Sayings ... in the hermitary style
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[This feature was launched in 2003.]
“Childhood moments in nature: For me it was important to be alone; solitude was a prerequisite to being openly and joyfully susceptible and responsive to the world of leaves, light, birdsong, flowers, flowing water.”
Mary Oliver, from her book Upstream: Selected Essays: Wordsworth 2. Childhood Moments in Nature.
In solitude, or in that deserted state when we are surrounded by human beings, and yet they sympathize not with us, we love the flowers, the grass, the waters, and the sky. In the motion of the very leaves of spring, in the blue air, there is then found a secret correspondence with our heart.
Percy Bysshe Shelley, from his essay "On Love." Epigrah to the book Upstream, Essays by Mary Oliver.
I'm very happy alone. If I had to change myself into something else, I'd probably be unhappy.
Octavia Butler, late science fiction writer, in Washington Post interview with critic David Streitfeld (July 9, 1995).
submitted by Jonathan
A man may begin [to understand the world] by following the craving of desire, until he comes to see how hollow and unreal a thing is life, how deceitful are its pleasures, what horrible aspects it possesses; and this it is that makes people hermits, penitents. Magdalenes.
--Arthur Schopenhauer: "Essays: "Character."
I have never felt lonesome, or in the least oppressed by a sense of solitude, but once, and that was a few weeks after I came to the woods, when, for an hour, I doubted if the near neighborhood of man was not essential to a serene and healthy life. To be alone was something unpleasant. But I was at the same time conscious of a slight insanity in my mood, and seemed to foresee my recovery. In the midst of a gentle rain while these thoughts prevailed, I was suddenly sensible of such sweet and beneficent society in Nature, in the very pattering of the drops, and in every sound and sight around my house, an infinite and unaccountable friendliness all at once like an atmosphere sustaining me, as made the fancied advantages of human neighborhood insignificant, and I have never thought of them since.
--Henry David Thoreau: "Walden," chapter 5: "Solitude," section 4).
He that can live alone resembles the brute beast in nothing, the sage in much and God in everything.
--Baltasar Gracián: "Oráculo Manual y Arte de Prudencia," Maxim 137 (1647)
I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.
--Albert Einstein: "Self-Portrait" (1936), p. 5 - "Out of My Later Years" (1950)
I don't think of myself as a Robinson Crusoe, because Robinson Crusoe wanted to go back. I don't want to return to society. I'm much more like Ulysses, in search of himself.
--Mauro Morandi, hermit of the Sardinian island of Budelli
I'm more than ever of the opinion that a decent human existence is possible only on the fringes of society.
--Hannah Arendt (in correspondence to Karl Jaspers, Jan. 1946)
submitted by Jonathan
A hermit’s work is never done.
-- Robert Lax: In the Beginning Was Love, edited by S. T. Georgiou
submitted by Ethan
Khalil Gibran:
Solitude is a silent storm that breaks down all our dead branches. Yet it sends our living roots deeper into the living heart of the living earth.
A hermit is one who renounces the world of fragments that he may enjoy the world wholly and without interruption. (from Sand and Foam)
Did people understand the language of silence, then they were nearer to the gods than the wild beasts of the forest. (from "The Cry of the Graves" in Spirits Rebellious)
Those of peaceful mind, discerning,
Mindful, given to Meditation,
Clearly see things rightly
And long not for sensual pleasures.
Those peaceful ones, delighting in diligence,
Who see fear in negligence,
Are incapable of falling away
And are close to Nibbana.
--Itivuttaka: 45
submitted by Timo
Deserts, silence, solitudes are not necessarily places but states of mind
and heart. These deserts can be found in the midst of the city, and in
the every day of our lives. We need only to look for them and realize our
tremendous need for them. They will be small solitudes, little deserts,
tiny pools of silence, but the experience they will bring, if we are
disposed to enter them, may be as exultant and as holy as the one God
Himself entered. For it is God who makes solitude, deserts, and silences
holy.
--Catherine Doherty, Poustinia
Solitude is a silent storm that breaks down all our dead branches. Yet it sends our living roots deeper into the living heart of the living earth.
A hermit is one who renounces the world of fragments that he may enjoy the world wholly and without interruption. (from Sand and Foam)
Did people understand the language of silence, then they were nearer to the gods than the wild beasts of the forest. (from "The Cry of the Graves" in Spirits Rebellious)
Two Chinese sayings:
Even the heartfelt hermit yearns, but I invite the wind for company. --Liu Tsung-yuan (from "Reply to Chia Peng")
If I ever left here, where would I go -- to the realm of people all trouble and peril? --Po Chui-i (from "My Thatch Hut")
Three Sufi sayings:
The Sufi is one in whom nothing is attached, and who does not become
attached to anything. --Nuri Mojudi (Ahmed Ibn Abu al-Hassan al-Nuri), 9th cent.
So long as we do not die to ourselves, and so long as are identified with someone or
something, we shall never be free. --Attar, 12th-13th cent.
O Heart! When you can see for an instant from within this prison of
deception the difference between This and That, detach from the Well of Tyranny. Stand outside!
--Rumi, 13th cent.
We have been very strenuously conditioned against
solitude. To be alone is considered to be a grievous and dangerous
condition. ... I suggest that people who like to be alone, who walk
alone, will perhaps be serious workers in the art field. ... To live
fully and effectively, the idea of achievement must be given up.
--Agnes Martin, Writings (2004)
It is only in the gesture of tranquilly prolonging this life and
striving to comprehend the mystery of this moment in time that freedom
of existence is achieved, for in solitarily scrutinizing the self the
perceptions of the self by others loses all relevance.
