Henri Nouwen Quotes

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.

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.

For a long time, I was afraid to be alone. I had to learn how to be alone. And there are still times when I think, Uh-oh! I gotta talk to somebody here or I'm gonna go crazy! But I like to be alone. Now I do. I really do. There's a big luxury in solitude.

For the self-development of men and women it is absolutely necessary that they should be alone with themselves at least one hour each day-to get the blessings of solitude.

In this modern world where activity is stressed almost to the point of mania, quietness as a childhood need is too often overlooked. Yet a child's need for quietness is the same today as it has always been--it may even be greater--for quietness is an essential part of all awareness. In quiet times and sleepy times a child can dwell in thoughts of his own, and in songs and stories of his own.

I enjoy my own thoughts sometimes.

I definitely have to pray and spend a lot of time by myself when I can.

I have an immense appetite for solitude, like an infant for sleep, and if I don't get enough for this year, I shall cry all the next.

True happiness is impossible without solitude.... I need solitude in my life as I need food and drink and the laughter of little children. Extravagant though it may sound, solitude is the filter of my soul. It nourishes me, and rejuvenates me. Left alone, I discovered that I keep myself good company.

What would a man do, if he were compelled to live always in the sultry heat of society, and could never bathe himself in cool solitude?

I used to ski across the vast white expanses of a quiet and lonely mountaintop. In the stillness and solitude... I pondered the mysteries of the universe, the planet, nature and of man. I'm still pondering.

One of the greatest necessities in America is to discover creative solitude.

From 7 in the morning to 11 at night, I was reading. I don't think one can find any other time in one's life to be left alone so much to read in peace like that.

No matter how much we love our family and friends, a part of us needs the occasional moment of solitude as a plant needs water. It is the inmost core of each of us that, that part which nobody can define but which we all recognize because it never changes.

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 really need to be alone. I can't deal with someone sleeping next to me.

I enjoy my time alone.

I have to be alone very often. I'd be quite happy if I spent from Saturday night until Monday morning alone in my apartment. That's how I refuel.

A life without a lonely place, that is, without a quiet center, becomes destructive.

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

All my adult life, if I didn't have several hours a day to sit in a room by myself, I would get antsy and irritable.

I love to sit on my own and think, not to be photographed all the time.

I'm a very private person, not much of a party person. That's how I keep my sanity.

When I am not acting or performing, I want to keep quiet and not to have a conversation.

When you're on set, you're constantly surrounded by people - talking to people, being touched by people. So I like to just spend time with myself.