Henri Nouwen Quotes

All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.

Solitude helps you reflect.

I feel calm when I'm on my own.

Whether you call it meditation, self-reflection or just shutting everything out, I am quite good at that.

You may not enjoy loneliness, because loneliness is sad. But solitude is something else; solitude is what you look forward to when you want to be alone, when you want to be with yourself. So, solitude is something we all need from time to time.

We must relearn to be alone.

The ideal person is he who, in the midst of the greatest silence and solitude, finds the intensest activity, and in the midst of the intensest activity finds the silence and solitude of the desert.

It is important from time to time to slow down, to go away by yourself, and simply be.

In the madness, you have to find calm.

I aspire only to silence.

I love silence.

In fact at home I sometimes like to be quiet and hear the sounds of the world outside.

It's important to have quiet time and isolation.

Solitude has its own very strange beauty to it.

Don't like small talk, love rainy days.

My goal is to get quieter as I get older.

I thought about how we need to make children feel that there are times in their lives when they need to be alone and quiet and to be able to accept their aloneness.

I like silence; I'm a gregarious loner and without the solitude, I lose my gregariousness.

I live a very secluded life, a very contemplative life and a very meditative one. That is my ideal life.

When you walk 10 hours, 11 hours a day by yourself, you are doing a walking meditation.

Everywhere I have sought rest and not found it, except sitting in a corner by myself with a little book.

I enjoy my own thoughts sometimes.

The wisdom of silence is a great asset.

Writing is a tribute to solitude. It is choosing introversion over extroversion, lonely hours/days/weeks/years over fun and sociability.

I don't think people take enough time to themselves or like to be alone anymore, but it's really important.