Solitude As A Choice Quotes & Sayings

Exile from society allows person to disengage from meaningless activities and develop conscious awareness. A person's courageous struggle to eliminate the trepidation of social exile produces insights into what it means to be human. We can displace emotional disquiet by living a heightened state of existence. How a person's resolves the tremendous anxiety and dizziness that impetus comes from contemplating the inevitability of death, human freedom of choice, the moral responsibilities attendant to living in a selected manner, existential isolation, and the possibility of nothingness establishes a governing philosophical framework. A person must not rue ouster from society because release from moral and societal constraints spurs learning and advanced consciousness. — Kilroy J. Oldster

But the wilderness had found him out early, and had taken on him a terrible vengeance for the fantastic invasion. I think it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude--and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating.

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Ah! but it was something to have at least a choice of nightmares.

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...perhaps all the wisdom, and all truth, and all sincerity, are just compressed into that inappreciable moment of time in which we step over the threshold of the invisible. Perhaps! — Joseph Conrad

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

Being solitary is being alone well: being alone luxuriously immersed in doings of your own choice, aware of the fullness of your won presence rather than of the absence of others. Because solitude is an achievement.
— Alice Koller

Her body moved with the frankness that comes from solitary habits. But solitude is only a human presumption. Every quiet step is thunder to beetle life underfoot; every choice is a world made new for the chosen. All secrets are witnessed. — Barbara Kingsolver

If man will understand the real essence of staying in the solitude with his Maker alone, he will never spend all his time with the crowd always — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

You are right; I am not good at moving in society. Be merciful. You do not understand me; I live in the woods by choice
that is my happiness. Here, where I am all alone, it can hurt no one that I am as I am; but when I go among others, I have to use all my will power to be as I should. — Knut Hamsun

At some point in life every person encounters haunting feelings of loneliness, because the feeling of being alone and withdrawing deeply into the inner self is part of the human condition. A person might choose to countenance or even cultivate their loneliness and turn the poignant hours of unerring solitude into poetry of their soul. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Usually, we think that "good" loneliness is what we call "solitude," the choice of some alone-time. But I want to press on with the negative dimension, to look at ways in which a fundamental sense of being separated from others shapes who we are and why. — Thomas L. Dumm

Moments of solitude, rest for the soul. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Solitude is a human presumption. Every quiet step is thunder to beetle life underfoot, a tug of impalpable thread on the web pulling mate to mate and predator to prey, a beginning or an end. Every choice is a world made new for the chosen. — Barbara Kingsolver

Quietude is the hermit's humble tool. An intrepid person might attempt to wring out of him or herself a translucent state of creative consciousness by deliberately cutting oneself off from all outside stimuli. When the exterior world forms a wall of impenetrable silence, in our state of exile we can hear the unique cadence of the subtle mind's authentic ringtone. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Given the choice, a yeast cell's ideal state is to be diploid. But if it's in an environment with a lack of nutrients, you know what happens?
The diploids break into haploids again. Solitary little haploids. Because, in a crisis, it's easier to survive as a single cell. — Jeffrey Eugenides

In a few moments he came into the core of himself, where he was alone, and felt strangely companioned, not by anyone or anything, but by himself. The rejected self found refuge here, not a cowed refuge, but somehow a wandering ease; as if it were indestructible, and had its own final pride, its own secret eyes. — Neil M. Gunn

Solitude is the biggest medicine for once peace, It makes your heart pure and calm. — Debolina Bhawal

He was somewhat of a loner by temperament
because though never wholly happy when alone, he was usually slightly more miserable when with other people. — Colin Dexter

Much of the time I'm an introvert, by choice spending a lot of time on my own. I suppose liking my solitude is part of a writer's sensibility. — Robyn Davidson

Loneliness is imposed by society, it kills you and solitude
is self inflicted. I enjoy my solitude — Dixy Gandhi

I prize my downtime, count on it as a writer, a parent, a person. Sometimes I think of Woody Allen's remark about masturbation, that it is sex with someone he loves. I feel as though being alone is hanging out with someone I like. — Anna Quindlen

