Quotes About Solitude

My cell phone is my only individual zone, just for me.

Overstimulated, we seek out constrained worlds.

Solitude does not necessarily mean being alone. It is a state of conscious retreat, a gathering of the self. The capacity for solitude makes relationships with others more authentic. Because you know who you are, you can see others for who they are, not for who you need them to be. So solitude enables richer conversation.

Our capacity for solitude is undermined as soon as we introduce a screen.

felt empty, just as they did when Dani climbed out of them

I don't know what I shall do. I just want to go away and look at people and think.

I may stay here in this town another day or I may go on to another town. No one knows where I am. I am taking this bath in life, as you see, and when I have had enough of it I shall go home feeling refreshed.

Being alone doesn't mean being where there are no people. It means being where people are all strangers to you.

I have come to this lonely place, and here is this other.

I don't know what I shall do. I just want to go away and look at people and think.

Many people must live and die alone, even in Winesburg.

Teach us healing above all, soothing the center of our being. Teach us dark solitude without longing.

The feeling of love remains until we forget about the other. Did you know that? Because we can fall in love alone too.

They lived under supervision, a life without men. Dora knew no men. You could scarcely see how she might meet one, let alone come to know.

I have continued to come here for that kind of aloneness, so very different from being lonely with someone.

A person with low self-esteem is suffering from loneliness even when he is amongst large groups of people, whereas a person with high self-esteem is enjoying solitude out of choice. Loneliness is the pain of being alone, solitude is the pleasure of being alone. A person with high self-esteem is really saying I enjoy my company. I may be physically alone, but I am with myself.

Even when you practice zazen alone, without a teacher, I think you will find some way to tell whether your practice is adequate or not.

It's distance that makes mountains mountains. Looked at closely, they start to resemble me.

Desolation would not be the proper word to describe his feelings now; it was more the sense of emptiness he imagined he might feel standing all alone on the surface of the moon.

Jamie enjoyed solitude, but loneliness was a constant ache.

Who's this—alone with stone and sky? It's only my old dog and I— It's only him; it's only me; Alone with stone and grass and tree. What share we most—we two together? Smells, and awareness of the weather. What is it makes us more than dust? My trust in him; in me his trust.

I have always been considerably addicted to my own company.

Alone he staggered on until he found Dawn's ghost that filtered down a shafted stair To the dazed, muttering creatures underground Who hear the boom of shells in muffled sound. At last, with sweat of horror in his hair, He climbed through darkness to the twilight air, Unloading hell behind him step by step.

I did not dread the dark winter as people do when they have lost their youth and live alone in some great city. ? Siegfried Sassoon, Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man (Andesite Press, August 8, 2015)