Motivational Quotes

Solitude

The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.

- Huxley, Aldous

Best Quotes about Solitude

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

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

Chekhov, Anton

Solitude cherishes great virtues and destroys little ones.

Smith, Sydney

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

Herbert, George

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

Marvell, Andrew

Solitude is un-American.

Jong, Erica

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

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

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

10.

Life without a friend is death without a witness.

Proverb, Spanish

11.

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

Home, Henry

12.

This great misfortune -- to be incapable of solitude.

Bruyere, Jean De La

13.

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

Einstein, Albert

14.

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

15.

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

Renard, Jules

16.

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

Connolly, Cyril

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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.

21.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

22.

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

23.

One can acquire everything in solitude except character.

Stendhal, Henri B.

24.

I have never found a companion so companionable as solitude.

Thoreau, Henry David

25.

Solitude begets whimsies.

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley

26.

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

27.

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

28.

The right to be alone -- the most comprehensive of rights, and the right most valued by civilized man.

Brandeis, Louis D.

29.

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

30.

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

Hoagland, Edward

31.

The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.

Huxley, Aldous

32.

Well has he lived who has lived well in obscurity.

Ovid

33.

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

34.

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

35.

Solitude can be used well by very few people. They who do must have a knowledge of the world to see the foolishness of it, and enough virtue to despise all the vanity.

Cowley, Abraham

36.

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

37.

The best thinking has been done in solitude.

Edison, Thomas A.

38.

A solitude is the audience-chamber of God.

Landor, Walter Savage

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.

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

Lowell, James Russell

41.

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

Sterne, Laurence

42.

In the world a man lives in his own age; in solitude in all ages.

Mathews, William

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

Camus, Albert

46.

No matter how close to yours another's steps have grown, in the end there is one dance you'll do alone.

Browne, Jackson

47.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

48.

Solitude is impractical and yet society is fatal.