Solitaire

“ But worst of all was the awful loneliness from which I suffered. It seemed to me as though there were no other living thing in all the Universe and never had been and never would be any other living thing. I felt as though I were the Universe rushing solitary through space for ages upon ages in a frantic search for fellowship, and finding none. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Alone! alone! I travelled on day after day, in short, but wearisome journeys, and I felt the pain of utter and forced solitude; the burning sun shone, and the dews fell at evening, but there was no breeze, no coolness to refresh me; the nights were close, and my limbs, dried with the scorching of the day, and stiff with walking, burned all night as if a furnace had glowed within them. Were these slight evils? Alas! I was a spoiled child, and I felt every pain as an agony. ”

“ No, it's not death I fear, but solitude; for then one's not alone. I don't know who's there, I or another, but in solitude one's not alone. The air grows heavy and seems to engender invisible beings, who have life and whose presence can be felt. ”

“ In this tantalizing solitude of the crowd, in this sense of isolation from our fellows, if never before, do we feel, with sickness of heart, that we are alone. There is a solitude of sickness,—the solitude of the watcher or of the patient,—a solitude to which, at times, duty and Providence call us all. There are, in brief, countless circumstances of life when we shall realize that we are indeed alone, and sad enough will be that solitude if we have no inner resource,—no Celestial companionship;—if we cannot say and feel as we say it, that we are not alone, for the Father is with us. ”

“ My silent rivulets, over-brimmed.
What, I have secrets from you? Yes.
But O my Sea, your love doth press
And reach in further than you know,
And fills all these; and when you go,
There's loneliness in loneliness. ”

“ When one looks at the blue sky for a long time, one's thoughts and one's soul unite mysteriously in a feeling of solitude.... For a moment one feels the loneliness of the dead, and the enigma of hopeless and terrible life. ”

“ Exceeding great and terrible is my solitude—behind me, before me and around me a yawning emptiness. It is the fearful loneliness of one who lives, feels and thinks, and is incomprehensibly alone; how small I seem, absurdly null, and so weak that I expect to be extinguished any moment. ”

“ And the loneliness and silence of the night will take a shape almost tangible. The stirring of the half-dead leaves, the chirping of a belated cricket, simply emphasized the loneliness and made the silence more profound. At intervals, all nature seemed to heave a deep sigh, and address itself to slumber again. ”

“ As a blue peacock sheaves his starry tail....
I am alone, most utterly alone,
More lonely than the last man in the world
Straying amid the dust of vanished lives.
More lonely than a spirit stolen from heaven
Who stands beside that nebulous cold river
Dividing sleep from death,
Eternity from time....
Nothing disturbs the white peace of the dawn,
She brings no feverous memories of night
And sheds no tears. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Then it is true that you can indeed hear the beating of your own heart; you fear, but know not what you fear; and being the only living creature there, you are impressed with a thought of death. But soon to that severe silence you are more than reconciled; the solitude, without ceasing to be sublime, is felt to be solemn and not awful, and ere long, utter as it is, serene. ”

“ Can any of us look back to the earlier days of our mortal pilgrimage and remember the helpless sense of desolation and loneliness caused by being forced to go off to the stillness and darkness of a solitary bed far from all the beloved voices and employments and sights of life? ”

“ But when the heart is full and would unburden itself, when the brain teems [Pg 278] with pent-up thoughts, when the excitement of action and of peril wanes and the mind would fain tell and hear and compare and remember—then to be alone, to be solitary, is to sink below one's self. ”

“ every one must have some solitary spot where he can be alone with his God. ”

“ I wander far From Thee among the haunts of men, Most like some lone, faint, flickering star Gone from its place, nor knoweth when The sun shall give it shining dole Lord! no man careth for my soul. Blind, Lord, so blind! In loneliness By crowded mart or busy street, I fold my hands and feel how less Am I to any one I meet, Than to Thee one lost billow’s roll: Lord! no man careth for my soul. ”

“ Solitude, isolation, are painful things, and beyond human endurance. ”

“ They have drawn me aside from the beaten path of the world, and led me into a strange sort of solitude,—a solitude in the midst of men,—where nobody wishes for what I do, nor thinks nor feels as I do. The tales have done all this. ”

“ For over fifteen years, then, from my marriage to the fatal date of May 30th-31st, 1908, I experienced that peculiar sensation which you cannot easily do without when once you have known it, the sensation which comes from being always surrounded by many people, from having near you scores of friends (and a few enemies too) , day after day, until solitude becomes unthinkable—as distant and fanciful a notion as that of life on a desert isle—from hearing every day something fresh or unexpected, from constantly renewing your little stock of knowledge, the sensation of unending giving and taking. ”

“ The solitude and the silence assume an oppressive significance. They are only the garment of the mighty mystery that envelops you. You feel that these dead walls have ears, eyes, and most potent voices, that you are not in the midst of a great loneliness, but that all around the earth is full of most tremendous secrets. ”

“ He experienced that heart-probing, fiery sense of dangerous loneliness, which sometimes assails the courage of a solitary adventurer in an unexplored country. The sight of a man's face—he felt—of any man's face, would have been a profound relief. ”

“ The poets tell you, and rightly, that solitude is the fit sphere for love; but how few are the lovers whom solitude does not fatigue! they rush into retirement, with souls unprepared for its stern joys and its unvarying tranquillity: they weary of each other, because the solitude itself to which they fled, palls upon and oppresses them. ”

