Settle yourself in solitude, and you will come upon God in yourself.

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. We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes.

You can't truly rest until every area in your life rests in God.

Into the void of silence, into the empty space of nothing, the joy of life is unfurled.

Only in quietness do we possess our own minds and discover the resources of the Inner Life.

Far from the world I walk, and from all care.

But I didn't call to him, for he gave a sudden intimation that he was content to be alone - he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling.

Strength comes from solitude, a waiting, a communion with the best in us, which is at one with the divine spark.

I live a very secluded life, a very contemplative life and a very meditative one. That is my ideal life.

Before you worry about the world, son, you should be sure your own soul is secure in God.

As much as we complain about it, though, there's part of us that is drawn to a hurried life. It makes us feel important. It keeps the adrenaline pumping. It means I don't have to look too closely at my heart or life. It keeps us from feeling our loneliness.

Let God leave us! Let us grow up. Let us walk forward on our own. Because we need the silence of the holy: we need the sacred and equally we need its maddening silence. And in the curious privacy and relief of that silence we can go out into the chaos and commit a thousand acts of minor and gleeful splendor all our own. If it's our tragedy to be left by God, then let it also be our luck.