“
If a traveller does not meet with one who is his better, or his equal, let him firmly keep to his solitary journey; there is no companionship with a fool.
”
”
Gautama Buddha
“
Genuine love not only respects the individuality of the other but actually cultivates it, even at the risk of separation or loss. The ultimate goal of life remains the spiritual growth of the individual, the solitary journey to peaks that can be climbed only alone.
”
”
M. Scott Peck (The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth)
“
Suddenly he saw himself as others in the crowd must surely see him; a silent, solitary figure, standing apart from the rest. He looked out at the hoardes of singing, laughing people and felt more alone than he'd ever felt in his life. Was this how it was going to be then? Was this who he was? A man apart from his fellows, making the journey through life alone?
”
”
Mary Lawson (The Other Side of the Bridge)
“
I begin to fully understand the lengths to which people have gone to protect me. What I mean to the rebels. My on going struggle against the Capitol, which has so often felt like a solitary journey, has not been undertaken alone. I have had thousands upon thousands of people from the districts at my side. I was their Mockingjay long before I accepted the role.
”
”
Suzanne Collins (Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, #3))
“
She disappeared; her voice, her laughter, and the warmth of her breath never seen by no one again.
”
”
Durgesh Satpathy (Equating the Equations of Insanity: A Journey from Grief to Victory)
“
It will be better to spent our energy on reality; the tangible facts, not thoughts of the past.
”
”
Durgesh Satpathy (Equating the Equations of Insanity: A Journey from Grief to Victory)
“
Someone carries my belief that raises hope in me, but flame didn’t last for long
”
”
Durgesh Satpathy (Equating the Equations of Insanity: A Journey from Grief to Victory)
“
Journey becomes difficult when we know the destination but not aware of the right path, may be the supreme power testing your moral and physical stamina.
”
”
Durgesh Satpathy (Equating the Equations of Insanity: A Journey from Grief to Victory)
“
Being in home is like magic moments, in a magic world, among maicians
”
”
Durgesh Satpathy (Equating the Equations of Insanity: A Journey from Grief to Victory)
“
was it scripted by God or I am playing with my life.
”
”
Durgesh Satpathy (Equating the Equations of Insanity: A Journey from Grief to Victory)
“
When stupidity reaches its highest level, we act rubbish knowingly
”
”
Durgesh Satpathy (Equating the Equations of Insanity: A Journey from Grief to Victory)
“
If a traveller does not meet with one who is his better, or his equal, let him firmly keep to his solitary journey; there is no companionship with a fool. 62.
”
”
Anonymous (Dhammapada, a collection of verses; being one of the canonical books of the Buddhists)
“
Brothers and sisters, one of the great consolations of this Easter season is that because Jesus walked such a long, lonely path utterly alone, we do not have to do so. His solitary journey brought great company for our little version of that path—the merciful care of our Father in Heaven, the unfailing companionship of this Beloved Son, the consummate gift of the Holy Ghost, angels in heaven family members on both sides of the veil, prophets and apostles, teachers, leaders, friends. All of these and more have been given as companions for our mortal journey because of the Atonement of Jesus Christ and the Restoration of His gospel. Trumpeted from the summit of Calvary is the truth that we will never be left alone nor unaided, even sometimes we may feel that we are. Truly the Redeemer of us all said: “I will not leave you comfortless: [My Father and] I will come to you [and abide with you].
”
”
Jeffrey R. Holland
“
If a traveller does not meet with one who is his better, or his equal, let him firmly keep to his solitary journey; there is no companionship with fools. 43
”
”
Paul Carus (The Gospel of Buddha)
“
It is a commonplace of all religious thought, even the most primitive, that the man seeking visions and insight must go apart from his fellows and live for a time in the wilderness. If he is of the proper sort, he will return with a message. It may not be a message from the god he set out to seek, but even if he has failed in that particular, he will have had a vision or seen a marvel, and these are always worth listening to and thinking about.... One must seek, then, what only the solitary approach can give - a natural revelation.
”
”
Loren Eiseley (The Immense Journey)
“
61. If a traveller does not meet with one who is his better, or his equal, let him firmly keep to his solitary journey; there is no companionship with a fool.
”
”
F. Max Müller (Dhammapada (Canonical Books of the Buddhists))
“
I begin to fully understand the lengths to which people have gone to protect me. What I mean to the rebels. My ongoing struggle against the Capitol, which has so often felt like a solitary journey, has not been undertaken alone. I have had thousands upon thousands of people from the districts at my side. I was their Mockingjay long before I accepted the role.
”
”
Suzanne Collins (Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, #3))
“
Great marriages cannot be constructed by individuals who are terrified by their basic aloneness, as so commonly is the case, and seek a merging in marriage. Genuine love not only respects the individuality of the other but actually seeks to cultivate it, even at the risk of separation or loss. The ultimate goal of life remains the spiritual growth of the individual, the solitary journey to peaks that can be climbed only alone.
”
”
M. Scott Peck (The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth)
“
We enter this universe alone in search of microscopic beauty—and while we love, or are loved by others—we leave this world completely alone, having only found infinite sorrow. Despite there being so many of us, each of us tragically realizes that everyone is on a solitary journey. No one else can see what we see, hear what we hear, feel, what we feel. All we have of each other are glimpses of moments, whispers of experiences, memories of the past we wish we could make eternal, but in the end, we become a faint memory in the minds of a few good people.
”
”
Bruce Crown (Chronic Passions)
“
I begin to fully understand the lengths to which people have gone to protect me. What I mean to the rebels. My ongoing struggle against the Capitol, which has so often felt like a solitary journey, has not been understaken alone. I have had thousands upon thousands of people from the districts at my side. I was their Mockingjay long before I accepted the role.
”
”
Suzanne Collins
“
Your mortal suitor has already forgotten this journey. But you and I, we share memories of a childhood that I will never forget. You are the lady of my heart. My match in every way. I would’ve stayed at your side once we banished Queen Red, never left you to rule alone. We could’ve danced every night in the stars above your kingdom. For you, I would’ve given up my solitary life … been your loyal footman and cherished you eternally.
”
”
A.G. Howard (Splintered (Splintered, #1))
“
Long is the night to him who is awake; long is a mile to him who is tired; long is life to the foolish who do not know the true law. 61. If a traveller does not meet with one who is his better, or his equal, let him firmly keep to his solitary journey; there is no companionship with a fool.
”
”
F. Max Müller (The Dhammapada (Wisehouse Classics - The Complete & Authoritative Edition))
“
The old men from the charity hospital next door would come jerking past our rooms, making useless, disjointed leaps. They'd go from room to room, spitting out gossip between their decayed teeth, purveying scraps of malignant worn-out slander. Cloistered in their official misery as in an oozing dungeon, those aged workers ruminated the layer of shit that long years of servitude deposit on men's souls. Impotent hatreds grown rancid in the pissy idleness of dormitories. They employed their last quavering energies in hurting each other a little more. In destroying what little pleasure they had left.
Their last remaining pleasure! Their shriveled carcasses contained not one solitary atom that was not absolutely vicious!
”
”
Louis-Ferdinand Céline (Journey to the End of the Night)
“
I have always felt that life is a solitary journey, that we are each on a train, riding through our hours, our days, our years. We get on alone, we leave alone, and the decisions we make as we travel on the train are our responsibility alone. Along the way, different people—the family we are born to and the family we choose, the friends we meet, those we come to love and who come to love us—get on and off the cars of our train. We are travelers, always moving, always in flux, and so are our fellow passengers. Our time riding together is fleeting, but it’s everything—because the time together is what brings us love, joy, connection.
