Marian Wright Edelman Quotes

The necessary thing is after all but this; solitude, great inner solitude. Going into oneself for hours meeting no one - this one must be able to attain.

Sometimes it seems like we're closer to our manicurists than we are our own souls. We have to find ways to get in touch with that and to listen to it and to hear it.

In my personal life, I am very contemplative.

When from our better selves we have too long been parted by the hurrying world, and droop. Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired, how gracious, how benign is solitude.

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

When you don't know what to do, do nothing. Get quiet so you can hear the still, small voice.

Solitude is the salt of personhood. It brings out the authentic flavor of every experience.

If people have some sort of yearning, dissatisfaction or some itching irritability, then it might because they aren't looking in the right direction for a solution. They aren't looking within.

A lot of so-called Christian souls are not fine. People need to look inside themselves and look at the lives they're leading and fix themselves before they try to fix other people.

To make the right choices in life, you have to get in touch with your soul. To do this, you need to experience solitude, which most people are afraid of, because in the silence you hear the truth and know the solutions.

We gotta be willing to seek direction ... we've gotta be willing to look within.

We've known about the transcendent power of solitude for centuries; it's only recently that we've forgotten it.

To read your own mind is to look at your self and read your soul. Hatred becomes love and that is the path I am working on

By all means use sometimes to be alone. Salute thyself: see what thy soul doth wear.

Dig deep. Find your way to your soul.

There is nothing as certain as silence, stillness, and solitude to introduce you to the secrets of yourself.

I happen to believe the world will change only when we change ourselves. And that starts with finding ourselves: learning to quiet the clamor in our minds and the voices of everyone around us and move toward what feels right – toward the things we know, for reasons we can’t explain, that we’re mean to do, the things that makes us feel alive.

Only when one is connected to one's own core is one connected to others, I am beginning to discover. And, for me, the core, the inner spring, can best be refound through solitude.

Meditation is like the cloak of the good thief. You find a corner or somewhere where you can actually entertain your own self and your own soul, and understand what your work [is] here.

In the end, we need two things to lead a balanced life - a sense of the world and a sense of ourselves; it's like breathing in and breathing out. And if you can only get to know the world by stepping out, and losing yourself in experience, you can only get to know the self by stepping back, and finding yourself in contemplation. One without the other leads to a kind of madness.

I have hardly anything in common with myself and should stand very quietly in a corner, content that I can breathe.

The most difficult thing for people to do is hear their own soul.

Our wisdom is all mixed up with what we call our neurosis. Our brilliance, our juiciness, our spiciness, is all mixed up with our craziness and our confusion, and therefore it doesn’t do any good to try to get rid of our so-called negative aspects, because in that process we also get rid of our basic wonderfulness. We can lead our life so as to become more awake to who we are and what we’re doing rather than trying to improve or change or get rid of who we are or what we’re doing. The key is to wake up, to become more alert, more inquisitive and curious about ourselves.

I sometimes pray not for self-knowledge in general but for just so much self knowledge at the moment as I can bear and use at the moment; the little daily dose.

Once you start drinking a little of meditativeness, a little of love, you start growing wings.