Quotes & Sayings About Solitary

Writing is the most solitary of arts. — Joyce Carol Oates

The Taj Mahal rises above the banks of the river like a solitary tear suspended on the cheek of time. — Rabindranath Tagore

Some minds seem almost to create themselves, springing up under every disadvantage and working their solitary but irresistible way through a thousand obstacles. — Washington Irving

A lonely soul is the best friend of itself — Munia Khan

Do I dare disturb the universe?
Yes, I do, I do. I think.
Jerry suddenly understood the poster
the solitary man on the beach standing upright and alone and unafraid, poised at the moment of making himself heard and known in the world, the universe. — Robert Cormier

Come with me, come with me
I'll revisit the solitary mosque near hill brook,
Where men are scarce, come let's see,
I'll hold your hands as I took
The hands of my shiver strains,
Of poignant losses, of miniscule gains,
Come with me across these marsh mellows
Dividing our men into doves and scarecrows!
Come sit with the longing in these abandoned rows
where the frozen eyes burn renunciation stoves,
Let's visit the solitary mosque near hill brook; — Ashfaq Saraf

God sees everything at once and knows what you are called to do. Our part is not to play God, but to trust God - to believe that our single, solitary life can make a difference — Zig Ziglar

Mental prayer is, as I see it, simply a friendly intercourse and frequent solitary conversation with Him who, as we know, loves us. — Teresa Of Avila

Then she revived him with an ardor and skill he could not have imagined in the meager pleasures of his solitary lovemaking, and without glory deprived him of his virginity. He was fifty-two years old and she was twenty-three, but age was the least pernicious of the differences between them. They continued to make hurried, heartless siesta love in the evangelical shade of the orange trees. The madwomen encouraged them from the terraces with indecent songs, and celebrated their triumphs with stadium ovations. Before the Marquis was aware of the dangers that pursued him, Bernarda woke him from his stupor with the news that she was in the second month of pregnancy. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

This was what is was to be alone. No wonder solitary confinement was considered such a severe punishment. Being locked away from everyone you loved was infinitely cruel. Still, solitary would only work perfectly if you first stripped the prisoner of his hopes and dreams. There must be no future on which to focus. — Sara Steger

To me the Universe was all void of Life, of Purpose, of Volition, even of Hostility; it was one huge, dead, immeasurable Steam-engine, rolling on, in its dead indifference, to grind me limb from limb. Oh vast gloomy, solitary Golgotha, and Mill of Death! Why was the living banished thither companionless, conscious? Why, if there is no Devil; nay, unless the Devil is your God? — Thomas Carlyle

The city had laid miles and miles of streets and sewers through regions where perhaps one solitary house stood out alone, — Erik Larson

Let's just enjoy it for ourselves. Dawn is such a private hour, don't you think? Such a solitary hour. One always hears that said of midnight, but I think of midnight as remarkably companionable - everyone together, sleeping in the dark.'
'I am afraid I am interrupting your solitude,' Anna said.
'No, no,' the boy said. 'Oh, no. Solitude is best enjoyed in company.' He grinned at her, quickly, and Anna smiled back. 'Especially the company of one other soul,' he added, turning back to the sea. 'It's dreadful to feel alone and really be alone. But I love to enjoy the feeling when I'm not. — Eleanor Catton

External objects produce decided effects upon the brain. A man shut up between four walls soon loses the power to associate words and ideas together. How many prisoners in solitary confinement become idiots, if not mad, for want of exercise for the thinking faculty! — Jules Verne

Writing begins as a solitary obsession and ends up as communication. — Marty Rubin

But the artist began to have misgivings as the wall underwent its transformation. Bigger than any pavement project he had yet undertaken, it made him restless. Over the years, a precise cycle had entered the rhythm of his life, the cycle of arrival, creation, and obliteration. Like sleeping, waking and stretching, or eating, digesting and excreting, the cycle sang in harmony with the blood in his veins and the breath in his lungs. He learned to disdain the overlong sojourn and the procrastinated departure, for they were the progenitors of complacent routine, to be shunned at all costs. The journey
chanced, unplanned, solitary
was the thing to relish.
Now, however, his old way of life was being threatened. The agreeable neighborhood and the solidity of the long, black wall were reawakening in him the usual sources of human sorrow: a yearning for permanence, for roots, for something he could call his own ... — Rohinton Mistry