”
”
Priyanka Chopra Jonas (Unfinished: A Memoir)
“
The Romantic journey was usually a solitary one. Although the Romantic poets were closely connected with one another, and some collaborated in their work, they each had a strong individual vision. Romantic poets could not continue their quests for long or sustain their vision into later life. The power of the imagination and of inspiration did not last. Whereas earlier poets had patrons who financed their writing, the tradition of patronage was not extensive in the Romantic period and poets often lacked financial and other support. Keats, Shelley and Byron all died in solitary exile from England at a young age, their work left incomplete, non-conformists to the end. This coincides with the characteristic Romantic images of the solitary heroic individual, the spiritual outcast 'alone, alone, all, all alone' like Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and John Clare's 'I'; like Shelley's Alastor, Keats's Endymion, or Byron's Manfred, who reached beyond the normal social codes and normal human limits so that 'his aspirations/Have been beyond the dwellers of the earth'. Wordsworth, who lived to be an old man, wrote poems throughout his life in which his poetic vision is stimulated by a single figure or object set against a natural background. Even his projected final masterpiece was entitled The Recluse. The solitary journey of the Romantic poet was taken up by many Victorian and twentieth-century poets, becoming almost an emblem of the individual's search for identity in an ever more confused and confusing world.
”
”
Ronald Carter (The Routledge History of Literature in English: Britain and Ireland)
“
The schizo knows how to leave: he has made departure into something as simple as being born or dying. But at the same time his journey is strangely stationary, in place. He does not speak of another world, he is not from another world: even when he is displacing himself in space, his is a journey in intensity, around the desiring-machine that is erected here and remains here. For here is the desert propagated by our world, and also the new earth, and the machine that hums, around which the schizos revolve, planets for a new sun. These men of desire - or do they not yet exist? - are like Zarathustra. They know incredible sufferings, vertigos, and sicknesses. They have their specters. They must reinvent each gesture. But such a man produces himself as a free man, irresponsible, solitary, and joyous, finally able to say and do something simple in his own name, without asking permission; a desire lacking nothing, a flux that overcomes barriers and codes, a name that no longer designates any ego whatever. He has simply ceased being afraid of becoming mad. He experiences and lives himself as the sublime sickness that will no longer affect him.. Here, what is, what would a psychiatrist be worth?
”
”
Deleuze Guattari
“
Traveling is sacred; mankind has traveled ever since the dawn of time, in search of hunting and grazing ground, or milder climates. Very few men manage to understand the world without leaving their home towns. When you travel - and I am not speaking of tourism, but of the solitary experience of a journey - four important things occur in your life:
”
”
Paulo Coelho (Warrior of the Light)
“
The journey simultaneously holds the contraries of solitary longing and relatedness to community, as Shaw tells us: “It’s an extraordinary, indigenous idea that to find an authentic center we have to wander lonely beaches and sleep under hedges, longing for something we know is lost. To make a place in us for a small, cultivated altar to the bird that flew away.” And, “This intensely mysterious experience is solitary in nature—a conscious break from society—but requires the warmth and subtlety of a return to community to help grow the seeds that can flower from such an experience.
”
”
Martin Shaw (A Branch from the Lightning Tree: Ecstatic Myth and the Grace of Wildness)
“
There had been a time when the mere business of driving a car was a relief to him; when he had found in the un-reality of a long, solitary journey a palliative to his troubled brain, when the fatigue of several hours’ driving had allowed him to forget more sombre cares.
It was one of the subtler landmarks of middle age, perhaps, that he could no longer thus subdue his mind. It needed sterner measures now: he even tried on occasion to plan in his head a walk through a European city – to record the shops and buildings he would pass, for instance, in Berne on a walk from the Münster to the university. But despite such energetic mental exercise, the ghosts of time present would intrude and drive his dreams away. It was Ann who had robbed him of his peace, Ann who had once made the present so important and taught him the habit of reality, and when she went there was nothing.
”
”
John Le Carré (Call for the Dead (George Smiley, #1))
“
Later in the evening Misabel went for a solitary stroll by the sea. She saw the moon rise and start his lonesome journey through the night.
"He's exactly like me," Misabel thought sadly. "So plump and lonely."
At this thought she felt so forsaken and mild that she had to cry a little.
"What are you crying for?" asked Whomper nearby.
"I don't know, but it feels nice," replied Misabel.
"But people cry because they feel sorry, don't they?" objected Whomper.
"Well, yes--the moon," Misabel replied vaguely and blew her nose. "The moon and the night and all the sadness there is..."
"Oh, yes," said Whomper.
”
”
Tove Jansson (Moominsummer Madness (The Moomins, #5))
“
But the artist began to have misgivings as the wall underwent its transformation. Bigger than any pavement project he had yet undertaken, it made him restless. Over the years, a precise cycle had entered the rhythm of his life, the cycle of arrival, creation, and obliteration. Like sleeping, waking and stretching, or eating, digesting and excreting, the cycle sang in harmony with the blood in his veins and the breath in his lungs. He learned to disdain the overlong sojourn and the procrastinated departure, for they were the progenitors of complacent routine, to be shunned at all costs. The journey -- chanced, unplanned, solitary -- was the thing to relish.
Now, however, his old way of life was being threatened. The agreeable neighborhood and the solidity of the long, black wall were reawakening in him the usual sources of human sorrow: a yearning for permanence, for roots, for something he could call his own....
”
”
Rohinton Mistry (Such a Long Journey)
“
I am a lonely figure when I run the roads. People wonder how far I have come, how far I have to go. They see me alone and friendless on a journey that has no visible beginning or end. I appear isolated and vulnerable, a homeless creature. It is all they can do to keep from stopping the car and asking if they can take me wherever I'm going.
I know this because I feel it myself. When I see the runner I have much the same thoughts. No matter how often I run the roads myself, I am struck by how solitary my fellow runner appears. The sight of a runner at dusk or in inclement weather makes me glad to be safe and warm in my car and headed for home. And at those times, I wonder how I can go out there myself, how I can leave the comfort and warmth and that feeling of intimacy and belonging, to do this distracted thing.
But when finally I am there, I realise it is not comfort and warmth I am leaving, not intimacy and belonging I am giving up, but the loneliness that pursues me this day and every day. I know that the real loneliness, the real isolation, the real vulnerability, begins long before I put on my running shoes.
”
”
George Sheehan
“
In a bourgeois country, just as in a Communist land, they disapprove of “escapism” as a solitary vice, as a debilitating and wretched perversion.
Modern society discredits the fugitive so that no one will listen to his account of his journeys. Art or history, man’s imagination or his tragic and noble destiny, these are not criteria which modern mediocrity will tolerate.
“Escapism” is the fleeting vision of abolished splendors and the probability of an implacable verdict on today’s society.
”
”
Nicolás Gómez Dávila
“
We have about eighty thousand people in solitary confinement in this country, more than anywhere in the world. In California’s Pelican Bay state prison alone, more than five hundred prisoners had spent at least a decade in the hole. Eighty-nine had been there for at least twenty years. One had been in solitary for forty-two years.
”
”
Shane Bauer (American Prison: A Reporter's Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment)
“
Tomino’s Hell
Elder sister vomits blood,
younger sister’s breathing fire
while sweet little Tomino
just spits up the jewels.
All alone does Tomino
go falling into that hell,
a hell of utter darkness,
without even flowers.
Is Tomino’s big sister
the one who whips him?
The purpose of the scourging
hangs dark in his mind.
Lashing and thrashing him, ah!
But never quite shattering.
One sure path to Avici,
the eternal hell.
Into that blackest of hells
guide him now, I pray—
to the golden sheep,
to the nightingale.
How much did he put
in that leather pouch
to prepare for his trek to
the eternal hell?
Spring is coming
to the valley, to the wood,
to the spiraling chasms
of the blackest hell.
The nightingale in her cage,
the sheep aboard the wagon,
and tears well up in the eyes
of sweet little Tomino.
Sing, o nightingale,
in the vast, misty forest—
he screams he only misses
his little sister.
His wailing desperation
echoes throughout hell—
a fox peony
opens its golden petals.
Down past the seven mountains
and seven rivers of hell—
the solitary journey
of sweet little Tomino.
If in this hell they be found,
may they then come to me, please,
those sharp spikes of punishment
from Needle Mountain.
Not just on some empty whim
Is flesh pierced with blood-red pins:
they serve as hellish signposts
for sweet little Tomino.
