#Solitude

"being alone never felt right. sometimes it felt good, but it never felt right."

"Divide the constant tide and random noisiness of energetic flow, with conscious recurring moments of empty mind, solitude, gratitude and deep...slow...breathing. Of this, the natural law of self-preservation demands."

"There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,There is a rapture on the lonely shore,There is society, where none intrudes,By the deep sea, and music in its roar:I love not man the less, but Nature more"

"Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life."

"The range of human knowledge today is so great that we're all specialists and the distance between specializations has become so great that anyone who seeks to wander freely between them almost has to forego closeness with the people around him."

"I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself."

"Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you."

"I am a free soul, singing my heart out by myself no matter where I go and I call strangers my friends because I learn things and find ways to fit them into my own world. I hear what people say, rearrange it, take away and tear apart until it finds value in my reality and there I make it work. I find spaces in between the cracks and cuts where it feels empty and there I make it work."

"Silent solitude makes true speech possible and personal. If I am not in touch with my own belovedness, then I cannot touch the sacredness of others. If I am estranged from myself, I am likewise a stranger to others."

"If you're lonely when you're alone, you're in bad company."

"A pine tree standeth lonelyIn the North on an upland bare;It standeth whitely shroudedWith snow, and sleepeth there.It dreameth of a Palm treeWhich far in the East alone,In the mournful silence standethOn its ridge of burning stone."

"Solitude is fine but you need someone to tell that solitude is fine."

"For those who know the value of and exquisite taste of solitary freedom (for one is only free when alone), the act of leaving is the bravest and most beautiful of all."

"From that time on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again, never miss the lack of intimate friends. Books became her friends and there was one for every mood."

"We wrote verses that condemned us, with no hope of pardon, to the most bitter solitude."

"He walked on in silence, the solitary sound of his footsteps echoing in his head, as in a deserted street, at dawn. His solitude was so complete, beneath a lovely sky as mellow and serene as a good conscience, amid that busy throng, that he was amazed at his own existence; he must be somebody else's nightmare, and whoever it was would certainly awaken soon."

"Friendship needs no words - it is solitude delivered from the anguish of loneliness."

"When from our better selves we have too longBeen parted by the hurrying world, and droop,Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired,How gracious, how benign, is Solitude"

"Not that she objected to solitude. Quite the contrary. She had books, thank Heaven, quantities of books. All sorts of books."

"I’ll read my books and I’ll drink coffee and I’ll listen to music, and I’ll bolt the door."( A Boy in France : Saturday Evening Post CCXVII, March 31, 1945)"