THOUGHTS ON SOLITUDE AND THE LAST BUTTERFLIES OF SUMMER

I love to be alone.

I never found a companion

that was so companionable as solitude.

Thoreau

I need to be alone . . . 

I need the sunshine and the paving stones

of the streets without companions, without conversation, 

face to face with  myself, with only the music of my heart for company.

Henry Miller

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone;

and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom;

for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.

Schopenhauer

I live in that solitude

which is painful in youth, 

but delicious in the years of maturity.

Einstein

Loneliness is the poverty of self;

solitude is richness of self.

May Sarton

But your solitude will be a support and a home for you,

even in the midst of very unfamiliar circumstances,

and from it you will find all paths.

Rilke

Wherever I am, the world comes after me.

It offers me its busyness.  It does not believe 

that I do not want it.  Now I understand

why the old poets of China went so far and high

into the mountains, then crept into the pale mist.

Mary Oliver

"Why I Wake Early"

Uncontradicting solitude

Supports me on its giant palm;

And like a sea-anemone

Or simple snail, there cautiously

Unfolds, emerges, what I am.

Philip Larkin

In order to be open to creativity, 

one must have the capacity for constructive use of solitude.

One must overcome the fear of being alone.

Rollo May

When from our better selves we have too long

Been parted by the hurrying world, and droop,

Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired,

How gracious, how benign, is Solitude.

Wordsworth