—translated by David Bowles
June 29, 2014
”
”
Saijo Yaso
“
man shut up between four walls soon loses the power to associate words and ideas together. How many prisoners in solitary confinement become idiots, if not mad, for want of exercise of the thinking faculty!
”
”
Jules Verne (Journey to the Center of the Earth)
“
I'll tell you what I miss.
I miss that throbbing heart telling me to take a leap when the sky looks too dark.
I miss the walk that I took in the narrow cobblestoned pathways that fumed of history and undying stories of love and loss.
I miss the coffee that scented like mist in a frozen dream in a land of strange beauty.
I miss the afternoon tea that followed my pen to hours of happy melancholy.
I miss the muse I saw dance in a foreign land of near heart.
I miss the stranger smiling at me from a corner and teaching me his language to smile at my twinkled happiness.
I miss that symphony of mad evenings ending in a sky full of stars to fill my soul with an unknown ecstasy.
I miss that hand of an old woman trying to tell me her story.
I miss that child running up to me in a crowd of unknown faces to hand me her candy.
I miss that night where I lay back on a distant balcony gazing at the solitary moon for hours knowing that it is shining at my homeland just as bright.
I miss that stranger listening to my heart and telling me how beautiful it is.
I miss a wandering soul, who went on filling her breath with life of eternal love in the wings of Life.
And I'll tell you now when I look back I see how wonderful Time has treated me and how grateful I am to have lived in moments that roar of a beautiful Life lived with a heart throbbing to take a leap once again in that ocean of Life's beguiling journey.
”
”
Debatrayee Banerjee
“
I was thinking about friendship, about the indestructible ties of love between two people, who until a certain time had been complete strangers, but, who, somehow, on the solitary path of life, found another soul with whom to share the journey.
”
”
Mario Escobar (Remember Me: A Novel of the Spanish Civil War)
“
He had crept cold and friendless and ignorant out of a great public school, preparing for a silent and solitary journey, and praying as a highest favour that he might be left alone. Cambridge had not answered his prayer. She had taken and soothed him, and warmed him, and had laughed at him a little, saying that he must not be so tragic yet awhile, for his boyhood had been but a dusty corridor that led to the spacious halls of youth. In one year he had made many friends and learnt much,
”
”
E.M. Forster (The Complete E. M. Forster Collection : 11 Complete Works)
“
A Thousand mountains will greet my departing friend,
When the spring teas blossom again.
With such breadth and wisdom,
Serenely picking tea—
Through morning mists
Or crimson evening clouds—
His solitary journey is my envy.
We rendezvous at a remote mountain temple,
Where we enjoy tea by a clear pebble fountain.
In that silent night,
Lit only by candlelight,
I struck a marble bell—
Its chime carrying me
A hidden man
Deep into thoughts of ages past.
— "The Day I Saw Lu Yu off to Pick Tea
”
”
Aaron Fisher (The Way of Tea: Reflections on a Life with Tea)
“
The restaurant was waning, indifferently relaxing its illusion: for the late-comers a private illusion took its place. Their table seemed to stand on their own carpet; they had a sensation of custom, sedateness, of being inside small walls, as though dining at home again after her journey. She told him about her Mount Morris solitary suppers, in the middle of the library, the rim of the tray just not touching the base of the lamp... the fire behind her back softly falling in on its own ash-no it had not been possible to feel lonely among those feeling things.
”
”
Elizabeth Bowen (The Heat of the Day)
“
Journey by Train Stretched across counties, countries, the train Rushes faster than memory through the rain. The rise of each hill is a musical phrase. Listen to the rhythm of space, how it lies, How it rolls, how it reaches, what unwinding relays Of wood and meadow where the red cows graze Come back again and again to closed eyes— That garden, that pink farm, that village steeple, And here and there the solitary people Who stand arrested when express trains pass, That stillness of an orchard in deep grass. Yet landscapes flow like this toward a place, A point in time and memory’s own face. So when the clamor stops, we really climb Down to the earth, closing the curve of time, Meeting those we have left, to those we meet Bringing our whole life that has moved so fast, And now is gathered up and here at last, To unroll like a ribbon at their feet.
”
”
May Sarton (Collected Poems, 1930–1993)
“
The bell of Limehouse Church rang as each of them, in this house, drifted into sleep - suddenly once more like children who, exhausted by the day's adventures, fall asleep quickly and carelessly. A solitary visitor, watching them as they slept, might wonder how it was that they had arrived at such a state and might speculate about each stage of their journey towards it: when did he first start muttering to himself, and not realise that he was doing so? When did she first begin to shy away from others and seek the shadows? When did all of them come to understand that whatever hopes they might have had were foolish, and that life was something only to be endured? Those who wander are always objects of suspicion and sometimes even of fear: the four people gathered in this house by the church had passed into a place, one might almost say a time, from which there was no return. The young man who had been bent over the fire had spent his life in a number of institutions - an orphanage, a juvenile home and most recently a prison; the old woman still clutching the brown bottle was an alcoholic who had abandoned her husband and two children many years before; the old man had taken to wandering after the death of his wife in a fire which he believed, at the time, he might have prevented. And what of Ned, who was now muttering in his sleep?
”
”
Peter Ackroyd (Hawksmoor)
“
...I want to exist from my own force, like the
sun which gives light and does not suck light. That belongs to the earth. I recall my solar nature and would like to rush to my rising. But ruins stand in my way They say: "With regard to men you should be this or that." My chameleonesque skin shudders. They obtrude upon me and want to color me. But that should no longer be. Neither good nor evil shall be my masters. I push them aside, the laughable survivors, and go on my way again, which leads me to the East. The quarreling powers that for so long stood between me and myself lie behind me.
Henceforth I'm completely alone. I can no longer say to you: "Listen!" or "you should," or "you could," but now I talk only with myself Now no one else can do anything more for me, nothing whatsoever. I no longer have a duty toward you, and you no longer have duties toward me, since I vanish and you vanish from me. I no longer hear requests and no longer make requests of you. I no longer fight and reconcile myself with you, but place silence between you and me.
Your call dies away in the distance, and you cannot find my footprints. Together with the west wind, which comes from the plains of the ocean, I journey across the green countryside, I roam through the forests, and bend the young grass. I talk with trees and the forest wildlife, and the stones show me the way. When I thirst and the source does not come to me, I go to the source. When I starve and the bread does not come to me, I seek my bread and take it where I find it. I provide no help and need no help. If at any time necessity confronts me, I do not look around to see whether there is a helper nearby, but I accept the necessity and bend and writhe and struggle. I laugh, I weep,I swear, but I do not look around me.
On this way, no one walks behind me, and I cross no one's path. I am alone, but I fill my solitariness with my life. I am man enough, I am noise, conversation, comfort, and help enough unto myself And so I wander to the far East. Not that I know any-thing about what my distant goal might be. I see blue horizons before me: they suffice as a goal. I hurry toward the East and my rising- I will my rising.
”
”
C.G. Jung (The Red Book: Liber Novus)
“
A gigantic monster, they said, had arrived the night before, armed with a gun and many pistols; putting to flight the inhabitants of a solitary cottage, through fear of his terrific appearance. He had carried off their store of winter food, and, placing it in a sledge, to draw which he had seized on a numerous drove of trained dogs, he had harnessed them, and the same night, to the joy of the horror-struck villagers, had pursued his journey across the sea in a direction that led to no land; and they conjectured that he must speedily be destroyed by the breaking of the ice, or frozen by the eternal frosts.
”
”
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (Frankenstein)
“
For a moment he dreamed of seeing the beauty of the world with her, becoming merged with her as part of that beauty. Then his day-dream disintegrated, wandered, took another path. And he realized that though he did want to go on such a journey, he wanted to go alone. And it was true that , when he remembered all the wonderful places he had seen—every one of which he had visited at least twice, once alone and once with someone he loved—or when he wanted to use them in his books, it was always the time when he had travelled alone that came to his mind most vividly, most magically and most potently. For it is a major law of nature that we are no longer entirely one when we are two. If God said 'It is not good that man should live alone', it was because he was afraid of the solitary man. And so he weakened him by providing him with a mate, in order to have him at his mercy.
