as dew comes to the morning grass. ~ David Paul Kirkpatrick

Luther deters me from solitariness; but he does not mean from a sober solitude that rallies our scattered strengths and prepares us against any new encounter from without. ~ Francis Atterbury

Religion is what an individual does with his solitariness. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

The condition of leadership adds new degrees of solitariness to the basic solitude of mankind. Every order that we issue increases the extent to which we are alone, and every show of deference which is extended to us separates us from our fellows. ~ Thornton Wilder

O sweet woods, the delight of solitariness! ~ Philip Sidney

People will occasionally ask me if I understand what it's like to be lonely. And the truth is I don't, because for me, solitariness is a blessing, a gift. Me, I get on fine with myself. ~ John Burnside

My dreams are crowded with people, as though to compensate for the solitariness of my waking hours. ~ Anna Lyndsey

The test of mountain-top experiences, of mysticism, of visions of God and of solitariness is when you are "in the soup" of actual circumstances. ~ Oswald Chambers

The range of human knowledge today is so great that we're all specialists and the distance between specializations has become so great that anyone who seeks to wander freely between them almost has to forego closeness with the people around him. ~ Robert M. Pirsig

One of the fundamental themes of the Qur'an is man's flight from reality. Given the basic premise that God is, and that His being both transcends and encompasses all existence, then unbelief is precisely such a flight. Men and women throughout the centuries have tried at every opportunity to evade total Reality and to take refuge in little corners of private darkness. Even at the simplest everyday level there is constant avoidance of the thought of death; there is evasion of our inward solitariness, which no amount of conviviality can entirely overcome, and there is a refusal to acknowledge our limitations and our sins. Not only is it the innate tendency of fallen man to 'forget' God, but there comes about a luxuriant growth of forgetfulness in every sphere. ~ Charles Le Gai Eaton

In its solitariness the spirit asks, What, in the way of value, is the attainment of life? And it can find no such value till it has merged its individual claim with that of the objective universe. Religion is world-loyalty. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

The main thing about aliens is that they are alien. They feel no responsibility for fulfilling any of your expectations. (Dark City Lights) ~ Robert Silverberg

Religion is what a man does with his solitariness. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

Most of the scientists I have known well have felt - just as deeply as the non-scientists I have known well - that the individual condition of each is tragic. Each of us is alone: sometimes we escape from solitariness, through love or affection or perhaps creative moments, but those triumphs of life are pools of light we make for ourselves while the edge of the road is black: each of us dies alone. ~ C.P. Snow

Religion is what the individual does with his own solitariness. Thus religion is solitariness; and if you are never solitary, you are never religious. ~ Alfred North Whitehead