Solitude Quotes - Page 29

• This perpetual hurry of business and company ruins me in soul if not in body. More solitude and earlier hours!

  William Wilberforce

  Soul, Body, Ruins

  Robert I. Wilberforce, Samuel Wilberforce, William Wilberforce (1839). “The Life of William Wilberforce: In Five Volumes”, p.207

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• Not that she objected to solitude. Quite the contrary. She had books, thank Heaven, quantities of books. All sorts of books.

  Jean Rhys

  Book, Heaven, Contrary

  Jean Rhys (1981). “Quartet”

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• It would be nice to avoid the world, to leave it and all its threats and unhappiness. Not to die or anything like that, but to find a place of solitude and solace.

  Robert Cormier

  Nice, Would Be, World

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• Solitude matters. And for some people it's the air they breathe.

  Susan Cain

  Air, People, Matter

  "Introverts run the world -- quietly" by Susan Cain, www.cnn.com. March 18, 2012.

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• All companionship can consist in only the strengthening of neighboring solitudes, giving oneself is by nature harmful to companionship: for when a person abandons himself, he is no longer anything, and when two people both give themselves up in order to become closer to each other, there is no longer any ground beneath them and their being together is a continual falling – I have learned over and over again, there is scarcely anything more difficult than to love one another.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Fall, Order, Two

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• Loneliness becomes a lover, solitude a darling sin.

  Ian Fleming

  Loneliness, Lovers, Sin

  Ian Fleming (2012). “The Spy Who Loved Me: James Bond 007”, p.5, Random House

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• And so I learned what solitude really was. It was raw material - awesome, malleable,older than men or worlds or water. And it was merciless - for it let a man become precisely what he alone made of himself.

  David James Duncan

  Men, Water, Raw Materials

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• The observations and encounters of a solitary, taciturn man are vaguer and at the same times more intense than those of a sociable man; his thoughts are deeper, odder and never without a touch of sadness. Images and perceptions that could be dismissed with a glance, a laugh, an exchange of opinions, occupy him unduly, become more intense in the silence, become significant, become an experience, an adventure, an emotion. Solitude produces originality, bold and astonishing beauty, poetry. But solitude also produces perverseness, the disproportionate, the absurd and the forbidden.

  Thomas Mann

  Adventure, Sadness, Men

  Thomas Mann (2012). “Death in Venice & A Man and His Dog: A Dual-Language Book”, p.101, Courier Corporation

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• There is a difference between solitude and isolation. One is connected and one isn't. Solitude replenishes, isolation diminishes.

  Henry Cloud

  Differences, Isolation, Connected

  Twitter post from Feb 19, 2015

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• Cause if you’re happy in your head, then solitude is blessed, and alone is okay.

  Tanya Davis

  Blessed, Causes, Okay

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• The soul that has been enriched by communion with God will not be dismayed by isolation but will welcome solitude. He will seek not the crowd but the closet, and emerging will never walk alone, for he has unseen companionship.

  Frances J Roberts

  Soul, Crowds, Unseen

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• We must reserve a back shop all our own entirely free, in which to establish our real liberty and our principal retreat and solitude.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Real, Liberty, Retreat

  Michel de Montaigne (1958). “Complete Essays”, p.177, Stanford University Press

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• Real travel is not about the highlights with which you dazzle your friends once you're home. It's about the loneliness, the solitude, the evenings spent by yourself, pining to be somewhere else. Those are the moments of true value. You feel half proud of them and half ashamed and you hold them to your heart.

  Tahir Shah

  Real, Loneliness, Home

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• The dream remains overloaded with the badly lived passions of daytime life. Solitude in the nocturnal dream is always a hostility. It is strange. It isn't really our solitude.

  Gaston Bachelard

  Life, Dream, Passion

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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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• The important thing is to know why we want to dance. We dance a solitude that we have inside us and cannot occupy with anything. This gap, that emptiness to which we put movement is the TANGO.

  Carlos Gavito

  Important, Movement, Want

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• As a model, I didn't have an identity; I was a chameleon, a silent actress. I was an amorphous thing. I wasn't full of personality, I was full of solitude and solemnity. I wasn't a cover-girl type.

  Carmen Dell'Orefice

  Girl, Personality, Identity

  "Carmen Dell’Orefice, 82-Year-Old Model, Lands YOU Magazine Cover", www.huffingtonpost.com. July 8, 2013.

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• The hunter who accepts the sporting code of ethics keeps his commandments in the greatest solitude, with no witness or audience other than the sharp peaks of the mountain, the roaming cloud, the stern oak, the trembling juniper, and the passing animal.

  Jose Ortega y Gasset

  Hunting, Animal, Clouds

  Jose Ortega y Gasset (2007). “Meditations on Hunting”, p.42, Wilderness Adventures Press

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• The artist knows he must be alone to create; the writer, to work out his thoughts; the musician, to compose; the saint, to pray. But women need solitude in order to find again the true essence of themselves.

  Anne Morrow Lindbergh

  Artist, Order, Essence

  Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1975). “GIFT FROM THE SEA”

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• I think solitude is a really positive thing. I cherish solitude immensely. In today’s society, there’s so much pressure to communicate, eat out, be friends with people. Why can’t you read a book on your own? Why have you got to have a book club?

  Nicky Wire

  Book, Thinking, People

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• When I was going into one of my first meditation retreats, I asked my father, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, for some advice. He said, "How you act when you're alone affects the rest of your life." Even in solitude, the ruler engages in virtue.

  Sakyong Mipham

  Father, Meditation, Advice

  Sakyong Mipham (2005). “Ruling Your World: Ancient Strategies For Modern Life”, p.16, Harmony

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• Wilderness has been characterized as barren and unproductive; little can be grown in its sand and rock. But the crops of wilderness have always been its spiritual values - silence and solitude, a sense of awe and gratitude - able to be harvested by any traveler who visits.

  David Douglas

  Spiritual, Gratitude, Journey

  David Douglas (1989). “Wilderness Sojourn: Notes in the Desert Silence”, HarperCollins

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• The simplest spiritual discipline is some degree of solitude and silence. But it's the hardest, because none of us want to be with someone we don't love. Besides that, we invariably feel bored with ourselves, and all of our loneliness comes to the surface.We won't have the courage to go into that terrifying place without Love to protect us and lead us, without the light and love of God overriding our own self-doubt. Such silence is the most spacious and empowering technique in the world, yet it's not a technique at all. It's precisely the refusal of all technique.

  Richard Rohr

  Love, Spiritual, Loneliness

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• In a world of intrusive technology, we must engage in a kind of struggle if we wish to sustain moments of solitude. E-reading opens the door to distraction. It invites connectivity and clicking and purchasing. The closed network of a printed book, on the other hand, seems to offer greater serenity. It harks back to a pre-jacked-in age. Cloth, paper, ink: For these read helmet, cuirass, shield. They afford a degree of protection and make possible a less intermediated, less fractured experience. They guard our aloneness. That is why I love them, and why I read printed books still.

  Mohsin Hamid

  Love, Book, Reading

  Mohsin Hamid (2014). “Discontent and Its Civilizations: Dispatches from Lahore, New York and London”, p.81, Penguin UK

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• Unlike the millions who casually masturbate in solitude while looking at girlie pictures in Playboy and similar magazines, the massage man preferred an accomplice, an attendant lady of respectable appearance who would help him reduce the guilt and loneliness of this most lonely act of love.

  Gay Talese

  Love, Lonely, Loneliness

  Gay Talese (1981). “Thy neighbor's wife”, Dell Publishing Company

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