--Gao Xingjian, One Man's Bible, 54
Solitude is truly an interior affair, and to realize this insight and
to live accordingly amounts to the best and most helpful form of
progress.
--Rainer Maria Rilke, Correspondence (March 1907)
Solitude, though it may be silent as light, is, like light, the
mightiest of agencies; for solitude is essential to man. All men come
into this world alone; all leave it alone.
--Thomas De Quincy, Autobiographical Sketches
Solitude is impracticable, and society fatal. We must keep our head
in the one and our hands in the other. The conditions are met, if we
keep our independence, yet do not lose our sympathy.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson, Solitude and Society, 1857
To live as a hermit is to be untrammeled by things of the world; it is
like drawing a length of bamboo out from a dense thicket.
--Kyobutsu, Japanese hijiri, quoted from Plain Talk on the Pure
Land
Who not with others bides / And always lives alone, / If he's not God
himself, / Must into God have grown.
--Angelus Silesius, Solitude Divine, II, 202
A certain hermit once said, "There is one thing that even I, without
worldly entanglements, would be sorry to give up: the beauty of the
sky." I can see why he would have felt that way.
--Yoshida Kenko, Essays in Idleness, 20
And in this we must for the most part entertain ourselves with
ourselves,
and so privately that no exotic knowledge or communication be admitted
there; there to laugh and to talk, as if without wife, children, goods,
train, or attendance, to the end that when it shall so fall out that we
must lose any or all of these, it may be no new thing to be without
them.
We have a mind pliable in itself; that will be company; that has
wherewithal to attack and to defend, to receive and to give: let us not
then fear in this solitude to languish under an uncomfortable
vacuity.
--Michel de Montaigne, "On Solitude"
submitted by Jonathan
All the spaces of our past moments of solitude, the spaces in which
we have suffered from solitude, enjoyed, desired, and compromised
solitude, remain indelible within us.
--Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space
Let us do as the prophet says: "I will take heed of my ways, that I
offend not with my tongue. I have set a guard to my mouth. I was dumb
and was humbled, and kept silence even from good words." Here the
prophet teaches us that if we should at times, for the love of silence,
refrain from good talk, we should with more reason still, for fear of
sin's punishment, eschew all evil talk. On account of the great value of
silence, therefore, let leave to speak be seldom granted to observant
disciples, even though it be for good, holy, and edifying conversations;
for it is written: "In much speaking you shall not escape sin" and
elsewhere: "Death and life are in the power of the tongue." It becomes
the master to speak and to teach; but it befits the disciple to be
silent and to listen. If anything be asked of the superior, therefore,
let it be sought with all humility and respectful submission. But as for
buffoonery and talk that is vain and stirs laughter, we condemn such
things everywhere with a perpetual ban, and forbid the disciple to open
his mouth for such conversation.
--Rule of St. Benedict, ch. 6, "On Silence"
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. ... Solitude will be welcomed or endured or
avoided, according as a man’s personal value is large or small, -- the
wretch feeling, when he is alone, the whole burden of his misery; the
great intellect delighting in its greatness.
--Arthur Schopenhauer, Counsels and Maxims, ch. 2, 9
What is not meant to happen will not happen, however much you wish
it. What is meant to happen will happen, no matter what you do to
prevent it. This is certain. Therefor the best path is to remain
silent.
--Ramana Maharshi
The Christian (as we have been describing) is at once the most
attached and the most detached. Convinced in a way in which the
"worldly" cannot be of the unfathomable importance and value concealed
beneath the humblest worldly successes, the Christian is at the same
time as convinced as the hermit of the worthlessness of any success
which is envisaged only as a benefit to himself (or even a general one)
without reference to God.
--Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Le Mileau Divin, 1.6
There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make
themselves manifest. Thay are what is mystical What we cannot speak
about we must consign to silence.
--Lugwig Wittgenstain, Tractatus logico-philosophicus
In the writings of a hermit we always hear something of the echo of
desolation, something of the whispers and the timid gazing around of
isolation; from his strongest words, even from his screaming, still
resounds a new and dangerous kind of silence, of concealment. Whoever
has sat down, year in and year out, day and night, alone in an intimate
dispute and conversation with his soul, whoever has become a cave bear
or digger for treasure or guardian of treasure and dragon in his own
cavern - it can be a labyrinth but also a gold mine - such a man's very
ideas finally take on a distinct twilight colouring and smell as much of
mould as they do of profundity, something incommunicable and reluctant,
which blows cold wind over everyone passing by. The hermit does not
believe that a philosopher - assuming that a philosopher has always
first been a hermit - has ever expressed his real and final opinion in
his books. Don't people write books expressly to hide what they have
stored inside them? - In fact, he will have doubts whether a philosopher
could generally have "real and final" opinions, whether in his case
behind every cave there does not still lie, and must lie, an even deeper
cavern - a more comprehensive, stranger, richer world beyond the
surface, an abyss behind every reason, under every "foundation." Every
philosophy is a foreground-philosophy - that is the judgment of a
hermit: "There is something arbitrary about the fact that he remained
here, looked back, looked around, that at this point he set his shovel
aside and did not dig more deeply - there is also something suspicious
about it." Every philosophy also hides a philosophy; every opinion is
also a hiding place, every word is also a mask.
--Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Part 9, aphorism
289
You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t
know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don’t know who your
friends are, you don’t know what you owe anybody, you don’t know what
anybody owes to you. This is a place where you can simply experience and
bring forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of
creative incubation. At first you may find that nothing happens there.
But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will
happen.
--Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth, p. 115
submitted by Jesús
There
are two distinct components to human nature: the social and the
solitary. While most people are strictly social ... there are also
quite a few loners, people who motivate themselves, derive their
rewards directly from nature and whose only constraints are
self-imposed. The solitary part of human nature is definitely the more
highly evolved, and humanity has surged forward through the efforts of
brilliant loners and eccentrics. Their names live on forever precisely
because society was unable to extinguish their brilliance or thwart
their initiatives through social inertia. On the other hand, our social
instincts are atavistic and result far too reliably in mediocrity and
conformism. We evolved to live in small groups of a few families, small
enough to accommodate a few brilliant eccentrics, and our recent
experiments that have gone beyond that limited scope seem to rely on
herd instincts that may not even be specifically human. When facing
imminent danger, large groups of humans have a tendency to panic and
stampede, and on such occasions people regularly get trampled and
crushed underfoot: a pinnacle of evolution indeed!
--Dmitry Orlov, The Five Stages of Collapse, p. 5
submitted by Lynne
Solitude is not the absence of company, but the moment when our soul
is free to speak to us and help us decide what to do with our life.
--Paulo Coelho, Manuscript Found in Accra, from Paulo Coelho
Blog
Alone, even doing nothing, you do not waste your time. You do,
almost always, in company. No encounter with yourself can be altogether
sterile: Something necessarily emerges, even if only the hope of some
day meeting yourself again.
--E. M. Cioran, Strangled Thoughts, 2
We seek retreats for ourselves, houses in the country, seashores,
mountains. But ... we have in our power to retire into ourselves. For
there is no retreat that is quieter and freer from trouble than our
soul ... perfect tranquility, the right ordering of mind.
--Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 4.3
Solitude is a defense mechanism in a world that does not deserve to
be saved.
--Robert Ferguson, Alone in America, p. 85
Disassociation ... is a defense mechanism that allows the individual
to remove himself or herself from a commotional event either by numbing
feelings or splitting off the intellectual from the feeling state.
--Ester Schaler Buchholz, The Call of Solitude, p. 266
My gardening in the course of the years has become nothing but a
hermit’s pastime without any practical meaning -- that is to say, it
has a meaning for me alone.
--Hermann Hesse, Notes at Easter
Solitary men. Some men are so accustomed to being alone
with themselves that they do not compare themselves with others at all
but spin out their life of monologue in a calm and cheerful mood,
conversing and indeed laughing with themselves alone. If they are
nonetheless constrained to compare themselves with others they are
inclined to a brooding underestimation of themselves: so that they have
to be compelled to acquire again a good and just opinion of themselves
from others: and even from this acquired opinion they will tend
continually to detract and trade away something. -- We must therefore
allow certain men their solitude and not be so stupid, as we so often
are, as to pity them for it.
--Friedrich Nietzsche, Man Alone With Himself, 625
Our unhappiness arises from one thing only, that we cannot be
comfortably alone in our room. ... That is why the pleasure of solitude
is seen as so incomprehensible.
--Blaise Pascal, Pensees, 9. Diversions
When a person has grown old and has done his all, it is his task
peacefully to make friends with death. He does not need other people.
He knows them and has seen enough of them. What he needs is peace. It
is not seemly to seek out such a person, to talk to him, to torment him
with your chatter. At the gateway to his home the proper thing is to
pass by, as if nobody lived there.
--Hermann Hesse (notice on the door of his house upon award of the
Nobel Prize for Literature)
To reside in a remote village on the side of a deep gorge hidden amid
dense vegetation in a poor hut with a thatched roof on which grass
sprouts up, whose door is overgrown by vines and which has small round
windows, like the mouth of a jar and a mulberry staff for a hinge, a
hut whose roof is blanketed by snow and frost so that the grass mats
are soaked; to wander in a vast marsh and ramble on the side of
mountain slopes ...
--Liu An, Huainanzi
Vocation to Solitude. To deliver oneself up, to hand oneself up, to
hand oneself over, entrust oneself completely to the silence of a wide
landsccape of woods and hills, or sea, or desert, to sit still while
the sun comes up over the land and fills its silences with light. To
pray and work in the morning and to labor in meditation in the evening
when night falls upon that land and when the silence fills itself with
darkness and with stars. This is a true and special vocation. There are
few who are willing to belong completely to such silence, to let it
soak into their bones, to breathe nothing but silence, to feed on
silence, and to turn the very substance of their life into a living and
vigilant silence.
--Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude
There is no need for you to leave the house. Stay at your table and
listen. Don't even listen, just wait. Don't even wait, be completely
quiet and alone. The world will offer itself to you unmasked; it can't
do otherwise; in raptures it will writhe before you.
--Franz Kafka, The Blue Octavo Notebooks
Without going out the door, you can know the whole universe.
Without looking through the window, you can see the ways of heaven.
The farther you go, the less you know.
Thus the sage knows without traveling,
sees without looking,
acts without doing.
--Lao-tzu, Taoteching, 47
Living, there is not happiness in that. Living: carrying one's
painful self through the world. But being, being is happiness. Being:
becoming a fountain, a vessel of stone on which the universe falls like
warm rain.
--Milan Kundera, Immortality
submitted by Jesús
When he turned up -- a rare occurrence -- he was well received, but
no one knew what to say to him, for in his encounters with people he
was as imperturably grave and indifferent as a hermit who would very
shortly be going back to his woods.
--Hermann Hesse, The Marble Works
Our intelligence struggles to think its way out of the mirrored
labyrinth, but the actual exit is to be found only by turning aside,
now and then, from the churning of thought, dropping beneath the spell
of inner speech to listen into the wordless silence. Only by
frequenting that depth, again and again, can our ears begin to remember
the many voices that inhabit that silence, the swooping songs and
purring rhythms and antler-smooth movements that articulate themselves
in the eloquent realm beyond the words. Only thus do we remember
ourselves to the deeper field of intelligence, to the windblown
thinking that is not ours, upon which all our thoughts depend.
