Alfred Stieglitz Quotes

There is nothing like being left alone again, to walk peacefully with oneself in the woods. To boil one's coffee and fill one's pipe, and to think idly and slowly as one does it.

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.

I like to take walks in the park by myself, where no one can bother me and I can think.

'Swan,' by Mary Oliver. Poems and prose. Reading from this book is as if visiting a very wise friend. There is wisdom and welcoming kindness on every page.

I go to the Himalayas after every film. I go alone. I go to the interiors, to the villages. Being there itself is like meditation.

Each soul must meet the morning sun, the new sweet earth and the Great Silence alone.

As for solitude, I cannot understand how certain people seek to lay claim to intellectual stature, nobility of soul and strength of character, yet have not the slightest feeling for seclusion; for solitude, I maintain, when joined with a quiet contemplation of nature, a serene and conscious faith in creation and the Creator, and a few vexations from outside is the only school for a mind of lofty endowment.

Give me the clear blue sky over my head, and the green turf beneath my feet, a winding road before me, and a three hours' march to dinner - and then to thinking! ... I begin to feel, think, and be myself again. Instead of an awkward silence, broken by attempts at wit or dull common-places, mine is that undisturbed silence of the heart which alone is perfect eloquence.

Wherever I go I need a period of incubation so that I may learn the essence of nature, which never wishes to be understood or yield herself.

Experience is the only teacher, and we get his lesson indifferently in any school.

He who understands humanity seeks solitude

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

There are endless ways to amuse oneself and be idle, and most of them lie outside the woods. I assume that when a man goes to the woods he goes because he needs to. I think he is drawn to the wilderness much as he is drawn to a woman: it is, in its way, his opposite. It is as far as possible unlike his home or his work or anything he will ever manufacture. For that reason he can take from it a solace-an understanding of himself, of what he needs and what he can do without-such as he can find nowhere else.

I must stay alone and know that I am alone to contemplate and feel nature in full; I have to surrender myself to what encircles me, I have to merge with my clouds and rocks in order to be what I am.

Let the moon shine on the in thy solitary walk; and let the misty mountain-winds be free to blow against thee.

I started understanding William Blake and George Orwell more and more. It's amazing how we go to school when we're so young, read all of these books, just trying to memorize them. When you start to live, you don't have to memorize anything.

What we really have to do is take a day and sit down and think. The world is not going to end or fall apart. Jobs won't be lost. Kids will not run crazy in one day. Lovers won't stop speaking to you. Husbands and wives are not going to disappear. Just take that one day and think. Don't read. Don't write. No television, no radio, no distractions. Sit down and think. . . . Go sit in a church, or in the park, or take a long walk and think. Call it a healing day.

We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence.

I have a room all to myself; it is nature.

Because, once alone, it is impossible to believe that one could ever have been otherwise. Loneliness is an absolute discovery.

I didn't think I was good at anything, didn't do well in school. And then in the third grade, I was going to a public school. And the teacher was putting math problems on the board. And I said to myself - it's amazing how you can remember certain incidents at any age that made an impression - I asked myself why is she putting those up when the answers are obvious. And then I saw it wasn't obvious to anybody else in the class. So I said, "Hey, I'm good at something."

You grow your best thoughts in silence, solitude, and meditation. When you relax and think deeply, you are giving your inmost powers their best opportunity to disclose themselves.

I like to be alone. I am focused on what I am doing. I feel the nature and I feel my body. It's so simple.