Soliloquy

“ And in life's noisiest hour
There whispers still the ceaseless love of thee,
The heart's self-solace and soliloquy. ”

“ God never speaks but in the still small voice of consciousness, that comes to every man in the dark watches of the night, when the hum and movement of life is hushed into the silence of sleep!
Solitude, too, that twin-sister of Silence, “though,” as De Quincey says, “it may be silent as light, is, like light, the mightiest of agencies; for solitude is essential to man.” But if essential to the ordinary man, it is as the breath of life to men of God and prophets. Solitude, in fact, sinks deep into a pure and simple nature, and changes him in a great measure. ”

“ It is solitude—and solitude is the mother country of the strong. It is astonishing what an amount of irritation is poured from external objects through the windows of the soul,—on the retina, where they appear to be focused, and then turned like a burning-glass on the naked nerves of the soul. To shut one's eyes and turn the thoughts inward is like sleep, and, like sleep, gives strength and peace. Now, would you accept from me a subject of meditation?"
"Willingly, sir," he said, like a child. ”

“ To be alone and silent in thy realm,
Spirit of life and love!—It might not be!—
There is no solitude in thy domains,
Save what man makes, when in his selfish breast
He locks his joys, and shuts out others' grief.
Thou hast not left thyself in this wide world
Without a witness. Even the desert place
Speaketh thy name. The simple flowers and streams
Are social and benevolent, and he
Who holdeth converse in their language pure,
Roaming among them at the cool of day,
Shall find, like him who Eden's garden drest,
His Maker there, to teach his listening heart. ”

“ I do not know as I "have ever realized the depths of absolute negations," but I have realized the depths of absolute solitude, and can sympathize with you in your loneliness, and "think it a good thing to keep the Eternal and Infinite always in view, and so love quiet, solitude, and meditation. They strengthen me to do my work in life." ”

“ They are hard to find—not to be found among the many. Books and nature and her dreams—but the many will not follow her to these sources.... And yet every man and woman I know who are great to me, have entered this solitude in childhood. They were Solitaries—that seems the mark of the questers.... Why, you would not have one stay with the many—just to avoid the loneliness and the heart-pulling that leads us into ourselves. Everything done in the world that is loved and remembered—every life lived with beauty and productiveness to the many—has come from the Solitaries. ”

“ That is the world's incurable hurt—the silence that replies to its perplexity—the wistful appeal that remains unanswered.... And many, many vex God with the desolation of their endless importunities and complaints when a look, a word, a touch from a human being would relieve them of the heaviest of all burdens—a sad heart's solitude."
He put his arm around her, impulsively:
"You little angel," he said, tenderly.
"No—only a human girl who has learned what solitude can mean." ”

“ How delightful this boundless solitude where nature silently keeps watch! This silence has a thousand tongues that prompt the soul to soar away to God and wrap it in ineffable delights. Here no noise is heard but the human voice rising heavenward. These sounds full of sweetness alone trouble the secret solitude. ”

“ On the contrary, we truly discover in the silence of solitude, the inward complexion of the heart; and learn not only what the characters of men are, but what in truth and nature they ought to be.
How many new and useful discoveries may be made by occasionally forcing ourselves from the vortex of the world, and retiring to the calm enjoyments of study and reflection! To accomplish this end, it is only necessary to commence seriously with our hearts, and to examine our actions with impartiality. ”

“ It is the loneliness which men are wont to associate with death: when the Eastern ceases for this—dialogue—he has attained Heaven, absorption into the Divine. ... Oh! the loneliness! Oh! the joy of loneliness and solitude; the joy of aloofness, each for each. The Soul and God together, alone together side by side, and at last, alone and one ... one Great Soul. For our souls are carrier pigeons, homing to God. ”

“ Within himself the recluse feels weak, unstable and inconsistent. Without he is strong in the consciousness of the omnipotence and supremacy of the Infinite. “Solitude generates a certain amount of sublime exaltation. It is like the smoke arising from the burning bush. A mysterious lucidity of mind results, which converts the student into the seer, and the poet into a prophet.” In a word, there is an enthusiasm, an influence, and a power in solitude that the civilized man, or the man who has never been subjected to it, cannot form the slightest or faintest conception of. ”