--David Abram, Becoming Animal
submitted by Pierre
The "I" in me, my friend, dwells in the house of silence, and
therein it shall remain for ever more, unperceived, unapproachable.
--Kahlil Gibran, The Madman
I feel that it is necessary and ordained that I should be alone, a
stranger and an exile in relation to every human circle without
exception.
--Simone Weil
I am a horse for a simple harness, not cut out for tandem or
teamwork.
--Albert Einstein, Forum and Century, Living
Philosophers
A mind forever voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone.
--William Wordsworth re Isaac Newton, The Prelude,
Book 3
Let me alone, sheltered in my cell.
Let me be with God, who alone is good.
Why should I move out of my cell?
Back to that which I left?
Let me be.
I want to cry and mourn over the days and nights I have wasted.
--Simeon the New Theologian
Now and again it is necessary to seclude yourself among deep
mountains and hidden valleys to restore your link to the source of
life.
--Morihei Ueshiba, founder of Aikido
Spiritual joys come only from solitude,
So the wise choose the bottom of the well,
For the darkness down there beats
The darkness up here.
He who follows at the heels of the world
Never saves his head.
--Rumi, Solitude
submitted by Pierre
It seemed to him that he knew exactly what it felt like to sit
in a room like this, in an armchair beside an open fire with your feet
in
the fender and a kettle on the hob, utterly alone, utterly secure with
nobody watching you, no voice pursuing you, no sound except the singing
of the kettle and the friendly ticking of the clock. ...
To do anything that suggested a taste for solitude, even to go for a
walk by yourself, was always slightly dangerous. There was a word for
it in Newspeak: ownlife, it was called, meaning
individualism and eccentricity.
--George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-four
A painter paints pictures on canvas, but musicians paint their
pictures on silence.
--Leopold Stokowski, classical music conductor
Solitude is as much an intrinsic desire in man as his
gregariousness. Hermits, solitary thinkers, independent
spirits, recluses, although often stigmatized in the modern world, are
healthy expressions of man's dialogue with himself.
--Clark E. Moustakas, Loneliness and Love
The rain surrounded the cabin ... with a whole world of
meaning, of
secrecy, of rumor. Think of it: all that speech pouring down, selling
nothing, judging nobody, drenching the thick mulch of dead leaves,
soaking the trees, filling the gullies and crannies of the wood with
water, washing out the places where men have stripped the hillside.
Nobody started it, nobody is going to stop it. It will talk as long as
it wants, the rain. As long as it talks I am going to listen.
--Thomas Merton (quoted in David Abram, The Spell of
the Sensuous)
submitted by Pierre
My deepest inspiration came from the simple Mongol pilgrims
who inspired me with the belief that learning
and scholarhsip are by no means essential to the truly religious life
or to gaining freedom from the Wheel.
On the mountain dedicated to Divine Wisdom (Wu Tai Shan in Northern
China), I learned that such Wisdom must be
sought for in silence and not at all by discursive thought.
--John Blofeld, The Wheel of Life
Solitude is the furnace of transformation. Without solitude we
remain victims of our society and continue to be entangled in the
illusions of the false self.
--Henri J. M. Nouwen, The Way of the Heart
The best word is the unspoken word. I am a man of few words
and a musician of few notes. Music is the written that cannot be
expressed. I wish that my music should seem to come out of the shadows
and return to the shadows again.
--Federico Mompou (20th century Catalan composer)
Silence is given in the sick declaration of the heart. When
the fragrance of a flower is charged with reminiscences, we linger
alone over breathing it in, questioning it, in the anguish of the
secret which its sweetness will in an instant deliver up to us: this
secret is only the inner presence, silent, unfathomable and naked,
which an attention forever given to words (to objects) steals from us,
and which it ultimately gives back if we give it to those most
transparent among objects. But this attention does not fully give it up
unless we know how to detach it, in the end, even from its
discontinuous objects, which we can do by choosing for them a sort of
resting place where they will finally disappear, the silence which is
no longer anything.
--Georges Bataille, Inner Experience
submitted by Pierre
This stillness, solitude, wildness of nature is a kind of
thoroughwort, or boneset, to my intellect. That is what I go out to
seek. It is as if I always met in those places some grand, serene,
immortal, infinitely encouraging, though invisible, companion, and
walked with him.
--Henry David Thoreau, Journal, January 7, 1857
submitted by Maria
In many so-called primitive cultures it is a requirement of
tribal
initiation to spend a lengthy period alone in the forests or mountains,
a period of
coming to terms with the solitude and nonhumanity of nature so as to
discover
who, or what, one really is—a discovery hardly possible while the
community is
telling you what you are, or ought to be. He may discover, for
instance, that
loneliness is the masked fear of an unknown which is himself, and that
the
alien-looking aspect of nature is a projection upon the forests of his
fear of
stepping outside habitual and conditioned patterns of feeling. There is
much
evidence to show that for anyone who passes through the barrier of
loneliness,
the sense of individual isolation bursts, almost by dint of its own
intensity, into the "all-feeling" of identity with the universe. One
may pooh-pooh
this as "nature mysticism" or "pantheism," but it should be obvious
that a
feeling of this kind corresponds better with a universe of mutually
independent
processes and relations than with a universe of distinct, blocklike
entities.
--Alan Watts, Nature, Man and Woman
submitted by Pierre
Once more
Uncontradicting solitude
Supports me on its giant palm;
And like a sea-anemone
Or simple snail, there cautiously
Unfolds, emerges, what I am.