Dying is a very solitary thing. The only thing we can do it be there when she wants us there. — Lois Lowry

Our libraries are so to speak prisons where we've locked up our intellectual giants, naturally Kant has been put in solitary confinement, like Nietzsche, like Schopenhauer, like Pascal, like Voltaire, like Montaigne, all the real giants have been put in solitary confinement, all the others in mass confinement, but everyone for ever and ever, my friend, for all time and unto eternity, that's the truth. — Thomas Bernhard

Maybe there is a single spot, just one, where living organisms are holed up. Maybe so, but if so this would be the strangest thing of all, absolutely incomprehensible. For we are not familiar with this kind of living. We do not have solitary, isolated creatures. It is beyond our imagination to conceive of a single form of life that exists alone and independent, unattached to other forms — Lewis Thomas

Bradley Manning has been imprisoned without charge, under torture, which is what solitary confinement is. — Noam Chomsky

He was ready, perhaps, to shed a little of the armor he wore around his heart, that upon returning to civilization, he intended to abandon the life of a solitary vagabond, stop running so hard from intimacy, and become a member of the human community. — Jon Krakauer

We are all sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life. — Tennessee Williams

Lots of creativity is and should be solitary. — Geoff Mulgan

It was a lone tree burning on the desert. A heraldic tree that the passing storm had left afire. The solitary pilgrim drawn up before it had traveled far to be here and he knelt in the hot sand and held his numbed hands out while all about in that circle attended companies of lesser auxiliaries routed forth into the inordinate day, small owls that crouched silently and stood from foot to foot and tarantulas and solpugas and vinegarroons and the vicious mygale spiders and beaded lizards with mouths black as a chowdog's, deadly to man, and the little desert basilisks that jet blood from their eyes and the small sandvipers like seemly gods, silent and the same, in Jeda, in Babylon. A constellation of ignited eyes that edged the ring of light all bound in a precarious truce before this torch whose brightness had set back the stars in their sockets. — Cormac McCarthy

When I sing, it's the most solitary state: just me, and the microphone, and the holy spirit. It's not about notes or scales, it's all about emotion. — Sinead O'Connor

Decomposition, for most, starts when they leave the free, social, and uncorrupted college life for the solitary confinement of professions and nuclear families. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

It was a fossilized path: the will which had cut this gash out of these solitary places so that the blood and sap would flow there was long since dead - and dead too were the circumstances which had guided this will. A whitish and indurated scar remained, gradually gnawed away by the earth like a flesh that heals itself, yet its direction was still vaguely cut into the horizon; a language and crepuscular sign rather than a way forward - a worn-out lifeline which still vegetated through the fallow land as it does on the palm of a hand. It was so old that, since it had been constructed, the very configuration of the land must have changed imperceptibly. — Julien Gracq

Every one must have some solitary spot where he can be alone with his God. — Andrew Murray

Writing is a solitary profession; you are really alone when you write. Then the emotions become well shaped and distinct. But their transition into words must be done deliberately and with rigid artistry. — F. Sionil Jose

Physical development was alleged to assist spiritual and intellectual development, while also helping safeguard boys from the 'solitary and sexual sin' of masturbation. — Martin Crotty

Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. — Charles Dickens

Ain't but three things in this world worth a solitary dime/
But old dogs, children, and watermelon wine — Tom T. Hall

Lonely as God, and white as a winter moon, Mount Shasta starts up sudden and solitary from the heart of the great black forests of Northern California — Joaquin Miller

The painter must be solitary. For if you are alone you are completely yourself, but if you are accompanied by a single companion, you are only half yourself. — Leonardo Da Vinci

By self-interest, Man has become gregarious, but in instinct he has remained to a great extent solitary; hence the need of religion and morality to reinforce self-interest. — Bertrand Russell

[He] would drive his sculling boat through mile after mile, in a silent brutal programe of conditioning - he would work all alone, at first light, punishing himself without mercy. His was the private dignity of the lone athlete, with a grim purpose, fighting a solitary war with himself, toward a goal only he can see. — Daniel Topolski

