solitude

Nature is shy and noncommittal in a crowd. To learn her secrets, visit her alone or with a single friend, at most. Everything evades you, everything hides, even your thoughts escape you, when you walk in a crowd.

He was alone with his thoughts. They were extremely unpleasant thoughts and he would rather have had a chaperon.

Benj had once said, "A man must have a care to what he puts in his mind, for when he's alone on a hillside and draws it out he'll want treasures to be his company, not regrets.

Moments spent alone make us realize the value of our own thoughts. Value your solitude.

A man can stand a lot as long as he can stand himself. He can live without hope, without friends, without books, even without music, as long as he can listen to his own thoughts.

The scholar only knows how dear these silent, yet eloquent, companions of pure thoughts and innocent hours become in the season of adversity. When all that is worldly turns to dross around us, these only retain their steady value.

Drifting across the vast space, silent except for wind and footsteps, I felt uncluttered and unhurried for the first time in a while, already on desert time.

Karen, her elbows folded on the deck-rail, wanted to share with someone the pleasure in being alone: this is the paradox of any happy solitude. She had never landed at Cork, so this hill and that hill beyond were as unexpected as pictures at which you say "Oh look!" Nobody was beside her to share the moment, which would have been imperfect with anyone else there.

I think one travels more usefully when they travel alone, because they reflect

To you, whoever you are, when I am gone _ remember to be kind tonight to some lonely person. For me.

Solitude is the furnace of transformation. Without solitude we remain victims of our society and continue to be entangled in the illusions of the false self. Jesus himself entered into this furnace. There he was tempted with the three compulsions of the world: to be relevant ('turn stones into loaves'), to be spectacular ('throw yourself down'), and to be powerful ('I will give you all these kingdoms'). There he affirmed God as the only source of his identity ('You must worship the Lord your God and serve him alone'). Solitude is the place of the great struggle and the great encounter - the struggle against the compulsions of the false self, and the encounter with the loving God who offers himself as the substance of the new self.

Tea is just an excuse.i am drinking this sunset, this evening.and you.

It may be that I link every library to that first one - to my early childhood experience of drawing on the floor near my father's desk. A library is of course a real place, but it is also an unreal one. What happens there is mostly silent. I think I've always liked the whispering aspect of libraries, the hushing librarians and my feeling of solitude among many.

Solitude, a time for memories, a time to dream, a time for passions to simmer quietly in the dark recesses of the mind, eager to fly yet merely reflections in the minds eye...

If you make friends with yourself, you'll never be alone.

Lonely was much better than alone.

We are given these niches, small worlds of our own populated by only a handful, where we feel understood. Our bubble worlds bump into innumerable others daily, but there is so little cause to allow their integrity to be breached.

Wherever you go in the next catastrophéBe it sickroom, or prison, or cemet__yDo not fear that your stay will besolit__yCountless souls share your fate,you__l have company!