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Solitude Quotes

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Solitude Quotes

“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and being alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You have to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes too near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself that you tasted as many as you could.”

LoveLossSolitudeLivingMeaningYearning
Book:The Painted Drum
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“First: breakdown, impossible to sleep, impossible to stay awake, impossible to endure life, or, more exactly, the course of life. The clocks are not in unison; the inner one runs crazily on at a devilish or demoniac or in any case inhuman pace, the outer one limps along at its usual speed. What else can happen but that the two worlds split apart, and they do split apart, or at least clash in a fearful manner. There are doubtless several reasons for the wild tempo of the inner process; the most obvious one is introspection, which will suffer no idea to sink tranquilly to rest but must pursue each one into consciousness, only itself to become an idea, in turn to be pursued by renewed introspection. Secondly: this pursuit, originating in the midst of men, carries one in a direction away from them. The solitude that for the most part has been forced on me, in part voluntarily sought by me –but what was this if not compulsion too? –is now losing all its ambiguity and approaches its dénouement. Where is it leading? The strongest likelihood is, that it may lead to madness; there is nothing more to say, the pursuit goes right through me and rends me asunder. Or I can –can I? –manage to keep my feet somewhat and be carried along in the wild pursuit. Where, then, shall I be brought? ‘Pursuit,’ indeed, is only a metaphor. I can also say, ‘assault on the last earthly frontier’, an assault, moreover, launched from below, from mankind, and since this too is a metaphor, I can replace it by the metaphor of an assault from above, aimed at me from above.”

SolitudeMadnessPursuitContradictionIntrospectionInsomniaBreakdownDiaryInner Conflict
Book:Diaries, 1910-1923
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“There is something in this January Siberian landscape that overpowers, oppresses, stuns. Above all, it is its enormity, its boundlessness, its oceanic limitlessness. The earth has no end here; the world has no end. Man is no created for such measureless. For him a comfortable, palpable, serviceable measure is the measure of his village, his field, street, house. At sea, the size of the ship's deck will be such a measure. Man is created for the kind of space that he can traverse at one try, with a single effort.”

PhilosophyHomeWisdomPoetryLiteratureHouseEffortComfortSolitudeRussiaMeasureTraverseSiberiaPolish LiteratureSiberian Hellhole
Book:Imperium
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“Therefore, dear Sir, love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. For those who are near you are far away... and this shows that the space around you is beginning to grow vast.... be happy about your growth, in which of course you can't take anyone with you, and be gentle with those who stay behind; be confident and calm in front of them and don't torment them with your doubts and don't frighten them with your faith or joy, which they wouldn't be able to comprehend. Seek out some simple and true feeling of what you have in common with them, which doesn't necessarily have to alter when you yourself change again and again; when you see them, love life in a form that is not your own and be indulgent toward those who are growing old, who are afraid of the aloneness that you trust.... and don't expect any understanding; but believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.”

LoveFaithRelationshipsChangeSolitudeLoved OnesAlonenessCommon Ground
Book:Letters to a Young Poet
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“We sat down to eat, right?” continued Gonzales. “And so... yeah, we sat down to eat and then we talked about chairs. Chairs! That drove our conversation gooooood. And none of us wanted to talk about it, but we smiled and made the best of it. Said a bunch of smart things about chairs—and French café chairs, and shopping for one, and sofas and her thoughts on the proper cushioning. And it was very engaging, but why didn’t any of us cut the crap and say, ‘I don’t care about chairs. I want to— I don’t know—roll around in the grass with you!’ We just spend the whole couple of hours able to grasp each other’s ideas and respond perfectly, but it’s so careful that we don’t get anywhere. I don’t know why that happens. We got love all up in our heads, man. We articulate who we are, but we don’t show people. She and I are just clever. There’s no chemistry in being clever. I mean, why interview on dates man? It’s not like anyone’s gonna tell the truth. Better to lay down with her, like cubs, really be with her, and see if we want to hold each other or not. But you can’t ask someone to do that, huh?” said Gonzales, defeated.”

LoveRomanceLonelinessSolitudeDatingBoredomConnectionCouplesConversationsOverthinking
Book:A Happy Ghost
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“Once a month, rain or shine, I bought a delightful meal, drank something delicious, and read my book at a restaurant in London, one hundred percent alone, whether I was seeing someone or not. It was the one time I didn't have to pretend to be anyone else, didn't have to do anything for anyone. Didn't have to go on a date with someone, fizzing with hope, only to find they were third-five and hadn't dealt with their childhood traumas, didn't know how to ask a question and listen to the answer, and still weren't wearing matching socks.”

SolitudeDatingUghMale Entitlement
Book:The Fixer Upper
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“Connections are difficult. There’s an irritation in being among people who’ve already found their connection, and finding that those left who haven’t are just as undesirable as the void they would be replacing. The numbing mind-ream of knowing you're alone not because people won't accept you but because you find so little worth accepting. An imposed solitude is better than simply tolerating your company in waiting for something better. So loneliness is not such a terrible thing when you consider that the alternative to thought provoking solace is to be surrounded only by reminders of why that solitude is preferable.”