”
”
Henry de Montherlant (The Girls)
“
Catherine was too wretched to be fearful. The journey in itself had no terrors for her; and she began it without either dreading its length or feeling its solitariness. Leaning back in one comer of the carriage, in a violent burst of tears, she was conveyed some miles beyond the walls of the abbey before she raised her head; and the highest point of ground within the park was almost closed from her view before she was capable of turning her eyes towards it. Unfortunately, the road she now travelled was the same which only ten days ago she had so happily passed along in going to and from Woodston; and, for fourteen miles, every bitter feeling was rendered more severe by the review of objects on which she had first looked under impressions so different. Every mile, as it brought her nearer Woodston, added to her sufferings, and when within the distance of five, she passed the turning which led to it, and thought of Henry, so near, yet so unconscious, her grief and agitation were excessive. The day which she had spent at that place had been one of the happiest of her life.
”
”
Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey)
“
My dwelling was small, and I could hardly entertain an echo in it; but it seemed larger for being a single apartment and remote from neighbors. All the attractions of a house were concentrated in one room; it was kitchen, chamber, parlor, and keeping-room; and whatever satisfaction parent or child, master or servant, derive from living in a house, I enjoyed it all. Cato says, the master of a family (patremfamilias) must have in his rustic villa "cellam oleariam, vinariam, dolia multa, uti lubeat caritatem expectare, et rei, et virtuti, et gloriae erit," that is, "an oil and wine cellar, many casks, so that it may be pleasant to expect hard times; it will be for his advantage, and virtue, and glory." I had in my cellar a firkin of potatoes, about two quarts of peas with the weevil in them, and on my shelf a little rice, a jug of molasses, and of rye and Indian meal a peck each. I sometimes dream of a larger and more populous house, standing in a golden age, of enduring materials, and without gingerbread work, which shall still consist of only one room, a vast, rude, substantial, primitive hall, without ceiling or plastering, with bare rafters and purlins supporting a sort of lower heaven over one's head—useful to keep off rain and snow, where the king and queen posts stand out to receive your homage, when you have done reverence to the prostrate Saturn of an older dynasty on stepping over the sill; a cavernous house, wherein you must reach up a torch upon a pole to see the roof; where some may live in the fireplace, some in the recess of a window, and some on settles, some at one end of the hall, some at another, and some aloft on rafters with the spiders, if they choose; a house which you have got into when you have opened the outside door, and the ceremony is over; where the weary traveller may wash, and eat, and converse, and sleep, without further journey; such a shelter as you would be glad to reach in a tempestuous night, containing all the essentials of a house, and nothing for house-keeping; where you can see all the treasures of the house at one view, and everything hangs upon its peg, that a man should use; at once kitchen, pantry, parlor, chamber, storehouse, and garret; where you can see so necessary a thing, as a barrel or a ladder, so convenient a thing as a cupboard, and hear the pot boil, and pay your respects to the fire that cooks your dinner, and the oven that bakes your bread, and the necessary furniture and utensils are the chief ornaments; where the washing is not put out, nor the fire, nor the mistress, and perhaps you are sometimes requested to move from off the trap-door, when the cook would descend into the cellar, and so learn whether the ground is solid or hollow beneath you without stamping. A house whose inside is as open and manifest as a bird's nest, and you cannot go in at the front door and out at the back without seeing some of its inhabitants; where to be a guest is to be presented with the freedom of the house, and not to be carefully excluded from seven eighths of it, shut up in a particular cell, and told to make yourself at home there—in solitary confinement. Nowadays the host does not admit you to his hearth, but has got the mason to build one for yourself somewhere in his alley, and hospitality is the art of keeping you at the greatest distance. There is as much secrecy about the cooking as if he had a design to poison you. I am aware that I have been on many a man's premises, and might have been legally ordered off, but I am not aware that I have been in many men's houses. I might visit in my old clothes a king and queen who lived simply in such a house as I have described, if I were going their way; but backing out of a modern palace will be all that I shall desire to learn, if ever I am caught in one.
”
”
Henry David Thoreau (Walden)
“
Life is pretty short yet magnanimous if we know just how to live right. It isn't that easy, it takes a lot of our soul, sometimes too many broken pieces to finally come together in binding a masterpiece that smiles like a solitary star forever gazing around at the music of an eternal cosmos.
The most brutal yet beautiful truth about Life is that It is marked, marked with Time where every moment takes us closer to death, it doesn't have to sound or feel bad or scary because death is the most inevitable truth in this mortal world. While the knowledge of death jolts our mind with the uncertainty of Life, clutches us in the emotion of fear to think of pain or the loss of bonds, when we acknowledge that as a part of our souls' journey and take every moment as our precious gift, a blessing to experience this Life with its beautiful garden of emotions blossoming with wonderful smiles that we can paint on others, then we make our Life magnanimous, then we make even the very face of death as that of an angel coming to take us to a different voyage, soaked in a lot of memories and experiences beautifully binding our soul.
I have realised that when we live each day as if it's the last day of our life, we become more loving and gentle to everyone around and especially to our own selves. We forgive and love more openly, we grace and embrace every opportunity we get to be kind, to stay in touch with everything that truly matters. I have realised that when we rise every morning with gratitude knowing that the breath of air still passes through our body, just in the mere understanding that we have one more day to experience Life once again, we stay more compassionate towards everything and everyone around and invest more of our selves into everything and everyone that truly connect and resonate with our soul. I have realised that when we consciously try to be good and kind, no matter however bad or suffocating a situation is we always end up taking everything at its best holding on to the firm grip of goodness, accepting everything as a part of our souls' lesson or just a turn of Time or Fate and that shapes into our strength and roots our core with the truest understanding of Life, the simple act of going on and letting go. Letting go of anything and everything that chains our Soul while going on with a Heart open to Love and a Soul ready to absorb all that falls along the pathway of this adventure called Life. I have realised that when we are kind and do anything good for another person, that gives us the most special happiness, something so pure that even our hearts don't know how deep that joy permeates inside our soul. I have realised that at the end of the day we do good not because of others but because of our own selves, for if tomorrow death comes to grace me I hope to smile and say I have Lived, loved unconditionally and embraced forgiveness, kindness and goodness and all the other colours of Love with every breath I caught, I have lived a Life magnanimous.
So each time someone's unkind towards you, hold back and smile, and try to give your warmth to that person. Because Kindness is not a declaration of who deserves it, it's a statement of who you are. So each time some pieces of your heart lay scattered, hold them up and embrace everyone of them with Love. Because Love is not a magic potion that is spilled from a hollow space, it's a breath of eternity that flows through the tunnel of your soul. So each time Life puts up a question of your Happiness, answer back with a Smile of Peace. Because Happiness is not what you look for in others, it's what you create in every passing moment, with the power of Life, that is pretty short when we see how counted it stands in days but actually turns out absolutely incredibly magnanimous when loved and lived in moments.
”
”
Debatrayee Banerjee
“
Pilgrimage is premised on the idea that the sacred is not entirely immaterial, but that there is a geography of spiritual power. Pilgrimage walks a delicate line between the spiritual and the material in its emphasis on the story and its setting though the search is for spirituality, it is pursued in terms of the most material details of where the Buddha was born or where Christ died, where the relics are or the holy water flows. Or perhaps it reconciles the spiritual and the material, for to go on pilgrimage is to make the body and its actions express the desires and beliefs of the soul. Pilgrimage unites belief with action, thinking with doing, and it makes sense that this harmony is achieved when the sacred has material presence and location. Protestants, as well as the occasional Buddhist and Jew, have objected to pilgrimages as a kind of icon worship and asserted that the spiritual should be sought within as something wholly immaterial, rather than out in the world.
