Quotes About Solitude

Loneliness was not a matter of solitude but of the spirit and often much greater in company for that very reason.

Era imposible de explicar, ni siquiera a Anna, que sentirse solo no tenía nada que ver con la soledad, sino con el espíritu, y que por esa misma razón esa sensación se veía agravada a menudo estando en compañía.

All my days have I grown up among the Sages and I have found naught better for a man than silence.

I long ago abandoned myself to a blind lust for the written word. Literature is my sandbox. In it I play, build my forts and castles, spend glorious time. It is the world outside that box that gives me trouble. I have adapted tamely, though not conventionally, to this visible world so I can retreat without much inconvenience into my inner world of books.

Me? I was lost for long time. I didn't make any friends for few years. You can say I made friends with two trees, two big trees in the middle of the school […]. I spent all my free time up in those trees. Everyone called me Tree Boy for the longest time. […]. I preferred trees to people. After that I preferred pigeons, but it was trees first.

What is the purpose of a city if not to grant the greatest of gifts, anonymity?

I was always alone, Doc, solitary whether I wished to be or not, ever since I could remember I wished to be lost in another, thought that somehow I could disappear into that heart of yours, take walks within your veins, wander through the bones of you. You had friends, Satan said, you loved and were loved, you must not forget that, at least not that. But did I allow anyone in, I asked Satan, and he said, Did you, does anyone?

The cure for loneliness is solitude. —Marianne Moore, from the essay "If I Were Sixteen Today

I prefer slow conversations where words are counted like pearls, conversation with many pauses, pauses replacing words. An Unnecessary Woman

Throughout our marriage, we would go for weeks without exchanging more than perfunctory communications, sharing little but the bewildered quiet. And you think that I am lonely now? Heavens. I wish I'd listened to Chekhov, or had read him then: "If you are afraid of loneliness, don't marry.

The corpse looks to me like a suit left behind.

We were two solitudes benefiting from a grace that was continuously reinvigorated in each other's presence, two solitudes who nourished each other.

I imagine looking at the room through a stranger's eyes. Books everywhere, stacks and stacks, shelves and bookcases, stacks atop each shelf, I in the creaky chair that hasn't been reupholstered since I bought it in the early sixties. I have been its only occupant; years ago its foam molded into the shape of my posterior. The accompanying ottoman holds two stacks of books that haven't been disturbed in years, except for semiweekly dusting.

I lie on my side, head sunk in the pillow, waiting for first light, for the lift of the curtain, waiting for you, how your right hand used to entwine with my left in a slow dance, how our bodies fit in bed, yet you didn't show up.

I sit at my window gazing The world passes by, nods to me And is gone.

My day is done, and I am like a boat drawn on the beach, listening to the dance-music of the tide in the evening.

I came out alone on my way to my tryst. But who is this that follows me in the silent dark? I move aside to avoid his presence but I escape him not. He makes the dust rise from the earth with his swagger; he adds his loud voice to every word that I utter. He is my own little self, my lord, he knows no shame; but I am ashamed to come to thy door in his company.

When you have finished with others, that is my time.

The birds looked upon me as nothing but a man, quite a trifling creature without wings—and they would have nothing to do with me. Were it not so I would build a small cabin for myself among their crowd of nests and pass my days counting the sea waves.

Man goes into the noisy crowd to drown his own clamour of silence.

Amal: It isn't sad. When they shut me in here first I felt the day was so long. Since the King's Post Office I like it more and more being indoors, and as I think I shall get a letter one day, I feel quite happy and then I don't mind being quiet and alone. I wonder if I shall make out what'll be in the King's letter? Gaffer: Even if you didn't wouldn't it be enough if it just bore your name?

In pleasure and in pain I stand not by the side of men, and thus stand by thee. I shrink to give up my life, and thus do not plunge into the great waters of life.

My Song" This song of mine will wind its music around you, my child, like the fond arms of love. This song of mine will touch your forehead like a kiss of blessing. When you are alone it will sit by your side and whisper ini your ear, when you are in the crowd it will fence you about with aloofness. My song will sit in the pupils of your eyes, and will carry your sight into the heart of things. And when my voice is silent in death, my song will speak in your leaving heart.

Leave this chanting and singing and telling of beads! Whom dost thou worship in this lonely dark corner of a temple with doors all shut? Open thine eyes and see thy God is not before thee!