"Pray that your loneliness may spur you into finding something to live for, great enough to die for."
~Dag Hammarskjold"Language..has created the word "loneliness" to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word "solitude" to express the glory of being alone. "
~Paul Tillich
"People drain me, even the closest of friends, and I find loneliness to be the best state in the union to live in."
~Margaret Cho
"Solitude: a sweet absence of looks."
~Milan Kundera
"When you close your doors, and make darkness within, remember never to say that you are alone, for you are not alone; nay, God is within, and your genius is within. And what need have they of light to see what you are doing?"
~Epictetus
"A man in a bookstore buys a book on loneliness and every woman in the store hits on him. A woman buys a book on loneliness and the store clears out."
~Doug Coupland
~Steven Berkoff
"Solitude is a condition of peace that stands in direct opposition to loneliness. Loneliness is like sitting in an empty room and being aware of the space around you. It is a condition of separateness. Solitude is becoming one with the space around you. It is a condition of union. loneliness is small, solitude is large. loneliness closes in around you; solitude expands toward the infinite. loneliness has its roots in words, in an internal conversation that nodbody answers; solitude has it's roots in the great silence of eternity."
~Kent Nerburn
"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
“The Internet is for lonely people. People should live.”
― Charlton Heston
Loneliness has followed me my whole life. Everywhere. In bars, in cars, sidewalks, stores, everywhere. There's no escape. I'm God's lonely man...
~ Travis Bickle, Taxi Driver
In cities no one is quiet but many are lonely; in the country, people are quiet but few are lonely.
`Geoffrey F. Fisher
Loneliness is the human condition. Cultivate it. The way it tunnels into you allows your soul room to grow.
-Janet Fitch
Be able to be alone. Lose not the advantage of solitude.
~Sir Thomas Browne
When we cannot bear to be alone, it means we do not properly value
the only companion we will have from birth to death--ourselves.
~Eda LeShan
We visit others as a matter of social obligation.
How long has it been since we have visited with ourselves?
~Morris Adler
who travels with another must wait until the other is ready.
~Henry David Thoreau
The cure for all the illness of life is stored in the inner depth of life itself,
the access to which becomes possible when we are alone.This solitude is a world in itself, full of wonders and resources
unthought of. It is absurdly near; yet so unapproachably distant.
Deliberately seeking solitude--quality time spent away
from family and friends--may seem selfish. It is not.
Solitude is as necessary for our creative spirits to develop
and flourish as are sleep and food for our bodies to survive.
~Sarah Ban Breathnach
I remember my grandfather telling me how each of us must live
with a full measure of loneliness that is inescapable, and we must not
destroy ourselves with our passion to escape this aloneness.
~Jim Harrison
Wise people are never less alone than when they are alone.
~Jonathan Swift
We can cultivate an inner solitude and silence that sets us free
from loneliness and fear. Loneliness is inner emptiness. Solitude
is inner fulfillment. Solitude is not first a place but a state of mind
and heart. There is a solitude of heart that can be maintained at
all times. Crowds or the lack of them have little to do with this inward
attentiveness. It is quite possible to be a desert hermit and never experience
solitude. But if we possess inward solitude we will not fear being alone, for
we know that we are not alone. Neither do we fear being with others, for they
do not control us. In the midst of noise and confusion
we are settled into a deep inner silence.
~Teresa of Avila
I think lonely or being alone teaches us to be brave and rely on ourselves. Sometimes we might be surprised to see what we're capable of when we're all alone.
ReplyDeleteAida,
ReplyDeleteThat was soo true..being alone will discover our trueself evenmore and find our strenght on the way thru it
There's a distinction between being alone and loneliness, the two are quite different. Another related quotation by Browne though more esoterically inclined - 'There is no man alone, because every man is a Microcosm, and carries the whole world about him'- from Religio Medici (1643)
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