There is a symbiosis between journey and arrival in Christian pilgrimage, as there is in mountaineering. To travel without arriving would be as incomplete as to arrive without having traveled. To walk there is to earn it, through laboriousness and through the transformation that comes during a journey. Pilgrimages make it possible to move physically, through the exertions of one's body, step by step, toward those intangible spiritual goals that are otherwise so hard to grasp. We are eternally perplexed by how to move toward forgiveness or healing or truth, but we know how to walk from here to there, however arduous the jour ney. Too, we tend to imagine life as a journey, and going on an actual expedition takes hold of that image and makes it concrete, acts it out with the body and the imagination in a world whose geography has become spiritualized. The walker toiling along a road toward some distant place is one of the most compelling and universal images of what it means to be human, depicting the individual as small and solitary in a large world, reliant on the strength of body and will. In pilgrim age, the journey is radiant with hope that arrival at the tangible destination will bring spiritual benefits with it. The pilgrim has achieved a story of his or her ow and in this way too becomes part of the religion made up of stories of travel and transformation.
”
”
Rebecca Solnit (Wanderlust: A History of Walking)
“
A lengthy journey begins with a solitary first step, and ends with the last breath taken. --Debra Erfert
”
”
Debra Erfert
“
Wiser councils prevailed, and today a solitary Khmelnytsky slices the uncomplaining air on a traffic island outside Santa Sofia Cathedral. It is hard to make out
”
”
Anna Reid (Borderland: A Journey Through the History of Ukraine)
“
Of all the endlessly mythologised figures of Ukrainian history, Khmelnytsky is both the most influential and the most mysterious. For Ukrainians he is the leader of the first Ukrainian war of independence; for Poles he is the misguided peasant rebel who split the Commonwealth, pushing Poland into her long pre-Partition decline. For Jews he is the prototype pogromshchik, author of the infamous Khmelnytsky massacres; for Russians he is the founder of the Great Slav Brotherhood, the Moses who led Ukraine out of Polish bondage into the welcoming arms of Muscovy. In Kiev, the tsars erected a statue of him astride a rearing charger, pointing his mace towards the north-east and Moscow. According to its original design, the hetman was to have been represented trampling the cowering figures of a Polish nobleman, a Catholic priest and a Jew. Wiser councils prevailed, and today a solitary Khmelnytsky slices the uncomplaining air on a traffic island outside Santa Sofia Cathedral.
”
”
Anna Reid (Borderland: A Journey Through the History of Ukraine)
“
We are all on a journey to an unknown place, all subject to forces and opinions that threaten to destroy us. At the same time, we are surrounded by miracles that protect us whenever we feel ourselves to be most vulnerable. A footprint in stone here, a golden sandal there, a solitary cloud somewhere else. Are we not looking for such signs that tell us that we are protected by an invisible hand? Certainly I was beginning to believe this to be so.
”
”
James Cowan (Fleeing Herod: A Journey through Coptic Egypt with the Holy Family)
“
One Flight of a Lifetime
One solitary flight,
as it soars and flies through
and manoeuvres the clouds.
The pathway already set,
a distant land,
an adventure,
a home,
a journey.
In search for treasure,
filled with laughter,
filled with enthusiasm,
filled with change.
The roars in the skies,
the obstacles to be faced
and left behind.
As they are smashed and
only a mark left as they
are washed away by the rain.
One flight, One Chance,
One way, One Wind.
Never let the fog,
darkness or rain
prevent you from …
One flight of a Lifetime.
by Natasha Parker
Copyright © 2014 by Luisa Natasha Parker
”
”
Luisa Natasha Parker (Natasha a Journey to Freedom, Love and Happiness)
“
Thus, in eastern Tibet, they say that before he died one monk asked that no one touch his corpse for a week and that the door to his room remain closed. After seven days, when they went into the room, his body had completely dissolved. They found only his monastic robes; even his nails and hair had disappeared. This monk was a hermit who lived very simply, without externalizing any signs of realization during his life devoted to contemplation. He had managed, through his practice, to actualize the primordial purity of the mind. We are not all called to such an accomplishment. It is better, for our daily practice, to stay at home, keeping our professional and family life while still learning to become better from day to day and adhering to a positive mode of life that will contribute to the good of society, according to the principles of the Dharma. We should choose professions in the areas of education, health, or social services. We should avoid renouncing everything for a solitary retreat. The aim is not to devote ourselves solely to spiritual practice, to lead a life lost in the glaciers. We should progress by degrees, steadily, taking care not to have extreme views, in a spirit of steadfastness and perseverance.
”
”
Dalai Lama XIV (My Spiritual Journey: Personal Reflections, Teachings, and Talks)
“
The temporary separation attendant on my little journey, had its effect on the mind of both parties. It gave a space for the maturing of inclination. I believe that, during this interval, each furnished to the other the principal topic of solitary and daily contemplation. Absence bestows a refined and aërial delicacy upon affection, which it with difficulty acquires in any other way. It seems to resemble the communication of spirits, without the medium, or the impediment, of this earthly frame.
When we met again, we met with new pleasure, and, I may add, with a more decisive preference for each other. It was however three weeks longer, before the sentiment which trembled upon the tongue, burst from the lips of either. There was, as I have already said, no period of throes and resolute explanation attendant on the tale. It was friendship melting into love. Previously to our mutual declaration, each felt half-assured, yet each felt a certain trembling anxiety to have assurance complete.
”
”
William Godwin (Maria; or The Wrongs of Woman & Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman (2 in 1))
“
It had been like a dark room with a solitary television going thus far in their journey—inconsistent lighting with no discernible pattern. Sometimes good, sometimes dark, sometimes a maddening combination of both, alternating in quick succession, just as your eyes tried to accustom to one or the other.
”
”
Jeff Menapace (Wildlife (Wildlife #1))
“
I wished that old Diogenes, groping so patiently with his lantern, searching so zealously for one solitary honest man in all the world, might meander along and stumble on our party. I ought not to say it, may be, but still I suppose he would have put out his light." Mark Twain
”
”
Iota Angel (The Island Beyond the Coast - Book II: A real-life journey set in Greece during the 19th century with Bayard Taylor & Mark Twain)
“
I shielded my solitariness from them, and from the European future that they represented for me. I felt my solitary happiness threatened by their happiness of the herd, because they were stronger than me.
The happiness I feel here at the foot of the Third Tower is something I must not give up for anyone: for anyone, or anything. I cannot surrender my soul to any nation state, or to any set of beliefs.
(1936)
”
”
Antal Szerb (The Third Tower: Journeys in Italy (Pushkin Collection))
“
This was a creature that, except for the brief days in safety as a kitten, swatting at her mother’s tail and taking in a new world, had spent every waking moment fighting for life. Like one endless solo expedition, her life was a solitary battle for survival. Each morsel of food won required skill, stealth, and often the risk of injury or death. Stalking the beaches and brush of the long river beneath black thunderheads of the Amazon sky, she had managed to survive through all adversity in one of the most competitive and unforgiving ecosystems on earth.
”
”
Paul Rosolie (Mother of God: An Extraordinary Journey into the Uncharted Tributaries of the Western Amazon)
“
Everything was for this moment- of silence, of bliss! I am speechless at this shrine of You and I understand that life was just a journey to find You, the deepest consciousness living in even the dead!
”
”
Preeth Padmanabhan Nambiar (The Solitary Shores)
“
If a traveler does not meet with one who is his better, or his equal, let him firmly keep to his solitary journey; there is no companionship with a fool.
”
”
Shawn Conners (Zen Buddhism: The Path to Enlightenment)
“
If a traveler does not meet with one who is his better, or his equal, let him firmly keep to his solitary journey; there is no companionship with a fool.
”
”
Various
“
But my friend is silent—How should I live
so that my soul may ascend to the moon
that shines above these impenetrable gardens?
He wipes his tears and sighs.
My friend lost in solitary sadness.
I have vowed, I say, to live for limitless aspirations,
however painful that pursuit.
My friend smiles—I’ll do that too.