--Philip Larkin, Best Society
We live, as we dream, -- alone.
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his
chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write,
though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at
the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate
between him and vulgar things.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature
submitted by Pierre
A busy solitude is, I think, the happiest life of all.
--Voltaire, Letter to Frederick II, King
of Prussia, 1751
When we are quiet and alone, we fear that something will be
whispered in our ears, and so we hate the quiet, and dull our senses in
society.
--Friedrich Nietzsche, Schopenhauer as Educator
submitted by Pierre
A subject to which few intellectuals ever give a thought is the right to be a vagrant, the freedom to wander. Yet vagrancy is deliverance, and life on the open road is the essence of freedom. To have the courage to smash the chains with which modern life has weighted us (under the pretext that it was offering us more liberty), then to take up the symbolic stick and bundle, and get out! The healthy wayfarer sitting beside the road scanning the horizon open before him, is he not the absolute master of the earth, the waters, even the sky?… His estate has no limits, his empire no law. No work bends him toward the ground, for the bounty and beauty of the earth are already his.
To have a home, a family, a property or a public function, to have a
definite means of livelihood and to be a useful cog in the social
machine, all these things seem necessary, even indispensable, to the
vast majority of men, including intellectuals, and including even those
who think of themselves as wholly liberated. And yet such things are
only a different form of the slavery that comes of contact with
others.
--Isabelle Eberhardt, author of The Nomad
submitted by Jasmine
Being alone means you are established firmly in the here and
the now and you become aware of what is happening in the present
moment. You use your mindfulness to become aware of every feeling,
every perception you have. You’re aware of what’s happening around you
in the sangha, but you’re always with yourself, you don’t lose
yourself. That’s the Buddha’s definition of the ideal practice of
solitude: not to be caught in the past or carried away by the future,
but always to be here, body and mind united, aware of what is happening
in the present moment. That is real solitude.
--Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of the Matter
God is the silence of the universe and man is the cry that
gives meaning to that silence.
--Jose Saramago (from his blog)
Before I was twenty, I never worried about what other people
thought of me. But after I was twenty I worried endlessly about all the
impressions I made and how people were evaluating me. Only sometime
after turning fifty did I realize that they hardly ever thought about
me at all.
--Anthony de Mello, One Minute Wisdom
The things that ignore us save us in the end. Their presence
awakens silence in us; they refresh our courage with the purity of
their detachment.
--Andrew Harvey, from A Journey in Ladakh
The thoughtful soul to solitude retires. ...
--Omar Khayyam, from Rubaiyat, IV
The most useful among the people is he who is distant from the
people. ...
The strong grows in solitude where the weak withers away.
--Kahlil Gibran, from The Spiritual Sayings of
Kahlil Gibran
What they undertook to do
They brought to pass;
All things hang like a drop of dew
Upon a blade of grass.
--W. B. Yeats, Gratitude to the Unknown Instructors
But vain the Sword and vain the Bow,
They never can work War's overthrow.
The Hermit's prayer and the Widow's tear
Alone can free the World from fear.
--William Blake, The Grey Monk
Who is not a companion to his spirit is an enemy to people.
And he who sees not in his self a friend dies despairing. For life
springs from within a man and comes not from without him.
--Kahlil Gibran, A Tear and a Smile
It is difficult to live among men because silence is so
difficult.
--Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathrustra; 25
and 42
To fly from, need not be to hate, mankind.
-- Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage; 3, 69
submitted by Michael
The strongest man is he who stands alone in this world.
--Henrik Ibsen, The Enemy of the People
When your tongue is silent, you can rest in the silence of the
forest. When your imagination is silent, the forest speaks to you,
tells you of its unreality and of the Reality of God. But when your
mind is silent, then the forest becomes magnificently real and blazes
transparently with the Reality of God.
--Thomas Merton, The Sign of Jonas
submitted by Bill
In the life of each of us there is a place remote and
islanded, and given to endless regret or secret happiness; we are each
the uncompanioned hermit and recluse of an hour or a day; we understand
our fellows of the cell to whatever age of history they may belong.
--Sarah Orne Jewett,The Country of the Pointed Firs
submitted by Michele
Nothing is more negation than solitude and peace;
That is where, if at all, my soul shall find release.
--Angelus Silesius, 2. 248
Nothing in all creation is so like God as silence.
--Meister Eckhart, Sermons
submitted by Patricia
In silence which is active, the Inner Light begins to glow --
a tiny spark. For the flame to be kindled and to grow, subtle argument
and clamour of our emotions must be stilled... Silence is the welcoming
acceptance of the other.
--Pierre Lacout, Quaker Faith and Practice 2.12
submitted by Michele
The traits of the solitary bird are five: first, it seeks the
highest place;
second, it withstands no company; third, it holds its beak in the air;
fourth,
it has no definite color; fifth, it sings sweetly. These traits must be
possessed
by the contemplative soul. It must rise above passing things, paying no
more heed
to them than if they did not exist. It must likewise be so fond of
silence and
solitude that it does not tolerate the company of another creature. It
must hold
its beak in the air of the Holy Spirit, responding to his inspirations,
that by
so doing it may become worthy of his company. It must have no definite
color,
desiring to do nothing definite other than the will of God. It must
sing sweetly
in the contemplation and love of its Bridegroom.
--St. John of the Cross, Sayings of Light and Love
Only in silence does hearing begin. The ear is freed and no
longer merely instrumental in communication in code. Relieved of its
usual function, it begins to search and research.
--Philip Groening, producer of the film Into Great
Silence
submitted by Michele
Now, my real wish is to remain in a remote place, like a
wounded animal, and [using] all the energy, all the time, concentrate
on spiritual practice. And use my brain in a maximum way in
spiritual field. Without much expectation. If too much expectation,
then [on] last day, I may regret [dying]. So without too much
expectation, but [I still want to live for] some years!
