Solitude God Quotes & Sayings

Time for solitude. God, I ask you to remake my heart. Fill it with what You love. Remove from it what You don't. And mend what I've broken. — Yasmin Mogahed

Solitude is the audience-chamber of God. — Walter Savage Landor

Aristotle said that only two living entities are capable of complete solitude and complete separateness: God and beast. Because of this the most acute form of suffering for human beings is loneliness. — Chris Hedges

They ask only one question: "what is pleasing to the Spirit of God?" And as soon as they have heard the sound of the Spirit in the silence and solitude of their hearts, they follow its promptings even if it upsets their friends, disrupts their environment, and confuses their admirers. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

There is a vast difference between an Apostolic life and the solitude of the Carthusians. The latter is truly very holy but is not suited to those whom God has called to the former, which is in itself more excellent. — Vincent De Paul

Christ choosing solitude for private prayer, doth not only hint to us the danger of distraction and deviation of thoughts in prayer, but how necessary it is for us to choose the most convenient places we can for private prayer. Our own fickleness and Satan's restlessness call upon us to get into such places where we may freely pour out our soul into the bosom of God [Mark 1.35]. — Thomas Brooks

In solitude I get rid of my scaffolding ...
Solitude molds self-righteous people into gentle, caring, forgiving persons who are so deeply convinced of their own great sinfulness and so fully aware of God's even greater mercy that their life itself becomes ministry. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

He prayed for the recovery of that inward privacy which the purpose of his vigil demanded that he seek: a clean parchment of the spirit whereon the words of a summons might be written in his solitude - if that other Immensurable Loneliness which was God stretched forth Its hand to touch his own tiny human loneliness and to mark his vocation there. — Walter M. Miller Jr.

Solitude can be very rewarding and full of blessing because in the silence of the inner being, one finds God — Fulton J. Sheen

The reading of the word of God should be performed in solitude, in order that the whole mind of the reader might be plunged into the truths of the Holy Scripture, and that from this he might receive warmth, which in solitude produces tears; from these a man is wholly warmed and is filled with spiritual gifts, which rejoice the mind and heart more than any word. — Seraphim Of Sarov

Only in a state of solitude, when you willingly stay face to face with God, can He help you to open yourself, and show the impurities preventing you from moving forward and help you to identify your unique gift, life mission and destination — Sunday Adelaja

Ah, the harbour bells of Cambridge! Whose fountains in moonlight and closed courts and cloisters, whose enduring beauty in its virtuous remote self-assurance, seemed part, less of the loud mosaic of one's stupid life there, though maintained perhaps by the countless deceitful memories of such lives, than the strange dream of some old monk, eight hundred years dead, whose forbidding house, reared upon piles and stakes driven into the marshy ground, had once shone like a beacon out of the mysterious silence, and solitude of the fens. A dream jealously guarded: Keep off the Grass. And yet whose unearthly beauty compelled one to say: God forgive me. — Malcolm Lowry

Red like blood White like bone Red like solitude White like silence Red like the beastly instinct White like a god's heart Red like thawing hatred White like a frozen, pained cry Red like the night's hungry shadows Like a sigh piercing the moon it shines white and shatters red — Tite Kubo

Whoseoever is delighted in solitude, is either a wild beast or a god. Certain it is that the light that a man receiveth by counsel from another is drier and purer than that which cometh from his own understanding and judgment. — Francis Bacon

If you meet God in solitude, you discover the God you meet is the God who embraces all people. — Henri Nouwen

'Tis solitude should teach us how to die; It hath no flatterers; vanity can give, No hollow aid; alone - man with God must strive. — Lord Byron

The speech of God is silence. His Word is solitude. — Thomas Merton

In times of solitude, we are still to hear the voice of God. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Men and women run away from every goal, whether worldly or spiritual, because they overestimate the initial task. The proper way is a bit at a time. It is the same if someone eats too much; they should diminish it daily by a small bit, gradually. In that way, before a year or two have passed, they will have cut down what they eat by half, reducing it in such a way that their body does not notice. So it is with worship, withdrawing into solitude, attending to the service of God, and prayer. When a person enters upon the Way of God, for a while their prayers will be short. But after that, if they pray with their whole heart, their prayers will go on and on without end. — Jalaluddin Rumi

Light Breeze

As regards feeling pain,
like a hand cut in battle,
consider the body a robe you wear.