--from the poem: Morigasaki Beach
”
”
Daisaku Ikeda (Journey of Life: Selected Poems of Daisaku Ikeda)
“
After traversing the open plain, the road led through a grove of young ebony trees, where guinea-fowls and a hartebeest were seen; it then wound, with all the characteristic eccentric curves of a goat-path, up and down a succession of land-waves crested by the dark green foliage of the mango, and the scantier and lighter-coloured leaves of the enormous calabash. The depressions were filled with jungle of more or less density, while here and there opened glades, shadowed even during noon by thin groves of towering trees. At our approach fled in terror flocks of green pigeons, jays, ibis, turtledoves, golden pheasants, quails and moorhens, with crows and hawks, while now and then a solitary pelican winged its way to the distance. Nor was this enlivening prospect without its pairs of antelope, and monkeys which hopped away like Australian kangaroos; these latter were of good size, with round bullet heads, white breasts, and long tails tufted at the end. We arrived at Kikoka by 5 P.M., having loaded and unloaded our pack animals four times, crossing one deep puddle, a mud sluice, and a river, and performed a journey of eleven miles. The settlement of Kikoka is a collection of straw huts; not built after any architectural style, but after a bastard form, invented by indolent settlers from the Mrima and Zanzibar for the purpose of excluding as much sunshine as possible from the eaves and interior. A sluice and some wells provide them with water, which though sweet is not particularly wholesome or appetizing, owing to the large quantities of decayed matter which is washed into it by the rains, and is then left to corrupt in it. A
”
”
Henry Morton Stanley (How I Found Livingstone: Travels, adventures, and discoveres in Central Africa, including an account of four months' residence with Dr. Livingstone, by Henry M. Stanley)
“
Even when surrounded by many others, your journey is solitary, for the life you are to choose is your life, not someone else’s. Alone, we nonetheless move amid a community of other solitudes; alone, our world is peopled with many companions, both within and without. Thus, this paradox stands before each of us, and challenges: We “must be alone if [we] are to find out what it is that supports [us] when we can no longer support [ourselves]. Only this experience can give [us] an indestructible foundation.”63 Finding what supports you from within will link you to transcendence, reframe the perspectives received from your history, and provide the agenda of growth, purpose, and meaning that we all are meant to carry into the world and to share with others. The soul asks each of us that we live a larger life. Each day this summons is renewed and leaves you, unspeakably, to sort out your life, with its fearsome immensities, so that, now boundaried, now limitless, it transforms itself as stone in you and star.
”
”
James Hollis (Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life: How to Finally, Really Grow Up)
“
Ravi sat on his cot, leaning on a stack of pillows, and looked out of the window. The sun was setting. The grazing herd of clouds was gone. Soon it was dark, and the fantasy returned, the fantasy of the journey. The seedling house became a compartment in a train, and he the lone and imprisoned traveller. Dark wastes lay on either side; from them fleeting signs spoke to Ravi—a solitary firefly, a plodding lantern. The wheels moved along the track with soft, deceptive thuds. Then he heard the far rush of another track racing towards his own, the sorrow of another, futilely seeking comfort. The rails met for one moment, tumultuously, to part again. To race away into the many-mysteried night.
”
”
O.V. Vijayan
“
Contemplation, normally regarded as a private pursuit, needs communal support. We are most likely to risk its vulnerabilities and be faithful to its implications when we are embedded in a community that both invokes and witnesses our truth, a rare form of community in which we learn to be alone together, to support one another on a solitary journey. We practice being present to others without being invasive or evasive, neither trying to fix them with advice nor turning away when they share something distressing. Imagine yourself sitting by the bedside of a dying person, who is making the most solitary journey of all. Here, we must lose both the arrogance that makes us think we can fix the other, and the cowardice that tempts us to turn away. Since we are all dying all the time, why not practice this way of relating before the final hour?
”
”
Aaron Kheriaty (The Catholic Guide to Depression: How the Saints, the Sacraments, and Psychiatry Can Help You Break Its Grip and Find Happiness Again)
“
Of course, you have probably heard about studies in which rats or even primates continually pressed levers to get cocaine, heroin, or methamphetamine until they died, choosing drugs rather than food and water. But what you probably didn’t know is that these animals were kept in isolated, unnatural environments for most of their lives, where they typically became stressed without social contact and had little else to do. By analogy, if you were in solitary confinement for years with only one movie as a source of entertainment, you’d probably watch it over and over. But that wouldn’t necessarily mean that that particular movie is “addictive” or compulsively watchable. You’d probably still watch it if it were the worst film ever made, just to have something to do. Similarly, saying that unlimited access to cocaine “makes” animals addicted to the point of killing themselves, based on research in isolated rodents or primates, doesn’t tell us much about drug use in the real world.
”
”
Carl L. Hart (High Price: A Neuroscientist's Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society)
“
Ever since childhood, I’ve felt a tension between who I think I should be-- smarter, more confident, more creative, more adventurous, more out going- and who I am: quiet, introspective, sensitive, and solitary. If I could only be better, I think- a better wife, a better mother, a better writer, a better human- then I would feel more sure of myself and more worthy. More deserving of life.
”
”
Katrina Kenison (Magical Journey: An Apprenticeship in Contentment)
“
Our creative journeys are different every time, and different for each of us. Typically, they are solitary ventures, private intimate adventures for one.
”
”
Laurie E. Smith (Leap With Me: A Creative Path to Finding and Following Your True Voice)
“
When ego, unopposed, assumes its throne,
The world, in fragments, reaps the seeds it’s sown.
A kaleidoscope of discord and divide,
Where separate streams in ceaseless turmoil bide.
Through ego’s lens, reality transforms,
A battleground where rampant desire storms.
A sphere of strife, of victory and loss,
Where fortunes shift as dice of fate are tossed.
In ego’s solitary, narrow view,
The world is painted in a hue so skewed.
Confined by fears, by selfish dreams confined,
Its canvas bears the limits of the mind.
Thus, perception, in its manifold grace,
Reflects the light of ego and soul’s face.
In balance, may the truest sight be found,
Where essence and ego in harmony abound.
In the crucible where essence blends with sight,
A wondrous transformation takes its flight.
Where once division’s shadow coldly lay,
Interconnection’s dawn breaks forth in day.
What opposition’s harsh gaze once discerned,
To harmonies of concord is now turned.
The essence, with its ancient wisdom’s glow,
Unveils the unity that lies below.
Each leaf and stone, each soul that wanders free,
A note within reality’s grand symphony.
Essential, bound within the vast expanse,
In life’s intricate, cosmic dance.
This alchemical shift in vision’s sphere,
Brings forth changes profound, both far and near.
Challenges, once daunting, now unfold,
As growth’s opportunities, bright and bold.
Foes, once clad in enmity’s harsh guise,
Transform to teachers, wise beneath the skies.
Each joy, each pain, in life’s intricate weave,
Threads of our evolution, we perceive.
No longer a stage for vain rivalry’s play,
But a landscape where learning’s blossoms sway.
Growth and learning, in rich abundance, thrive,
In this new world where our spirits come alive.
Where once the ego’s voice, in solo strain,
Ruled with iron will, in self’s domain,
Now in harmony with the soul’s sweet song,
It finds a place where it truly belongs.
No longer master, but a partner kind,
Guiding through life with a humble mind.
It learns compassion’s tongue, intuition hears,
Acts with mindfulness, as purpose nears.
In perception’s alchemy, a journey grand,
From fractured states to unity’s soft hand,
From discord’s harsh cacophony to peace,
A path that leads where true essences release.
This sacred path, evolving as it weaves,
Into our nature’s heart, where spirit cleaves.
The veil of separation gently falls,
As interconnectedness softly calls.
Upon this path, with every step we tread,
Our world transforms, new visions in its stead.
The mundane now with sacredness imbues,
The ordinary in extraordinary hues.
Each day becomes a picture, rich and vast,
For deepest truths, in vibrant colors cast.
Through alchemy of sight, our roles transcend,
Not mere observers, but creators bend.
In world’s unfolding tale, we play our part,
Co-architects, with collective heart.
