Quotes About Solitude

Religion is what a man does with his solitariness.

Religion is something that you need to do in silence.

In all things I would have the island of a man inviolate. Let us sit apart as the gods, talking from peak to peak all round Olympus. No degree of affection need invade this religion.

Mountains had taken the place of religion, had satisfied her religious sense, her need for adoration and worship as no service in any Cathedral, however sublime, had been able to do.

No Christian and, indeed, no historian could accept the epigram which defines religion as 'what a man does with his solitude.'

A garden is a private world or it is nothing.

In a heartbeat, he understands why religions are born on the sands – there is nothing here for a man but his own mind.

Religion is what an individual does with his solitariness.

My cigarettes and I are going outside. At least they show me respect.

One way leads to acquisition, the other leads to nirvana. Realising this a monk should take no pleasure in the respect of others, but should devote himself to solitude.

Personally, I find it romantic not to be with someone all the time; you don't get used to someone or take them for granted.

Anything could happen while the dead slept. Which was why some would say a woman shouldn't tread alone through a cemetery at 2:55 on a Tuesday morning in April.

He'd been going out with his right hand for so long they were practically common law spouses.

You see, one loves the sunset when one is so sad.

Sometimes you need to run away just to see who will come after you.

I was always sad as a child, for as long as I can think back. I hated crowds of people, and used to sit in a corner by myself, just thinking.

I was never interested in what everybody else was interested in. I was very interiorized. I always felt kind of sad.

One may have a blazing hearth in one's soul, and yet no one ever comes to sit by it.

When I sit in my bedroom with a book and a bottle of vodka, I do it because I'm sad, not because I think it's cool. I do it because I want to forget what I am thinking about.

The shadows drifted near, then dragged away, as if the entire forest were breathing, as if her feet were its heartbeat, as if she were the only thing alive in the world.

His practice was to listen noncommittally with half his mind, while he allowed the other half to lose itself in utterly unrelated , often deeply lonely musings. From the speaker's perspective it was like sticking a lance into something again and again with no result...

I shall arise and go to Innisfree

What does it matter to you that I'll stay here alone? What does it matter to you if I don't want others to want on my behalf, but want to want for myself-if I want the impossible .....

I walked alone through the twilit street. The wind was whirling, driving, carrying me like a slip of paper. Fragments of cast-iron sky flew and flew-they had another day, two days to hurtle through infinity… The unifs of passersby brushed against me, but I walked alone. I saw it clearly: everyone was saved, but there was no salvation for me. I did not want salvation …"(c)