When you meet someone you love,
do you kiss their clothes?
Search out who's inside.


Union with God is sweeter
than body comforts.

We have hands and feet
different from these.
Sometimes in dream we see them.
That is not illusion.
It's seeing truly.
You do have a spirit body;

don't dread leaving the physical one. Sometimes someone feels this truth so strongly that he or she can live in mountain solitude totally refreshed.


The worried, heroic doings of men and women seem weary and futile to dervishes enjoying the light breeze of spirit. — Jalaluddin Rumi

The man who fears to be alone will never be anything but lonely, no matter how much he may surround himself with people. But the man who learns, in solitude and recollection, to be at peace with his own loneliness, and to prefer its reality to the illusion of merely natural companionship, comes to know the invisible companionship of God. Such a one is alone with God in all places, and he alone truly enjoys the companionship of other men, because he loves them in God in Whom their presence is not tiresome, and because of Whom his own love for them can never know satiety. — Thomas Merton

Is the invisible presence of the Christian fellowship a reality and a help to the individual? Is the Word of God close to him as a comfort and a strength? Or does he misuse his aloneness contrary to the fellowship, the Word, and the prayer? The individual must realize that his hours of aloneness react upon the community. In his solitude he can sunder and besmirch the fellowship, or he can strengthen and hallow it. Every act of self-control of the Christian is also a service to the fellowship. One who returns to the Christian family fellowship after fighting the battle of the day brings with him the blessing of his aloneness, but he himself receives anew the blessing of the fellowship. Blessed is he who is alone in the strength of the fellowship and blessed is he who keeps the fellowship in the strength of aloneness. But the strength of aloneness and the strength of the fellowship is solely the strength of the Word of God, which is addressed to the individual in the fellowship. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

At the foundation of the Christian life, there is a kind of sacred individuality, a sort of holy aloneness that cries out to be left alone with God. This isn't all of the Christian life. It doesn't erase those parts of a Christian's experience that happen in the context of relationships, but this sacred solitude needs to be discovered, respected, and protected.
It is that place where we most irrefutably hear God tell us that he loves us, and we come to know that, no matter what other people may say about us or do to us, God will not abandon us. That holy solitude is the place where we find God's Spirit changing our affections and redirecting our identities. It is, for Jesus-followers, holy ground. — Michael Spencer

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

I feel strongly that the God we meet in solitude is always the God who calls us to community. — Henri Nouwen

Sometimes you have to be in solitude with yourself, listening to your own heartbeat and acknowledging the brilliance God created as you. — Valerie Winrow

Find some time to seclude yourself from the fuss of life and be face to face with yourself and God — Sunday Adelaja

The North American Church is at a critical juncture. The gospel of grace is being confused and compromised by silence, seduction, and outright subversion. The vitality of the faith is being jeopardized. The lying slogans of the fixers who carry religion like a sword of judgment pile up with impunity. Let ragamuffins everywhere gather as a confessing Church to cry out in protest. Revoke the licenses of religious leaders who falsify the idea of God. Sentence them to three years in solitude with the Bible as their only companion. — Brennan Manning

As if any one believed anything by instinct! One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them. Finding bad reasons for what one believes for other bad reasons - that's philosophy. People believe in God because they've been conditioned to believe in God.'
'But all the same,' insisted the Savage, 'it is natural to believe in God when you're alone - quite alone, in the night, thinking about death ... '
'But people are never alone now,' said Mustapha Mond. 'We make them hate solitude; and we arrange their lives so that it's almost impossible for them to ever to have it. — Aldous Huxley

