solitude - solitude 2

Being alone gives us the space to listen again to our
inner rhythms, to embrace our inner selves.

Patricia Hoolihan

quotations - contents - welcome page - obstacles
our current e-zine - the people behind the words - articles and excerpts
Daily Meditations, Year One - Year Two - Year Three - Year Four
     
Sign up for your free daily spiritual or general quotation ~ ~ Sign up for your free daily meditation

Living alone, though it may not be the state you ultimately
desire for yourself, affords an unparalleled opportunity
to know yourself, to be yourself, and to develop yourself
as a unique and interesting individual.

Phyllis Hobe

Self-renewal usually begins quietly.  The lonely griever becomes
a person with a confident solitude. . . . In contrast to loneliness,
which mourns the loss, solitude is positive aloneness, a confident
presence of self-suffering.

Fredric M. Hudson

Alone, but not lonely, I postulate philosophies, explore my soul,
and, in the modesty of solitude, expose my love and angers, wishes
and disappointments.  I examine each, and put it into its place.  Alone,
I redefine my appreciation of the people with whom I live.

Joan Mills

In many societies, voluntary isolation from others is considered necessary
for the completion of certain phases of personal growth.  Adolescent males
entering adulthood in certain tribal cultures are expected to wander alone
in the forest, mountains, or desert for as long as several months at a time.
During this period the solitary wanderer is instructed to communicate with
the Divine, compose a song, or experience a magic dream.  Those who
return without their dream may be sent back into the mountains
and told to return when they are successful.

Barbara Powell

I have to be alone very often. I'd be quite happy if I spent from Saturday
night until Monday morning alone in my apartment. That's how I refuel.

Audrey Hepburn

solitude - solitude 2

You need solitude if you are to fulfill your promises.

Francis Steloff

If one is to know oneself, then periods of solitude
should be courted, planned, and embraced.

Mary Kay Blakely

Great minds are like eagles, and build their nest in some lofty solitude. . . .
People can be themselves only so long as we are alone, and if we do
not love solitude, we will not love freedom, for it is only
when we are alone that we are really free.

Artur Schopenhauer

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.

Leonardo da Vinci

Whatever those unacquainted with it may think, solitude and utter
loneliness are far from being devoid of charm.  Words cannot convey
the almost voluptuous sweetness of the feelings experienced. . . Mind
and senses develop their sensibility in this contemplative life made up
of continual observations and reflections.  Does one become a
visionary or, rather, is it not that one has been blind until then?

Alexandra David-Neel

One lives and endures one's life with others, within matrices,
but it is only alone, truly alone that one bursts apart, springs forth.

Maria Isabel Barreno

I love being by myself.  And as I grow older, I love that more
than anything else.  There are so many things
to think about and work out.

Gwendolyn Brooks

We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and private:
and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship.

C.S. Lewis
The Weight of Glory

Being alone gives us the space to listen again to our
inner rhythms, to embrace our inner selves.

Patricia Hoolihan

It is only in solitude that men and women can come to know
the happiness that is like the delight of children in nothing at all.

John Cowper Powys

solitude - solitude 2

Retreating into oneself to find purpose can be like straddling a boat
leaving the dock; pulled in opposite directions by the intense
desire of the mind for human involvement and the equally intense
need of the soul for its own company.  In the sheer immensity of
solitude, when one can no longer draw energy from external
sources, we come to see how much of what we habitually call
meaningful purpose is merely the evasion of sitting still and
meeting what is most difficult for us to receive with compassion--
our own pain.

Dawna Markova
I Will Not Die an Unlived Life

We need periods of being by ourselves—alone.  Sometimes a fortnight
or even a week will do wonders for one, unless he or she has drawn too
heavily upon the account.  The simple custom, moreover, of taking an
hour, or even a half hour, alone in the quiet, in the midst of the daily
routine of life, would be the source of inestimable gain
for countless numbers.

Ralph Waldo Trine
The Wayfarer on the Open Road

quotations - contents - welcome page - obstacles
our current e-zine - the people behind the words - articles and excerpts
Daily Meditations, Year One - Year Two - Year Three - Year Four
     
Sign up for your free daily spiritual or general quotation ~ ~ Sign up for your free daily meditation

To live a spiritual life we must first find the courage to enter
into the desert of loneliness and change it by gentle and
persistent efforts into a garden of solitude.

Henri J. Nouwen

We must become so alone, so utterly alone, that we withdraw into our
innermost self. It is a way of bitter suffering.  But then our solitude is
overcome, we are no longer alone, for we find that our innermost self
is the spirit, that it is God, the indivisible. And suddenly we find ourselves
in the midst of the world, yet undisturbed by its multiplicity, for our
innermost soul we know ourselves to be one with all being.

Hermann Hesse