Quotes & Sayings About Solitude And Reflection

He had to hold his body very still, very still, like some vessel about to slosh over from too much motion. Gradually he managed to get control of his breathing. His excited heart beat more steadily; the pounding of the waves inside him subsided slowly. And suddenly solitude fell across his heart like a dusky reflection. He closed his eyes. The dark doors within him opened, and he entered. The next performance in the theatre of his soul was beginning. — Patrick Suskind

But there remained a reflective solitude behind that laughter, that nagging sense of completion that didn't sit well on the shoulders of a woman who had just begun to open her eyes to the wide world. — R.A. Salvatore

Solitude does not necessarily mean living apart from others; rather, it means never living apart from one's self.
A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life — Parker J. Palmer

A writer needs solitude : moments that he can spend in introspection and in reflection. These moments make him pensive and thoughtful and help him write his thoughts with clarity. A life of devotion to one's passion gives us meaning to our life. — Avijeet Das

Aloneness exaggerates our emotions and sensitivity. — Beth Moore

I finally went
where everyone goes
and I realized
I was
never
missing
out. — Meraaqi

The trout fisher, like the landscape painter, haunts the loveliest places of the earth, and haunts them alone. Solitude and his own thoughts - he must be on the best terms with all of these; and he who can take kindly the largest allowance of these is likely to be the kindliest and truest with his fellow men. — Thomas Hughes

Women need real moments of solitude and self-reflection to balance out how much of ourselves we give away. — Barbara De Angelis

Television creates loneliness. This is why sitcoms have added laughter tracks which try to cheat you out of your solitude. Television is a reflection of the world in which we live, designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator. It kills spontaneous imagination and destroys our ability to entertain ourselves, painfully erasing our patience and sensitivity to significant detail. — Paul Cronin

own. That was the reflection that made you creepy all over. It was impossible - it was not good for one either - trying to imagine. He had taken a high seat amongst the devils of the land - I mean literally. You can't understand. How could you? - with solid pavement under your feet, surrounded by kind neighbors ready to cheer you or to fall on you, stepping delicately between the butcher and the policeman, in the holy terror of scandal and gallows and lunatic asylums - how can you imagine what particular region of the first ages a man's untrammeled feet may take him into by the way of solitude - utter solitude without a policeman - by the way of silence, utter silence, — Joseph Conrad

After long reflection in solitude and meditation, I suddenly had the idea, during the year 1923, that the discovery made by Einstein in 1905 should be generalised by extending it to all material particles and notably to electrons. — Louis De Broglie

Happiness must be shared. Selfishness it its enemy; to make another happy is to be happy one's self. It is quiet, most easily won in moments of solitude and reflection. It comes from within. — William B. Ogden

If we give priority to the outer life, our inner life will be dark and scary. We will not know what to do with solitude. We will be deeply uncomfortable with self-examination, and we will have an increasingly short attention span for any kind of reflection. Even more seriously, our lives will lack integrity. Outwardly, we will need to project confidence, spiritual and emotional health and wholeness, while inwardly we may be filled with self-doubts, anxieties, self-pity, and old grudges. — Timothy J. Keller

Set a daily solitude time for reflection and rethinking. — Lailah Gifty Akita

In the mirror the brow furrowed in confusion, this was not her soul that she saw in the reflection. The eyes filled with tears of anguish. The face aches with despair.
Then the being retreats to her solitude, deliciously succumbing to the dissociation — Tina J. Richardson

Silence leads us back to our purpose, and it ignites creativity and vision. — Angela Lynne Craig

If you are in the mountains alone for some time, many days at minimum, & it helps if you are fasting. The forest grows tired of its weariness towards you; it resumes its inner life and allows you to see it. Near dusk the faces in tree bark cease hiding, and stare out at you. The welcoming ones and also the malevolent, open in their curiosity. In your camp at night you are able to pick out a distinct word now and then from the muddled voices in creek water, sometimes an entire sentence of deep import. The ghosts of animals reveal themselves to you without prejudice to your humanity. You see them receding before you as you walk the trail their shapes beautiful and sad. — Charles Frazier

