SO GOOD QUOTES

“Loneliness can also spur us on to new heights of creativity. It is no secret, for instance, that many of our greatest works of literature, art, poetry, music, and philosophy arose from the depths of someone’s loneliness.

…

I would like to illustrate this by using as an example a very creative person of the nineteenth century, Søren Kierkegaard, the father of modern existentialism. A very gifted and prolific writer, Kierkegaard always saw his own loneliness as a creative pain, something almost to be deliberately cultivated and nurtured. For him, living in loneliness was part of a vocation from God. For this reason, among others, he refused marriage, even though he was deeply in love with someone. He sacrificed, as he saw it, married love so that he could continue his vocation of loneliness. Many of his works arose out of his own loneliness and, for that exact reason, speak deeply healing words to his readers.”

—Ronald Rolheiser, The Restless Heart: Finding Our Spiritual Home in Times of Loneliness