Let me admonish you, first of all, to go alone; to refuse the good models, even those sacred in the imagination of men...Imitation cannot go above its model. Emerson.
Imitation is sometimes a good training-ship; but it will never fly the flag of the admiral. Sri Aurobindo.
The great are strongest when they stand alone.
A God-given might of being is their force,
A ray from self's solitude of light, the guide;
The soul that can live alone with itself meets God;
Its lonely universe is their rendezvous.
The love of solitude is a sign of the disposition towards knowledge; but knowledge itself is only achieved when we have a settled perception of solitude in the crowd, in the battle and in the mart. Sri Aurobindo.
You think I am impoverishing myself by withdrawing from men, but in my solitude I have woven for myself a silken web or chrysalis, and, nymph-like, shall ere long burst forth a more perfect creature, fitted for a higher society.Thoreau.
After having realized that a crowded place is the least conducive to the practice of contemplation: to resort to a sequestered place, in order to meditate upon the Lord, is known as the love of solitude. Sri Shankaracharya.
Even as bad actors cannot sing alone, but only in chorus: so some cannot walk alone.
But all is screened, subliminal, mystical
It needs the intuitive heart, the inward turn,
It needs the power of a spiritual gaze.
(Savitri.)Sri Aurobindo.
A single thinker in an aimless world
Awaiting some tremendous dawn of God.
(Savitri.)Sri Aurobindo.
Take what relates to the body as far as the bare use warrants--as food, drink, clothing etc. But all that makes for show and luxury reject.
"Hold fast
, I beseech you, to the resolution to wait for light from
the Lord. Go not to men for a creed, faint not, but be of good courage.
The darkness is only for a season. We must be willing to tarry the
Lord's time in the wilderness, if we would enter the Promised Land.
The purest saints that I have ever known were long, very long, in darkness
and in doubt. Even when they had firm faith, they were long without
'feeling' what they 'believed in'. One told me he was two years in
chaotic darkness, without an inch of firm ground to stand upon, watching
for the dayspring from on high, and after this long probation it shone
upon his path, and he has walked by its light for years. Do not fear
or regret your isolation from men, your difference from all around you.
It is often necessary to the enlargement of the soul that it should thus
dwell alone for a season, and when the mystical union of God and man shall
be completely developed, and you feel yourself newly born a child of light,
one of the sons of God, you will also feel new ties to your fellow men;
you will love them all in God, and each will be to you whatever their state
will permit them to be.
My acquaintances will sometimes wonder why I will impoverish myself by living aloof from this or that company, but greater would be the impoverishment if I should associate with them.Thoreau.
"Someone out in a blizzard dressed in the lightest summer clothes is not as exposed as one who wills to be a solitary human being in a world where everything is alliance and accordingly, with the selfishness of the alliance, demands that one ally oneself with it until the individual protects himself against several alliances by becoming a member of one alliance, whereas the solitary, as soon as it has become obvious that he does not wish to enter into alliance with anyone, has all the alliances, joined together as one -- a grandiose alliance! -- against him." Kierkegaard.
It would give me such joy to know that a friend had come to see me, and yet that pleasure I seldom if ever experience.....Thoreau.
If I am too cold for human friendship,
I trust I shall not soon be too
cold for natural influences. It appears to be a law that you
cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature. Those qualities
that bring you near to the one estrange you from the other.Thoreau.
I cannot associate with those who do not understand me.
By my intimacy with nature I find myself withdrawn from man. My interest in the sun and the moon, in the morning and the evening, compels me to solitude. The grandest picture in the world is the sunset sky. In your higher moods what man is there to meet? You are of necessity isolated. The mind that perceives clearly any natural beauty is in that instant withdrawn from human society. My desire for society is infinitely increased; my fitness for any actual society is diminished. The inclination for society indicates a distance from Nature.Thoreau.
"Live alone, walk alone". All friendship, all love is only limitation.... One cannot serve the God of Truth who leans upon somebody. Be still my soul! Be alone! Vivekananda.
I repeatedly find myself drawn towards certain persons but to be disappointed,
I expect everything but get nothing. By myself I can live and thrive,
but in the society of incompatible friends, I starve. Ah! I need solitude. All human beings are frightened of their own solitude. Yet only in solitude can we learn to know ourselves …learn to handle our own eternity of aloneness. Han Suyin.
Learn to be silent. Let your quiet mind listen and absorb. Pythagoras.
Silence is the great revelation. Lao Tzu.
Let all our stores and munitions be provided for the lone state.
It snowed in the night of the 6th, and the ground is now snow covered.
The remote pastures and hills beyond the woods are now closed to cows and
cowherds, aye, and to cowards. I am struck by this sudden solitude
and remoteness which these places have acquired. The dear privacy
and retirement and solitude which winter makes possible.Thoreau.