“ My labours have cheered long hours of solitude, and taken me out of a world, which has averted its once benignant face from me, to one glowing with imagination and power. Will my readers ask how I could find solace from the narration of misery and woeful change? ”

“ I shall walk in meditation and solitude, so that your thoughts shall be worthy thoughts; I shall dwell on the hillsides, so that your mind shall be lofty; I shall love all living things, so that you shall be godly in the love of your kind ”

“ Thou hast provided all things: But with me
I see not who partakes. In solitude
What happiness, who can enjoy alone,
Or, all enjoying, what contentment find?
Thus I presumptuous; and the Vision bright,
As with a smile more brightened, thus replied.
What callest thou solitude? Is not the Earth
With various living creatures, and the air
Replenished, and all these at thy command
To come and play before thee? Knowest thou not
Their language and their ways? They also know,
And reason not contemptibly: With these
Find pastime, and bear rule; thy realm is large. ”

“ During its progress [Pg 164] through life it gathers around it what it can in the way of crumbs of love, grains of affection, taking them tenderly and with tears of gratefulness. But it is always conscious of solitude,—an awful yet Divine solitude, over which the Infinite broods, watchful yet silent. Why it is brought into conscious being, to live within a material frame and there perform certain duties and labours, and from thence depart again, it cannot tell. All is a mystery,—a strange Necessity, in which it cannot truly recognize its part or place. ”

“ But those who, by vigor of mind, supported better the preying of the soul upon itself, could do no otherwise than exchange the {200} simple and affectionate piety with which, perhaps they entered the wilderness, for some form of visionary religion. [5] To maintain, unbent, the rectitude of sound reason, and unsullied, the propriety of sound feelings, in solitude, is an achievement, which, it may confidently be affirmed, surpasses the powers of human nature. Good sense, never the product of a single mind, is the fruit of intercourse and collision. ”

“ We made no difficulty of compliance, and I sat down to take notes on a green bank, with a small stream running at my feet, in the midst of savage solitude, with mountains before me, and on either hand covered with heath. I looked around me, and wondered that I was not more affected, but the mind is not at all times equally ready to be put in motion; if my mistress and master and Queeny had been there we should have produced some reflections among us, either poetical or philosophical, for though solitude be the nurse of woe, conversation is often the parent of remarks and discoveries. ”

“ A crowded solitude, if we may use such a strange expression, is, in sober sadness, as melancholy a sensation as human nature is capable of enduring.
A crowded solitude! If you are young, thoughtless, and talkative, you will be astonished at the idea; and there will be nothing extraordinary in your surprise. The ancient poets—poor ignorant souls!—have given us a very different description of being alone. They have defined various kinds of solitude, suited to various descriptions of men ”

“ Thus will you find in your solitude the presence of the Spirit invisible and eternal, whose name is love, and whose home is heaven, and whose children are the lowly and meek and devout, who love souls—the world full of souls—and who daily bear them in tender sympathy to the throne. ”

“ For worship set apart and holy things.” Every one in his hours of deepest feeling, whether of love, or grief, or devotion, has longed for some such retreat where he might nurse it in solitude. To every soul of any sensibility that has lived and suffered—and is it not all one?—it appeals with a force proportioned to the deep solitude he has already passed through, and his sense of that solitude he knows must one day be encountered. ”

“ In company we are silent—in solitude we soliloquise. So dearly do we love our own voice that we cannot bear to hear [Pg 225] it mixed with that of others—perhaps drowned; and then our bashfulness tongue-ties us in the hush expectant of our "golden opinions," when all eyes are turned to the speechless "old man eloquent," and you might hear a tangle dishevelling itself in Neæra's hair. But all alone by ourselves, in the country, among trees standing still among untrodden leaves—as now—how we do speak! ”