On St. Patrick's Day, the traditional Irish family would rise early and find a solitary sprig of shamrock to put on their somber Sunday best. Then they'd spend the morning in church listening to sermons about how thankful they should be that St. Patrick saved such a bunch of ungrateful sinners. Nobody wore green clothing as it was considered an unlucky color not suitable for church. — Rashers Tierney

St. Triduana devoted herself to God in a solitary life at Rescobie in Angus (now Forfarshire). While dwelling there, a prince of the country having conceived an unlawful passion for her is said to have pursued her with his unwelcome attentions. To rid herself of his importunities, as a legend relates, Triduana bravely plucked out her beautiful eyes, her chief attraction, and sent them to her admirer. Her heroism, it is said, procured for her the power of curing diseases of the eyes. — Michael Barrett

I had always been a solitary person. Therefore I had a habit of opening my heart to a piece of paper. I thought that was quite secure. I knew that those words would never go out there, except of course if someone read them. — Pet Torres

Writing is a solitary occupation. — Bernard Cornwell

In the last stage of the spiritual master's life, the devotees of the spiritual master should take preaching activities into their own hands. In this way the spiritual master can sit down in a solitary place and render nirjana-bhajana. — A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

A great many wise sayings have been uttered about the effects of solitary retirement; but the motives which impel men to seek it are not more various than the effects which it produces on different individuals. One thing is certain, that those who can with truth affirm that they are "never less alone than when alone," might generally add that they never feel more lonely than when not alone. — Arthur Helps

It was my temper to avoid a crowd, and to attach myself fervently to a few. — Mary Shelley

Grief is a solitary journey. No one but you knows how great the hurt is. No one but you can know the gaping hole left in your life when someone you know has died. And no one but you can mourn the silence that was once filled with laughter and song. It is the nature of love and of death to touch every person in a totally unique way. Comfort comes from knowing that people have made the same journey. And solace comes from understanding how others have learned to sing again. — Helen Steiner Rice

To dwell in the place of God, as Evagrius puts it, is to live with a particular intense awareness of this reality, to know oneself not as a solitary, autonomous being but as one whose identity can only be conceived of as existing within an intricate web of encompassing relationships. The primary work of contemplative practice is to become more aware of this web of relationships, to learn to live within it fully and responsibly and to give expression to it in one's life. — Douglas E. Christie

In order to get one of the greatest inventions of the modern age, in other words, we thought we needed the solitary genius. But if Alexander Graham Bell had fallen into the Grand River and drowned that day back in Brantford, the world would still have had the telephone, the only difference being that the telephone company would have been nicknamed Ma Gray, not Ma Bell. — Malcolm Gladwell

This solitary Tree! a living thing Produced too slowly ever to decay; Of form and aspect too magnificent To be destroyed. — William Wordsworth

Writing is a solitary job, and should be taken to someone who believes in you. — Stephen King

Know for a certainty that if men understood how terrible is even one solitary sin, they would rather be cast into a heated furnace, and there remain, living both in soul and body, than to support such a sight. And if the sea were all fire they would cast themselves therein and never leave it, if they were certain of meeting the sin on doing so. — Catherine Of Genoa

Working in network news is not a solitary pursuit; it is the ultimate 'team sport,' in which success is derived from the collective performances of remarkable people united in purpose and dedication. — Steve Capus

I am excessively slothful, and wonderfully industrious-by fits. There are epochs when any kind of mental exercise is torture, and when nothing yields me pleasure but the solitary communion with the 'mountains & the woods'-the 'altars' of Byron. I have thus rambled and dreamed away whole months, and awake, at last, to a sort of mania for composition. Then I scribble all day, and read all night, so long as the disease endures. — Edgar Allan Poe

Flyfishing does have its social aspects - on some of our crowded trout streams it can get too social - but esentially it's a solitary, contemplative sport. People are left alone with themselves in beautiful surroundings to try to accomplish something that seems to have genuine value. — John Gierach

Also, painting and animation are really solitary pursuits, so the collaborative aspects of music making and acting are pretty welcome sometimes. — Tunde Adebimpe

Various stars. Various kings.
Various sunsets, signs, cursory insights.
Many minute attentions, many knowledgeable watchers,
Much cold, much overbearing darkness.