--Dalai Lama, Ten Questions for the Dalai Lama
(live interview in English)
If we are to think positively of the One, there would be more
truth in Silence.
--Plotinus, Enneads, 5.6
Non-action is the real action. One hundred acts are not as
good as one moment of silence. One hundred exercises are not as good as
one moment of standing still. ...
Big action is not as good as small action. Small action is not as good
as non-action.
--Wang Xiang Zhai, Chinese Xingyiquan master
God is the mirror of silence in which all creation is
reflected.
--Paramahansa Yogananda
submitted by Michele
Once you experience the inner silence you never feel empty,
because in the inner silence you can hear the stars speak, you can hear
the voice of the water, you can hear the voice of the great Self.
--Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, Resonate with Stillness
submitted by Linda
Great things are done when men and mountains met.
This is not done by jostling in the street.
--William Blake
You do not need to leave your room.
Remain sitting at your table and listen.
Do not even listen, simply wait,
be quiet, still and solitary.
The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked,
it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.
--Franz Kafka, Senses
Hell is other people.
--Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit
You, too, may have met your hermit, or perhaps something else
equally marvelous. Maybe it was a rock, a tree, a star, or a beautiful
sunset. The hermit is the Buddha inside of you.
--Thich Nhat Hanh, The Hermit and the Well
And speaking of solitude again, it becomes clear that solitude
is always at bottom not something that one can take or leave. We are
solitary. We may delude ourselves and act as though this were not so.
That is all. But how much better it is to realize that we are so, yes,
even to begin by assuming it.
--Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, 8
Solitude, silence, the admonishing presence of grand, fair,
and permanent forms, and the gentle allurements of pure air, flowers,
and clear streams -- these are valuable in themselves
-- Basil Willey, literary scholar
If you want to perceive and understand objectively, just don't
allow yourself to be confused by people.
Detach from whatever you find inside or outside yourself and only then
will you attain liberation. When you are not entangled in things, you
pass through freely to autonomy.
-- Zen Master Lin-chi
Solitude, though it may be silent as light, is like light the
mightiest of agencies;
for solitude is essential to man. All men come into this world alone;
all leave it along.
-- Thomas De Quincey
I have known the silence of the stars and of the sea,
And the silence of the city when it pauses,
And the silence of a man and a maid,
And the silence for which music alone finds the word,
And the silence of the woods before the winds of spring begin,
And the silence of the sick
When their eyes roam about the room.
And I ask: For the depths
Of what use is language? ...
-- Edgar Lee Masters: [from his poem] Silence
To drift like a dead leaf fallen from the tree and taken up by
the wind, knowing not if the wind carries you or if you are carrying
the wind ...
-- Michel Jourdan (French hermit writer)
submitted by Michele
About three hundred years ago, an Indian chief said to the
governor of Pennsylvania: "We love quiet; we suffer the mouse to play;
when the woods are
rustled by the wind, we fear not." Silence is part of the traditional
way of living for the Native American. It is an easy way, for it gives
the soft distance between spoken words, body signals, and action
choices. To live with Indian people is to discover a beautiful
enhancement of the spirit through silence. Unless they have succumbed
to the rush and noise of the mainstream style of life in this country,
Indians still reveal this gift of silence. . . .
-- Mary Jose Hobday (Catholic nun and Seneca elder)
submitted by Michele
How do I talk to a little flower? Through it I talk to the
Infinite. And what is the Infinite? It is the silent, small force. It
isn't the outer physical contact. No, it isn't that. The infinite is
not confined in the visible world. It is not in the earthquake, the
wind or the fire. It is that still small voice that calls up the
fairies.
--George Washington Carver
submitted by Lhachö
The city does not take away, neither does the country give,
solitude; solitude is within us.
-- Joseph Roux (18th century France)
Life is ample for those who keep themselves detached from
involvement. None of their time is transferred to others. None is
frittered away in this direction and that, none is committed to
Fortune, none perishes of neglect, none is squandered in lavishness,
none is idle.
God's first language is Silence. Everything else is a
translation.
--Thomas Keating
submitted by hermitess
A hermit, aware of such unworldly joy, finds truth from scenes
of rock walls, sunset glow, mountain caves and clouds. ... A decent
person needs to empty his heart for room for newly realized truth as
well as to fill his heart at the same time, leaving no room for worldly
desires.
--Choi Joon-ho, Korean art historian
Solitude and nature are absolutely necessary for the proper
development of a human being. It is an admixture of natural life, lived
in solitude, amid beautiful surroundings of nature and what we call an
arboreal life, which is absolutely necessary for the poise and harmony
of the human mind.
--Gopi Krishna
submitted by Steven
Every man who delights in uttering a multitude of words, even
though he says admirable things, is empty within. If you love truth, be
a lover of silence. In the beginning we have to force ourselves to be
quiet. But then there is born something that draws us to it.
--Isaac of Ninevah
Silence is not native to my world; more than likely it is a
stranger to your world, too. If you and I even have silence in our
noisy hearts, we are going to have to grow to it. ... We will do so on
silence's terms for growth -- terms which are not yet your own.
-- Wayne Oates, Nurturing Silence in a Noisy Heart
The present state of the world, the whole of life, is
diseased. If I were a doctor and were asked for my advice, I would
reply: "Create silence! Bring men to silence. The Word of God cannot be
heard in the noisy world of today. Create silence."
--Soren Kierkegaard
Best of any song is bird song in the quiet, but first you must
have the quiet.
