“When you are by yourself, you soon get tired of your craziness. It is too exhausting. It does not fit in with the eminent sanity of trees, birds, water, sky. You have to shut up and go about the business of living. The silence of the woods forces you to make a decision which the tensions and artificialities of society may help you evade forever. Do you want to be yourself or don’t you?…Are you going to stand on your own feet before God and the world and take full responsibility for your own life?”
- Thomas Merton, from Contemplation in a World of Action