Anthony de Mello Quotes

I was a man who thrived on solitude; without it I was like another man without food or water. Each day without solitude weakened me. I took no pride in my solitude; but I was dependent on it. The darkness of the room was like sunlight to me.

Being alone can be good. It's easy to find peace alone. But sometimes, being alone is a king of death.

There are few places you can find silence. Air travel could be the last fortress of solitude.

her spirits wanted the solitude and silence which only numbers could give.

Poetry is an orphan of silence.

The kind of solitude that refreshes and restores is very important, not just for children, not just for adolescents, but for all of us. If you don't teach your children how to be alone they will only be able to be lonely.

If people can't stand being alone, they have no choice but to die

There are moments when it's too quiet. Particularly late at night or early in the mornings. That's when you know there's something lacking in your life. You just know.

Solitude is separate experience.

So it always is: when you escape to a desert the silence shouts in your ear.

Sometimes I go for days without speaking to a soul. I think, “I should make that call", but I put it off. Because there’s something pleasurable about not talking. But then I love talking, so it’s not that. But sometimes it can be nice. It’s not like I sit here philosophizing, because I’ve no talent for that. It’s just this thing about silence that’s so wonderful.

Solitude: a sweet absence of looks.

Loneliness is random; solitude is ritual.

One's need for loneliness is not satisfied if one sits at a table alone. There must be empty chairs as well.

Solitude is different from loneliness, and it doesn't have to be a lonely kind of thing.

To be silent; to be alone. All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others.

Only those moments count, when the desire to remain by yourself is so powerful that you'd prefer to blow your brains out than exchange a word with someone.

Solitude has its own very strange beauty to it.

The task of the solitary man is to be even more solitary.

I crave a cone of silence every once in while.

There's a difference between solitude and loneliness. I can understand the concept of being a monk for a while.

What makes loneliness an anguish is not that I have no one to share my burden, but this: I have only my own burden to bear.

She would sit by herself in the middle of the old stoe amphitheatre, with the sky's starry vault overhead, and simply listen to the great silence around her.

Silence and solitude are more distracting to me than chatter and commotion.

I liked to be in my own company, so when I came home from school, I'd just go up to my room and hang out by myself. I wouldn't really have friends over or go to see friends much.