--Wendell Berry
It is a good discipline to wonder in each new situation if
people wouldn't be better served by our silence than by our words.
--Henri J. M. Nouwen, The Way of the Heart
Far back past deep, dark, silent trees
where no city's seed has e're been sown,
in a forest by the crashing seas,
there lives the hermit all alone.
Wouldn't leave if, per chance, he could;
the slightest change would raise his ire.
Content to wander in the wood,
to dream alone beside the fire.
-- R. Logue
submitted by Robert
The Tao cannot be sought from others; it is attained in
oneself. If you abandon yourself to seek from others, you are far from
the Tao.
-- Huainan-tzi
Outwardly go with the flow, while inwardly keeping your true
nature. Then your eyes and ears will not be dazzled, and your thoughts
will not be confused, while the secret within you will expand greatly
to roam in the realms of absolute parity.
-- Huainan-tzi
The sage who wanders alone is like the wind that is not caught
in a net, like the lotus not soiled by water, leading others but not
led by them.
-- Sutta-Nipata (Pali)
Forgetfulness of black-printed books comes of itself to one
who realizes that all things are holy scriptures.
--Milarepa, Songs (44)
There are two great forces in the universe, silence and
speech. Silence prepares, speech creates. Silence acts, speech gives
the impulse to action. Silence compels, speech persuades. The immense
and inscrutable processes of the world all perfect themselves within,
in a deep and august silence, covered by a noisy and misleading surface
of sound ...
-- Sri Aurobindo, Karmayogin
I know that I went from the brief before to the eternal
afterward of everything, but I do not know how
--Antonio Porchia (1886-1968), Argentine poet
submitted by Timothy
It is necessary not to be "myself," still less to be
"ourselves."
--Simone Weil, Decreation
I have never found the companion that was so companionable as
solitude.
--Henry David Thoreau, Walden
If the desert is holy, it is because it is a forgotten place
that allows us to remember the sacred. Perhaps that is why every
pilgrimage to the desert is a pilgrimage to the self. There is no place
to hide and so we are found.
--Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge: An Unnatural
History of Family and Place
submitted by Michele
Solitude is sometimes the best society.
--John Milton, Paradise Lost
Society is the cave. The way out is solitude
--Simone Weil, The Great Beast
Every time you feel lost, alienated, or cut off from life, or
from the world, every time you feel despair, anger, or instability,
practice going home. Mindful breathing is the vehicle that you use to
go back to your true home.
--Thich Nhat Hanh, Going Home
Never less idle than when wholly idle, nor less alone than
when wholly alone.
--Cicero, De officius
This is the truth. If hermits regard contempt as praise,
poverty as riches, hunger as a feast, they will never die.
--Macarius (from Sayings of the Desert Fathers)
submitted by l'ermita
Seeing that, for every hermit, sickness is an exhortation to
virtue, without any ceremony whatsoever, I will follow my way, sickness
or death.
--Milarepa
submitted by l'ermita
I am fully qualified to work as a doorkeeper, for this reason:
What is inside me, I don't let out; what is outside me, I don't let in.
If someone comes in, he goes right out again. He has nothing to do with
me at all. I am a Doorkeeper of the Heart, not a lump of wet clay.
--Rabia Basri (woman Sufi master)
He is a solitary figure, robed in simplicity and kindness. He
sits upon the lap of Nature to draw his Inspiration, and stays up in
the silence of the night, awaiting the descending of the spirit.
--Khalil Gibran, from The Poet
Not all who wander are lost.
--J. R. R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings: 1. Fellowship
of the Ring
submitted by Derrick
I have started on a new journey which, I know, will take me
further than before towards the perfect life I was instinctively
seeking. I began this journey by exploring the unmapped territory of my
own mind... This endeavour is as vast as life itself because it
requires the analysis of our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual
being...
--Ella Maillart, explorer-traveler-writer, Cruises
and Caravans
submitted by Michele
Put forth diligent effort, seeking wisdom that comes of
itself, taking solitary delight in goodness and wisdom ...
-- Lotus Sutra, 3
We live as we dream -- alone.
--Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
I am never lonely. A lonely person is one who is not aware of
the complete fullness within. When you become dependent on something
outside without having awareness of the reality within you, then you
will indeed be lonely. The whole search for enlightenment is to seek
within, to become aware that you are complete in yourself. You are
perfect. You don't need any externals. No matter what happens in any
situation, you need never be lonely.
-- Swami Rama, Living with the Himalayan Masters
In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a
clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into
crystal clearness.
-- Mohandas Gandhi
It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it
is easy in solitude to live after one's own; but the great man is he
who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the
independence of solitude.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
When a grasshopper sits on a blade of grass, he has no thought
of separation, resistance, or blame. Human children prefer dragonflies
whose wings and bellies are as red as chili peppers. But the green
grasshopper blends completely with the green grass, and children rarely
notice it. It neither retreats nor beckons. It knows nothing of
philosophy or ideals. It is simply grateful for its ordinary life.
-- Thich Nhat Hanh, Fragrant Palm Leaves
Genuine tranquility of the heart and perfect peace of mind,
the highest blessings on earth after health, are to be found only in
solitude and, as a permanent disposition, only in the deepest
seclusion.
-- Arthur Schopenhauer, World As Will and
Representation
The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering,
clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander a spell in abysses of
solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation.
-- Kate Chopin,
The Awakening
In solitude we are in the presence of mere matter: the sky,
the stars, the moon, blossoming trees, things of less value, perhaps,
than the human spirit. The value of solitude lies in the greater
possibility of attention.
--Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace
Solitude is the furnace of transformation. Without solitude we
remain victims of our society and continue to be entangled in the
illusions of the false self.