InspirationalSolitudeTrue
Author:Jhonen Vásquez
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“He hadn't left any of the stretches that he'd done of me. But he did leave a sketch of my rocking chair. It was perfect. A rocking chair against the bare walls of my room. He'd captured the afternoon light streaming into the room, the way the shadows fell on the chair and gave it depth and made it appear as if it was something more than an inanimate object. There was something sad and solitary about the sketch and I wondered if that's the way he saw the world or if that's the way he saw my world. I starred at the sketch for a long time. It scared me. Because there was something true about it.”

SadSolitudeTrueSketch
Book:Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
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“The more we sit with our thoughts and really get to know ourselves, the more we understand our true calling and purpose in life. By sitting with ourselves in peace and quiet, we bring more peace into our lives and we give ourselves the space to process and heal from our emotions. The more we process our thoughts and heal, the more we can let go, forgive, leave the past, let the future be in the future and take solace in the present moment.”

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Author:Todd Perelmuter
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“In solitude, I learnt, my Heart has wings, Caged, held hostage by unvarying routine, Locked with treasure chest of my dreams, In this break, song of freedom it sings. Cage is broken, the chest now opens, The Heart has taken a giant leap, Carrying my dreams on its wings, Flies, flies, n it flies, the sky beckons. So strange are the ways of Thee, Didn't hear, when heart was with me, Now that it's flying, it's song so clear, Closed eyes, I follow, Pied Piper for me!”

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Author:Mukesh Kwatra
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“Family. That was the word that came to mind as Loulie took in the domestic scene. It gripped her heart like a vise, made it difficult to breathe. She had become accustomed to - preferred - living a solitary life, but it was easier to forget what she had lost in the cities, where the families were scattered and hidden. Sitting around this campfire, she could see the interconnectedness of the lives around her - and she could see herself sitting in the heart of the web, adrift.”

LoveLossFamilySolitudeConnectionForgetting
Book:The Stardust Thief
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“But for pain words are lacking. There should be cries, cracks, fissures, whiteness passing over chintz covers, interference with the sense of time, of space; the sense also of extreme fixity in passing objects; and sounds very remote and then very close; flesh being gashed and blood spurting, a joint suddenly twisted - beneath all of which appears something very important, yet remote, to be just held in solitude.”

PainSolitude
Book:The Waves
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“I have lost silence, and the regret I feel over that is immeasurable. I cannot describe the pain that invades a man once he has begun to speak. It is a motionless pain that is itself pledged to muteness; because of it, the unbreathable is the element I breathe. I have shut myself up in a room, alone, there is no one in the house, almost no one outside, but this solitude has itself begun to speak, and I must in turn speak about this speaking solitude, not in derision, but because a greater solitude hovers above it, and above that solitude, another still greater, and each, taking the spoken word in order to smother it and silence it, instead echoes it to infinity, and infinity becomes its echo.”

PainRegretSolitudeIsolation
Book:Death Sentence
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“It was a situation sincere hearts find themselves in of raw, dirty discomfort they cannot share. A day-to- day, on-the-ground, actual trouble of skin and reality—like flat tires, psychotic parents, immobilized brothers—a pain that the restless world would have no patience for and so was kept secret in the shadows of tragedy along with lost people, lost things, and real life.”

LifePainFriendshipHealingSocietyLonelinessSolitudeEmpathyTraumaPrivacy
Book:A Happy Ghost
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“So through endless twilights I dreamed and waited, though I knew not what I waited for. Then in the shadowy solitude my longing for light grew so frantic that I could rest no more, and I lifted entreating hands to the single black ruined tower that reached above the forest into the unknown outer sky. And at last I resolved to scale that tower, fall through I might; since it were better to glimpse the sky and perish, than to live without even beholding day.”

DreamLightWaitingSkySolitudeLongingForestUnknownTower
Book:The Outsider
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“Writing is my greatest adventure as it takes me deep into the psychology of the self, the dark woods containing entombed skeleton of a former self, and the secrets of a future self. Until I demystify all aspects of being, I will be forevermore chasing an enigmatic persona, and living with an unholy pack of insecurities, self-doubts, and unchecked skepticism and pessimism. Until I discover how to preserve the independence of solitude, I will always doubt myself and live an anxious and worrisome life.”

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Book:Dead Toad Scrolls
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“Out of town I could simply be, I could feel my self, firm and calm and unmalleable as I could not when I was in school or in any of the usual human communities that seemed to weaken or scatter me. I could sit for an hour in the rocks above the Knife River, asking for no more discourse than that water’s monotonous gabble. I was an inward child, it was true, but beyond that, I felt a contentment outside human society that I couldn’t feel within it.”

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Book:Montana 1948
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“Solitude is never where you are; it is always where you are not, and is only possible with a stranger present; whatever the place or whoever the person, it must be one that is wholly ignorant concerning you, and concerning which or whom you are equally ignorant, so that will and sensation remain suspended and confused in an anxious uncertainty, while with the ceasing of all affirmation on your part, your own inner consciousness ceases at the same time. True solitude is to be found in a place that lives a life of its own, but which for you holds no familiar footprint, speaks in no known voice, and where accordingly the stranger is yourself.”

LifeSelfSolitudeLonelyStrangerUncertainty
Book:One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand
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