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All Solitude Hermit Introspection Self Isolation Solitude As A Choice Darkness Food Food Poverty Freedom Happiness

Famous Neil Ansell Quotes

“Happiness is a full larder.”

Happiness Poverty Food Food Poverty

Book:Deep Country: Five Years in the Welsh Hills

Source: Deep Country: Five Years in the Welsh Hills

“Solitude embraced is the opposite of loneliness”

Loneliness Solitude Solitude Quotes

Book:Deep Country: Five Years in the Welsh Hills

Source: Deep Country: Five Years in the Welsh Hills

“Imagine being given the opportunity to take time out of your life, for five whole years. Free of social obligations, free of work commitments. Think how well you would get to know yourself, all that time to consider your past and the choices you had made, to focus on your personal development, to know yourself through and through, to work out your goals in life, your true ambitions. None of this happened, not to me. Perhaps for someone else it would have been different. Any insight I have gained has been the result of later reflection. Solitude did not breed introspection, quite the reverse. My days were spent outside, immersed in nature, watching.”

Solitude Self Knowledge Introspection Solitude As A Choice Self Isolation

Book:Deep Country: Five Years in the Welsh Hills

Source: Deep Country: Five Years in the Welsh Hills

“The great gift of solitude is that although you might think that it provokes introspection, actually the very opposite is true - you can lose all sense of self.”

Book:The Last Wilderness, A Journey into Silence

Source: The Last Wilderness, A Journey into Silence

“The silence outside was reflected by a growing silence within. Any interior monologue quietened to a whisper, then faded away entirely.”

Introspection Solitude As A Choice Hermit Self Isolation

Book:Deep Country: Five Years in the Welsh Hills

Source: Deep Country: Five Years in the Welsh Hills

“One late-autumn day I opened the back door to fetch some water, and there was a young hare sat on my back step. Save for the twitching of its nose, it froze in position as if I had surprised it as it was about to knock. It was already the size of a full-grown rabbit, and its black-tipped ears were longer than any rabbit’s would ever be. I stood there and waited for it to flush. After a while I began to doubt that it would, and squatted down to its level for a closer look, eye to eye. It stared at me apparently unconcerned, chewing silently, with bulging eyes that were such a rich golden colour they were almost orange, with black depths like the keyhole of a door to another world.”

Book:Deep Country: Five Years in the Welsh Hills

Source: Deep Country: Five Years in the Welsh Hills

“This was the pattern of my days, a simple life led by natural rhythms rather than the requirements and expectations of others.”

Freedom Simplicity Natural World Simple Life Simple Living Hermit No Expectation

Book:Deep Country: Five Years in the Welsh Hills

Source: Deep Country: Five Years in the Welsh Hills

“Winters here are hard. It is not so much the cold as the long nights, and I tended to sleep early and wake with first light to minimize the hours spent sitting in the darkness in forced immobility, idly tending the fire.”

Darkness Winter Wales Long Nights Immobility

Book:Deep Country: Five Years in the Welsh Hills

Source: Deep Country: Five Years in the Welsh Hills