If you would really take a position outside the street and daily life
of men, you must have deliberately planned your course, you must have business
that is not your neighbors' business, which they cannot understand.Thoreau.
The Sages will is set.....always and only.....on the inward. Plotinus.
There is nothing so sanative, I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time.
To be in company, even the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating.
I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable
as solitude.Thoreau.
The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.
We can ill spare The more I know you, the more I dissatisfy and must dissatisfy all my
wonted companions. Their very presence stupefies me. The common
understanding withdraws itself from the one centre of all existence.
Unless the action is necessary, 
I have come forth to this hill at sunset
to see the forms of the mountains in the horizon,....to behold and commune
with something grander than man. Their mere distance and unprofanedness
is an infinite encouragement. It is with infinite yearning and aspiration
that I seek solitude, more and more resolved and strong; but with
a certain genial weakness that I seek society ever.Thoreau.
so poetic, as a walk in the woods and
fields even now, (Jan.) when I meet none abroad for pleasure. Nothing
so inspires me and excites such serene and profitable thought. The
objects are elevating. In the streets and in society I am almost
invariably cheap and dissipated, my life is unspeakably mean. But
alone in distant woods or fields, I come to myself, I once more feel myself
grandly related, and that cold and solitude are friends of mine.
I suppose that this value, in my case, is equivalent to what others get
by churchgoing and prayer. I come to my solitary woodland walk, as
the homesick go home. I wish to know something; I wish to be made
better. I wish to forget, a considerable part of every day, all mean,
narrow, trivial men, and therefor I come out to these solitudes, where
the problem of existence is simplified. I get away a mile or two
from the town into the stillness and solitude of nature, with rocks, trees,
weeds , snow about me. I am not thus expanded, recreated, enlightened,
when I meet a company of men. They bore me. This stillness,
solitude, wildness of nature is a kind of thoroughwort, or boneset, to
my intellect. This is what I go out to seek. It is if I always
met in those places some grand, serene, immortal, infinitely encouraging,
though invisible companion, and walked with him. There at last my
nerves are steadied, my senses and mind do their office. Thoreau.
the commanding social benefits of cities; they must
be used; yet cautiously, and haughtily, -- and will yield their best values
to him who best can do without them. Keep the town for occasions,
but the habits should be formed to retirement. 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.
He who should inspire and lead his race must be defended from traveling
with the souls of other men, from living, breathing, reading, and writing
in the daily, time-worn yoke of their opinions. "In the morning,
-- solitude;" said Pythagoras; that Nature may speak to the imagination,
as she does never in company, and that her favorite may make acquaintance
with those divine strengths, which disclose themselves to serious and abstracted
thought. 'Tis very certain that Plato, Plotinus, Archimedes, Hermes,
Newton, Milton, Wordsworth, did not live in a crowd, but descended into
it from time to time as benefactors: and the wise instructor will press
this point, of securing to the young soul, in the disposition of time and
the arrangements of living, periods and habits of solitude.Emerson.
unless it is adequate, I do not wish to perform it. I wish to do one thing but once. I do not love
routine.
For the path which the hero travels alone, is the highway of health and benefit to mankind.
In every solitude there are those who succor our genius and stimulate us in wonderful ways.
Solitude characterizes the third stage of life. This is the stage of retirement. During this stage one is required to renounce the householder or the married life and all its activities and duties and enter the life of contemplation and meditation.
Avoid Company where it is not profitable or necessary; and in those occasions speak little, and last.
It takes a man to make a room silent.
There are voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world.
It is a sign of our times, conspicuous to the coarsest observer, that
many intelligent and religious persons withdraw themselves from the common
labors and competitions of the market and the caucus, and betake themselves
to a certain solitary and critical way of living, from which no solid fruit
has yet appeared to justify their separation. They hold themselves
aloof: they feel the 
disproportion between their faculties and the work offered them, and
they prefer to ramble in the country and perish of ennui, to the degradation
of such charities and such ambitions as the city can propose to them.
They are striking work, and crying out for somewhat worthy to do!
What they do, is done only because they are overpowered by the humanities
that speak on all sides; and they consent to such labor as is open to them, though to their lofty dream
the writing of Iliads or Hamlets, or the building of cities or empires
seems drudgery. They are lonely; the spirit of their writing and conversation
is lonely; they repel influences; they shun general society; they incline
to shut themselves in their chamber in the house, to live in the country
rather than in the town, and to find their tasks and amusements in solitude.
Society, to be sure, does not like this very well; it saith, Whoso goes
to walk alone, accuses the whole world; he declareth all to be unfit to
be his companions; it is very uncivil, nay, insulting; Society will retaliate.
