Solitude famous quotes
Last updated: Sep 5, 2024
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Your inner voice is the voice of divinity. To hear it, we need to be in solitude, even in crowded places.
-- A. R. Rahman -
What a brave privilege is it to be free from all contentions, from all envying or being envied, from receiving or paying all kinds of ceremonies!
-- Abraham Cowley -
Solitude can be used well by very few people. They who do must have a knowledge of the world to see the foolishness of it, and enough virtue to despise all the vanity.
-- Abraham Cowley -
Modern civilization is so complex as to make the devotional life all but impossible. It wears us out by multiplying distractions and beats us down by destroying our solitude, where otherwise we might drink and renew our strength before going out to face the world again.
-- Aiden Wilson Tozer -
A lot of directors prefer the solitude of the editing process, but I revel in the craziness of what a film set is.
-- Alan Parker -
She was waiting, but she didn't know for what. She was aware only of her solitude, and of the penetrating cold, and of a greater weight in the region of her heart.
-- Albert Camus -
Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful.
-- Albert Camus -
Do not be afraid of spending quality time by yourself. Find meaning or don’t find meaning but “steal†some time and give it freely and exclusively to your own self. Opt for privacy and solitude. That doesn’t make you antisocial or cause you to reject the rest of the world. But you need to breathe. And you need to be.
-- Albert Camus -
In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion.
-- Albert Camus -
Crime too is a form of solitude, even if one thousand get together to commit it. And it is right for me to die alone, after having lived and killed alone.
-- Albert Camus -
There is a solitude in poverty, but a solitude which restores to each thing its value.
-- Albert Camus -
The older I grow, the more I find myself alone.
-- Alberto Giacometti -
There are degrees and kinds of solitude. ... I know of no solitude so secure as one guarded by a spring flood; nor do the geese, who have seen more kinds and degrees of aloneness than I have.
-- Aldo Leopold -
We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. [...] By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies - all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable.
-- Aldous Huxley -
Work cannot convey the almost voluptuous sweetness of the feelings experienced ... in solitude.
-- Alexandra David-Neel -
Nature has a language of its own, or maybe those who have lived long in solitude read in it their own unconscious inner feelings and mysterious foreknowledge.
-- Alexandra David-Neel -
When everyone leaves you it's loneliness you feel, when you leave everyone else it's solitude.
-- Alfred Polgar -
In my solitude I have pondered much on the incomprehensible subjects of space, eternity, life and death.
-- Alfred Russel Wallace -
He who understands humanity seeks solitude
-- Ali ibn Abi Talib -
Solitude, if rightly used, becomes not only a privilege but a necessity. Only a superficial soul fears to fraternize with itself.
-- Alice Hegan Rice -
The weight of the world is love. Under the burden of solitude, under the burden of dissatisfaction.
-- Allen Ginsberg -
Internally, you experience rowing as a graphic microcosm of life - solitude, learning, work, rest, nourishment, sharing and ultimately challenge.
-- Allen Rosenberg -
Solitude is such a potential thing. We hear voices in solitude, we never hear in the hurry and turmoil of life; we receive counsels and comforts, we get under no other condition...
-- Amelia Barr -
In the world of the dreamer there was solitude: all the exaltations and joys came in the moment of preparation for living. They took place in solitude.
-- Anais Nin -
Human beings can reach such desperate solitude that they may cross a boundary beyond which words cannot serve, and at such moments there is nothing left for them but to bark.
-- Anais Nin -
Though man's feeling for the other-worldly often has recourse to solitude, solitude does not foster its development; rather, it is nourished by communion, to which the church is more propitious than the cemetery.
-- Andre Malraux -
Lately I've been thinking about who I want to love, and how I want to love, and why I want to love the way I want to love, and what I need to learn to love that way, and how I need to become to become the kind of love I want to be. And when I break it all down, when I whittle it into a single breath, it essentially comes out like this: before I die, I want to be somebody's favorite hiding place, the place they can put everything they need to survive, every secret, every solitude, every nervous prayer, and be absolutely certain I will keep it safe. I will keep it safe.
-- Andrea Gibson -
One of the many advantages of being a loner is that often there's time to think, ponder, brood, meditate deeply, and figure things out to one's satisfaction.
