Quotes About Solitude

The Remote I often think about you when I'm lying alone in my room with my mouth open and the remote lost somewhere in the bed.

I looked for you in everyone And they called me on that too I lived alone but I was only Coming back to you

This is the way we summon one another, but it is not the way we call upon the Name. We stand in rags, we beg for tears to dissolve the immovable landmarks of hatred. How beautiful our heritage, to have this way of speaking to eternity, how bountiful this solitude, surrounded, filled, and mastered by the Name, from which all things arise in splendour, depending one upon the other.

and to hell with all the glories of loneliness.

The secret of praying is praying in secret.

If you are alone you belong entirely to yourself. If you are accompanied by even one companion you belong only half to yourself or even less in proportion to the thoughtlessness of his conduct and if you have more than one companion you will fall more deeply into the same plight.

I get a friend to travel with me... I need somebody to bring me back to who I am. It's hard to be alone.

He sought out cold waterfalls, small thick forests, and thought about nothing at all.

My loneliness is very great. I am not in need of friends, but I must speak of Myself and I have no one to speak to.

Cast down by sadness, I walked far into the mountains where the cypresses grew so pointed one would have taken them for arms, where the brambles had thorns as big as claws.

It's better to read in the library. Sitting at my favorite table by the window reading and listening to the sound of other folks turning pages makes me feel like I'm in a house full of company I don't have to talk to.

Why would a happily married man isolate himself this way, standing in meditation through the night?

I wished there was someone, somewhere I could ask: What should I do? But no such person existed in my world. I was the only expert on living my own life, the only person I could turn to for answers.

AFTER THE NIGHT rain, a blue mist rose above the rolling green llanos from dawn until noon. A hundred miles in the distance, the high mountains were still hidden in clouds, and it had been easy for David to imagine he was Adam in the Garden. For as far as he could see to the south and the west, there were no jet vapor trails, no engine sounds, no glitter of metal or glass, no dogs barking, no human voice; only the insects whirring and the calls of birds.

Be ready in the morning, and come up . . . present thyself there to me in the top of the mount. And no man shall come up with thee (Exod. 34:2–3).

For a certain kind of person there is literally nothing nicer than eating breakfast by yourself on a moving train with a good book.

Alone in his room, he smiled at his secret greatness.

At this moment his dearest wish would have been just a moment's grace to immerse his face in a sinkfull of warm water. And maybe to have somebody hold him under till he drowned.

he'd fantasized about having nothing to do except lie on his bed and sleep and stare into space, but now those empty hours were here, and they were getting old amazingly fast.

or maybe Eliot had decided that the tedium of solitude was ever so slightly greater than the tedium of Quentin's company.

Quentin felt cold all the time like he was trapped in his own private individual winter

They spent the rest of that afternoon together. Maybe he felt guilty for giving Quentin the cigarette, or maybe Eliot had decided that the tedium of solitude was ever so slightly greater than the tedium of Quentin's company. Maybe he just needed a straight man. He

Selv om det ingen gjester var, var Anna like opptatt med seg selv som ellers og dessuten svært opptatt av å lese - både romaner og alvorlige bøker, slike som var på mote nå. Hun bestilte alle de bøkene som ble rosende omtalt i de utenlandske avisene og tidsskriftene hun mottok, og pløyet dem igjennom med den oppmerksomhet for det man leser som man bare finner hos mennesker i ensomhet.

I have given up reading books; I find it takes my mind off myself.