Various long midwinter Glooms.
Various Solitary and Terrible Stars.
Many Frosty Nights, many previously Unseen Sky-flowers.
Many people setting out (some of them kings) all clutching at stars.

...

Various people coming home (some of them kings). Various headlights.
Two or three children standing or sitting on the low wall.
Various winds, the Sea Wind, the sound-laden Winds of Evening
Blowing the stars toward them, bringing snow. — Alice Oswald

The songs came from a more solitary place and I hadn't played them with many people before recording. So I just added the layers of people who are in my life, and built up the songs. — Aoife O'Donovan

I have always shook with fright before human beings. Unable as I was to feel the least particle of confidence in my ability to speak and act like a human being, I kept my solitary agonies locked in my breast. I kept my melancholy and my agitation hidden, careful lest any trace should be left exposed. I feigned an innocent optimism; I gradually perfected myself in the role of the farcical eccentric. — Osamu Dazai

My native land is all lands,
In no particular direction.
My monastery is the solitary mountains,
In no particular place.
My family is all the beings of the six realms. — SHABKAR

The man who is to be great is the one who can be the most solitary, the most hidden, the most deviant, the man beyond good and evil, lord of his virtues, a man lavishly endowed with will - this is precisely what greatness is to be called: it is able to be as much a totality as something multi-faceted, as wide as it is full — Friedrich Nietzsche

IMPORTANT Book reading is a solitary and sedentary pursuit, and those who do are cautioned that a book should be used as an integral part of a well-rounded life, including a daily regimen of rigorous physical exercise, rewarding personal relationships, and sensible low-fat diet. A book should not be used a as a substitute or an excuse. — Garrison Keillor

We don't need any more writers as solitary heroes. We need a heroic writer's movement: assertive, militant, pugnacious. — Toni Morrison

The solitary Bee Whose buzzing was the only sound of life, Flew there on restless wing, Seeking in vain one blossom where to fix. — Robert Southey

It is possible to be solitary in one's mind while living in a crowd, and it is possible for one who is solitary to live in the crowd of his own thoughts. — Syncletica Of Alexandria

You happen to be possessed of a certain verbal acuity coupled with a relentless hair trigger humor and surface cheer spackling over a chronic melancholia and loneliness
a grotesquely caricatured version of your deepest self which you trot out at the slightest provocation to endearing and glib comic effect, thus rendering you the kind of fellow who is beloved by all yet loved by none, all of it to distract, however fleetingly, from the cold and dead-faced truth that with each passing year you face the unavoidable certainty of a solitary future in which you will perish one day while vainly attempting the Heimlich maneuver on yourself over the back of the kitchen chair — David Rakoff

And what does a person with such a romantic temperament seek in the study of the classics? He asked this as if, having had the good fortune to catch such a rare bird as myself, he was anxious to extract my opinion while I was still captive in his office.
'If by romantic you mean solitary and introspective,' I said, 'I think romantics are frequently the best classicists.'
He laughed. 'The great romantics are often failed classicists. But that's beside the point, isn't it? — Donna Tartt

I see myself abandoned, solitary, thrown into a cell without dimensions, where light and shadows are silent phantoms. Within my inner self I find the silence I am seeking. But it leaves me so bereft of any memory of any human being and of me myself, that I transform this impression into the certainty of physical solitude. Were I to cry out - I can no longer see things clearly - my voice would receive the same indifferent echo from the walls of the earth. — Clarice Lispector

So all I have is the knowledge that I saw! That I saw without being afraid and without turning away, and that I didn't forgive the unforgivable. Forgiveness is a reflex for when you can't stand what you know. I resisted that reflex. That's my sole, solitary, lonely accomplishment. — Jane Smiley

I have always hesitated to give advice, for how can one advise another how to act unless one knows that other as well as one knows himself? Heaven knows. I know little enough of myself: I know nothing of others. We can only guess at the thoughts and emotions of our neighbours. Each one of us is a prisoner in a solitary tower and he communicates with the other prisoners, who form mankind, by conventional signs that have not quite the same meaning for them as for himself. — W. Somerset Maugham

