Solitude Quotes - Page 26

• What is necessary, after all, is only this: solitude, vast inner solitude. To walk inside yourself and meet no one for hours-that is what you must be able to attain. To be solitary as you were when you were a child.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Children, Able, Hours

  "Letters to a Young Poet". Book by Rainer Maria Rilke, 6, 1929.

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• I like people. I like watching them. It's just that I'd prefer to do it from a mile away using very powerful binoculars.

  Geraldine McCaughrean

  Powerful, People, Miles

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• I am not a joiner. Somewhere I once said that people join clubs now for the very reason they once carried them, a need for security. Maybe I'm alone more often than I should be, because I try to find security within myself.

  Rod McKuen

  People, Trying, Needs

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• [Kierkegaard] did not care for large public events because every crowd is in itself an untruth. The only way out is isolation, aloofness. Only the individual is a reality and only the individual is true. Maybe the process of isolation in an individual is one of the most important matters that exists. Is not the whole point of this world for people to separate and become individuals?

  Mati Unt

  Reality, People, Important

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• Every so often a disappearance is in order. A vanishing. A checking out. An indeterminate period of unavailability. Each person, each sane person, maintains a refuge, or series of refuges, for this purpose. A place, or places, where they can, figuratively if not literally, suspend their membership in the human race.

  John Murray

  Race, Order, Purpose

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• I write in praise of the solitary act: of not feeling a trespassing tongue forced into one's mouth, one's breath smothered, nipples crushed against the ribcage, and that metallic tingling in the chin set off by a certain odd nerve: unpleasure.

  Fleur Adcock

  Writing, Feelings, Nerves

  Fleur Adcock (2000). “Poems 1960-2000”, Bloodaxe Books Limited

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• I just think that sometimes it is less hard to wake up feeling lonely when you are alone than to wake up feeling lonely when you are with someone else. Some people would be better off alone, but they feel they've got to get hold of someone to prove they're worthwhile.

  Liv Ullmann

  Lonely, Thinking, People

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• I prize the privilege of being alone.

  Carl Rogers

  Privilege, Prize

  Carl Rogers (2012). “On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy”, p.15, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• For the quirkyalone, there is no patience for dating just for the sake of not being alone. On a fine but by no means transcendent date we dream of going home to watch television. We would prefer to be alone with our own thoughts than with a less than perfect fit. We are almost constitutionally incapable of casual relationships.

  Sasha Cagen

  Dream, Home, Mean

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• Unless you really understand the water, and understand the reason for being on it, and understand the love of sailing and the feeling of quietness and solitude, you don't really belong on a boat anyway. I think Hemingway said one time that the sea is the last free place on earth.

  Humphrey Bogart

  Thinking, Sea, Water

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• Solitude is a necessary protest to the incursions and the false alarms of society's hysteria, a period of cure and recovery.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Recovery, Hysteria, Alarms

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1965). “Who is Man?”, p.44, Stanford University Press

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• Worthy books
  Are not companions – they are solitudes:
  We lose ourselves in them and all our cares.

  Philip James Bailey

  Book, Care, Worthy

  Philip James Bailey (1848). “Beauties of Festus”, p.20

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• Inspiration comes to us slowly and quietly . prime it with a little solitude.

  Brenda Ueland

  Inspiration, Littles, Prime

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• In solitude a dialogue always arises, because even in solitude there are always two.

  Hannah

  Two, Arise, Dialogue

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• To understand one's world, one must sometimes turn away from it! To serve better, one must briefly hold it at a distance. Where can the necessary solitude be found, the long breathing space in which mind gathers its strength and takes stock of its courage.

  Albert Camus

  Distance, Breathing Space, Long

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• Books are solitudes in which we meet.

  Rebecca Solnit

  Book

  Rebecca Solnit (2013). “The Faraway Nearby”, p.36, Granta Books

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• She was waiting, but she didn't know for what. She was aware only of her solitude, and of the penetrating cold, and of a greater weight in the region of her heart.

  Albert Camus

  Heart, Waiting, Weight

  Albert Camus (1964). “The fall, & Exile and the kingdom”, Random House Inc

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• You have got me walking up and down all day under those trees, saying to me over and over again, "Solitude, solitude." And You have turned around and thrown the world in my lap. You have told me, "Leave all things and follow me," and then You have tied half of New York to my foot like a ball and chain. You have got me kneeling behind that pillar with my mind making a noise like a bank. Is that contemplation?

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, New York, Feet

  Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.484, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Imagination is strong in a man when that particular function of the brain which enables him to observe is roused to activity without any necessary excitement of the sense. Accordingly, we find that imagination is active just in proportion as our sense are not excited by external objects. A long period of solitude, whether in prison or in a sick room; quiet, twilight, darkness-these are the things that promote its activity; and under their influence it comes into play of itself.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Strong, Twilight, Men

  Arthur Schopenhauer (2012). “Collected Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer”, p.247, Simon and Schuster

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• O Holy Spirit of God, abide with us; inspire all our thoughts; pervade our imaginations; suggest all our decisions; order all our doings. Be with us in our silence and in our speech, in our haste and in our leisure, in company and in solitude, in the freshness of the morning and in the weariness of the evening; and give us grace at all times humbly to rejoice in Thy mysterious companionship.

  John Baillie

  Morning, Order, Giving

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• Internally, you experience rowing as a graphic microcosm of life - solitude, learning, work, rest, nourishment, sharing and ultimately challenge.

  Allen Rosenberg

  Challenges, Rowing, Graphic

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• It is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, ina government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one's being alone.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Ocean, Men, Boys

  Henry David Thoreau (2009). “Walden”, p.208, Cosimo, Inc.

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• The Tao gives birth to One. One gives birth to Two. Two gives birth to Three. Three gives birth to all things. All things have their backs to the female and stand facing the male. When male and female combine, all things achieve harmony. Ordinary men hate solitude. But the Master makes use of it, embracing his aloneness, realizing he is one with the whole universe.

  Laozi

  Hate, Men, Two

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• Quiet time and solitude are vital to helping me keep perspective. I consider myself fortunate to have so much quiet built into my profession. I spend long hours by myself at my easel. And while I work, I think-of the future, of my loved ones, of God's goodness and the many exciting opportunities that surround me. I ponder the challenges I face, the needs of others, the direction my life is going.

  Thomas Kinkade

  Opportunity, Thinking, Long

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• The ideal person is he who, in the midst of the greatest silence and solitude, finds the intensest activity, and in the midst of the intensest activity finds the silence and solitude of the desert.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Inspiration, Practice, Silence

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda”, p.39, Manonmani Publishers

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