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Solitude Quotes
"Everywhere I have sought rest and not found it, except sitting in a corner by myself with a little book."
39
"When I go fishing I like to know that there's nobody within five miles of me."
38
"There are moments, such as the one that oppresses me now, when I feel my own self far more than I feel external things, and everything transforms into a night of rain and mud where, lost in the solitude of an out-of-the-way station, I wait interminably for the next third-class train."
38
"Can you be alone without being lonely? Can you spend time by yourself without craving noise or company of other people? Have you discovered the glory of quiet time spent alone, time spent listening to your soul? Solitude brings with it gifts that come from nowhere else."
38
"Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape."
38
"Tris: "I was reading." Sandry: "You're always reading. The only way people can ever talk to you is to interrupt." Tris: "Then maybe they shouldn't talk to me."
37
"Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and today -- all without seeing him. It is a long time to be alone; still, it is better to be alone that unwelcome. I had to have company -- I was made for it, I think -- so I made friends with the animals."
36
"And that is why it is so important to be solitary and attentive when one is sad: because the seemingly uneventful and motionless moment when our future steps into us is so much closer to life than that other loud and accidental point of time when it happens to us as if from outside. The quieter we are, the more patient and open we are in our sadnesses, the more deeply and serenely the new presence can enter us, and the more we can make it our own."
36
"Alone in the car with my social life all before and behind me, I was suspended in the beautiful solitude of the open road, in a kind of introspection that only outdoor space generates, for inside and outside are more intertwined than the usual distinctions allow. The emotion stirred by the landscape is piercing, a joy close to pain when the blue is deepest on the horizon or the clouds are doing those spectacular fleeting things so much easier to recall than to describe."
36
"A man who is afraid of being alone has never truly met himself."
36
"The man I meet with is not often so instructive as the silence he breaks."
35
"Maybe a person's world can grow bigger in all the right ways, not too wide that it becomes shallow, just large enough to preserve its depth."
34
"There are some places in life where you can only go alone. Embrace the beauty of your solo journey."
33
"You know, they ask me if I were on a desert island and I knew nobody would ever see what I wrote, would I go on writing. My answer is most emphatically yes. I would go on writing for company. Because I'm creating an imaginary - it's always imaginary - world in which I would like to live."
32
"I can be alone without being lonely. In fact, those times of solitude are necessary respite for a beleaguered soul, set upon by the pressures of life. I need to take whatever moments I can to just be still."
32
"Being alone is much better than being around negative people out of loneliness or desperation."
31
"I inhale loneliness like it is the sweet smell of virgin earth conquered by fiery rain drops. Within me, I'm a thousand others."
30
"Loneliness is a state of feeling that can be changed.People may still feel lonely even among the crowd."
29
"How much better is silence; the coffee cup, the table. How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake. Let me sit here for ever with bare things, this coffee cup, this knife, this fork, things in themselves, myself being myself."
29
"I have often wished in vain, ' said she, 'for another's judgment to appeal to when I could scarcely trust the direction of my own eye and head, they having been so long occupied with the contemplation of a single object as to become almost incapable of forming a proper idea respecting it.'That, ' replied I, 'is only one of many evils to which a solitary life exposes us."
28
"Inside myself is a place where I live all alone and that is where I renew my springs that never dry up."
27
"I watched the moon alone, unable to share his cold beauty with anyone."
27
"Solitude is a virtue for us, since it is a sublime inclination and impulse to cleanliness which shows that contact between people, "society, inevitably makes things unclean. Somewhere, sometime, every community makes people-"base."
27
"Each evening, I ached for the shelter of my tent, for the smallest sense that something was shielding me from the entire rest of the world, keeping me safe not from danger, but from vastness itself. I loved the dim, clammy dark of my tent, the cozy familiarity of the way I arranged my few belongings all around me each night."
25
"Solitude has seven skins, nothing gets through any more."
24
"I'm going inside of myself and never coming out."
24
"Some of my pleasantest hours were during the long rain-storms in the spring or fall, which confined me to the house for the afternoon as well as the forenoon, soothed by their ceaseless roar and pelting; when an early twilight ushered in a long evening in which many thoughts had time to take root and unfold themselves. In those driving northeast rains which tried the village houses so, when the maids stood ready with mop and pail in front entries to keep the deluge out, I sat behind my door in my little house, which was all entry, and thoroughly enjoyed its protection."
24
"I am lonely, sometimes, but I dare say it's good for me."
23
"When the orbits of these two satellites of ours happened to cross paths, we could be together. Maybe even open our hearts to each other. But that was only for the briefest moment. In the next instant we'd be in absolute solitude. Until we burned up and became nothing."
23
"The ingenious person will above all strive for freedom from pain and annoyance, for tranquility and leisure, and consequently seek a quiet, modest life, as undisturbed as possible, and accordingly, after some acquaintance with so-called human beings, choose seclusion and, if in possession of a great mind, even solitude. For the more somebody has in himself, the less he needs from the outside and the less others can be to him. Therefore, intellectual distinction leads to unsociability."
23
"I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone enough."
23
"He walked on in silence, the solitary sound of his footsteps echoing in his head, as in a deserted street, at dawn. His solitude was so complete, beneath a lovely sky as mellow and serene as a good conscience, amid that busy throng, that he was amazed at his own existence; he must be somebody else's nightmare, and whoever it was would certainly awaken soon."
23
"His habit of reading isolated him: it became such a need that after being in company for some time he grew tired and restless ..."
22
"The more we speak of solitude, the clearer it becomes that at the bottom it is not something one can choose to take or leave. We are lonely. One can deceive oneself about it and act as if it were not so. That is all. But it is so much better to see that we are so, indeed even to presuppose it. It will make us dizzy, of course; because all the focal points on which our eyes were used to resting are taken away from us, there is nothing near us anymore, and everything distant is infinitely distant."
22
"If I were to envy any persons on this planet, it would be mountain hermits. You often hear old platitudes such as, 'Speak out. Be heard.' On the contrary, a breath of fresh air would be something like: 'Silence, think for at least 15 minutes, and then maybe speak out."
21
"Then stirs the feeling infinite, so felt In solitude, where we are least alone."
21
"I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself, with only the music of my heart for company."
21
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