Circenn moved swiftly, intending to catch the tear upon his finger, kiss it away, then kiss away all her pain and fear, and assure her that he would permit no harm to touch her and would spend his life making things up to her; but she dropped the flask onto the table and turned swiftly.
"Please, leave me alone," she said and turned away from him. "Let me comfort you, Lisa," he entreated.
"Leave me alone."
For the first time in his life, Circenn
felt utterly helpless. Let her grieve, his heart instructed. She would need to grieve, for discovering that the flask didn't work was tantamount to lowering her mother into a solitary grave. She would grieve her mother as if she'd in truth died that very day. May God
forgive me, he prayed. I did not know what I was doing when I cursed that flask. — Karen Marie Moning

Mr. Boffin, as if he were about to have his portrait painted, or to be electrified, or to be made a Freemason, or to be placed at any other solitary disadvantage, ascended the rostrum prepared for him. — Charles Dickens

Silence is a very concrete, practical, and useful discipline in all our ministerial tasks. It can be seen as a portable cell taken with us from the solitary place into the midst of our ministry. Silence is solitude practiced in action. — Henri Nouwen

Man is not a solitary animal, and so long as social Life survives, self-realization cannot be the supreme principle of ethics. — Bertrand Russell

You know my belief in bald-headed Fortune, with the one solitary hair. Well, I meant to grab that hair ... — Emmuska Orczy

Adoration is made out of a solitary soul occupying two bodies. — Aristotle.

Some wounds; never reflects on the skin, but kills us slowly from inside. — Durgesh Satpathy

We are relational creatures. All humans live in community and most people seek social interaction. In western culture, isolation is seen as one of the most stringent of punishments. Even criminals do not aspire to solitary confinement. — Gary Chapman

To most observers, innovation is a solitary process that requires creativity and genius, perhaps even greatness. It can't, in their view, be managed or predicted, just hoped for and, perhaps, facilitated. But for me innovation was and still is more than that. It was a battle in the marketplace between innovators or attackers trying to make money by changing the order of things, and defenders protecting their cash flow. — Richard J. Foster

Satan has his companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am solitary and detested. — Mary Shelley

Sitting there, watching the shades of evening settle slowly on the drab little town, it seemed to me that nothing but blind blundering vengeance, howsoever camouflaged, awaits all those who dare to step out of its stifling confines. It is a confrontation whose outcome is as certain as the end of solitary boats beating against a maelstrom. — Arun Joshi

I know this much, is all," Franny said. "If you're a poet, you do something beautiful. I mean you're supposed to leave something beautiful after you get off the page and everything. The ones you're talking about don't leave a single, solitary thing beautiful. All that maybe the slightly better ones do is sort of get inside your head and leave something there. — J.D. Salinger

Songs and smells will bring you back to a moment in time more than anything else. It's amazing how much can be conjured with a few notes of a song or a solitary whiff of a room. A song you didn't even pay attention to at the time, a place that you didn't even know had a particular smell. — Emily Giffin

I begin to fully understand the lengths to which people have gone to protect me. What I mean to the rebels. My on going struggle against the Capitol, which has so often felt like a solitary journey, has not been undertaken alone. I have had thousands upon thousands of people from the districts at my side. I was their Mockingjay long before I accepted the role. — Suzanne Collins

Solitary and farouche people don't have relationships; they are quite unrelatable. — Elizabeth Bowen

I read like a crazy person, I play the piano, and I'm a photographer. I always say my photography keeps me sane. I spend a lot of time in the darkroom. It's a very solitary, quiet life when I'm not working. — Alaina Huffman

When it comes to girls (and in Colin's case, it so often did), everyone has a type. Colin Singleton's type was not physical but linguistic: he liked Katherines. And not Katies or Kats or Kitties or Cathys or Rynns or Trinas or Kays or Kates or, god forbid, Catherines. K-A-T-H-E-R-I-N-E. He had dated 19 girls. All of them had been named Katherine. And all of them- every single solitary one- had dumped him. — John Green

When we can stand in the solitary presence of something magnificent, the obligation of sharing the experience evaporates, and we are free to truly be a part of it. — Josh Gates

A grateful loving heart carries with it, under every parallel of latitude, the warmth and light of the tropics. It plants its Eden in the wilderness and solitary place, and sows with flowers the gray desolation of rock and mosses. — John Greenleaf Whittier

