Solitude Quotes
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First and foremost, the monk should own nothing in this world, but he should have as his possessions solitude of the body, modesty of bearing, a modulated tone of voice, and a well-ordered manner of speech. He should be without anxiety as to his food and drink, and should eat in silence.
Saint Basil
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The world is full of noise. Might we not set ourselves to learn silence, stillness solitude?
Elisabeth Elliot
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A perfect life is like that of a ship of war which has its own place in the fleet and can share in its strength and discipline, but can also go forth alone in the solitude of the infinite sea. We ought to belong to society, to have our place in it, and yet be capable of a complete individual existence outside of it.
Philip Gilbert Hamerton
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I feel most real when alone, even most alive when alone. Better to say that the liveliness of companionship and the liveliness of solitude differ, and the latter is never as exhausting as the former.
Florida Scott-Maxwell
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Solitude is creativity's best friend, and solitude is refreshment for our souls.
Naomi Judd
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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
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Man is alone everywhere. But the solitude of the Mexican, under the great stone night of the high plateau that is still inhabited by insatiable gods, is very different from that of the North American, who wanders in an abstract world of machines, fellow citizens and moral precepts.
Octavio Paz
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My music is very personal. I've created it in solitude. I face a white wall and beller. I like that sound - the expression of loneliness. That's what it's all about.
Dwight Yoakam
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'One Hundred Years of Solitude' is a masterpiece because it is an episodic novel that has a rigorous form - an unprecedented combination. From the very beginning we know the town of Macondo will endure only a century, so there is a limit to the length of the narrative.
Edmund White
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Had Kala lived, Tarzan would have sacrificed all else to remain near her, but now that she was dead, and the playful friends of his childhood grown into fierce and surly brutes he felt that he much preferred the peace and solitude of his cabin to the irksome duties of leadership amongst a horde of wild beasts.
Edgar Rice Burroughs
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The writing gets done away from the keyboard and away from the studio in my head, in solitude. And then I come in and hopefully have something, then I wrestle with sounds and picture all day long. But the ideas usually come from a more obscure place, like a conversation with a director, a still somebody shows you, or whatever.
Hans Zimmer
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Retire at various times into the solitude of your own heart, even while outwardly engaged in discussions or transactions with others, and talk to God.
Saint Francis de Sales
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Jack? . . . No, there is very little music in the name Jack, if any at all, indeed. It does not thrill. It produces absolutely no vibrations . . . I have known several Jacks, and they all, without exception, were more than usually plain. Besides, Jack is a notorious domesticity for John! And I pity any woman who is married to a man called John. She would probably never be allowed to know the entrancing pleasure of a single moment’s solitude. The only really safe name is Ernest.
Oscar Wilde
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That inward eye/ Which is the bliss of solitude.
William Wordsworth
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Often, marriage was solitude, with company.
Deb Caletti
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I gang my own gait and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties I have never lost an obstinate sense of detachment, of the need for solitude - a feeling which increases with the years.
Albert Einstein
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I have been trying, for some time now, to find dignity in my loneliness. I have been finding this hard to do. It is easier, of course, to find dignity in one's solitude. Loneliness is solitude with a problem.
Maggie Nelson
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Although I've made notes for things and even written synopses sitting in trains or on park benches, for the complete composition of things I need absolute solitude, preferably an empty house.
James Salter
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Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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She closed her eyes. And while her intellect wouldn’t let her realize her deepest fear, that all this might soon be gone forever, nevertheless she stood there for a time and worshipped the only way a person like her could worship-in silence and solitude, under the temple of the sky.
David Brin
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Only a great genius like the Victorian novelist Elizabeth Gaskell can be mother, wife and novelist without solitude. I couldn't write until my youngest child went to school, and then I began - the first morning - and I've never stopped.
Jane Gardam
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The Great Man... is colder, harder, less hesitating, and without fear of 'opinion'; he lacks the virtues that accompany respect and 'respectability,' and altogether everything that is the 'virtue of the herd.' If he cannot lead, he goes alone... He knows he is incommunicable: he finds it tasteless to be familiar... When not speaking to himself, he wears a mask. There is a solitude within him that is inaccessible to praise or blame.
Friedrich Nietzsche
