Niccolo Machiavelli Quotes

Your sacred space is where you can find yourself again and again.

Nothing gives rest but the sincere search for truth.

Reading has always been my home, my sustenance, my great invincible companion. "Book love," Trollope called it. "It will make your hours pleasant to you as long as you live." Yet of all the many things in which we recognize some universal comfort...reading seems to be the one in which the comfort is most undersung.

When men comfort themselves with philosophy, 'tis not because they have got two or three sentences, but because they have digested those sentences, and made them their own: philosophy is nothing but discretion.

But your solitude will be a support and a home for you, even in the midst of very unfamiliar circumstances, and from it you will find all your paths.

Let no young man delay the study of philosophy, and let no old man become weary of it; for it is never too early nor too late to care for the well-being of the soul.

It is wisdom that is seeking for wisdom.

Happiness is not to be sought in solitude or in busy centers. It is in the Self.

There is no thought or situation that you can't put up against inquiry. Every thought, every person, every apparent problem is here for the sake of your freedom.

Loneliness becomes a lover, solitude a darling sin.

Solitude. One knows instinctively it has benefits that must be more deeply satisfying than those of other conditions, but still it is difficult.

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

Solitude is an essential element for the spiritual health of a child. If we only stimulate our children - keep them busy with endless stories with no space to be alone - that's not good.

Solitude is the audience-chamber of God.

Aloneness is a wise teacher. Kierkegaard remarked that one sign of spiritual maturity was the ability to be comfortable when alone.

Philosophy ... bears witness to the deepest love of reflection, to absolute delight in wisdom.

No one can advise and help you, no one. There is only one way: go within.

Lacy was just as happy alone as with company. When she was alone, she was potential; with others she was realized.

Associate with the noblest people you can find; read the best books; live with the mighty; but learn to be happy alone.

Many of those who are driven to this life are desperately searching for those pockets of silence where we can root and grow.

Embrace your solitude and love it. Endure the pain it causes, and try to sing out with it. For those near to you are distant.

And he who has dwelt with his heart alone, Hears all the music in friendship's tone. So better and better I comprehend How sorrow ever would be our friend.

Read poems to yourself in the middle of the night. Turn on a single lamp and read them while you're alone in an otherwise dark room or while someone else sleeps next to you. Read them when you're wide awake in the early morning, fully alert. Say them over to yourself in a place where silence reigns and the din of the culture — the constant buzzing noise that surrounds us — has momentarily stopped. These poems have come from a great distance to find you.

I think everybody has had the experience at some point when they feel that there's more to life than just matter. But I think it's very important to keep that under control and not to hand it over to be exploited by priests and shamans and rabbis and other riffraff.

Usually we regard loneliness as an enemy. Heartache is not something we choose to invite in. It's restless and pregnant and hot with the desire to escape and find something or someone to keep us company. When we can rest in the middle, we begin to have a nonthreatening relationship with loneliness, a relaxing and cooling loneliness that completely turns our usual fearful patterns upside down.