Solitude Quotes - Page 27

• I chose the shadows; they did not choose me. I stay here securely not just because I feel plain, but because disappearance is by now the easy way. The habit. The worn path that I can trod knowingly and be assured safe passage home.

  Rod McKuen

  Home, Shadow, Safe

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• We cannot confront solitude without moral resources.

  Honore de Balzac

  Moral, Resources

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• Deliberately seeking solitude-quality time spent away from family and friends-may seem selfish. It is not. Solitude is as necessary for our creative spirits to develop and flourish as are sleep and food for our bodies to survive.

  Sarah Ban Breathnach

  Selfish, Sleep, Creative

  Sarah Ban Breathnach (2008). “Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort of Joy”, p.234, Hachette UK

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• It is a difficult lesson to learn today-to leave one's friends and family and deliberately practice the art of solitude for an hour or a day or a week. And yet, once it is done, I find there is a quality to being alone that is incredibly precious. Life rushes back into the void, richer, more vivid, fuller than before.

  Anne Morrow Lindbergh

  Art, Practice, Quality

  Anne Morrow Lindbergh (2010). “Gift from the Sea”, p.34, Random House

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• Wise people are never less alone than when they are alone.

  Jonathan Swift

  Wise, People, Wise People

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• In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion; in order to serve others better, one has to hold them at a distance for a time. But where can one find the solitude necessary to vigor, the deep breath in which the mind collects itself and courage gauges its strength? There remain big cities.

  Albert Camus

  Distance, Order, Cities

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.157, Vintage

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• Our equal and opposite needs for solitude and community constitute a great paradox. When it is torn apart, both of these life-giving states of being degenerate into deathly specters of themselves. Solitude split off from community is no longer a rich and fulfilling experience of inwardness; now it becomes loneliness, a terrible isolation. Community split off from solitude is no longer a nurturing network of relationships; now it becomes a crowd, an alienating buzz of too many people and too much noise.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Loneliness, Opposites, People

  Parker J. Palmer (2012). “The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life”, p.68, John Wiley & Sons

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• In the depths of the night, fear grips my heart. It paralyzes my mind. But most of all, I feel very, very alone

  Lily Tomlin

  Heart, Night, Mind

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• Mathematical Mark all mathematical heads, which be only and wholly bent to those sciences, how solitary they be themselves, how unfit to live with others, and how unapt to serve in the world.

  Roger Ascham

  Learning, Math, Science

  "The whole works of Roger Ascham".

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• We need quiet time to examine our lives openly and honestly...spending quiet time alone gives your mind an opportunity to renew itself and create order.- Susan Taylor--Everyone has a talent. What is rare is the courage to nurture it in solitude and to follow the talent to the dark places where it leads.

  Erica Jong

  Dark, Opportunity, Order

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• To live without feeling or exciting sympathy, to be fortunate without adding to the felicity of others, or afflicted without tasting the balm of pity, is a state more gloomy than solitude; it is not retreat, but exclusion from mankind. Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.

  Samuel Johnson

  Pain, Feelings, Retreat

  Rasselas ch. 26 (1759)

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• Not only does democracy make every man forget his ancestors, but also clouds their view of their descendants and isolates them from their contemporaries. Each man is for ever thrown back on himself alone, and there is danger that he may be shut up in the solitude of his own heart.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Heart, Men, Clouds

  "Democracy in America". Book by Alexis de Tocqueville, Volume II. Book Two, Chapter II, 1840.

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• Stephen Blackpool fall into the loneliest of lives, the life of solitude among a familiar crowd. The stranger in the land who looks into ten thousand faces for some answering look and never finds it, is in cheering society as compared with him who passes ten averted faces daily, that were once the countenances of friends

  Charles Dickens

  Cheer, Live Life, Fall

  Charles Dickens “Hard Times”, W. W. Norton & Company

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• We need to build downtime into our lives, so that we can have solitude without feeling overcome with guilt.

  Melody Beattie

  Feelings, Guilt, Overcoming

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• After all perhaps the greatness of art lies in the perpetual tension between beauty and pain, the love of men and the madness of creation, unbearable solitude and the exhausting crowd, rejection and consent.

  Albert Camus

  Art, Pain, Lying

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• Do not be afraid of spending quality time by yourself. Find meaning or don’t find meaning but “steal” some time and give it freely and exclusively to your own self. Opt for privacy and solitude. That doesn’t make you antisocial or cause you to reject the rest of the world. But you need to breathe. And you need to be.

  Albert Camus

  Self, Giving, Quality

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• He was raised by three nurses: freedom, solitude and Mademoiselle. Together, the three of them provided him with an education. From them, he learned everything he believed it was possible to learn.

  Timothee de Fombelle

  Nurse, Together, Three

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• The physical union of the sexes ... only intensifies man's sense of solitude.

  Nikolai Berdyaev

  Sex, Men, Unions

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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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• A WISE MAN never enjoys himself so much, or a FOOL so little, as when he is alone.

  Josh Billings

  Wise, Men, Littles

  "Wit and Wisdom of Josh Billings [pseud.]: Choice Bits of Fun and Philosophy of the Great Humorist Carefully Collected and Revised".

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• The departure from the world is regarded not as a fault, but as the first step into that noble path at the remotest turn of which illumination is to be won.

  Joseph Campbell

  Illumination, Noble, Departure

  Joseph Campbell (2008). “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”, p.142, New World Library

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• In the tumult of great events, solitude was what I hoped for. Now it is what I love. How is it possible to be contented with anything else when one has come face to face with history?

  Charles de Gaulle

  Events, Faces, Tumult

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• Solitude is naught and society is naught. Alternate them and the good of each is seen.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2004). “A Dream Too Wild: Emerson Meditations for Every Day of the Year”, Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations

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• As for solitude, I cannot understand how certain people seek to lay claim to intellectual stature, nobility of soul and strength of character, yet have not the slightest feeling for seclusion; for solitude, I maintain, when joined with a quiet contemplation of nature, a serene and conscious faith in creation and the Creator, and a few vexations from outside is the only school for a mind of lofty endowment.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Character, School, People

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1963). “Goethe's world view: presented in his reflections and maxims”

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• Deep down, Erikson wants profoundly to be respected and admired - and very deep down he wants to be left alone.

  Stanley Hoffmann

  Want, Erikson, Very Deep

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