Meantime, this retirement does not proceed from any whim on the part of
these separators; but if any one will take pains to talk with them, he
will find that this part is chosen both from temperament and from principle;
with some unwillingness, too, and as a choice of the less of two evils;
for these persons are not by nature melancholy, sour, and unsocial,....they
are not stockish or brute, -- but joyous; susceptible, affectionate;
they have even more than others a great wish to be loved. Like
the young Mozart, they are rather ready to cry ten times a day, "But are
you sure you love me?" Nay, if they tell you their whole thought, they
will own that love seems to them the last and highest gift of nature; that
there are persons whom in their hearts they daily thank for existing, -- persons whose faces are perhaps unknown
to them, but whose fame and spirit
have penetrated their solitude, -- and
for whose sake they wish to exist. To behold the beauty of another
character, which inspires a new interest in our own; to behold the beauty
lodged in a human being, with such vivacity of apprehension, that I am
instantly forced home to inquire if I am not deformity itself: to behold
in another the expression of a love so high that it assures itself, --
assures itself also to me against every possible casualty except my unworthiness;
-- these are degrees on the scale of human happiness, to which they have
ascended; and it is a fidelity to this sentiment which has made common
association distasteful to them. They wish
a just and even fellowship,
or none. They cannot gossip with you, and they do not wish, as they
are sincere and religious, to gratify any mere curiosity which you may
entertain. Like fairies, they do not wish to be spoken of.
Love me, they say, but do not ask who is my cousin and my uncle.
If you do not need to hear my thought, because you can read it in my face
and behavior, then I will tell it you from sunrise to sunset. If
you cannot divine it, you would not understand what I say. I will
not molest myself for you. I do not wish to be profaned. With
this passion for what is great and extraordinary, it cannot be wondered
at, that they are repelled by vulgarity and frivolity in people.
It is easy in the world to follow the worlds opinion. It is easy in solitude to follow our own. But the great man is he, who in the midst of the crowd, keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.Emerson.
If he listen with insatiable ears, richer and greater wisdom is taught him, the sound swells to a ravishing music, he is borne away as with a flood, he becomes careless of his food and of his house, he is the fool of ideas, and leads a heavenly life.Emerson.
In solitude I hear the Voice of Silence. 
Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of the genius. - Gibbon (1737-1794)
Your loneliness........... is yourself longing to know your Self.
It is better to be alone than in bad company.
We all tend to feel more secure when we are with others, even if we are all being led to the slaughterhouse. But this is a myth we've been led to believe....the myth of Conformity.
When there is a complete silence in the being, either a stillness of the whole being or a stillness behind, unaffected by surface movements, then we can become aware of a Self, a spiritual substance of our being, an existence exceeding even the soul-individuality, spreading itself into universality, surpassing all dependence on any natural form or action, extending itself upward into a transcendence of which the limits are not visible. It is these liberations of the spiritual part in us which are the decisive steps of the spiritual evolution in Nature.
To dare to live alone is the rarest courage; since there are many who had rather meet their bitterest enemy in the field, than their own hearts in their closet.
Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of the genius. - Gibbon (1737-1794)
Maps are useless where you're going, because the territory ahead is constantly shifting. You might as well try to map flowing water.
There is only one great adventure...... and that is inwards...... towards the self.
If a man wishes to be sure of the road he treads on, he must close his eyes and walk in the dark. - St. John Of The Cross
"My soul, wait silently for God alone, For my expectationis from Him" (Psalms 62:5).
"As soon as you trust your Self, you will know how to live." - Goethe
Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself, and know that everything in life has purpose. There are no mistakes, no coincidences, all events are blessings, given to us..... to learn from.
Men cannot see their reflection in running water, but only in still water. Only that which is itself still can still the seekers of stillness. ~ Chuang Tzu
What people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can.
Not only a truer knowledge, but a greater power comes to one in the quietude and silence of a mind that, instead of bubbling on the surface, can go to its own depths and listen. ~ Sri Aurobindo
The best thinking has been done in solitude. The worst has been done in turmoil. ~Thomas Alva Edison
Language has created the word "loneliness" to express the pain of being alone, and the word "solitude" to express the glory of being alone. ~Paul Tillich
My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities. I am truly a "lone traveler" and have never belonged to my country, my friends, or even my immediate family with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties, I have never lost a sense of distance and a need for solitude - feelings which increase with the years. I lived in solitude in the country and noticed how the monotony of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind. Albert Einstein.
The purpose of solitude is threefold: (1) to contemplate, (philosophize) (2) to learn charity, i.e., Love of your neighbour, (mankind in general), (3) to give oneself to That, and That alone.
This fire growing by its fuel's death.......... like a set of batteries gradually being charged, only with 'another kind' of intensity.
More than two millenniums ago, Euripedes wrote, "The wisest men follow their own direction."
Make no mistake about it: do not even begin to reason about it; the 'Path of Solitude' is difficult indeed. The cruelest of all wants, the desitution of the heart.
Great indeed, but few are those to whom self-knowledge from within is thus sufficient and who do not need to pass under the dominant influence of a written book or a living teacher. Sri Aurobindo.
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