You, too, may have met your hermit, or perhaps something else equally marvelous. Maybe it was a rock, a tree, a star, or a beautiful sunset. The hermit is the Buddha inside of you.
--Thich Nhat Hanh, The Hermit and the Well
Hell is other people.
--Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit
To drift like a dead leaf fallen from the tree and taken up by the wind, knowing not if the wind carries you or if you are carrying the wind ...
-- Michel Jourdan (French hermit writer)
I have known the silence of the stars and of the sea,
And the silence of the city when it pauses,
And the silence of a man and a maid,
And the silence for which music alone finds the word,
And the silence of the woods before the winds of spring begin,
And the silence of the sick
When their eyes roam about the room.
And I ask: For the depths
Of what use is language? ...
-- Edgar Lee Masters: [from his poem] Silence
About three hundred years ago, an Indian chief said to the governor of Pennsylvania: "We love quiet; we suffer the mouse to play; when the woods are rustled by the wind, we fear not." Silence is part of the traditional way of living for the Native American. It is an easy way, for it gives the soft distance between spoken words, body signals, and action choices. To live with Indian people is to discover a beautiful enhancement of the spirit through silence. Unless they have succumbed to the rush and noise of the mainstream style of life in this country, Indians still reveal this gift of silence. . . .
-- Mary Jose Hobday (Catholic nun and Seneca elder)
Solitude, though it may be silent as light, is like light the mightiest of agencies; for solitude is essential to man. All men come into this world alone; all leave it along.
-- Thomas De Quincey
Great things are done when men and mountains met.
This is not done by jostling in the street.
--William Blake
The Tao cannot be sought from others; it is attained in oneself. If you abandon yourself to seek from others, you are far from the Tao.
-- Huainan-tzi
Solitude is sometimes the best society.
--John Milton, Paradise Lost
He is a solitary figure, robed in simplicity and kindness. He sits upon the lap of Nature to draw his Inspiration, and stays up in the silence of the night, awaiting the descending of the spirit.
--Khalil Gibran, from The Poet
Not all who wander are lost.
--J. R. R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings: 1. Fellowship of the Ring
I am never lonely. A lonely person is one who is not aware of the complete fullness within. When you become dependent on something outside without having awareness of the reality within you, then you will indeed be lonely. The whole search for enlightenment is to seek within, to become aware that you are complete in yourself. You are perfect. You don't need any externals. No matter what happens in any situation, you need never be lonely.
-- Swami Rama, Living with the Himalayan Masters
For the most part it [Walden Pond] is as solitary where I live as on the prairies. It is as much Asia or Africa as New England. I have, as it were, my own sun and moon and stars, and a little world all to myself.
-- Henry David Thoreau, Walden, chapter 5: Solitude
A hermit is one who renounces the world of fragments that he may enjoy the world wholly and without interruption.
-- Khalil Gibran, Sand and Foam
I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than to be crowded on a velvet cushion.
-- Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Ordinary men hate solitude. But the Master makes use of it, embracing his aloneness, realizing he is one with the whole universe.
-- Tao Te Ching, 42
Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.
-- Francis Bacon
Your life dwells among the causes of death
Like a lamp standing in a strong breeze.
-- Nagarjuna
