Quotes about Solitude

When God gets us alone through suffering, heartbreak, temptation, disappointment, sickness, or by thwarted friendship - when He gets us absolutely alone, and we are totally speechless, unable to ask even one question, then He begins to teach us.

When God gets us alone through suffering, heartbreak, temptation, disappointment, sickness, or by thwarted desires, a broken friendship, or a new friendship— when He gets us absolutely alone, and we are totally speechless, unable to ask even one question, then He begins to teach us.

When someone thinks that to develop a holy life he must always be alone with God, he is no longer of any use to others.

Our battles are first won or lost in the secret places of our will in God's presence, never in full view of the world. The Spirit of God seizes me and I am compelled to get alone with God and fight the battle before Him. Until I do this, I will lose every time. The battle may take one minute or one year, but that will depend on me, not God. However long it takes, I

When "important" individuals go away we are sad, until we see that they are meant to go, so that only one thing is left for us to do—to look into the face of God for ourselves.

There are vast areas of stubbornness and ignorance the Holy Spirit has to reveal in each of us, but it can only be done when Jesus gets us alone...Jesus cannot teach us anything until we quiet all our intellectual questions and get alone with Him.

Prayer is an effort of the will. After we have entered our secret place and shut the door, the most difficult thing to do is to pray. We cannot seem to get our minds into good working order, and the first thing we have to fight is wandering thoughts. The great battle in private prayer is overcoming this problem of our idle and wandering thinking. We have to learn to discipline our minds and concentrate on willful, deliberate prayer.

No one rose to his defense. He not only suffered; he suffered alone. Even his Father turned his back on him in his deepest moment of agony.

Today you will spend solitary moments of conversation with yourself, either listing your complaints or counting your blessings.

Mathematician need only peace of mind and occasionally, paper and pencil.

Loneliness can be conquered only by those who can bear solitude.

Thomas Merton's Thoughts in Solitude.