God is absence. God is the solitude of man. — Jean-Paul Sartre

For under moonlight the forms of the earth were liquid and they passed in or out of his body who ventured, in solitude, some gesture of communication with those forms. Especially under moonlight, especially when his own breath was the purest liquid. Thus Aziz Khan. Sometimes almost bewildered as a bird, compelled to flick from the sides of his body, not knowing what it was he did, never questioning his own actions but performing them without realising that, ardent though was his faith in Islam, the god he was most devoted to was the cosmos. — Zulfikar Ghose

Solitude begins with a time and a place for God, and God alone. If we really believe not only that God exists but also that God is actively present in our lives
healing, teaching and guiding
we need to set aside a time and space to give God our undivided attention. (Matt 6:6) — Henri J.M. Nouwen

Oh you who have been removed from God in his solitude by the abyss of time, how can you expect to reach him without dying? — Mansur Al-Hallaj

In the heart of every writer there lies a murderer.
Writers spend their lives struggling to conceal this murderous desire from other mortals.
Like God, they ruthlessly destroy the people of their own creation, drag them from one cruelty to another, meting out punishment, and with the callous indifference of a serial killer. And no one knows when he has taken a life from the solitude of his room. But when a writer is enraged the walls of his refuge come crumbling down, revealing his true identity. — Ahmet Altan

You probably can't get much closer to God than serving a congregation 24/7. At the same time, there's a different kind of closeness in this present life I have in which I have much more freedom to come and go and to engage some of the silence and stillness and solitude that I was missing before. — Barbara Brown Taylor

I've discovered it is not sufficient simply to try to take time for quietness but that I must, with all diligence, make time. Whatever keeps me from prayer, solitude, and the Bible, however good it appears, is my enemy if I am to be God's devoted friend and follower. — Tommy Barnett

If you start with community and want to be faithful to community, you have to realize that what binds you together is not mutual compatibility or common tasks, but God. In order to stay in touch with that call to community, we always have to return to solitude. — Henri Nouwen

As a child of God, how much more do we need times of complete solitude - times to deal with the spiritual realities of life and to be alone with God the Father. If there was ever anyone who could dispense with special times of solitude and fellowship, it was our Lord. Yet even He could not maintain His full strength and power for His work and His fellowship with the Father without His quiet time. God desires that every servant of His would understand and perform this blessed practice, that His church would know how to train its children to recognize this high and holy privilege, and that every believer would realize the importance of making time for God alone. — Lettie B. Cowman

However softly we speak, God is so close to us that he can hear us; nor do we need wings to go in search of him, but merely to seek solitude and contemplate him within ourselves, without being surprised to find such a good Guest there. — John Of The Cross

I was worked like a jackass for the worst part of my childhood, and offered up to climate and predator and vice, and introduced to solitude, and braced against hope, and dangled before the Lord our God, and schooled in the subtle truths and blatant lies of a half life in the American countryside, all because my parents did not trust that I would mature to their specifications in town. — Ben Metcalf

Prayer is a gift from Almighty God that transforms us, whether we bow our heads in solitude, or offer swift and silent prayers in times of trial. Prayer humbles us by reminding us of our place in creation. Prayer strengthens us by reminding us that God loves and cares for each and every soul in His creation. And prayer blesses us by reminding us that there is a divine plan that stands above all human plans. — George W. Bush

Habits Your habits are how you renew your daily commitment as a leader to serve rather than to be served. As a leader committed to serve despite all the pressures, trials, and temptations He faced, how did Jesus replenish His energy and servant perspective? His habits! Through a life pattern of solitude and prayer, knowledge of the will of God expressed in His Holy Word, and the community He shared with a small group of intimate companions, Jesus was constantly refreshed and renewed. — Kenneth H. Blanchard

One of the axioms that most religions, Judaism included, accept about God is that God is good. But those are just words. What does it actually mean to be good? One of the things it means, Luzzatto says, is that one acts to benefit others. If there is no world, though, then there are no others that God can benefit; He exists alone in numinous solitude. God acted to create a world so that there would be other beings existing besides Himself, beings upon whom He could bestow goodness. In short, God created the world because goodness demanded it. — David Fohrman

