“She had thought, in her nocturnal and suicidal hours, that solitude was the problem. But that was because it hadn’t been true solitude. The lonely mind in the busy city yearns for connection because it thinks human-to-human connection is the point of everything. But amid pure nature (or the ‘tonic of wilderness’ as Thoreau called it) solitude took on a different character. It became in itself a kind of connection. A connection between herself and the world. And between her and herself.”
Matt Haig, The Midnight Library (Page 126)
“I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.”
Henry David Thoreau, via The Midnight Library (Page 126)
“It can be very difficult to have one’s own space. But unless you have your own space, you will never become acquainted with your own being. You will never come to know who you are. Always engaged, always occupied in a thousand and one things—in relationships, in worldly affairs, anxieties, plans, future, past—one continuously lives on the surface. If you love yourself deeply and go down into yourself, you will be ready to love others even more deeply, because one who does not know oneself cannot love very deeply.”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 153)
“Enjoy silence; but know that silence is not against noise. Silence can exist in noise. In fact, when it exists in noise only then is it real silence. The silence that you feel in the Himalayas is not your silence; it belongs to the Himalayas. But if in the marketplace you can feel silence, you can be utterly at ease and relaxed, it is yours. Then you have the Himalayas in your heart, and that’s the true thing!”
Osho, Everyday Osho (Page 128)
“We need space to escape in order to discern the essential few from the trivial many. Unfortunately, in our time-starved era we don’t get that space by default—only by design.”
Greg McKeown, Essentialism (Page 64)
