James Salter Quotes

You may never be less alone than when you are alone.

I am lonely, sometimes, but I dare say it's good for me.

Woe unto him that is never alone, and cannot bear to be alone.

Isolation, but it's a good vulnerability. Humbling. I actually seek out solitude.

I am ready to be alone.

It is a difficult lesson to learn today-to leave one's friends and family and deliberately practice the art of solitude for an hour or a day or a week. And yet, once it is done, I find there is a quality to being alone that is incredibly precious. Life rushes back into the void, richer, more vivid, fuller than before.

I've never just been able to be alone, and I'm obsessed with being alone and hearing my thoughts. I'm trying to take this alone time — the five minutes I do have a day — to learn as much as I can.

Solitude is the great teacher, and to learn its lessons you must pay attention to it.

A WISE MAN never enjoys himself so much, or a FOOL so little, as when he is alone.

I am never less alone than when alone.

So it is necessary that we should learn to be alone.

I was never less alone than when by myself.

Be able to be alone. Lose not the advantage of solitude, and the society of thyself.

Being alone & actually sitting with our own thoughts can lead to such growth and realizations that are rare in our everyday busy lives.

I personally think that's incredibly therapeutic to just be alone in your own thoughts and not be freaking out.

People think being alone is a luxury, but it's crucial: Whatever you're not down with about yourself gets loud and in your face.

I use solitude as a judge and as a person - a lot.

Wrong solitude vinegars the soul, right solitude oils it.

There might be some hours of loneliness. But there was something wonderful even in loneliness. At least you belonged to yourself when you were lonely.

We must relearn to be alone.

In solitude, where we are least alone.

There is no doubt that solitude is a challenge and to maintain balance within it a precarious business. But I must not forget that, for me, being with people or even with one beloved person for any length of time without solitude is even worse. I lose my center. I feel dispersed, scattered, in pieces. I must have time alone in which to mull over my encounter, and to extract its juice, its essence, to understand what has really happened to me as a consequence of it.

Solitude does not pull us away from our fellow human beings but instead makes real fellowship possible.

One ought to sink to the bottom of the sea, probably, and live alone with one's words.

The great omission in American life is solitude; not loneliness, for this is an alienation that thrives most in the midst of crowds, but that zone of time and space, free from the outside pressures, which is the incubator of the spirit.