In solitude, struggles occur that no one else knows about. Inner battles are fought here that seldom become fodder for sermons or illustrations for books. God, who probes our deepest thoughts during protracted segments of solitude, opens our eyes to things that need attention. It is here He makes us aware of those things we try to hide from others. — Charles R. Swindoll

We are not to practice Bible reading, fasting, solitude, prayer, and other disciplines to make God happy with us but to make space to hear how happy God is with us because of Jesus. — Jimmy Davis

1 Somewhere, out at the edges, the night Is turning and the waves of darkness Begin to brighten the shore of dawn The heavy dark falls back to earth And the freed air goes wild with light, The heart fills with fresh, bright breath And thoughts stir to give birth to color. 2 I arise today In the name of Silence Womb of the Word, In the name of Stillness Home of Belonging, In the name of the Solitude Of the Soul and the Earth. I arise today Blessed by all things, Wings of breath, Delight of eyes, Wonder of whisper, Intimacy of touch, Eternity of soul, Urgency of thought, Miracle of health, Embrace of God. May I live this day Compassionate of heart, Clear in word, Gracious in awareness, Courageous in thought, Generous in love. — John O'Donohue

Spirituality is not to be learned by flight from the world, or by running away from things, or by turning solitary and going apart from the world. Rather, we must learn an inner solitude wherever or with whomsoever we may be. We must learn to penetrate things and find God there. — Meister Eckhart

There is no such thing as solitude, nor anything that can be said to be alone and by itself but God, who is His own circle, and can subsist by Himself. — Thomas Browne

He has learned that God uses solitude to teach us how to live with other people. — Paulo Coelho

Thus, discipline is the creation of boundaries that keep time and space open for God. Solitude requires discipline, worship requires discipline, caring for others requires discipline. They all ask us to set apart a time and a place where God's gracious presence can be acknowledged and responded to. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

It is crucial for us to form the habit of holy leisure, of quiet places and times alone with the Lord, so that we will restore our passion and intimacy with Christ. In this way, service will flow out of our life with him, and our activities and abilities will be animated by dependence upon his indwelling power. Restoration and renewal are especially important after periods of intense activity. When we seek and treasure God's intentions and calling, our personal knowledge of him (knowing) shapes our character (being) and conduct (doing). Although we are more inclined to follow Jesus into service than into solitude, the time we spend in "secluded places" with him (Mark 1:35; 6:31) will energize our service. — Kenneth D. Boa

Some people prefer solitude. They say their peace of mind depends on this.
Others say they would be better off in church.
If you do well, you do well wherever you are. If you fail, you fail wherever you are.
Your surroundings don't matter. God is with you everywhere
in the market place as well as in seclusion or in the church.
If you look for nothing but God, nothing or no one can disturb you.
God is not distracted by a multitude of things.
Nor can we be. — Meister Eckhart

I had to learn - since I'm divorced now and everyone is like, 'Oh my God, you're single, what's going on?' - that if I don't like to spend time with myself, how can I ask someone else to enjoy spending time with me? I'm getting to learn how to enjoy my solitude and have a good time. — Gabrielle Union

It has been said that no great work in literature or in science was ever wrought by a man who did not love solitude. We may lay it down as an elemental principle of religion, that no large growth in holiness was ever gained by one who did not take time to be often long alone with God. — Austin Phelps

There comes a moment during which almost every girl or boy falls into melancholy; they are tormented by a vague inquietude which rests on everything and finds nothing to calm it. They seek solitude; they weep; the silence to be found in cloister attracts them: the image of peace that seems to reign in religious houses seduces them. They mistake the first manifestations of a developing sexual nature for the voice of God calling them to Himself; and it is precisely when nature is inciting them that they embrace a fashion of life contrary to nature's wish. — Denis Diderot

Let your need draw you closer to your Creator. — Lailah Gifty Akita

God created man and, finding him not sufficiently alone, gave him a companion to make him feel his solitude more keenly — Paul Valery