A person with low self-esteem is suffering from loneliness even when he is amongst large groups of people, whereas a person with high self-esteem is enjoying solitude out of choice. Loneliness is the pain of being alone, solitude is the pleasure of being alone. A person with high self-esteem is really saying I enjoy my company. I may be physically alone, but I am with myself. — Shiv Khera

Missing what most of the time? The babbling faceless agora, the fame, the parties, the pop of flash bulbs? The lovers, the gaiety, the champagne? The solitude carved out of celebrity, poring over charts by a single lamp on a wide desk in a venerable hotel? Room service, coffee before dawn? The company of one friend, two? The choice: All of it or not? Some or none? Now, not now, maybe later? — Peter Heller

How difficult it is to find solitude in a world that constantly demands your attention. — Joyce Rachelle

Until that rainy Sunday at the movies 31 years ago, for me, companionship had been a mandate for life's good times. After Orca, it became a choice. My trip to the theater helped me to distinguish between loneliness (experienced by default), and solitude (choosing when and how to enjoy my own company), as I began a journey of engaging the world on my own terms. Over the years, that journey deepened as I traveled life's roads with increasing independence and confidence, whether I was attending graduate school at night while working during the day, buying my first house or changing careers. — Gina Greenlee

I have always believed it my right to have a locked door between me and the world, and to hold the key myself. Now look at it, kicked open. The doors are off their hinges, the portals unguarded, every cover blown. — Mihail Sebastian

I understand I've made an unusual lifestyle choice. But the label 'crazy' bothers me. Annoys me. Because it prevents response. When someone asks if you're crazy, Knight lamented, you can either say yes, which makes you crazy, or you can say no, which makes you sound defensive, as if you fear that you really are crazy. There's no good answer. — Michael Finkel

As a general rule, teenage girls never, ever see solitude as a choice. — Alice Pung

She'd rather be alone than settle just because she was lonely, but sometimes - not that she'd admit it to another soul - that choice sucked. — Donna Alward

These words filled me with a sort of melancholy and I was at a loss for an answer, for I felt when I was with him, when I was talking to him - and no doubt it would have been the same with anyone else - none of that happiness which it was possible for me to experience when I was by myself. Alone, at times, I felt surging from the depths of my being one or other ot those impressions which gave me a delicious sense of well-being. But as soon as I was with someone else, as soon as I was talking to a friend, my mind as it were faced about, it was towards this interlocutor and not towards myself that it directed its thoughts, and when they followed this outward course they brought me no pleasure. — Marcel Proust

Solitude is addictive. Being alone, but not lonely, is peaceful and inspiring. It gives you the strength to go back and deal with all the nonsense. — Karen Gibbs

Guilt and misery shrink, by a natural instinct, from public notice: they court privacy and solitude: and even in their choice of a grave will sometimes sequester themselves from the general population of the churchyard, as if declining to claim fellowship with the great family of man; thus, in a symbolic language universally understood, seeking (in the affecting language of Mr. Wordsworth)
' Humbly to express
A penitential loneliness. — Thomas De Quincey

For the first time, in Golconda, she had practiced Larry's choice of withdrawing if the people were not of quality. Of preferring solitude to the effort of pretending he was interested in them. — Anais Nin

The evening I went for a walk. To walk for the sake of walking is something I seldom do.Inside my apartment I'd felt inexplicably anxious. I needed to talk to someone, to be reassured. Or perhaps I needed to confess my sin: I was once again having impure thoughts about saving the world. Or it was neither of these
I was afraid I was dreaming. Indeed, considering the events of the day, it was likely that I was dreaming. I sometimes fly in my dreams, and each time I say to myself, "At last
it's happening in reality and not in a dream!"
In any case, I needed to talk to someone, and I was alone. This is my habitual condition, by choice
or so I tell myself. Mere acquaintanceship leaves me unsatisfied, and few people are willing to accept the burdens and risks of friendship as I conceive of it. — Daniel Quinn