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Solitude Quotes
"Solitude produces originality, bold and astonishing beauty, poetry. But solitude also produces perverseness, the disproportianate, the absurd and the forbidden."
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"And in this we must for the most part entertain ourselves with ourselves, and so privately that no exotic knowledge or communication be admitted there; there to laugh and to talk, as if without wife, children, goods, train, or attendance, to the end that when it shall so fall out that we must lose any or all of these, it may be no new thing to be without them. We have a mind pliable in itself; that will be company; that has wherewithal to attack and to defend, to receive and to give: let us not then fear in this solitude to languish under an uncomfortable vacuity."
16
"Is there nowhere in an American house where one may be by one's self?"
16
"Aloneeverything changes.Some might call it distorted realitybut it's exactly the place I need to be."
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"Even when I'm alone I have real good company - dreams and imaginations and pretendings. I like to be alone now and then, just to think over things and taste them. But I love friendships - and nice, jolly little times with people."
16
"There comes a time when the world gets quiet and the only thing left is your own heart. So you'd better learn the sound of it. Otherwise you'll never understand what it's saying."
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"Every man must have a peaceful place to contemplate. If you do not have such a place, you must find one!"
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"Nothing, to my way of thinking, is a better proof of a well ordered mind than a man's ability to stop just where he is and pass some time in his own company."
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"Loneliness chosen is always preferable to loneliness imposed."
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"Though solitude, endured too long, Bids youthful joys too soon decay, Makes mirth a stranger to my tongue, And overclouds my noon of day;When kindly thoughts that would have way, Flow back discouraged to my breast;I know there is, though far away, A home where heart and soul may rest.Warm hands are there, that, clasped in mine, The warmer heart will not belie;While mirth, and truth, and friendship shineIn smiling lip and earnest eye.The ice that gathers round my heartMay there be thawed; and sweetly, then, The joys of youth, that now depart, Will come to cheer my soul again."
16
"At life's most significant moments, we are always alone."
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"Always remember that you were once alone, and the crowd you see in your life today are just as unecessary as when you were alone."
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"Solitude with God is a place for pregnancy."
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"In his history of solitude, Anthony Storr writes about the importance of being able to feel at peace in one's own company. But many find that, trained by the Net, they cannot find solitude even at a lake or beach or on a hike. Stillness makes them anxious. I see the beginnings of a backlash as some young people become disillusioned with social media. There is,. too, the renewed interest in yoga, Eastern religions, meditating, and 'slowness."
16
"I went up on the hill and walked about until twilight had deepened into an autumn night with a benediction of starry quietude over it. I was alone but not lonely. I was a queen in halls of fancy."
15
"If from Society we learn to live Tis Solitude should teach us how to die It hath no flatterers."
15
"One of the greatest necessities in America is to discover creative solitude."
15
"The writer's curse is that even in solitude, no matter its duration, he never grows lonely or bored."
15
"In the world of the dreamer there was solitude: all the exaltations and joys came in the moment of preparation for living. They took place in solitude. But with action came anxiety, and the sense of insuperable effort made to match the dream, and with it came weariness, discouragement, and the flight into solitude again. And then in solitude, in the opium den of remembrance, the possibility of pleasure again."
15
"A lonely night is more profound then lonesome nights."
15
"Solitude, at first is scary. All you have is yourself. After a while its comforting, it knows the real you and cant judge you for it. If you live it long enough it becomes an addiction, like all things, too much of it and you will go insane but not enough of it will also send you there."
15
"Sometimes you need to sit lonely on the floor in a quiet room in order to hear your own voice and not let it drown in the noise of others."
15
"It was a different sense of isolation from what he normally felt in Japan. And not such a bad feeling, he decided. Being alone in two senses of the word was maybe like a double negation of isolation. In other words, it made perfect sense for him, a foreigner, to feel isolated here. The thought calmed him. He was in exactly the right place."
15
"I restore myself when I'm alone."
15
"I've always liked the moonless night best. It's easier to say things in the dark. It's easier to be yourself."
14
"I knew this feeling, the 2 a.m. loneliness that I'd practically invented."
14
"I am but a stranger ... as we all are. Lonely inside our separate skins, we cannot know each others pain and must bear our own in solitude. For my part, I have found that walking soothes it; and that, given luck, sometimes we find one to walk besides us ... at least for a little way."
14
"The gift of solo moments is that they are wholly ours. On or off the road, solo moments connect us inward to ourselves with heightened clarity and insight. They also direct our energies out into the world, magnetizing us to new people and experiences we may not have encountered under any other circumstance."
14
"My shadow is tired walking with me; but I have yet to be bored walking with myself, all by myself..."
14
"She had never before minded being alone. Now she dreaded it. When she was alone now she felt so dreadfully alone."
14
"It is not that we love to be alone, but that we love to soar, and when we do soar, the company grows thinner and thinner until there is none at all. We are not the less to aim at the summits though the multitude does not ascend them."
14
"Any human companionship, even the dearest and most perfect, would have been alien to her then. She was sufficient unto herself, needing not love nor comradeship nor any human emotion to round out her felicity. Such moments come rarely in any life, but when they do come they are inexpressibly wonderful - as if the finite were for a second infinity - as if humanity were for a space uplifted into divinity - as if all ugliness had vanished, leaving only flawless beauty."
14
"She didn't want to go far, just out of the trees so she could see the stars. They always eased her loneliness. She thought of them as beautiful creatures, burning and cold; each solitary, and bleak, and silent like her."
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"I love my loneliness as it helps me gather strength to deal with people."
14
"And now if you'll excuse me, I should like to finish my book, alone, without the presence of a single ringleted girl to disrupt me. If you should come for me at dinner and find me in my chair, gone to the angels at last, you shall know that I died alone, which is to say in a state of utter bliss."
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