That's what meditation is all about, to be capable of being alone. And remember, aloneness is not loneliness. Loneliness is the state of the person who cannot live alone; loneliness means you are dependent on the crowd, on the other. Aloneness means you are happy with yourself, you are not dependent on anybody. The moment you are not dependent you are an emperor, you are a god, a goddess. Now you have something to share, you can go into the world. — Osho

After the creation of Adam every living creature was brought before him to receive its name; he saw that to each had been given a companion, but among them "there was not found an help meet for him." Among all the creatures that God had made on the earth, there was not one equal to man. And God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him." Man was not made to dwell in solitude; he was to be a social being. Without companionship the beautiful scenes and delightful employments of Eden would have failed to yield perfect happiness. Even communion with angels could not have satisfied his desire for sympathy and companionship. There was none of the same nature to love and to be loved. — Ellen G. White

My God, if any of it could be shared! But would it "be" then, would it "be"? No, it "is" only at the price of solitude. — Rainer Maria Rilke

...there is something which impresses the mind with awe in the shade and silence of these vast forests. In the deep solitude, alone with nature, we converse with God. — Thaddeus Mason Harris

The heart which has no agenda but God's is the heart at leisure from itself. Its emptiness is filled with the Love of God. Its solitude can be turned into prayer. — Elisabeth Elliot

A Blessing of Solitude May you recognize in your life the presence, power, and light of your soul. May you realize that you are never alone, that your soul in its brightness and belonging connects you intimately with the rhythm of the universe. May you have respect for your own individuality and difference. May you realize that the shape of your soul is unique, that you have a special destiny here, that behind the facade of your life there is something beautiful, good, and eternal happening. May you learn to see yourself with the same delight, pride, and expectation with which God sees you in every moment. — John O'Donohue

Solitude is bearable only with God. — Andre Gide

Contemplation means rest, suspension of activity, withdrawal into the mysterious interior solitude in which the soul is absorbed in the immense and fruitful silence of God and learns something of the secret of His perfections less by seeing than by fruitive love. — Thomas Merton

But all the same," insisted the Savage, "it is natural to believe in God when you're alone - quite alone, in the night, thinking about death ... " "But people never are alone now," said Mustapha Mond. "We make them hate solitude; and we arrange their lives so that it's almost impossible for them ever to have it. — Aldous Huxley

On the Eighth Day Adam Slept Alone

It must have been
the eighth day.

A day the scribes and Pharisees conveniently
left out.

Adam was either inspecting goats
or naming the birds

when something pinched
my side.

I had to stop pruning the tree of knowledge
to catch my breath.

God had taken a long weekend.

At first I thought the solitude of gardening
was going to my head.

Was it loneliness?
An omen? A vision?

For a moment I thought I would
ascend.

Then I realized it was just a rib
missing.

How you found your way in
along the banks of the third river

I will never know
but I still shiver to recall

how perfectly your fingers
fell into place

along the ridges
of my ribcage.

Go ahead, Love,
take every last bone.

Make of me
what you will. — Nancy Boutilier

By standing respectfully and faithfully at the borders of another's solitude, we may mediate the love of God to a person who needs something deeper than any human being can give. — Parker J. Palmer

Our silence might be better than our voices if our solitude was spent with God. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

It is in lonely solitude that God delivers His best thoughts, and the mind needs to be still and quiet to receive them. — Charles R. Swindoll

The simplest spiritual discipline is some degree of solitude and silence. But it's the hardest, because none of us want to be with someone we don't love. Besides that, we invariably feel bored with ourselves, and all of our loneliness comes to the surface.
We won't have the courage to go into that terrifying place without Love to protect us and lead us, without the light and love of God overriding our own self-doubt. Such silence is the most spacious and empowering technique in the world, yet it's not a technique at all. It's precisely the refusal of all technique. — Richard Rohr

