This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Thomas De Quincey, fully Thomas Penson De Quincey
Solitude, though it may be silent as light, is like light, the mightiest of agencies; for solitude is essential to man.
Suppleness is an extremely important quality of soul... When you find tolerance in yourself for the competing demands of the soul, life becomes more complicated, but also more interesting. An example might be the contradictory needs of solitude and social life.
E. O. Wilson, fully Edward Osborne "E.O." Wilson
True character arises from a deeper well than religion. It is the internalization of moral principles of a society, augmented by those tenets personally chosen by the individual, strong enough to endure through trials of solitude and adversity. The principles are fitted together into what we call integrity, literally the integrated self, wherein personal decisions feel good and true. Character is in turn the enduring source of virtue. It stands by itself and excites admiration in others
Admiration | Character | Enough | Good | Principles | Solitude | Tenets | Trials |
For the total development of the human being, solitude as a means of cultivating sensitivity becomes a necessity. One has to know what it means to be alone, what it is to meditate, what it is to die; and the implications of solitude, of meditation, of death, can be known only by seeking them out. These implications cannot be taught, they must be learnt. One can indicate, but learning by what is indicated is not the experiencing of solitude or meditation. To experience what is solitude and what is meditation, one must be in in a state of inquiry; only a mind that is in a state of inquiry is capable of learning. But when inquiry is suppressed by previous knowledge, or by the authority and experience of another, then learning becomes mere imitation, and imitation causes a human being to repeat what is learnt without experiencing it.
Authority | Experience | Imitation | Inquiry | Learning | Means | Mind | Solitude |
Joan Halifax, fully Roshi Joan Jiko Halifax
Often we must go outside society to confirm that we live inside the continuum of creation. One seeks solitude to know relatedness.
Jean Paul, born Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, aka Jean Paul Richter
We could not endure solitude were it not for the powerful companionship of hope, or of some unseen one.
Jean Paul, born Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, aka Jean Paul Richter
The contemplation of night should lead to elevating rather than to depressing ideas. Who can fix his mind on transitory and earthly things, in presence of those glittering myriads of worlds; and who can dread death or solitude in the midst of this brillings, animated universe, composed of countless suns and worlds, all full of light and life and motion?
Contemplation | Death | Dread | Life | Life | Light | Mind | Solitude | Contemplation |
Modern man’s discovery of the fundamental aloneness and solitude in a universe indifferent to his fate is due to an expectation that it was in the universe where care for what is ultimately precious was to be found. He now suffers from the collapse of naïve self-deception and oversimplification. Our era marks the end of simplification, the end of personal exclusiveness, the end of self-defense through aloofness, the end of a sense of security.
Care | Discovery | Era | Expectation | Fate | Self-deception | Sense | Solitude | Universe | Fate | Discovery | Expectation |
Fatigue can make it hard to have faith. Too much busyness can make it hard to have faith. Too much of too little solitude can impact faith. For that matter, so can a bout of hunger or overwork, anything carried to an extreme. Faith thrives on routine. Look at any monastery and you will see that. Faith keeps on keeping on.
Stendhal, pen name of Marie Henn Beyle or Marie-Henri Beyle NULL
One can acquire everything in solitude - except character.
Solitude |
May Sarton, pen name of Eleanore Marie Sarton
The values of solitude - one of its values - is, of course, that there is nothing to cushion against attacks from within, just as there is nothing to help balance at times of particular stress or depression. A few moments of desultory conversation...may calm an inner storm. But the storm, painful as it is, might have had some truth in it. So sometimes one has simply to endure a period of depression for what it may hold of illumination if one can live through it, attentive to what it exposes or demands. The reasons for depression are not so interesting as the way one handles it, simply to stay alive.
Balance | Depression | Nothing | Solitude | Truth |