All these afflictions are worse when, through hatred of their toilsome failure, men have retreated into idleness and private studies which are unbearable to a mind aspiring to public service, keen on activity, and restless by nature because of course it is short of inner resources. In consequence, when the pleasures have been removed which busy people derive from their actual activities, the mind cannot endure the house, the solitude, the walls, and hates to observe its own isolation. From this arises that boredom and self-dissatisfaction, that turmoil of a restless mind and gloomy and grudging endurance of our leisure, especially when we are ashamed to admit the reasons for it and our sense of shame drives the agony inward, and our desires are trapped in narrow bounds without escape and stifle themselves. From this arise melancholy and mourning and a thousand vacillations of a wavering mind, buoyed up by the birth of hope and sickened by the death of it. From this arises the state of mind of those who loathe their own leisure and complain that they have nothing to do, and the bitterest envy at the promotion of others. For unproductive idleness nurtures malice, and because they themselves could not prosper they want everyone else to be ruined. Then from this dislike of others’ success and despair of their own, their minds become enraged against fortune, complain about the times, retreat into obscurity, and brood over their own sufferings until they become sick and tired of themselves.
—Seneca, On the Shortness of Life: Life Is Long if You Know How to Use It
Category: LONELINESS & SOLITUDE
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The creative person is constantly seeking to discover himself, to remodel his own identity, and to find meaning in the universe through what he creates. He finds this a valuable integrating process which, like meditation or prayer, has little to do with other people, but which has its own separate validity. His most significant moments are those in which he attains some new insight, or makes some new discovery; and these moments are chiefly, if not invariably, those in which he is alone.
—Anthony Storr, Solitude a Return to the Self -
Many creative activities are predominantly solitary. They are concerned with self-realization and self-development in isolation, or with finding some coherent pattern in life.
—Anthony Storr, Solitude a Return to the Self
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When we don’t have the capacity for solitude, we turn to other people in order to feel less anxious or in order to feel alive. When this happens, we’re not able to appreciate who they are. It’s as though we’re using them as spare parts to support our fragile sense of self.
—Sherry Turkle: Connected, but alone? -
Every one rushes elsewhere and into the future, because no one wants to face one’s own inner self.
—Michel de Montaigne -
The man who fears to be alone will never be anything but lonely, no matter how much he may surround himself with people.
—Thomas Merton,No Man Is an Island -
I could never again see the evening sun fading into oblivion without feeling lonely.
—Clark E. Moustakas, Loneliness -
During his hours of bitter loneliness, when he became utterly aware and sensible, he understood the ultimate meaning of being alone. He realized how wrong his sense of values had been and how he had failed to see that the simple, the natural, the homely, the unpretentious things in life are what really matter.
—Clark E. Moustakas, Loneliness -
Byrd soon discovered the brain-cracking loneliness of solitary confinement and the loneliness of futile routine. He tried to crowd his days with systematic but meaningful acts. But he found it exceedingly difficult to escape loneliness.
—Clark E. Moustakas, Loneliness -
Byrd anticipated the crisis of loneliness. What he had not counted on was how closely a man could come to dying and still not die or want to die.
—Clark E. Moustakas, Loneliness
SO GOOD QUOTES 