Motivational Quotes

Solitude

The best thinking has been done in solitude.

- Edison, Thomas A.

Best Quotes about Solitude

Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous- to poetry. But also, it gives birth to the opposite: to the perverse, the illicit, the absurd.

Mann, Thomas

Solitude is as needed to the imagination as society is wholesome to the character.

Lowell, James Russell

We are a most solitary people, and we live, repelled by one another, in the gray, outcast cities of Cain.

Dahlberg, Edward

The best thinking has been done in solitude.

Edison, Thomas A.

History shows that the majority of people that have done anything great have passed their youth in seclusion.

Carlyle, Thomas

The whole business of your life overwhelms you when you live alone. One's stupefied by it. To get rid of it you try to daub some of it off on to people who come to see you, and they hate that. To be alone trains one for death.

Celine, Louis-Ferdinand

Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful.

Camus, Albert

There is convincing evidence that the search for solitude is not a luxury but a biological need. Just as humans posses a herding instinct that keeps us close to others most of the time, we also have a conflicting drive to seek out solitude. If the distance between ourselves and others becomes too great, we experience isolation and alienation, yet if the proximity to others becomes too close, we feel smothered and trapped.

Kottler, Jeffrey

In solitude we are in the presence of mere matter (even the sky, the stars, the moon, trees in blossom), things of less value (perhaps) than a human spirit. Its value lies in the greater possibility of attention.

Weil, Simone

10.

Violent passions are formed in solitude. In the busy world no object has time to make a deep impression.

Home, Henry

11.

Solitude: a sweet absence of looks.

Kundera, Milan

12.

Alone, even doing nothing, you do not waste your time. You do, almost always, in company. No encounter with yourself can be altogether sterile: Something necessarily emerges, even if only the hope of some day meeting yourself again.

Cioran, E. M.

13.

A writer who writes, I am alone... can be considered rather comical. It is comical for a man to recognize his solitude by addressing a reader and by using methods that prevent the individual from being alone. The word alone is just as general as the word bread. To pronounce it is to summon to oneself the presence of everything the word excludes.

Blanchot, Maurice

14.

If you are afraid of loneliness, don't marry.

Chekhov, Anton

15.

The worst vice of the solitary is the worship of his food.

Connolly, Cyril

16.

If you are afraid of being lonely, don't try to be right.

Renard, Jules

17.

Solitude is the despair of fools, the torment of the wicked, and the joy of the good.

18.

May God be gracious to each lonely one who walks in silence towards the setting sun.

19.

Shakespeare, Leonardo Da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin, and Lincoln never saw a movie, heard a radio, or looked at a TV They had loneliness and knew what to do with it. They were not afraid of being lonely because they knew that was when the creative mood in them would mark.

Sa, Carl

20.

It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinions; it is easy in solitude to live after your own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

21.

What call thou solitude? Is not the earth with various living creatures, and the air replenished, and all these at thy command to come and play before thee?

Milton, John

22.

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 and leave it alone.

Quincey, Thomas De

23.

I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone, I never found the companionable as solitude.

Thoreau, Henry David

24.

Solitude is painful when one is young, but delightful when one is more mature.

Einstein, Albert

25.

In solitude the mind gains strength and learns to lean upon itself.

Sterne, Laurence

26.

We are all prone to the malady of the introvert who, with the manifold spectacle of the world spread out before him, turns away and gazes only upon the emptiness within. But let us not imagine there is anything grand about the introvert's unhappiness.

Russell, Bertrand

27.

If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.

Thoreau, Henry David

28.

Solitude cherishes great virtues and destroys little ones.

Smith, Sydney

29.

Two Paradises t'were in one, to live in Paradise alone.

Marvell, Andrew

30.

By all means use sometimes to be alone. Salute thyself: see what thy soul doth wear. Dare to look in thy chest; for 'Tis thine own: And tumble up and down what thou findst there. Who cannot rest till he good fellows find, he breaks up house, turns out of doors his mind.

Herbert, George

31.

We never touch but at points.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

32.

One can acquire everything in solitude except character.

Stendhal, Henri B.

33.

Solitude begets whimsies.

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley

34.

You have already failed if you need a lot of inspectors.

35.

Solitude is dangerous to reason, without being favorable to virtue. Remember that the solitary mortal is certainly luxurious, probably superstitious, and possibly mad.

Johnson, Samuel

36.

In solitude, be a multitude to thyself. Tibullus by all means use sometimes to be alone.

Herbert, George

37.

The good and the wise lead quiet lives.

Euripides

38.

This great misfortune -- to be incapable of solitude.

Bruyere, Jean De La

39.

With some people solitariness is an escape not from others but from themselves. For they see in the eyes of others only a reflection of themselves.

Hoffer, Eric

40.

A solitude is the audience-chamber of God.

Landor, Walter Savage

41.

In the tumult of men and events, solitude was my temptation; now it is my friend. What other satisfaction can be sought once you have confronted History?

Gaulle, Charles De

42.

One hour of thoughtful solitude may nerve the heart for days of conflict -- girding up its armor to meet the most insidious foe.

Percival, Lord

43.

I have never found a companion so companionable as solitude.

Thoreau, Henry David

44.

Solitude is impractical and yet society is fatal.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

45.

When from our better selves we have too long been parted by the hurrying world, and droop. Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired, how gracious, how benign in solitude.

Wordsworth, William

46.

True solitude is a din of birdsong, seething leaves, whirling colors, or a clamor of tracks in the snow.

Hoagland, Edward

47.

Oh to have a lodge in some vast wilderness. Where rumors of oppression and deceit, of unsuccessful and successful wars may never reach me anymore.

Cowper, William

48.

To have a quiet mind is to possess one's mind wholly; to have a calm spirit is to possess one's self.

Mabie, Hamilton

49.

A man by himself is in bad company.