A reality, where highest potentials shine,
In this, your design, our spirits intertwine.
”
”
Kevin L. Michel (The 7 Laws of Quantum Power)
“
The Pentagram, a symbol of five points, stands as an eternal testament to the profound interconnection of all things. Each point signifies the fundamental elements of existence - earth, air, fire, water, and spirit. It is a cosmic diagram reminding us that as humans, we are not separate entities in an indifferent universe, but rather integral parts of a grand, interconnected cosmic dance. The element of earth represents the physical realm, our bodies, and the tangible world around us. It reminds us of our mortal nature, our connection to the mother Earth, and the grounding force that allows us to grow and prosper. Air, the breath of life, signifies the realm of intellect, communication, and thought. It is the invisible force that fuels our creative and innovative abilities, allowing us to soar towards our highest aspirations. Fire symbolizes passion, energy, and transformation. It is the spark of life within us, the burning desire to grow, evolve, and reach beyond the realms of the possible. Yet, it also serves as a reminder of the transformative power of trials and tribulations, refining us like gold in a crucible. Water relates to emotions, intuition, and the depths of the subconscious. It is the wellspring of our feelings, our dreams, our hopes, and our fears. Water teaches us the power of adaptability, the beauty of depth, and the strength in gentleness. Finally, the fifth point, spirit, represents the divine essence that permeates all things. It is the invisible thread that weaves together the fabric of the universe, the divine spark within each of us, connecting us to each other and to the cosmos. The Pentagram, therefore, is not merely a symbol. It is a philosophical compass, a map of our spiritual journey. It reminds us to remain grounded, yet to let our thoughts soar; to burn with passion, yet to cool with compassion; to dive deep within ourselves, yet to connect to the divine within all. It is a reminder that we are born of the cosmos, and to the cosmos, we shall return - a testament to the spiritual cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. In this dance of existence, we are not solitary dancers, but part of a divine choreography, intricately woven into the fabric of the universe.
”
”
D.L. Lewis
“
I have always felt that adventures are about connection and daring, albeit my traditional view was that it was a solitary quest and one where fears were stuffed down to be tamed alone. I would say that my learning to express and connect in vulnerable times has been my greatest and most perilous, daring journey of all. And the most empowering.
”
”
Sarah Outen (Tough Women Adventure Stories: Stories of Grit, Courage and Determination)
“
In the Second Mansion, you aim to become more discerning about your thoughts, motivations, and personal companions. We all need to be more discriminating about whom we allow into the circles that influence our souls. Beyond your friendships and social interactions, you need to become aware of how your psyche and soul are changing, of their shifts in perceptions. As you become more awakened, you may become more psychically hypersensitive and reactive to other people’s emotional energy, to highly charged negative atmospheres, to stresses in people around you, or even to the great tensions of the planet. Teresa warned her nuns that as they progressed in their Castles, they would become vulnerable in some way to other people’s emotional, psychological, mental, and spiritual debris. You need to learn, as an emerging mystic, how to protect your energy field.
This hypersensitivity can be brought on by spending too much time alone in retreat or by opening up too many interior rooms too rapidly. In rare cases, achieving a blissful state of consciousness can result in a sense of ungroundedness and disorientation. A more common experience is that reading sacred literature and doing soul work can shift your values and make you feel very detached from your familiar world. In these states, you require serious hand-holding and the companionship of someone who understands the journey of the soul. You will always need to maintain a solitary, silent prayer life and time for reflection, but you will also need to reach out to at least one other person to share your experience of God.
”
”
Caroline Myss
“
The ultimate goal of life remains the spiritual growth of the individual, the solitary journey to peaks that can be climbed only alone.
”
”
M. Scott Peck (The Road Less Traveled)
“
Focusing on expanding our skills, pursuing excellence in a vocation, cultivating enriching hobbies, sculpting our mind and body, creating a network of inspiring friends, seeking adventures, and devoting ourselves to rewarding goals – this is how we make our solitary journey meaningful, and therein cultivate self-love. And with sufficient self-love, we do not need a relationship to thrive, and, paradoxically, this is when we are at our most attractive and capable of cultivating a healthy relationship that is based on the following foundation of realism: A romantic partner can support us and enrich our journey, just as we can support and enrich theirs. However, to use a relationship to flee the burdens of our existence and to look to another person to provide us fulfillment, is to damage the relationship and cripple ourselves with infantile dependencies. The earthly salvation that we seek can only be found by cultivating and affirming our individual journey; it cannot be found in the arms of another.
”
”
Academy of Ideas
“
Ideological introversion manifests not as a retreat from society, but as a retreat from discourse; it is the solitary journey of decision-making, where debate is replaced by the quiet birth of resolution.
”
”
Syed Buali Gillani
“
The faithful living out of the tropos of the incarnate Christ is the challenge that faces us in all these areas, and what it entails (so Bonhoeffer and Przywara alike insist) is the patient embrace of finitude, the refusal of defensive anxiety about the Church’s privilege or influence, the recognition and valuing of the unspectacular, in life and art, as the site where we may expect the paradoxical radiance of the infinite to become visible. Christian ethics is not about dramatic and solitary choices for individual good or evil but the steady building of a culture of durable mutuality and compassion. Christian aesthetics is not about genius-driven or near-magical transmutations of this world into some imagined semblance of divine glory and abundance, but the gift of unlocking in the most ordinary setting or object the ‘grace of sense’ that allows it to be seen with (to use the word again) durable, attentive love.
And Christian metaphysics? Przywara’s work clearly understands the role of Christology in developing a schematic and consistent view of analogy, depending on the recognition that whatever comes into intellectual focus in our human understanding is always already implicated in relations that make its life more than a single and containable phenomenon but something opening out on to an unlimited horizon of connection...
...authentic theology shows itself, in self-forgetting and self-dispossessing practice. The theology that we write and discuss has no substance independently of this formal content, this knowledge of how to ‘enact Christ’ in the world. And it is because of this that Przywara resists a reading of St John of the Cross’s spiritual teaching which simply identifies the ‘night of spirit’ with the negation of the creaturely. Put like this, it can suggest yet another form of the competitive ontological model which we struggle to escape from – more world, less God, and vice versa. But St John properly read – giving priority to the poems rather than the commentaries on them – characterizes the night as participation in the act of Christ the Word. The darkness of our prayer is not the result of a straightforward gap between what we can know as creatures and the unknowable depths of God, the infinite dissimilarity between finite and infinite; it is our assimilation into the infinite’s self-unveiling in the dark places of the finite world, in the wordless helplessness of the cross. And because it is in this way an entry deeper and deeper into the centre of God’s activity, it is a journey into the ‘excess’ of divine light, the overflowing of God’s absolute abundance, which is itself nothing else than agape directed towards the life and joy of the other – in the divine life and in the relation of divine to non-divine life.
”
”
Rowan Williams
“
Ever since I was five years old,” David-Néel wrote in My Journey to Lhasa, “I wished to move out of the narrow limits in which, like all children of my age, I was then kept. I craved to go beyond the garden gate, to follow the road that passed it by, and to set out for the Unknown. But strangely enough, this ‘Unknown’ fancied by my baby mind always turned out to be a solitary spot where I could sit alone, with no one near.
”
”
Alexandra David-Néel (My Journey to Lhasa: The Classic Story of the Only Western Woman Who Succeeded in Entering the Forbidden City)
“
All this, in addition to each day’s walking and pushing, is making me a kind of tired I didn’t know existed. But tonight feels different. I have a sense of gratitude I haven’t felt before. The challenge of the day with so much traffic, the fact of Ted leaving us tomorrow, and the communal dinner we experienced tonight have me thinking about what it means to face the challenges of life alone, to take on the unexpected in isolation. I wasn’t designed for a solitary existence. Though I am so very tired, there is an underlying energy in my bones, an energy that comes from the presence and help of others. The unexpected is just that—unexpected! We can’t plan for it . . . we can’t predict it . . . we can’t be ready for it in any way. Often the unforeseen events in life come with few answers or no clear way out. Deborah’s MS offers no way out, and Justin’s disease will eventually take his life. But just like the highway, these unexpected challenges can be faced and life can be lived, despite the darkness. We just have to make sure we don’t face them alone. Ted has helped us get this far. Christie, Lynda, and John have offered to help in the coming days. The many pilgrims sitting, breaking bread, and enjoying wine tonight remind me of what the church is supposed to mean, what it is supposed to represent. We are a community—or at least we should be—where all are welcome, all are loved, and the unexpected challenges of life are faced with others at our side.
