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Quotes on Being Alone

    “Many of us seek community solely to escape the fear of being alone. Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.”

    bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions

      “I told everyone I was fine, when in fact I needed the privacy to fall apart.”

      Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms (Page 270)

        “It’s better to be alone than to spend time with toxic people. It’s better to do nothing than to work on something that doesn’t matter. It’s better to rest than to climb the wrong mountain.”

        James Clear, Blog

          “A wise man is never less alone than when he is alone.”

          Jonathan Swift, via Sunbeams (Page 93)

            “Yes, I felt closer to my fellow men, too, even in my solitude. For it is not physical solitude that actually separates one from other men, not physical isolation, but spiritual isolation. It is not the desert island nor the stony wilderness that cuts you from the people you love. It is the wilderness in the mind, the desert wastes in the heart through which one wanders lost and a stranger. When one is a stranger to oneself then one is estranged from others, too. If one is out of touch with oneself, then one cannot touch others. How often in a large city, shaking hands with my friends, I have felt the wilderness stretching between us. Both of us were wandering in arid wastes, having lost the springs that nourished us—or having found them dry. Only when one is connected to one’s own core is one connected to others, I am beginning to discover. And, for me, the core, the inner spring, can best be refound through solitude.”

            Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift From The Sea, via Sunbeams (Page 89)

              “Just remember, we’re all in this alone.”

              Lily Tomlin, via Sunbeams (Page 83)

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