Quotes About Solitude

Communion is depth. Singleness is height. Communion giveth warmth, singleness giveth us light.42

As Chuang Tzu put it: "In the deep dark the person alone sees light."87

He goes his way Without relying on others And does not pride himself On walking alone.70

The ocean is a dangerous place, but it's also a place you can still go and have to yourself, a place that's clean and, yes, wild. If you go into the ocean you're making a choice. You need to know you can drown, you can get lost, or you can be eaten by great beasts.

Wherever the mind dwells apart is itself a distant place.

Standing Alone Empty skies. And beyond, one hawk. Between river banks, two white gulls Laze, wind-drifted. Fit for an easy kill, To and fro, they follow contentment. Grasses all frost-singed. Spiderwebs Still hung. Heaven's loom of origins Tangling our human ways too, I stand Facing sorrow's ten thousand sources. Tu Fu

Amid spring mountains, alone, I set out to find you. Axe strokes crack-crack, and quit. Quiet mystery Deepens. I follow a stream up into last snow and ice And beyond, dusk light aslant, to Stone Gate forests. Deer roam all morning here, for you harm nothing. Wanting nothing, you know chi gold and silver all Night. Facing you on a whim in such dark, the way Home lost- I feel it drifting, this whole empty boat. Tu Fu

And what is the greatest number? Number one.

Celibacy,fasting, penance, mortification, self-denial, humility, silence, solitude and the whole train of monkish virtues...Stupify the understanding and harden the heart, obscure the fancy and sour the temper...A gloomy hair-brained enthusiast, after his death, may have a place in the calendar, but will scarcely ever be admitted, when alive, into intimacy and society, except by those who are as delerious and dismal as himself.

I am first affrighted and confounded with that forelorn solitude, in which I am plac'd in my philosophy, and fancy myself some strange uncouth monster, who not being able to mingle and unite in society, has been expell'd all human commerce, and left utterly abandon'd and disconsolate. Fain wou'd I run into the crowd for shelter and warmth; but cannot prevail with myself to mix with such deformity.

I am first affrighted and confounded with that forelorn solitude, in which I am plac'd in my philosophy, and fancy myself some strange uncouth monster, who not being able to mingle and unite in society, has been expell'd all human commerce, and left utterly abandon'd and disconsolate (Hume, 1739, p. 312).

I am first affrighted and confounded with that forelorn solitude, in which I am plac'd in my philosophy, and fancy myself some strange uncouth monster, who not being able to mingle and unite in society, has been expell'd all human commerce, and left utterly abandon'd and disconsolate (Hume, 1739, p. 311-312).

And so I learned what solitude really was. It was raw material - awesome, malleable,older than men or worlds or water. And it was merciless - for it let a man become precisely what he alone made of himself.

Abba Antony said, "Whatever you find in your heart to do in following God, that do, and remain within yourself in Him.

Once it's all done, I fancy I'll come back as an owl. Free and alone in the quiet of the night.

David thought books existed to stop you from feeling lonely.

David Foster Wallace: It just makes me a person that's really exhausted a couple other ways to live, you know? And really taken them, taken them to their conclusion. Which for me was a pink room, with no furniture and a drain in the center of the floor.

You don't need human relationships to be happy, God has placed it all around us.

I'm just a simple man standing alone with my old brushes, asking God for inspiration.

When church is over and there's no one there to listen except the only One who matters, do you still have that same passionate joy in your spirit, just to be alone with the Living God?

I am never lonely when I am reading the Bible. Nothing dissolves loneliness like a session with God's Word.

He that can live alone resembles the brute beast in nothing, the sage in much, and God in everything.

I drank the silence of God from a spring in the woods.

You may live in a crowd but you meet God and face eternity alone