#solitude

Solitude is better than the society of evil persons. ↗

— Abu Bakr

#evil #persons #society #solitude #than

Writing is sweat and drudgery most of the time. And you have to love it in order to endure the solitude and the discipline. ↗

— Peter Benchley

#drudgery #endure #love #most #order

I never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude. ↗

— Henry David Thoreau

#companionable #found #i #never #solitude

I'm pretty social so it's hard for me to find solitude, but I need to have solitude to write. ↗

— Catie Curtis

#hard #i #me #need #pretty

In any love-story there are usually two stages or phases. There is the initial stage, where love is expressed by the giving of gifts, especially the gift of self. Then there comes a time when it is no longer enough to give gifts to the beloved, but one has to be ready to suffer for her or for him. Only then can it be seen whether the love is real. In the story of a vocation to consecrated virginity there are also usually two stages. There is the initial stage of the vocation, when, spurred on by grace and attracted by the ideal, one joyfully and enthusiastically says, "Yes, Lord, here I am!" Then comes the time of solitude of heart, of weariness, of crisis, when, in order to maintain that "Yes," one has to die ↗

— Raniero Cantalamessa

#solitude #vocation #love

Much better stay in company! To love you must have someone else, Giving requires a legatee, Good neighbours need whole parishfuls Of folk to do it on - in short, Our virtues are all social; if, Deprived of solitude, you chafe, It's clear you're not the virtuous sort. ↗

— Philip Larkin

#society #solitude #virtue #love

In a cool solitude of trees Where leaves and birds a music spin, Mind that was weary is at ease, New rhythms in the soul begin. ↗

— William Kean Seymour

#solitude #trees #weariness #music

His act was rather that of a harmless lunatic than an enemy. We were not so new to the country as not to know that the solitary life of many a plainsman had a tendency to develop eccentricities of conduct and character not always easily distinguishable from mental aberration. A man is like a tree: in a forest of his fellows he will grow as straight as his generic and individual nature permits; alone, in the open, he yields to the deforming stresses and tortions that environ him. ↗

— Ambrose Bierce

#crazy #loneliness #society #solitude #nature

I knew that on that island one was driven back into the past. There was so much space, so much silence, so few meetings that one too easily saw out of the present, and then the past seemed ten times closer than it was. ↗

— John Fowles

#nature #past #solitude #nature

Why are we such tortured human beings, with tears in our eyes and false laughter on our lips? If you could walk alone among those hills or in the woods or along the long, white, bleached sands, in that solitude you would know what meditation is. The ecstasy of solitude comes when you are not frightened to be alone no longer belonging to the world or attached to anything. Then, like that dawn that came up this morning, it comes silently, and makes a golden path in the very stillness, which was at the beginning, which is now, and which will be always there. ↗

— Jiddu Krishnamurti

#nature #solitude #nature