#solitude

I like being on my own better than I like anything else, but I can't give up love. Maybe it's the tension between longing and aloneness that I need. My own funicular railway, holding in balance the two things most likely to destroy me. ↗

— Jeanette Winterson

#longing #love #solitude #love

Never forget that solitude is my lot ... I implore those who love me to love my solitude." (Letter to Mimi Romanelli, May 11, 1910) ↗

— Rainer Maria Rilke

#love

I paused to listen to the silence. My breath, crystallized as it passed my cheeks, drifted on a breeze gentler than a whisper. The wind vane pointed toward the South Pole. Presently the wind cups ceased their gentle turning as the cold killed the breeze. My frozen breath hung like a cloud overhead. The day was dying, the night being born — but with great peace. Here were the imponderable processes and forces of the cosmos, harmonious and soundless. Harmony, that was it! That was what came out of the silence — a gentle rhythm, the strain of a perfect chord, the music of the spheres, perhaps. It was enough to catch that rhythm, momentarily to be myself a part of it. In that instant I could feel no doubt of man's oneness with the universe. The conviction came that the rhythm was too orderly, too harmonious, too perfect to be a product of blind chance — that, therefore, there must be purpose in the whole and that man was part of that whole and not an accidental offshoot. It was a feeling that transcended reason; that went to the heart of man's despair and found it groundless. The universe was a cosmos, not a chaos; man was rightfully a part of that cosmos as were the day and night. ↗

— Richard Evelyn Byrd

#peace #solitude #music

How much better is silence; the coffee cup, the table. How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake. Let me sit here for ever with bare things, this coffee cup, this knife, this fork, things in themselves, myself being myself. ↗

— Virginia Woolf

#silence #solitude #coffee

Part of me remained forever at Latitude 80 degrees 08 minutes South: what survived of my youth, my vanity, perhaps, and certainly my skepticism. On the other hand, I did take away something that I had not fully possessed before: appreciation of the sheer beauty and miracle of being alive, and a humble set of values. All this happened four years ago. Civilization has not altered my ideas. I live more simply now, and with more peace. ↗

— Admiral Richard E. Byrd

#peace #solitude #beauty

People who do a job that claims to be creative have to be alone to recharge their batteries. You can’t live 24 hours a day in the spotlight and remain creative. For people like me, solitude is a victory. ↗

— Karl Lagerfeld

#charge #creativity #designer #energy #fame

Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life. ↗

— Fernando Pessoa

#reading #solitude #life

Orlando naturally loved solitary places, vast views, and to feel himself for ever and ever and ever alone. ↗

— Virginia Woolf

#love

...I got to love solitude - to see the Moon rise and set - I had time to watch it trace the window square across the wall in silent grace... ↗

— John Geddes

#moon #solitude #love

You read and write and sing and experience, thinking that one day these things will build the character you admire to live as. You love and lose and bleed best you can, to the extreme, hoping that one day the world will read you like the poem you want to be. ↗

— Charlotte Eriksson

#changing #growing-up #growth #journey #leaving