”
”
Patrick Gray (I'll Push You: A Journey of 500 Miles, Two Best Friends, and One Wheelchair)
“
Solitary walking forces us to confront ourselves, freeing us from the limitations of the body as well as those of our usual environment that restrict us to conventional, acceptable, and prepackaged ways of thinking.
”
”
Bernard Ollivier (Out of Istanbul: A Journey of Discovery along the Silk Road)
“
Within a raindrop there must be a heart- a heart that weeps the pain of longing. Look at her embracing her beloved and disappearing unto his yearning, but once again to set journey to the skies!
O dear, so is our union, a short while in the beautiful home named earth; but we shall continue, until the last drop water drains into the earth and there are no more rays of sun kissing these tender leaves of green!
And at last when the terrain shatters onto the Milky Way as tiny particles, O dear, remember, we will embrace once again to make a planet, a planet of love!
”
”
Preeth Padmanabhan Nambiar (The Solitary Shores)
“
I AM LEADING YOU along a way that is uniquely right for you. The closer to Me you grow, the more fully you become your true self—the one I designed you to be. Because you are one of a kind, the path you are traveling with Me diverges increasingly from that of other people. However, in My mysterious wisdom and ways, I enable you to follow this solitary path while staying in close contact with others. In fact, the more completely you devote yourself to Me, the more freely you can love people. Marvel at the beauty of a life intertwined with My Presence. Rejoice as we journey together in intimate communion. Enjoy the adventure of finding yourself through losing yourself in Me.
”
”
Sarah Young (Jesus Calling Morning and Evening, with Scripture References: Yearlong Guide to Inner Peace and Spiritual Growth (A 365-Day Devotional) (Jesus Calling®))
“
Life’s journey is solitary. Alone were manifest in this world and are to go alone at the end of life. The first achievement of life is self-love.
”
”
justbreathing.in
“
Time advanced again—Time machine’s pace became unusually up normal,the reality of my life stood in front of me when the journey continued mountain over mountains.We passed over more than a million rivers and streams of good and bad water as my insight intertwined a society. In the narrow paths of my life I felled,I bled with my solitary heart, as I knew I became a burden for a wild society. The crime I did was I created Literature with my spiral imagination.
”
”
Nithin Purple (The Bell Ringing Woman: A Blue Bell of Inspiration)
“
The act of writing a novel is generally thought to be a solitary journey from that first awe-inspiring blank page to the end. However, the fact that most authors offer acknowledgments speaks to the presence of a team in the background, offering advice, support, information, a shoulder to cry on, or someone to share a laugh with.
”
”
Jacqueline Winspear (Pardonable Lies (Maisie Dobbs, #3))
“
The work of the radical biologist Lynn Margulis and others has shown humans to be not solitary beings, but what Margulis memorably calls ‘holobionts’ – collaborative compound organisms, ecological units ‘consisting of trillions of bacteria, viruses and fungi that coordinate the task of living together and sharing a common life’, in the philosopher Glenn Albrecht’s phrase.
”
”
Robert Macfarlane (Underland: A Deep Time Journey)
“
He believes that success is not a solitary journey, but a collective ascent. Hence, he lifts the fallen and whispers courage to the broken. He is an influential figure whose delight is in seeing others soar in their purpose on earth.
”
”
Gift Gugu Mona (A Man of Valour: Idioms and Epigrams)
“
In the early sixteenth century, Ferdinand Magellan’s circumnavigation of the globe was a three-year odyssey filled with violence, starvation, and death. Magellan’s voyage was the first successfully to steer a course around the globe. In the process, he smashed the endurance record on the high seas, established the dimensions of the planet, and—taking place as the enterprise did in the context of European colonialism—opened the way for social and economic exchange on an international scale. Most of Magellan’s sailors recognized they were risking catastrophe. Though it was no longer widely believed that the Earth was flat, its roundness had not been proved as fact, and many in his crew may have feared sailing off the edge of the world. Both he and his crew were aware they would pay heavily for any mistaken assumptions. And indeed they did err, and they did pay: They had underestimated the length of their journey, the quantities of food needed to sustain them, the dangers of mass poisonings, and the risk of damaged or otherwise inoperative ships. Of the original fleet of five vessels carrying approximately 270 crewmembers, only one solitary ship bearing eighteen ghostly survivors returned to port in Spain. Not among them was their captain, who had perished along the way after being hit in the leg by a poisoned arrow.
”
”
Henry A. Kissinger (Genesis: Artificial Intelligence, Hope, and the Human Spirit)
“
In the early sixteenth century, Ferdinand Magellan’s circumnavigation of the globe was a three-year odyssey filled with violence, starvation, and death. Magellan’s voyage was the first successfully to steer a course around the globe. In the process, he smashed the endurance record on the high seas, established the dimensions of the planet, and—taking place as the enterprise did in the context of European colonialism—opened the way for social and economic exchange on an international scale. Most of Magellan’s sailors recognized they were risking catastrophe. Though it was no longer widely believed that the Earth was flat, its roundness had not been proved as fact, and many in his crew may have feared sailing off the edge of the world. Both he and his crew were aware they would pay heavily for any mistaken assumptions. And indeed they did err, and they did pay: They had underestimated the length of their journey, the quantities of food needed to sustain them, the dangers of mass poisonings, and the risk of damaged or otherwise inoperative ships. Of the original fleet of five vessels carrying approximately 270 crewmembers, only one solitary ship bearing eighteen ghostly survivors returned to port in Spain.
”
”
Henry A. Kissinger (Genesis: Artificial Intelligence, Hope, and the Human Spirit)
“
Writing is a solitary existence. Even in isolation, the writer brings to life a fictional world reimagined by their own journey where love often looses luster. To right wrongs in a perfectly controlled environment is a writer's birthright. To compose harmonious language onto a page that somehow bewitches the reader to feel all those emotions as though it passed through them first and not the former is no accident. Nor supernatural. It's the writer's courage to delve deep enough to excavate the heart of the abyss.
”
”
J.S. Nathaniel
“
Discover the Best Bus Trips to New York City with New York Iconic Cruises
Searching for an easy way to experience the wonders of New York City? For those who like convenience and adventure, bus tours to New York City are the best option. With our custom excursions, famous sights, and stunning skyline views, New York Iconic Cruises makes your trip one to remember.
Our cruise packages work well with your bus trip, providing a smooth entry into the heart of New York City, whether you're organising a solitary getaway or a group vacation. Imagine taking in the expansive views of Manhattan as you glide by the Statue of Liberty and making lifelong memories.
So why wait? Make reservations for your bus tour to New York City right now, and let New York Iconic Cruises be the high point of your journey. Start organising your ideal vacation by looking through our packages
”
”
newyorkiconiccruises
“
Discover the Best Bus Trips to New York City with New York Iconic Cruises
Searching for an easy way to experience the wonders of New York City? For those who like convenience and adventure, bus tours to New York City are the best option. With our custom excursions, famous sights, and stunning skyline views, New York Iconic Cruises makes your trip one to remember.
Our cruise packages work well with your bus trip, providing a smooth entry into the heart of New York City, whether you're organising a solitary getaway or a group vacation. Imagine taking in the expansive views of Manhattan as you glide by the Statue of Liberty and making lifelong memories.
So why wait? Make reservations for your bus tour to New York City right now, and let New York Iconic Cruises be the high point of your journey. Start organising your ideal vacation by looking through our packages
”
”
newyorkiconiccruises.