Quotes About Solitude

There is only one solitude, and it is great and is not easy to bear, and to almost everyone there come hours when they would gladly exchange it for some kind of communion, however banal and cheap, for the appearance of some slight harmony with the most easily available, with the most undeserving… But perhaps those are just the hours when solitude grows; for its growing is painful like the growing of boys and sad like the beginning of Spring.

I have faith in nights.

You, still the squanderers of the empty hall — when the twilight comes, wide as woods… And the chandelier, like a sixteen-pointer, vaults where nothing can set foot.

Préfères-tu, rose, être l'ardente compagne de nos transports présents? Est-ce les souvenir qui davantage te gagne lorsqu'un bonheur se reprend? Tant de fois je t'ai vue, heureuse et sèche, - chaque pétale un linceul - dans un coffret odorant, à côté d'une mèche, ou dans un livre aimé qu'on relira seul.

We are unspeakably alone.

Whether it be the singing of a lamp or the voice of a storm, whether it be the breath of an evening or the groan of the ocean — whatever surrounds you, a broad melody always wakes behind you, woven out of a thousand voices, where there is room for your own solo only here and there. To know when you need to join in: that is the secret of your solitude: just as the art of true interactions with others is to let yourself fall away from high words into a single common melody.

Even when the lights go out, even when someone says to me: It's over---, even when from the stage a gray gust of emptiness drifts toward me, even when not one silent ancestor sits beside me anymore---not a woman, not even the boy with the brown squint-eye: I'll sit here anyway. One can always watch.

Und man hat niemand und nichts und faehrt in der Welt herum mit einem Koffer und mit einer Bücherkiste und eigentlich ohne Neugierde.

particularly in the deepest and most important things, we are unutterably alone

There is but one solitude, and that is great and not easy to bear, and to almost everybody come hours when they would gladly exchange it for any sort of intercourse, however banal and cheap, for the semblance of some slight accord with the first comer, with the unworthiest... But perhaps those are the very hours when solitude grows; for its growing is painful as the growing of boys and sad as the beginning of springtimes.

Seule, ô abondante fleur, tu crées ton propre espace; tu te mires dans und glace d'odeur. Ton parfum entoure comme d'autres pétales ton innombrable calice. Je te retiens, tu t'étales, prodigieuse actrice.

La solitude qui enveloppe les oeuvres d'art est infinie, etil n'estrien qui permette de moins les atteindre que la critique. Seul l'amour peut les appréhender, les saisir et faire preuve de justesse à leur endroit:

Turn your attentions to it. Try to raise up the sunken feelings of this enormous past; your personality will grow stronger, your solitude will expand and become a place where you can live in the twilight, where the noise of other people passes by, far in the distance.

Nobody can advise you and help you, nobody. There is only one way. Go into yourself.

So whoever loves must try to act as if he had a great work: he must be much alone and go into himself and collect himself and hold fast to himself; he must work; he must become something!

Works of art are infinitely solitary and nothing is less likely to reach them than criticism. Only love can grasp them and hold them and do them justice.

Stiller Freund der vielen Fernen, fühle, wie dein Atem noch den Raum vermehrt.

Mit deinen Augen, welche müde kaum von der verbrauchten Schwelle sich befrein, hebst du ganz langsam einen schwarzen Baum und stellst ihn vor den Himmel: schlank, allein. Und hast die Welt gemacht. Und sie ist groß und wie ein Wort, das noch im Schweigen reift. Und wie dein Wille ihren Sinn begreift, lassen sie deine Augen zärtlich los ...

I don't like to write letters while I am traveling, because for letter writing I need more than the most necessary tools: some silence and solitude and a not too familiar hour.

You become more protective and more capable of granting protection exactly to the extent that you have lost and now lack protection. The solitude into which you were cast so violently makes you capable of balancing out the loneliness of others to exactly the same degree.

For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation. I hold this to be the highest task for a bond between two people: that each protects the solitude of the other.

You run like a herd of luminous deer, and I am dark, I am forest.

I love the dark hours of my being. My mind deepens into them.

Solitude is not merely a matter of being alone: it is a territory to be entered and occupied.