“ Were we to follow their opinions, we should place the solitude of the lover in whispering groves, purling rills, and moonlight; that of the sage in a library or an observatory; that of the poet in a dish of vegetables and a Sabine farm; and à fortiori, that of the Etonian in an uncarpeted domicile, with a fractured window on the one side and a smoking fire on the other. Is this solitude? Far from it! We must most strenuously contend that true solitude is to be found in a multitude. ”

“ Nothing so richly increases the significance of a statement as to hear it uttered by one’s own voice, in solitude. “Resolved, so help me God, never to touch another drop!” Those solemn words, breathed out in a mist of whiskey—how often, in dark nights, on icy mornings, how often have they been uttered! And the portentous imprecation seems to engage the whole universe to do battle on behalf of the Better Self against its besetting vice. ”

“ An outcry goeth forth from thee towards
Thyself, then will great solitude enfold
{22} Thee, and her wings will hush the tempest.
Fear not that angel's gravity, the look
His searching eye will plunge into thy heart.
Fear not the whisp'ring of his lips: Remember!
For ev'ry word of thine, each working of
Thy soul is booked, indelible the writing,
It is encircled in the movement of
The worlds and has its history. Thy soul,
Itself a world, belongs to Solitude. It is
So lonely that no crowd of friends, nor e'en
One friend can take its loneliness away. ”

“ At the very instant when we conceive all the happiness of our lives annihilated, God, perhaps, is performing something extraordinary in our favor. Certain it is, that patience and perseverance will, in solitude, convert the deepest sorrow into tranquillity and joy. Those objects which, at a distance, appear menacing, lose, on a nearer approach, their disagreeable aspect, and, in the event, frequently produce the most agreeable pleasures. ”

“ Twenty years of profound meditation in solitude would have been less painful to me than an active life of six months in the midst of men and public affairs, with a certainty of not succeeding in my undertaking. ”

“ The violent emotions which created the disgusting pain gently subside; and as our reflections on the condition of human nature prevail, the soul feels how incumbent it is to endeavor to bear with the follies, to alleviate the miseries, and to reform the vices of mankind; while the leisure and quietude which solitude affords, enables a man, who has thus retired, to point out the most likely means of accomplishing the ends which his lonely meditation, and philanthropic feelings, have generally inspired. ”

“ But when, passing from solitude to solitude, boundless space opens before you, this feeling wears off by degrees, and you experience a secret awe, which, so far from depressing the soul, imparts life and elevates the genius. ”

“ King and priest, warrior and maiden, philosopher and child, all must walk those mighty galleries alone. The solitude, therefore, which in this world appalls or fascinates a child's heart, is but the echo of a far deeper solitude, through which already he has passed, and of another solitude, deeper still, through which he has to pass: reflex of one solitude—prefiguration of another. ”

“ A disposition to enjoy the silence of sequestered solitude, and a glowing distaste of the noisy tumults of public life, are the earliest and most general symptoms of approaching melancholy. The heart, on which felicity was used to sit enthroned, becomes senseless to the touch of pleasure; the airy wing of high delight sinks prostrate to the earth on broken pinions: and care and anxiety, chagrin, and regret, load the mind with distempering ideas, and render it cheerless and forlorn. The dawning sun, and heaven lighted day, give no pleasure to the sickened senses of the unhappy [217] sufferer. ”

“ Words, curses, laughter, and song fell upon his soul, overlaying all that there was in it of sweetness and justice. He longed for solitude, regretted every moment which was stolen from his silent self-examination and sacrificed to other people. ”

“ I now shunned all company in which there was no hopes of coming at the object of my longings, and used to shut myself up, to indulge in solitude some tender meditation on the pleasure I strongly perceived the overture of, in feeling and examining what nature assured me must be the chosen avenue, the gates for unknown bliss to enter at, that I panted after. ”

“ And found a solitude themselves had made;
They came, as I, to hope which conquers doubt,
Though sun and moon and every star go out;
They ceased, while at their side a still voice said,
"Fear not, have courage; blessed are the dead." ”