Now I have to lie on the bed for a few minutes and let the solitude gather round me once more. — Martin Amis

I love the dark hours of my being.
My mind deepens into them.
There I can find, as in old letters,
the days of my life, already lived,
and held like a legend, and understood. — Rainer Maria Rilke

Who says that we always have to be ready to communicate? — Sherry Turkle

So the obvious, then: the liberal arts in general, and especially reading seriously, offer an opening to a wider life, the powers of active citizenship (including the willingness to vote); reading strengthens perception, judgment, and character; it creates understanding of other people and oneself, maybe kindliness and wit, and certainly the ability to endure solitude, both in the common sense of empty-room loneliness and the cosmic sense of empty-universe loneliness. Reading fiction carries you further into imagination and invention than you would be capable of on your own, takes you into other people's lives, and often, by reflection, deeper into your own. I will indulge a resounding tautology: every great civilization, including ours, has had a great literature and great readers. If literature matters less to young people than it once did, we are all in trouble. — David Denby

And suddenly solitude fell across his heart like a dusty reflection. He closed his eyes. The dark doors within him opened and he entered. The next performance in the theater of Grenouille's soul was beginning. — Patrick Suskind

They sell courage of a sort in the taverns. And another sort, though not for sale, a man can find in the confessional. Try the alehouses and the churches, Hugh. In either a man can be quiet and think. — Ellis Peters

On Man, on Nature, and on Human Life,
Musing is solitude — William Wordsworth

Accustomed to motion, he was forced to be still. — H.W. Brands

Days I enjoy are days when nothing happens,
When I have no engagements written on my block,
When no one comes to disturb my inward peace,
When no one comes to take me away from myself
And turn me into a patchwork, a jig-saw puzzle,
A broken mirror that once gave a whole reflection,
Being so contrived that it takes too long a time
To get myself back to myself when they have gone. — Vita Sackville-West

When some give you advice, say 'thank you'. Then, you must seek the quietness of your spirit for a reflection and direction. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Increasingly, people feel as though they must have a reason for taking time alone, a reason not to be available. — Sherry Turkle

Mass communication, radio, and especially television, have attempted, not without success, to annihilate every possibility of solitude and reflection. — Eugenio Montale

His mother had always been a headstrong woman, and with her grayish-white mane and unsmiling face, she appeared as regal and intimidating as she had ever been. Still, seeing her through other people's eyes, Hanfeng realized that all that made her who she was - the decades of solitude in her widowhood, her coldness to the prying eyes of people who tried to mask their nosiness with friendliness, and her faith in the notion of living one's own life without having to go out of one's way for other people - could be deemed pointless and laughable. Perhaps the same could be said of any living creature: a caterpillar chewing on a leaf, unaware of the beak of an approaching bird; an egret mesmerized by its reflection in a pond, as if it were the master of the universe; or Hanfeng's own folly of repeating the same pattern of hope and heartbreak, hoping despite heartbreak. — Yiyun Li

The very fine line between loneliness and solitude, reflection; being alone, always appealed to me when I was a kid. — Brad Mehldau

She lived in happy solitude, and grew old, and never worried when her beauty faded, for in her reflection she always saw a free woman. — Leigh Bardugo

Is there nowhere in an American house where one may be by one's self? — Edith Wharton

We don not think, in the holy places; we think in bed, afterwards, when the glare, and the the noise, and the confusion are gone, and in fancy we revisit alone, the solemn monuments of the past, and summon the phantom pageants of an age that has passed away. — Mark Twain

Given enough time, you could convince yourself that loneliness was something better, that it was solitude, the ideal condition for reflection, even a kind of freedom.
Once you were thus convinced, you were foolish to open the door and let anyone in, not all the way in. You risked the hard-won equilibrium, that tranquility that you called peace — Dean Koontz