Wise Words About Solitude

Many great thinkers have found solitude to be the best company.

The best of all is to be alone to experience one's soul in Silence. To be nakedly alone, unseen, is better than anything in the world, a relief like death. To be -- alone -- is one of life's greatest delights.

-- Sunyata

To find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time.  To be in company even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating.  I love to be alone.

-- Henry D. Thoreau

Many teachers praise love as the highest of virtues; I, however, place solitude higher than love.

-- Meister Eckhart

The man who makes everything that leads to happiness depends upon himself, and not upon other men, has adopted the very best plan for living happily.

-- Plato

The greatest saints avoided the company of men as much as possible, and chose to live with God in secret.

-- Thomas a’ Kempis

The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.

-- Aldous Huxley

The happiest of all lives is a busy solitude.

-- Voltaire

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone, and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom, for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.

--  Arthur Schopenhauer

Settle yourself in solitude, and you will come upon God in yourself.

-- Teresa of Avila

(Excerpted from “Spirituality For Dummies”)