--Henri J. M. Nouwen, Out of Solitude
The moment you don't make anything, Buddha's "right effort" is
achieved. Right effort is no effort. To get to the place of doing
things effortlessly takes a hell of a lot of effort.
-- Jane Dobisz, The Wisdom of Solitude
Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his
back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that
increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life,
contemplation, meditation.... Tooting, howling, screeching, booming,
crashing, whistling, grinding, and trilling bolster his ego. His
anxiety subsides. His inhuman void spreads monstrously like a gray
vegetation.
-- Jean Arp, Sacred Silence
Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius, the stern
friend, the cold, obscure shelter where moult the wings which will bear
it farther than suns and stars.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Conduct of Life
Everyone says Tushita Heaven is fine,
but how can it match this old hut of mine?
-- Stonehouse (Ching-hung), from his Mountain Poems
For the most part it [Walden Pond] is as solitary where I live
as on the prairies. It is as much Asia or Africa as New England. I
have, as it were, my own sun and moon and stars, and a little world all
to myself.
-- Henry David Thoreau, Walden, chapter 5:
Solitude
God's discretion invites us to silence, a silence filled with
wonder, a silence which adores and opens itself to God, who draws
closer in mystery. Adoration envelopes itself in silence,
joining itself to that which draws closer.
--Daniel Bourguet, La Pudeur de Dieu
submitted by Michele
One who knew how to appropriate the true value of this world
would be the poorest man in it. The poor rich man! All he has is what
he has bought. What I see is mine.
-- Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and
Merrimack Rivers
A hermit is one who renounces the world of fragments that he
may enjoy the world wholly and without interruption.
-- Khalil Gibran, Sand and Foam
Truthfully, I am "homesick" for a land that is not mine. I am
haunted by the steppes, the solitude, the everlasting snow and the
great blue sky "up there"! The difficult hours, the hunger, the cold,
the wind slashing my face, leaving me with enormous, bloody, swollen
lips. The camp sites in the snow, sleeping in the frozen mud, none of
that counted, those miseries were soon gone and we remained perpetually
submerged in a silence, with only the song of the wind in the
solitude, almost bare even of plant life, the fabulous chaos of rock,
vertiginous peaks and
horizons of blinding light.
-- Alexandra David-Néel [traveler and explorer of
India and Tibet]
submitted by Michele
No matter what the religion, at the highest level prayer is related and emerges as a state of silence, inner silence, inner stillness. At a very high level one may believe that one is having a dialogue or directing a petition to God. Still, even this prayer is related to the tangible -- something which one can objectify. This is emphasized in the Hannya Shingyo, the Buddhist Heart Sutra: "No prayer, no you, no me ... no this, no that." It goes on until we come to "No thing. Nothing," where you can't put labels, you can't objectify. I think this view conceives of prayer as absolute emptiness, stillness.
-- William Segal, A Voice at the Borders of Silence
No need to attack the faults of others
no need to flaunt your own virtues
act when you are acknowledged
retire when you are ignored.
-- Han-shan (8th century)
Be able to be alone. Lose not the advantage of solitude, and
the society of thyself.
-- Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682)
submitted by De Anna
I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself,
than to be crowded on a velvet cushion.
-- Henry David Thoreau, Walden
submitted by De Anna
I shall state silences more competently than ever a better man
spangled the butterflies of vertigo.
-- Samuel Beckett
at the crescent moon
the silence
enters the heart
-- Chiyo-ni, from Woman Haiku Master by
Patricia Donegan and Yoshie Ishibashi
submitted by anonymous
The more than human personages of visionary experience never
"do anything." ... They are content merely to exist. …To be busy is the
law of our being. The law of theirs
is to do nothing. ...The Egyptian gods, the Madonnas, the
bodhisattvas, the Buddhas, ... have one characteristic in
common: a profound stillness.
-- Aldous Huxley, Heaven and Hell
submitted by Bob
Whoever loves God wishes to be alone. Like newlyweds who do
not want to have their intimacy interrupted by outsiders, those who
have felt the love of God
retire into silence and solitude.
-- Ernesto Cardenal, Abide in Love
submitted by anonymous
Silence is the communing of the conscious soul with itself.
-- Henry David Thoreau, Journal, 12/1838
submitted by Bob
On the exoteric level the traditions are irreconcilable. On
the esoteric, experiential level of the heart reigns an eloquent,
reverential silence.
-- Frederick Franck, A Little Compendium On That
Which Matters
submitted by anonymous
Ordinary men hate solitude. But the Master makes use of it,
embracing his aloneness, realizing he is one with the whole universe.
-- Tao Te Ching, 42 (Stephen
Mitchell translation)
submitted by SweetMeadow
We need to find God and God cannot be found in noise and
restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature - trees and
flowers and grass - grow in silence. See the stars, the moon and the
sun, how they move in silence. The more we receive in silent prayer,
the more we can give in our active life.
-- Mother Teresa, The Joy in Loving
submitted by anonymous
There are moments when the silence of God culminates in his
creatures. In the solitude of a retreat, we are renewed by intimate
meeting with Christ.
-- Brother Roger of Taizé, The Rule of Taizé
submitted by Michele
Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a
god.
-- Francis Bacon
One of the conditions of being human, and even if we're
surrounded by others, we essentially live our lives alone. Real life
takes place inside us.
-- Paul Auster
Your life dwells among the causes of death
Like a lamp standing in a strong breeze.
-- Nagarjuna
Renunciation does not mean turning our back on the world. It
means turning our back on the conditions that cause suffering ...
-- Jakusho Kwong, No Beginning, No End
The cultivation of justice is silence.
-- Isaiah 32.17