Time's agency becomes most vicious when it is routinized for the practical effect of control. The routinizaton of time is a transformation cultivated by prison authorities and designed to make every day like every other. In this experience, paradoxically, time acts even to deaden one's sense of time. All the more true is this among the 80,000, likely more,[52] who are serving time in solitary confinement. Lisa — Mark Lewis Taylor

You are alone,
So alone,
You speak back to silence.
People call it loneliness,
You call it solitude,
Different words,
Meaning the same pain. — Jenim Dibie

The highest branch of solitary amusement is reading; but even in the choice of books the fancy is first employed; for in reading, the heart is touched, till its feelings are examined by the understanding, and the ripening of reason regulate the imagination. This is the work of years, and the most important of all employments. — Mary Wollstonecraft

The flies buzzed in answer above the dirty water standing in the washbasin, in which floated a solitary black hair. It, too, was like life
and as meaningless. — Stella Gibbons

The point I wish plainly to bring before you on this occasion is the individuality of each human soul
our Protestant idea, the right of individual conscience and judgment
our republican idea, individual citizenship. In discussing the rights of woman, we are to consider, first, what belongs to her as an individual, in a world of her own, the arbiter of her own destiny, an imaginary Robinson Crusoe with her woman Friday on a solitary island. Her rights under such circumstances are to use all her faculties for her own safety and happiness. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

He could see her planting violets on his grave, a solitary figure in a grey cloak. What a ghastly tragedy. A lump came to his throat. He became quite emotional thinking of his own death. He would have to write a poem about this.
from a Difference in Temperament — Daphne Du Maurier

So far, she'd been her usual lame self: solitary and routine-loving, carefully avoiding any path that might lead to spontaneous human interaction.
Lena Kaligaris — Ann Brashares

No countryman ever speaks to an animal without blaspheming it, although if he be engaged in some solitary work and inspired to music, he invariably sings a hymn in a voice that seems to have some vague association with wood pulp. — A.E. Coppard

Our whole childhood remains to be reimagined. In reimagining it, we have the possibility of recovering it in the very life of our reveries as a solitary child. — Gaston Bachelard

sacred pathways Naturalist - finds God in nature Ascetic - is drawn to disciplines Traditionalist - loves historical liturgies Activist - comes alive spiritually in a great cause Caregiver - meets God in serving Sensate - senses God through five senses Enthusiast - loves to grow through people Contemplative - is drawn to solitary reflection and prayer Intellectual - loves God by learning (For more information on these categories, read — John Ortberg

Winter again. The summer people have gone. The early morning walks are solitary once more. Fog wraps the ocean and sky like a wet, gray glove. Sprinting through the frosty dune grass, my dog Buddy emerges soaked and grinning. He's become a man-child, his boundless puppy love and mindless exuberance caroming off the walls in a muscular body. He lives by one rule: To be alive is to be gloriously happy. Not a bad way to be, I often remind myself.

Comfortable in the ebb and flow of each other's idiosyncracies and needs, he keeps me company while I work, I join him often in his play. His unflagging high spirits urge me to cram activity and joy into every waking moment as he does. By so doing, I tell myself, I will multiply my allotted time by dog years and dilate the remaining seasons accordingly. A good way to look at life, I figure. — Lionel Fisher

My heart applauds inside my ears, first like a roaring crowd, then slows and slows until it's a solitary person, clapping with unbridled sarcasm.
Clap. Clap.
Clap.
Well done, Ed.
Well given up. — Markus Zusak

Photography is solitary and there are lags between seeing with your eyes and seeing through the lens, and then seeing the image on your computer ... I often see things after the fact. This revelatory quality includes a sense of playfulness, because you're not sure what the consequences are going to be. — Christian Marclay

From his companions, and set forth to walk, Perhaps grown wearied of their Corinth talk: Over the solitary hills he fared, Thoughtless at first, but ere eve's star appeared His phantasy was lost, where reason fades, In the calm'd twilight of Platonic shades. Lamia beheld him coming, near, more near - Close to her passing, in indifference drear, His silent sandals swept the mossy green; So neighbour'd to him, and yet so unseen — John Keats