-- Andrea Seigel -
The great virtue of being alone is that your mind can go its own way.
-- Andy Rooney -
But I think there's something wonderful and extraordinary about climbing on your own and just that kind of relationship to the environment. I'm very addicted to the mountains. You know, so, I do like that solitude.
-- Andy Serkis -
Society than solitude is worse, And man to man is still the greatest curse.
-- Anna Letitia Barbauld -
No matter how much we love our family and friends, a part of us needs the occasional moment of solitude as a plant needs water. It is the inmost core of each of us that, that part which nobody can define but which we all recognize because it never changes.
-- Anna Neagle -
But the delights of solitude don't only consist of dreaming. Next in enjoyment, I think, comes planning.
-- Anna Neagle -
What a commentary on our civilization, when being alone is considered suspect; when one has to apologize for it, make excuses, hide the fact that one practices it—like a secret vice!
-- Anne Morrow Lindbergh -
To love ourselves is to act respectfully toward ourselves, to enjoy our own company when in solitude, to honor our limits and speak our truths.
-- Anodea Judith -
To be left alone is the most precious thing one can ask of the modern world.
-- Anthony Burgess -
I am a bit of a solitude person - a solitary personality. I like being on my own. I don't have any major friendships or relationships with people.
-- Anthony Hopkins -
A place of solitude offers a retreat from the opposing forces and diverse demands of living, an entry into a state of peace and unity. Mind and body can retire from confusion and conflict to a sanctuary of clarity and harmony
-- Anthony Lawlor -
In a culture in which interpersonal relationships are generally considered to provide the answer to every form of distress, it is sometimes difficult to persuade well-meaning helpers that solitude can be as therapeutic as emotional support.
-- Anthony Storr -
In giving you are throwing a bridge across the chasm of your solitude.
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery -
When the superficial wearies me, it wearies me so much that I need an abyss in order to rest.
-- Antonio Porchia -
Nothing is more capable of troubling our reason, and consuming our health, than secret notions of jealousy in solitude.
-- Aphra Behn -
Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.
-- Aristotle -
He is his own best friend and takes delight in privacy whereas the man of no virtue or ability is his own worst enemy and is afraid of solitude.
-- Aristotle -
Far from the madding crowd is a mistake on a honeymoon.... Solitude! Wherever you are, if you're on a honeymoon, you'll get quite as much solitude as is good for you every twenty-four hours. Constant change and distraction -- that's what wants arranging for. Solitude will arrange itself.
-- Arnold Bennett -
Get away from the crowd when you can. Keep yourself to yourself, if only for a few hours daily.
-- Arthur Brisbane -
Few artists thrive in solitude and nothing is more stimulating than the conflict of minds with similar interests.
-- Arthur C. Clarke -
A man can be himself only so long as he is alone.
-- Arthur Schopenhauer -
He who does not enjoy solitude will not love freedom.
-- Arthur Schopenhauer -
Solitude will be welcomed or endured or avoided, according as a man's personal value is large or small.
-- Arthur Schopenhauer -
Being an artist is being an isolated individual.
-- Asger Jorn -
Reading takes solitude and it takes focus.
-- Augusten Burroughs -
He that can live alone resembles the brute beast in nothing, the sage in much, and God in everything.
-- Baltasar Gracian -
Silence and solitude are confrontational. They plunge us instantly into the truth.
-- Barbara De Angelis -
No doubt about it, solitude is improved by being voluntary.
-- Barbara Holland -
Alone each heart must cover up its dead; Alone, through bitter toil, achieve its rest.
-- Bayard Taylor -
I always tell my students that Malcolm X came both to his spirituality and to his consciousness as a thinker when he had solitude to read. Unfortunately, tragically, like so many young black males, that solitude only came in prison.
-- Bell Hooks -
Solitude has a healing consoler, friend, companion: it is work.
-- Berthold Auerbach -
I guess part of the hit-man appeal is the solitude. Everybody is lured to the idea of the solitary life.
-- Bill Nighy -
Since the time of St. Jerome, it was mandatory for any kind of scholar or thinker to spend time out in the desert in solitude. It's no coincidence that the desert has been a major part of the visionary or mystical experience from the beginning of time.
