Solitude is not the same as loneliness. Solitude is a solitary boat floating in a sea of possible companions.
Interpretation
Solitude is a state of being alone but not lonely; it can be a fulfilling experience.
This quote by Robert Fulghum emphasizes the distinction between solitude and loneliness. Solitude is portrayed as a peaceful, intentional state where one can find clarity and self-reflection, akin to a boat floating amidst possibilities of connection, while loneliness is often viewed as a state of isolation and yearning for companionship. Fulghum suggests that solitude can be enriching and is not necessarily associated with the negative connotations of being alone.
In practice
This quote can be used during a mindfulness workshop to highlight the importance of solitude.
If dandelions were rare and fragile, people would knock themselves out to pay $14.95 a plant, raise them by hand in greenhouses, and form dandelion societies and all that. But, they are everywhere and don't need us and kind of do what they please. So we call them weeds and murder them at every opportunity
Weβre all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness β and call it love β true love.
Peace is not something you wish for, it's something you make
Doing a straight-forward, clear-cut task that has a beginning and an end balances out the complexity-without-end that often vexes the rest of my life. Sacred simplicity.
The grass is not, in fact, always greener on the other side of the fence. No, not at all. Fences have nothing to do with it. The grass is greenest where it is watered. When crossing over fences, carry water with you and tend the grass wherever you may be.
As one old gentleman put it, " Son, I don't care if you're stark nekkid and wear a bone in your nose. If you kin fiddle, you're all right with me. It's the music we make that counts.
All political revolutions, not affected by foreign conquest, originate in moral revolutions. The subversion of established institutions is merely one consequence of the previous subversion of established opinions.
That moment - to this ... may be years in the way they measure, but it's only one sentence back in my mind - there are so many days when living stops and pulls up and sits and waits like a train on the rails. I pass the hotel at 8 and at 5; there are cats in the alleys and bottles and bums, and I look up at the window and think, I no longer know where you are, and I walk on and wonder where the living goes when it stops.
Legislators invent too many devices for subdividing property, only taking care to let their subdivisions go hand in hand with the natural affections of the human mind.
There is no repose for the mind except in the absolute; for feeling, except in the infinite; for the soul, except in the divine.
Beauty without wit offers nothing but the enjoyment of its material charms, whilst witty ugliness captivates by the charms of the mind, and at last fulfils all the desires of the man it has captivated.
We divorced ourselves from the materials of the earth, the rock, the wood, the iron ore; we looked to new materials which were cooked in vats, long complex derivatives of urine which we called plastic. They had no odor of the living, ... their touch was alien to nature. ... [They proliferated] like the matastases of cancer cells.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.