Quotes About Solitude

He tells you that when you go to private prayer, your first thought must be: Thy Father who is in secret; the Father waits for me there.

No man can expect to make progress in holiness who is not often and long alone with God.

To be alone in secret with the Father: this be your highest joy. To be assured that the Father will openly reward the secret prayer, so that it cannot remain unblessed:

But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thine inner chamber, and having shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret, and thy Father which seeth in secret shall recompense thee.'—Matt. vi. 6.

Where was he? Somewhere in there he lost the first phase of youth, like the first phase of a rocket; it had fallen, depleted, behind him. And here was the second. And last. He swore he would not give it to anyone; he would enjoy it. He would enjoy it alone. But: how to live alone and yet not be alone?

Why this endless need for a man as a mirror? To see the Arthur Less reflected there? He is grieving, for sure—the loss of his lover, his career, his novel, his youth—so why not cover the mirrors, rend the fabric over his heart, and just let himself mourn? Perhaps he should try alone.

Arthur Less has left the room while remaining in it.

Have you met someone?" "Me? I think maybe I'll go it on my own. Maybe I'm better that way. Maybe I was always better that way and it was just that when I was young, I was so scared, and now I'm not scared.

How do we forgive ourselves? Our parents watch us so carefully when we're children, desperate not to miss a first scream, a first step, a first word, never taking their eyes off us. Yet we do not watch them. They near the end in solitude—even those who live beside us die in solitude—and rarely do we catch their own milestones: the last scream before the morphine settles in, last step before they cannot walk, last word before the throat seals.

Boredom is essential for writers. It is the only time they get to write.

He is grieving, for sure—the loss of his lover, his career, his novel, his youth—so why not cover the mirrors, rend the fabric over his heart, and just let himself mourn? Perhaps he should try alone.

No one could rival Author Less for his ability to exit a room while remaining inside it. He sat, and his mind immediately left me behind...I was too much in law of his self-sufficiency, of his freedom. To disappear within himself for ten or fifteen minutes while I drew him, when I could barely sit still to hold the pencil.

It is the aloneness within us made manifest, and it destroys not only connection to others but also the ability to be peacefully alone with oneself.

Life is fraught with sorrows: no matter what we do, we will in the end die; we are, each of us, held in the solitude of an autonomous body; time passes, and what has been will never be again.

I think anything like that- which is contemplative, silent, shows a person alone- people always feel sad. Is it because we've lost the art of being alone?

There had been nothing but snow, and if you looked at it long enough, you would begin to hear a white noice - a kind of silence that takes hold of your soul with its cold hands and doesn't release it for a long time.

At the times in my life when I was feeling the most gregarious and looking for bosom friendships, I couldn't find any takers, so that exactly when I was alone was when I felt the most like not being alone... I became a loner in my own mind... I decided I'd rather be alone.

The biggest price you pay for love is that you have to have somebody around, you can't be on your own, wich is always so much better.

Si jamás te tocara, qué profunda extrañeza-.

Night would settle in like slow blindness

He will be her one-room cottage, her oasis.

To leave, after all, was not the same as being left." ? Anita Shreve, The Pilot's Wife

She liked the life she had. She loved habits. She craved a day with nothing in it, a long, quiet stretch of hours in the studio.

Sometimes it is a relief to be invisible