At one point in your life you have to decide whether you want to become a sachem or a solitary.

I have often wished in vain,’ said she, ‘for another’s judgment to appeal to when I could scarcely trust the direction of my own eye and head, they having been so long occupied with the...

Solitude is a human presumption. Every quiet step is thunder to beetle life underfoot, a tug of impalpable thread on the web pulling mate to mate and predator to prey, a beginning or an end.

No, solitude did not trouble her. She could spend long minutes gazing out the window, hours listening to the BBC on the public radio station. She relished the very texture of her privacy, its depth...

I am not a Sunday morning inside four wallswith clean bloodand organized drawers.I am the hurricane setting fire to the forestsat night when no one else is aliveor awakehowever you choose to see itand I...

The InfiniteIt was always dear to me, this solitary hill,and this hedgerow here, that closes out my view,from so much of the ultimate horizon.But sitting here, and watching here, in thought,I create interminable spaces,greater than...

Many voices ask for our attention. There is a voice that says, ‘Prove that you are a good person.’ Another voice says, ‘You’d better be ashamed of yourself.’ There also is a voice that says,...

The solitary speaks.”One receives as a reward for much ennui , ill-humour and boredom, such as a solitude without friends, books, duties or passions must entail, one harvests those quarters of an hour of the...

I inhale loneliness like it is the sweet smell of virgin earth conquered by fiery rain drops. Within me, I’m a thousand others.

Sovereignty, loyalty, and solitude.

Now I no longer wish to be loved, beautiful, happy or successful. I want one thing and one thing only – to be left alone.

Holy solitude, Holy peace.

Though the most beautiful creature were waiting for me at the end of a journey or a walk; though the carpet were of silk, the curtains of the morning clouds; the chairs and sofa stuffed...

Life is an island in an ocean of solitude and seclusion.Life is an island, rocks are its desires, trees its dreams, and flowers its loneliness, and it is in the middle of an ocean of...

Solitude became, for me, an interesting mosaic of broken pieces, a place where the neglected parts of myself get collected—for better and for worse, sometimes barely tolerated and sometimes arranged into lovely patterns.

It did not occur to me that absence of human companionship does not assure solitude. It may, on the contrary, plunge one into an environment compared with which New York or London would appear deserts....

In good company your thoughts run, in solitude your thought is still; it goes deeper and makes for itself a deeper groove, delves. Delve meansa ‘dig with a spade’; it means hard work. In talk...

He had to hold his body very still, very still, like some vessel about to slosh over from too much motion. Gradually he managed to get control of his breathing. His excited heart beat more...

I love the dark hours of my being.My mind deepens into them.There I can find, as in old letters,the days of my life, already lived,and held like a legend, and understood.

Yes, in my life, since we must call it so, there were three things, the inability to speak, the inability to be silent, and solitude, that’s what I’ve had to make the best of.

But there remained a reflective solitude behind that laughter, that nagging sense of completion that didn’t sit well on the shoulders of a woman who had just begun to open her eyes to the wide...

Much better stay in company!To love you must have someone else,Giving requires a legatee,Good neighbours need whole parishfulsOf folk to do it on – in short,Our virtues are all social; if,Deprived of solitude, you chafe,It’s...

Solitude is a chosen separation for refining your soul. Isolation is what you crave when you neglect the first.

Solitude produces originality, bold and astonishing beauty, poetry. But solitude also produces perverseness, the disproportianate, the absurd and the forbidden.

The human spirit is not indestructible; but a courageous few discover that, when in hell, they are granted a glimpse of heaven.

Lonely is the world largely for those who have earned the wealth a lot or who have learned the truth a lot. The former never acknowledges it and the later never experiences it.

Often people request prayers for deliverance, inner healing, or physical healing. But more frequently they simply want a man or woman to whom they can turn–not because of what this person is able to do...

We are a most solitary people, and we live, repelled by one another, in the gray, outcast cities of Cain.

So they gave me love in form of poison and tiny little pills, programming my emotions, teaching me how to feel. To act correct and talk correct and answer without knowing the question, because that,...

C’est un grand jour, celui où l’on apprend qu’on est seul.

Tant que mes jambes me permettent de fuir, tant que mes bras me permettent de combattre, tant que l’expérience que j’ai du monde me permet de savoir ce que je peux craindre ou désirer, nulle...

Bien sûr on a des chagrins d’amour, mais on a surtout des chagrins de soi-même. Finalement la vie n’est qu’une affaire de solitude.

Here, in my solitude, I have the feeling that I contain too much humanity.

Company is a burden to those at home in the solitude of their souls.

Looking at the rain through my window,I can’t find an answer to this merciless solitude—The same solitude that sprouts from my eyes,A bittersweet tear which haunts me like a shadow.During evenings like this my life...

It’s solitary drinking that makes drunkards.

Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone, and the only one who seeks out another. His nature – if that word can be...

Allow the heart to empty itself of all turmoil! Retrieve the utter tranquility of the mind from which you issued.Although all forms are dynamic,and we all grow and transform,each of us is compelled to return...

From his corner office on the ground floor of the St. Cyril station house, Inspector Dick has a fine view of the parking lot. Six Dumpsters plated and hooped like iron maidens against bears. Beyond...

…I got to love solitude – to see the Moon rise and set – I had time to watch it trace the window square across the wall in silent grace…

Debemos reservarnos una trastienda del todo nuestra, del todo libre, donde fijar nuestra verdadera libertad y nuestro principal retiro y soledad. En ella debemos mantener nuestra habitual conversación con nosotros mismos, y tan privada que...

We are the puzzle pieces who seldom fit with other puzzle pieces. We inhabit singledom as our natural resting state…Secretly, we are romantics, romantics of the highest order. We want a miracle. Out of millions...

I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone enough

I should have written you a letter, it was too late to make the deaths of my brothers an excuse. Since they died, I wrote a book; why not a letter? A mysterious but truthful...

You could concentrate much more deeply when you were alone with agony.

We walk alone in the world.

Thus weary of the world, away she hies,And yokes her silver doves; by whose swift aidTheir mistress mounted through the empty skiesIn her light chariot quickly is convey’d;Holding their course to Paphos, where their queenMeans...

You don’t know what it means to be betrayed! Should I explain it to you? It means to be treated like trash and your feelings get stepped on…you get hurt over and over again and...

Solitude I seek. In solitude, I live.

I prize my downtime, count on it as a writer, a parent, a person. Sometimes I think of Woody Allen’s remark about masturbation, that it is sex with someone he loves. I feel as though...