But it certainly is a wonderful thing to wake up suddenly in the solitude of the woods and look up at the sky and see the utter nonsense of everything including all the solemn stuff given out by professional asses about the spiritual life; and simply to burst out laughing, and laugh and laugh, with the sky and the trees because God is not in words, and not in systems, and not in liturgical movements, and not in "contemplation" with a big "C," or in asceticism or in anything like that, not even in the apostolate. — Thomas Merton

Come into the silence of solitude, and the vibration there will talk to you through the voice of God. — Paramahansa Yogananda

In solitude, at last, we're able to let God define us the way we are always supposed to be defined - by relationship: the I-thou relationship, in relation to a Presence that demands nothing of us but presence itself. Not performance but presence — Richard Rohr

I have only one desire, and that is the desire for solitude-to disappear into God, to be submerged in His peace, to be lost in the secret of His Face. — Thomas Merton

Converse with men makes sharp the glittering wit, but God to man doth speak in solitude. — John Stuart Blackie

You are alone because you were born alone. And though you were born alone, you found a reason and the strength to shake yourself, though as helpless as you were at birth, for the whole universe to hear and know that you have not just arrived, but you are healthy, and you commended and moved things and people around you with your cry, even as an infant! And though it all seems you are alone, note that once you can breathe, you are never alone! Smile, for there is an indomitable power within you, given to you by God! Realize your God, realize your power! Awake and realize your true strength and the strong power within you! Face life and do not just challenge the challenges in life but conquer them with all boldness and fortitude. Step by step, complete the steps! It is always not all that easy, but, be strong and beat life no matter what! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Solitude well practiced will break the power of busyness, haste, isolation, and loneliness. You will see that the world is not on your shoulders after all. Your will find yourself, and God will find you in new ways. Silence also brings Sabbath to you. It completes solitude, for without it you cannot be alone. Far from being a mere absence, silence allows the reality of God to stand in the midst of your life. God does not ordinarily compete for our attention. In silence we come to attend. Lastly, fasting is done that we many consciously experience the direct sustenance of God to our body and our whole person. — Dallas Willard

It was one of Emily's earliest pleasures to ramble among the scenes of nature; nor was it in the soft and glowing landscape that she most delighted; she loved more the wild wood-walks, that skirted the mountain; and still more the mountain's stupendous recesses, where the silence and grandeur of solitude impressed a sacred awe upon her heart, and lifted her thoughts to the GOD OF HEAVEN AND EARTH. In scenes like these she would often linger along, wrapped in a melancholy charm, till the last gleam of day faded from the west; till the lonely sound of a sheep-bell, or the distant bark of a watch-dog, were all that broke on the stillness of the evening. Then, the gloom of the woods; the trembling of their leaves, at intervals, in the breeze; the bat, flitting on the twilight; the cottage-lights, now seen, and now lost - were circumstances that awakened her mind into effort, and led to enthusiasm and poetry. Her — Eliza Parsons

One of the reasons that hiddenness is such an important aspect of the spiritual life is that it keeps us focused on God. In hiddenness we do not receive human acclamation, admiration, support, or encouragement. In hiddenness we have to go to God with our sorrows and joys and trust that God will give us what we most need.
In our society we are inclined to avoid hiddenness. We want to be seen and acknowledged. We want to be useful to others and influence the course of events. But as we become visible and popular, we quickly grow dependent on people and their responses and easily lose touch with God, the true source of our being. Hiddenness is the place of purification. In hiddenness we find our true selves. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

At bottom, for me, the act of writing is a sort of dialogue with God. I say with God, but I am not a believer, although I cannot say that I am an unbeliever either. But for me, this meeting with God is in the act of writing. A solitude which meets another, a solitude in front of another solitude. 'God' being more alone than oneself. Such a shame that, to reach God, there is no bypassing faith. — Emil Cioran

Without solitude true happiness was impossible. The fallen angel was faithless to God probably only because he longed for solitude, which angles knew not. — Anton Chekhov

Remember, too, every day, and whenever you can, repeat to yourself, Lord, have mercy on all who appear before Thee today. For every hour and every moment thousands of men leave life on this earth, and their souls appear before God. And how many of them depart in solitude, unknown, sad, dejected that no one mourns for them or even knows whether they have lived or not! — Fyodor Dostoevsky

