Solitude Quotes

The black land slid by and he was going into the country among the hills. For the first time in a dozen years the stars were coming out above him, in great processions of wheeling fire. He saw a great juggernaut of stars form in the sky and threaten to roll over and crush him... the river was mild and leisurely, going away from the people who ate shadows for breakfast and steam for lunch and vapors for supper. The river was very real; it held him comfortably and gave him the time at last, the leisure, to consider this month, this year, and a lifetime of years. He listened to his heart slow. His thoughts stopped rushing with his blood.

~ Ray Bradbury

The things I know, every man can know, but, oh, my heart is mine alone!

~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

We all are individual and lonely, like stars which appear so close but millions of miles apart.

~ Santosh Kalwar

She has always said that talking makes everyone feel better. He says talking is the equivalent of grooming. The tongue and fingers are governed by the same parts of the brain. He marvels at how close they can be some nights on the phone and how words really are the equal of touch. Bakelite pressed hard against his ear.She says it's not just the freedom from him and from their daughter. I feel some sort of opening. I saw things so clearly today.He thinks about the solitary figure in every religion, the monks, saints and shamans in every tradition who walk out into wilderness on their own and find revelation.It's what solitude does to a social animal he says.People talk of recognizing something greater than themselves when they're alone because we finally have to realize how helpless we are as individuals. There's a freedom, a sense of wonder in feeling for a moment that we don't have to please anyone or adjust to the needs of others. And there's a fear in realizing how small we are, how much those distant others normally insulate us from seeing the limits of our mostly incompetent bodies. When we're on our own we seek solutions and speculate and fictionalize because that's what we do when we're confronted with survival. That's revelation.Maybe she says, I'm just saying I'd like to eat less meat. We could have fish.

~ Colin Mcadam

To love can mean 'to love oneself,' and often love is no more than a juxtaposition of two solitudes.

~ Pope Paul Vi

For the first time after so many years I come back to cry aloud in the desert. Because this is the mission of the intellectual who is truly a prophet—to cry in the desert. The greatest of the prophets, Isaiah, made it notable, of course, when he spoke of himself as the voice of one crying in the wilderness. Because the mission of the intellectual is to be the man who, from his desert, his basic solitude—and man is only man amid his truth, only himself when he is alone—cries aloud to others and invites them to each into his own solitude.

~ José Ortega Y Gasset

I choose solitude over cold kisses. If it isn't love, it is poison.

~ Anita Krizzan

I've learnt that solitude is sometimes a path that leads to peace

~ Carlos Ruiz Zafón

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.

~ L.m. Montgomery

A man thinking or working will always be alone, let him be where he will.

~ Henry David Thoreau

In solitude, struggles occur that no one else knows about. Inner battles are fought here that seldom become fodder for sermons or illustrations for books. God, who probes our deepest thoughts during protracted segments of solitude, opens our eyes to things that need attention. It is here He makes us aware of those things we try to hide from others.

~ Charles R. Swindoll

Live by yourself and you bound to talk yourself and when ye commence that folks start it up that you're light in the head. But I reckon it's all right to talk to a dog since most folks do even if a dog don't understand and cain't answer if he did.

~ Cormac Mccarthy

Arcadio had seen her many times working in her parents' small food store but he had never taken a good look at her because she had that rare virtue of never existing completely except at the opportune moment.

~ Gabriel García Márquez

On re-entering cultivated lands, the agitation, perplexity, and turmoil of civilization oppressed and suffocated us; the air seemed to fail us, and we felt every moment as if about to die of asphyxia.

~ Évariste Régis Huc

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.

~ Anne Brontë

Sometimes the stage terrifies me,” I confessed. “But being here alone like this, it’s freeing.”Solitude can be freeing,” he said.

~ Lesa Howard

But there remained a reflective solitude behind that laughter, that nagging sense of completion that didn't sit well on the shoulders of a woman who had just begun to open her eyes to the wide world.

~ R.a. Salvatore

Father and Ivy used to go off on their excursions, never knowing that I was relieved when they were gone. That I'd wear my nightgowns all day and read from dawn till dusk.