-- Bill Viola -
All the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber.
-- Blaise Pascal -
There are those who worship loneliness, I'm not one of them In this age of fiberglass I'm searching for a gem The crystal ball up on the wall hasn't shown me nothing yet I've paid the price of solitude, but at last I'm out of debt
-- Bob Dylan -
I can be by myself because I'm never lonely, I'm simply alone, living in my heavily populated solitude, a harum-scarum of infinity and eternity, and Infinity and Eternity seem to take a liking to the likes of me.
-- Bohumil Hrabal -
Inspiration comes to us slowly and quietly . prime it with a little solitude.
-- Brenda Ueland -
Silent solitude makes true speech possible and personal. If I am not in touch with my own belovedness, then I cannot touch the sacredness of others. If I am estranged from myself, I am likewise a stranger to others.
-- Brennan Manning -
Solitude is for me a fount of healing which makes my life worth living.
-- Carl Jung -
Tongues wrangled dark at a man. He buttoned his overcoat and stood alone. In a snowstorm, red hollyberries, thoughts, he stood alone.
-- Carl Sandburg -
The important thing is to know why we want to dance. We dance a solitude that we have inside us and cannot occupy with anything. This gap, that emptiness to which we put movement is the TANGO.
-- Carlos Gavito -
On the broad spectrum of solitude, I lean toward the extreme end: I work alone, as well as live alone, so I can pass an entire day without uttering so much as a hello to another human being. Sometimes a day's conversation consists of only five words, uttered at the local Starbucks: 'Large coffee with milk, please.
-- Caroline Knapp -
I've always been drawn to solitude, felt a kind of luxurious relief in its self-generated pace and rhythms.
-- Caroline Knapp -
Solitude is a breeding ground for idiosyncrasy, and I relish that about it, the way it liberates whim.
-- Caroline Knapp -
I'm pretty social so it's hard for me to find solitude, but I need to have solitude to write.
-- Catie Curtis -
Here I am, a wild beast cut off from his companions.
-- Chairil Anwar -
What's agitating about solitude is the inner voice telling you that you should be mated to somebody, that solitude is a mistake. The inner voice doesn't care about who you find. It just keeps pestering you, tormenting you ...
-- Charles Baxter -
they simply never understand, do they, that sometimes solitude is one of the most beautiful things on earth?
-- Charles Bukowski -
St. John of the Cross points out that the divine music can best be heard in solitude and silence. The sonorous music is not a physical sound that vibrates the eardrum but something transcending the senses. Physical solitude and silence remove the distracting noises that prevent us from hearing on deeper levels.
-- Charles Cumming -
Among the scenes which are deeply impressed on my mind, none exceed in sublimity the primeval [tropical] forests, ... temples filled with the varied productions of the God of Nature. No one can stand in these solitudes unmoved, and not feel that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body.
-- Charles Darwin -
If there be a regal solitude, it is a sick-bed. How the patient lords it there!
-- Charles Lamb -
Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks to the murderer like the voice of solitude.
-- Charles Robert Maturin -
One needs solitude and quiet to think. The cacophony of modern culture is designed to make that impossible...
-- Chris Hedges -
Coldplay frontman Chris Martin has found his niche in making the sound of solitude a triumphant experience, like Good Will Hunting: The Musical.
-- Chris Martin -
As I've gotten older I've occasionally found myself nostalgic for earlier periods of solitude, though I realize that's also likely a false nostalgia, as I know there was nothing I wanted more during those periods than to not be alone, whatever that means.
-- Chris Ware -
Solitude is not an absence of energy or action, as some believe, but is rather a boon of wild provisions transmitted to us from the soul.
-- Clarissa Pinkola Estes -
The writer's curse is that even in solitude, no matter its duration, he never grows lonely or bored.
-- Criss Jami -
Solitude well practiced will break the power of busyness, haste, isolation, & loneliness.
-- Dallas Willard -
Each of us needs periods in which our minds can focus inwardly. Solitude is an essential experience for the mind to organize its own processes and create an internal state of resonance. In such a state, the self is able to alter its constraints by directly reducing the input from interactions with others. (p. 235)
-- Daniel J. Siegel -
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.
-- David James Duncan