The ambiance of solitude, the absence of any disturbing noise and of worldly desires and images, the quiet and calm attention of the mind to God, helped by prayer and leisurely reading, flow into that "quies" or "rest" of the soul in God. A simple and joyful rest, full of God, that leads the monk to feel, in some way, the beauty of eternal life. — Carthusian Monks

Whoever, therefore, thinks that he understands the divine scriptures or any part of them so that it does not build on the double love of God and of our neighbor does not understand it at all. Thus a man supported by faith, hope, and charity, with an unshaken hold upon them does not need the scriptures ... And many live by these three things in solitude without books. — Saint Augustine

The ancient spiritual tradition is that God gives himself fully to us in silence and solitude. — Brennan Manning

In a revealed religion, silence with God has a value in itself and for its own sake, just because God is God. Failure to recognize the value of mere being with God, as the beloved, without doing anything, is to gouge the heart out of Christianity."10 Silent solitude makes true speech possible — Brennan Manning

See, once you have begun to experience solitude and silence, you discover that you actually have a soul and that there is a God.Then you can begin to practice Sabbath and that will enable you to re-enter community.You can't have community without Sabbath. — Dallas Willard

Anyone can retire into a quiet place, wrote Evelyn Underhill, but it's the shutting of the door that makes the difference. Solitude is a time for stripping away everything in order to focus on God. (Matt 6:6) — Sue Monk Kidd

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.
Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn. — William Wordsworth

Whosoever is delighted in solitude, is either a wild beast or a god. — Aristotle.

Solitude is listening to the voice who calls you the beloved. It is being alone with the one who says, 'You are my beloved, I want to be with you. Don't go running around, don't start to prove to everybody that you're beloved. You are already beloved'. That is what God says to us. Solitude is the place where we go in order to hear the truth about ourselves. It asks us to let go of the other ways of proving which are a lot more satisfying. The voice that calls us the beloved is not the voice that satisfies the senses. That's what the whole mystical life is about; it is beyond feelings and beyond thoughts. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

A lonely day is God's way of saying that he wants to spend some quality time with you. — Criss Jami

Giving back to my community is great, but I must never forget to give back to God in the solitude of prayer. — Laura Domino

Solitude with God repairs the damage done by the fret and noise and clamour of the world. — Oswald Chambers

Only God's truth without limit, without defect, without stain. This clean light, which tastes of Paradise, is beyond all pride, beyond comment, beyond proprietorship, beyond solitude. It is in all and for all. It is the true light that shines in everyone, in "every man coming into this world." It is the light of Christ, "Who stands in the midst of us and we know Him not. — Thomas Merton

Thank God for the solitude of the Sabbath. — Lailah Gifty Akita

There are times when solitude is better than society, and silence is wiser than speech. We should be better Christians if we were more alone, waiting upon God, and gathering through meditation on His Word spiritual strength for labour in his service. We ought to muse upon the things of God, because we thus get the real nutriment out of them ... Why is it that some Christians, although they hear many sermons, make but slow advances in the divine life? Because they neglect their closets, and do not thoughtfully meditate on God's Word. They love the wheat, but they do not grind it; they would have the corn, but they will not go forth into the fields to gather it; the fruit hangs upon the tree, but they will not pluck it; the water flows at their feet, but they will not stoop to drink it. From such folly deliver us, O Lord ... — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Brisbane and I passed a thoroughly satisfactory and entirely private evening in the solitude of our room. "Thank God for stout stone walls," he said at one point, and I heartily agreed. — Deanna Raybourn

We must become so alone, so utterly alone, that we withdraw into our innermost self. It is a way of bitter suffering. But then our solitude is overcome, we are no longer alone, for we find that our innermost self is the spirit, that it is God, the indivisible. And suddenly we find ourselves in the midst of the world, yet undisturbed by its multiplicity, for our innermost soul we know ourselves to be one with all being. — Hermann Hesse