“ My solitary life had rendered me nervous, and the dangerous lore with which my head was filled gave to the incident an immediate coloring of romance. A new sensation had taken possession of me, a new world was opening to me; the solitude and remoteness of the place, and the unexpectedness of that vision rising up among the wild flowers and the dark green heather, acted like a charm upon me, and awakened me to a sense of bewildering delight I had never experienced before.
There is always an awkwardness in country places at rencounters between people who are unaccustomed to strangers. ”

“ If you mount one of the little hills, the scene and the sensation is very different, The solitude is as deep as striking; no living thing is to be seen, unless it be a wild curlew, with its thin arched wings, whirling away with a shrill cry in the enjoyment of its own loneliness ”

“ The smoke-wreaths curl into thicker clouds. I have painted bright pictures, and they have faded. I have cherished fond dreams, and they are vanished. "It is not good for man to live alone;" and I am most solitary. ”

“ Tormented by my ill, I go from place to place, But wander as I will My woes can nought efface; My most of bad and good I find in solitude. But wheresoe’er I stay, In meadow or in copse, Whether at break of day Or when the twilight drops, My heart goes sighing on, Desiring one that’s gone. ”

“ The solitude of soul—that terrible solitude which is only to be experienced in a crowd—the dead monotony, without hope of change; the severance from all the pleasant things of life, and the want of any substitutes for them, eat into the heart and brain of him as a corrosive acid eats into iron. ”

“ Great numbers of educated people in this country live solitary lives. And by a solitary life I do not mean a life in a remote district of country with hardly a neighbour near, but with your house well filled and noisy with, children's voices. By a solitary life I mean a life in which, day after day and week after week, you rise in the morning in a silent dwelling, in which, save servants, there are none but yourself; in which you sit down to breakfast by yourself, perhaps set yourself to your day's work all alone, then dine by yourself, and spend the evening by yourself. ”

“ The solitude which delighted us in youth, but which, when the thoughts that make solitude a fairy land are darkened by affliction, becomes a fearful and sombre void, resumes its old spell, as the more morbid and urgent memory of that affliction crumbles away by time. ”

“ Since then the wine of youth had gone, spilled in those orgies which he had survived, yet, in the survival, abandoned more and more to solitude and making him seek, what the solitary ever do seek, inconspicuousness. ”

“ Thus, with a passionate, lively temperament, keenly susceptible to the charm of society, I was forced early to separate myself from men, and lead a solitary life. If at times I sought to break away from my solitude, how harshly was I repulsed by the renewed consciousness of my condition ”

“ However, I promise to be a much more subdued creature when you next meet me, for I had but just recovered from a state of extreme dejection, brought on in part by ill health, partly by other circumstances; and solitude and solitary musings do of themselves impregnate our thoughts, perhaps, with more life and sensation than will leave the balance quite even. ”

“ THE LONELY DREAMER
He lives his lonely life, and when he dies
A thousand hearts maybe will utter sighs;
Because they liked his songs, and now their bird
Sleeps with his head beneath his wing, unheard. ”

“ I do not know how far all this, continued through months or years of comparative loneliness, may permanently affect character; we can stand a great deal of kneading without being lastingly affected, either for better or worse; but there can be no question at all, that in a solitary life nature rises into a real companion, producing upon our present mood a real effect. As more articulate and louder voices die away upon our ear, we begin to hear the whisper of trees, the murmur of brooks, the song of birds, with a distinctness and a meaning not known before. ”

“ These little unfamiliarities observed with his mind on the stretch—the latent primitive man in him. Scenting danger in solitude—added to the loneliness. The sheltering walls of the usual were pushed away from him. He felt himself exposed, out of the call of friends, in a desolation haunted by invisible malevolences. ”

“ Whenever I'm wakeful and the night is windy and my room is dark and I lie in aloneness—a long aloneness: centuries—then shadows come from far-off world-wildnesses and float and flutter dimly unhappy around my bed. ”

“ 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." ”

“ Its solitude, its awful beauty, and its utter desolation, strike upon the stranger, the next moment, like a softened sorrow; and never in his life, perhaps, will he be so moved and overcome by any sight, not immediately connected with his own affections and afflictions. ”

“ But as the wayfarer from out of the snow and wind feels his limbs numb and frozen in the hearth's warmth, so, having learned that one might speak, be understood, be comforted, that one might love and be beloved,—the misery of loneliness was revealed to me. ”

“ Through loneliness and silence we will destroy your minds that we may form fresh minds within the bodies of which we take such care. In silence and in solitude is no real suffering—so we believe, for we ourselves have never passed one single silent day, one single day alone! ”

“ And the fireside by which you sit, now merry and noisy enough, may grow lonely,—lonely with the second loneliness, not the hopeful solitude of youth looking forward, but the desponding loneliness of age looking back. ”

“ There are many instances on record, of men who have chosen, or have been condemned, to lives of perfect solitude, but I scarcely remember one, even among sages of strong and vigorous intellect, where its effect has not become apparent, in some disordered train of thought, or some gloomy hallucination. What monstrous phantoms, bred of despondency and doubt, and born and reared in solitude, have stalked upon the earth, making creation ugly, and darkening the face of Heaven! ”

“ The solitude in which I lived probably contributed to heighten every fantastic impression. If any new feeling arose within me, being wholly undiverted by any external influence, or by the usual dissipations of society to which others can have recourse, it naturally grew into excess. ”

“ 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." ”