Loneliness and Solitude
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“The capacity to be alone is a valuable resource when changes of mental attitude are required. After major alterations in circumstances, fundamental reappraisal of the significance and meaning of existence may be needed. In a culture in which interpersonal relationships are generally considered to provide the answer to every form of distress, it is sometimes difficult to persuade well-meaning helpers that solitude can be as therapeutic as emotional support.”
“A wise person can be self-sufficient and still desire a friend, a neighbour and a companion.”
“I am never lonely here ... I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.”
“A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud.”
“Attunement to self is best characterized by the image of free flow, the flowing into [awareness] of thoughts, desires, and emotions with no sense of censorship or management, together with a free-flowing access backwards towards their origins.”
“Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for a kindness.”
“Nothing, to my way of thinking, is a better proof of a well ordered mind than a man’s ability to stop just where he is and pass some time in his own company.”
“To help others and be eager to share, not to be a pessimist, and never to doubt your friends’ affection for you.”
“The call is to leave a certain social situation, move into your own loneliness and find the jewel, the center that’s impossible to find when you’re socially engaged ... This is the departure when the hero feels something has been lost and goes to find it ... The first step, detachment or withdrawal, consists in a radical transfer of emphasis from the external to the internal world ...”
“I sacrifice myself for my profession, my wife, my children, or, more properly expressed, I do not sacrifice myself for them, but I find in them my satisfaction and joy.”
“Suppose that I become dissatisfied with my habitual self, or feel that there are areas of experience or self-understanding which I cannot reach. One way of exploring these is to remove myself from present surroundings and see what emerges. This is not without its dangers. Any form of new organization or integration within the mind has to be preceded by some degree of disorganization.”
“I know that it gives one great inner force, calmness, and happiness to communicate with such great thinkers as Socrates, Epictetus, Arnold, Parker. ... They tell us about what is most important for humanity, about the meaning of life and about virtue.”
“It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”
“No place of banishment can be found in the whole world in which man cannot find a home.”
“Maturation and integration can take place within the isolated individual to a greater extent than I had allowed for ... introverted creators are able to define identity and achieve self-realization by self-reference, that is, by interacting with their work rather than by interacting with other people.”
“I am less convinced that intimate personal relationships are the only source of health and happiness. In the present climate, there is a danger that love is being idealized as the only path to salvation. When Freud was asked what constituted psychological health, he gave as his answer the ability to love and work. We have over-emphasized the former, and paid too little attention to the latter ...”
“You should not let yourself be confused in your solitude by the fact that there is some thing in you that wants to move out of it ... We know little, but that we must trust in what is difficult is a certainty that will never abandon us; it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be one more reason for us to do it.”
“Yes, solitude is greater than I anticipated. My sense of values is changing, and many things which before were in solution in my mind now seem to be crystallizing.”
“The soul of a [solitary] journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do, just as one pleases ... For once, I like to have it all my own way; and this is impossible unless you are alone.”
“I begin to have intimations, now, of a return to some deep self that has been too absorbed and too battered to function for a long time.”