Best 1398 quotes in «solitude quotes» category

Loneliness comes in two basic varieties. When it results from a desire for solitude, loneliness is a door we close against the world. When the world instead rejects us, loneliness is an open door, unused.

Loneliness is failed solitude.

...loneliness is not a function of solitude.

Loners, if you catch them, are well worth the trouble. Not dulled by excess human contact, nor blasé or focused on your crotch while jabbering about themselves, loners are curious, vigilant, full of surprises. They do not cling. Separate wherever they go, awake or asleep, they shimmer with the iridescence of hidden things seldom seen.

Look, if I were alone in the world, I would have the right to choose despair, solitude and self-fulfillment. But I am not alone.

Lost in the solitude of his immense power, he began to lose direction.

Love from one being to another can only be that two solitudes come nearer, recognize and protect and comfort each other.

Love consists of this: two solitudes that meet, protect and great each other.

Love is nothing but the fear of mortal man at the thought of solitude.

Mark! Where his carnage and his conquests cease, He makes a solitude and calls it-peace!

Maybe love won't let you down. All of your failures are training grounds and just as your back's turned, you'll be surprised... as your solitude subsides.

Mass communication, radio, and especially television, have attempted, not without success, to annihilate every possibility of solitude and reflection.

Modern civilization is so complex as to make the devotional life all but impossible. It wears us out by multiplying distractions and beats us down by destroying our solitude, where otherwise we might drink and renew our strength before going out to face the world again.

May you gain more and more confidence in what is difficult and in your solitude among other people.

Most of my life I have needed more time to be on my own.

More than mother and son, they were accomplices in solitude.

Mounting toward the upland again, I pause reverently, as the hush and stillness of twilight come upon the woods. It is the sweetest, ripest hour of the day. And as the hermit's evening hymn goes up from the deep solitude below me, I experience that serene exaltation of sentiment of which music, literature, and religion are but the faint types and symbols.

Motherhood rarely allows for solitude, yet it begets its own kind of isolation: from one's past, from one's youth, from the women we once thought we were and would become.

my brain Worked with a dim and undetermined sense Of unknown modes of being; o'er my thoughts There hung a darkness, call it solitude Or blank desertion.

My doom and my strength is to be solitary.

My dear friend, Bonnie, is a person who rests and, consequently, earned my ire early in our relationship. Her ability to rest eventually taught me incredibly valuable lessons about the art of taking time-outs. To this day, Bonnie is astutely aware of times when her energy dips too low and resolutely honors her need to rest. To boost her energy, she's been known to sit quietly with a cup of tea, adjourn a workshop we were co-facilitating to take a five-minute breather, or slip out of her own wedding reception to be restored by a few minutes of solitude in the sun.

My favorite books are actually very complicated - 'One Hundred Years of Solitude', 'Ulysses'.

My watchful animal instinct to avoid people is almost overpowering.

My public life is before you; and I know you will believe me when I say, that when I sit down in solitude to the labours of my profession, the only questions I ask myself are, What is right? What is just? What is for the public good?

My yearning is my cup, my burning thirst is my drink, and my solitude is my intoxication; I do not and shall not quench my thirst. But in this burning that is never extinguished is a joy that never wanes.

Nature is the clearest source of solitude. The greatness of nature can overwhelm the insignificant chatter by which we measure most of our days. If you have the wisdom and the courage to go to nature alone, the larger rhythms, the eternal hum, will make itself known all the sooner. When you have found it, it will always be there for you. The peace without will become the peace within, and you will be able to return to it in your heart wherever you find yourself.

One must learn an inner solitude, where or with whomsoever he may be. He must learn to penetrate things and find God there, to get a strong impression of God firmly fixed on his mind.

No general description of the mode of advance of human knowledge can be just which leaves out of account the social aspect of knowledge. That is of its very essence. What a thing society is! The workingman, with his trade union, knows that. Men and women moving in polite society understand it, still better. But Bohemians, like me, whose work is done in solitude, are apt to forget that not only is a man as a whole little better than a brute in solitude, but also that everything that bears any important meaning to him must receive its interpretation from social considerations.

No matter how much we love our family and friends, a part of us needs the occasional moment of solitude as a plant needs water. It is the inmost core of each of us that, that part which nobody can define but which we all recognize because it never changes.

No matter who weaves in and out of your life, regardless of the quality of those deep friendships and familyships, I'm the only common denominator at this point who's been with me the whole time. And there's this sense of trying to make sense of that ultimate solitude. It's not a negative or even a positive. It's just a fact.

No person loving or admiring himself is alone.

Not everyone knows how to be alone with others, how to share solitude. We have to help each other to understand how to be in our solitude, so that we can relate to each other without grabbing on to each other. We can be interdependent but not dependent. Loneliness is rejected despondency. Solitude is shared interdependence.

Nothing impresses the mind with a deeper feeling of loneliness than to tread the silent and deserted scene of former throng and pageant.

Nothing will change the fact that I cannot produce the least thing without absolute solitude.

Of all the conditions we experience, solitude is perhaps the most misunderstood.

Oh blessed a thousand times the peasant who is born, eats and dies without anybody bothering about his affairs.

Oh, river! darkling river! what a voice Is that thou utterest while all else is still-- The ancient voice that, centuries ago, Sounded between thy hills, while Rome was yet A weedy solitude by Tiber's stream!

'One Hundred Years of Solitude' convinced me to drop out of Harvard graduate school. The novel reminded me of everything my Ph.D. program was trying to make me forget. Thank you, Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

One of the many advantages of being a loner is that often there's time to think, ponder, brood, meditate deeply, and figure things out to one's satisfaction.

No doubt solitude is wholesome, but so is abstinence after a surfeit. The true life of man is in society.

No one can feel more gratefully the charm of noble scenery, or the refreshment of escape into the unspoiled solitudes of nature, than the laborer at some close in-door employment.

Nothing could be more pleasant than to live in solitude, enjoy the spectacle of nature, and occasionally read some book.

Oh you who have been removed from God in his solitude by the abyss of time, how can you expect to reach him without dying?

One man runs to his neighbor because he is looking for himself, and another because he wants to loose himself. Your bad love of yourselves makes solitude a prison for you.

One of the greatest necessities in America is to discover creative solitude.

One ought to love society, if he wishes to enjoy solitude. It is a social nature that solitude works upon with the most various power. If one is misanthropic, and betakes himself to loneliness that he may get away from hateful things, solitude is a silent emptiness to him.

One sees that dead, vacant look steal over the rarest, finest of women's faces . . . in the very midst, it may be, of their warmest summer's day; and then one can guess at the secret of intolerable solitude that lies hid beneath the delicate laces . . .

One's better off alone, and yet there are so many things that are impossible to fathom on one's own. In fact it's a terrible business and the task is a hard one.

One way leads to acquisition, the other leads to nirvana. Realising this a monk should take no pleasure in the respect of others, but should devote himself to solitude.

Only in solitude do we find ourselves; and in finding ourselves, we find in ourselves all our brothers in solitude.