Quotes about Solitude

In and through solitude we do not move away from people. On the contrary, we move closer to them through compassionate ministry.

In solitude we become aware that our worth is not the same as our usefulness." - Out of Solitude

Solitude is the furnace in which transformation takes place.

In solitude we can come to the realization that we are not driven together but brought together. In solitude we come to know our fellow human beings not as partners who can satisfy our deepest needs, but as brothers and sisters with whom we are called to give visibility to God's all-embracing love. In solitude we discover that community is not a common ideology, but a response to a common call. In solitude we indeed realize that community is not made but given.

As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.

It is not that we love to be alone, but that we love to soar, and when we do soar, the company grows thinner and thinner until there is none at all. …We are not the less to aim at the summits though the multitude does not ascend them.

Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already.

I put a piece of paper under my pillow, and when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.

Give me a wildness whose glance no civilization can endure

The walking of which I speak has nothing in it akin to taking exercise, as it is called, as the sick take medicine at stated hours …but it is itself the enterprise and adventure of the day.

To be alone was something unpleasant. But I was at the same time conscious of a slight insanity in my mood, and seemed to foresee my recovery.

Silence is the communing of a conscious soul with itself.