~ Suzanne Palmieri

Solitude is a condition best enjoyed in company.

~ Eleanor Catton

Grieving, like being blind, is a strange business; you have to learn how to do it. We seek company in mourning, but after the early bursts of tears, after the praises have been spoken, and the good days remembered, and the lament cried, and the grave closed, there is no company in grief. It is a burden borne alone.

~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Solitude appeared to me as the only fit state of man.

~ Walter Benjamin

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.

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Living without personal boundaries is like trying to hold my breath and gasp for air, at the same time, it doesn't work. My introverted nature requires solitary sanctuary, to breathe. My internal batteries need time to recharge if i am to give from a place of abundance.

~ Jaeda Dewalt

A poet is a nightingale who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds; his auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician, who feel that they are moved and softened, yet know not whence or why.

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

I place solitude in a frame on my desk and call it, the one I love.

~ Kelli Russell Agodon

the romance of solitude and small places, the blurring of identity.

~ Spencer Gordon

Solitude is the biggest medicine for once peace, It makes your heart pure and calm.

~ Debolina Bhawal

So I lived alone. The first thing I did was take off my pants. Naturally.

~ Edward Abbey

The human spirit is not indestructible; but a courageous few discover that, when in hell, they are granted a glimpse of heaven.

~ Anthony Storr

The capacity to form attachments on equal terms is considered evidence of emotional maturity. It is the absence of this capacity which is pathological. Whether there may be other criteria of emotional maturity, like the capacity to be alone, is seldom taken into account.

~ Anthony Storr

In a culture in which interpersonal relationships are generally considered to provide the answer to every form of distress, it is sometimes difficult to persuade well-meaning helpers that solitude can be as therapeutic as emotional support.

~ Anthony Storr

But give thanks, at least, that you still have Frost's poems; and when you feel the need of solitude, retreat to the companionship of moon, water, hills and trees. Retreat, he reminds us, should not be confused with escape. And take these poems along for good luck!

~ Robert Graves

Often people request prayers for deliverance, inner healing, or physical healing. But more frequently they simply want a man or woman to whom they can turn--not because of what this person is able to do but because of what he or she is: a person who makes them feel wanted, a friend to love them, one who generates an atmosphere of warmth and trust in which they are able to love in return.

~ Brennan Manning

Only lost photographs that were never taken know what my mind speaks of when we are alone together.

~ Daniel J. Rice

Where solitude endeth, there beginneth the market-place; and where the market-place beginneth, there beginneth also the noise of the great actors, and the buzzing of the poison-flies.

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

There are times i wish i was a master magician so i could disappear into the folds of time, without consequence, without missing a beat. As an introvert, i need so much time to myself. I feel expansive and peaceful in my own space, constricted and chained, when confined to social situations. I can't blossom when pressed against everyone else.

~ Jaeda Dewalt

...children never forget. For this reason, it was so important what one said, and what one did, and it was a relief when they went to bed. For now she need not think about anybody. She could be herself, by herself. And that was what now she often felt the need of-- to think; well, not even to think. To be silent; to be alone. All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others.

~ Virginia Woolf

If one sets aside timefor a business appointment, a trip to the hairdresser, a social engagement or a shopping expedition,that time is accepted as inviolable. But if one says: I cannot come because that is my hour to be alone,one is considered rude, egotistical or strange. What a commentary on our civilization, when beingalone is considered suspect; when one has to apologize for it, make excuses, hide the fact that onepractices it—like a secret vice!

~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

In good company your thoughts run, in solitude your thought is still; it goes deeper and makes for itself a deeper groove, delves. Delve meansa 'dig with a spade'; it means hard work. In talk your mind can be stretched, widened, exhilarated to heights but it cannot be deepened; you have to deepen it yourself. It needs sturdiness. You will be lonely, you will be depressed; you must expect it; if you were training your body it would ache and be tired. It is worth it. There is a Hindu proverb which says: 'You only grow when you are alone'.

~ Rumer Godden

What is really scary is running naked inside yourself, revealing the real you.

~ Wes Adamson