#solitude

Living alone,' November whispered, 'is a skill, like running long distance or programming old computers. You have to know parameters, protocols. You have to learn them so well that they become like a language: to have music always so that the silence doesn't overwhelm you, to perform your work exquisitely well so that your time is filled. You have to allow yourself to open up until you are the exact size of the place you live, no more or else you get restless. No less, or else you drown. There are rules; there are ways of being and not being. ↗

— Catherynne M. Valente

#music

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

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

I have often wished in vain,' said she, 'for another's judgment to appeal to when I could scarcely trust the direction of my own eye and head, they having been so long occupied with the contemplation of a single object as to become almost incapable of forming a proper idea respecting it.' 'That,' replied I, 'is only one of many evils to which a solitary life exposes us. ↗

— Anne Brontë

#judgment #solitude #vain-hopes #respect

Many people suffer from the fear of finding oneself alone, and so they don't find themselves at all. ↗

— Rollo May

#solitude #introspection

Solitude was my only consolation - deep, dark, deathlike solitude. ↗

— Mary Shelley

#mood #solitude #solitude

I have an immense appetite for solitude, like an infant for sleep, and if I don't get enough for this year, I shall cry all the next. ↗

— Henry David Thoreau

#solitude

You see, the point is that the strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone. ↗