Quotes about Solitude

When "important" individuals go away we are sad, until we see that they are meant to go, so that only one thing is left for us to do—to look into the face of God for ourselves.

There are vast areas of stubbornness and ignorance the Holy Spirit has to reveal in each of us, but it can only be done when Jesus gets us alone...Jesus cannot teach us anything until we quiet all our intellectual questions and get alone with Him.

Prayer is an effort of the will. After we have entered our secret place and shut the door, the most difficult thing to do is to pray. We cannot seem to get our minds into good working order, and the first thing we have to fight is wandering thoughts. The great battle in private prayer is overcoming this problem of our idle and wandering thinking. We have to learn to discipline our minds and concentrate on willful, deliberate prayer.

No one rose to his defense. He not only suffered; he suffered alone. Even his Father turned his back on him in his deepest moment of agony.

Today you will spend solitary moments of conversation with yourself, either listing your complaints or counting your blessings.

Mathematician need only peace of mind and occasionally, paper and pencil.

Loneliness can be conquered only by those who can bear solitude.

Thomas Merton's Thoughts in Solitude.

On reaching a certain place, he spent the night there because the sun had set. And taking one of the stones from that place, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep.

So Jacob was left all alone, and there a man wrestled with him until daybreak.

Joseph hurried out because he was moved to tears for his brother, and he went to a private room to weep.

If he arrived alone, he is to leave alone; if he arrived with a wife, she is to leave with him.