Motivational Quotes

Solitude

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

- Brandeis, Louis D.

Best Quotes about Solitude

Solitude is impractical and yet society is fatal.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

Hoagland, Edward

Well has he lived who has lived well in obscurity.

Ovid

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

Solitude begets whimsies.

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley

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

We never touch but at points.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

Mathews, William

I'm still the little southern girl from the wrong side of the tracks who really didn't feel like she belonged.

Dunaway, Faye

10.

Solitude is un-American.

Jong, Erica

11.

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

Home, Henry

12.

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

13.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

14.

The higher we rise, the more isolated we become; all elevations are cold.

Boufflers

15.

This great misfortune -- to be incapable of solitude.

Bruyere, Jean De La

16.

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

17.

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

Herbert, George

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

Browne, Jackson

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.

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

Renard, Jules

24.

The good and the wise lead quiet lives.

Euripides

25.

Solitude: a sweet absence of looks.

Kundera, Milan

26.

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

27.

Solitude cherishes great virtues and destroys little ones.

Smith, Sydney

28.

I have never found a companion so companionable as solitude.

Thoreau, Henry David

29.

An artist is always alone -- if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness.

Miller, Henry

30.

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

Huxley, Aldous

31.

Go away, I'm all right!

Wells, H.G.

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

Dahlberg, Edward

38.

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

Lowell, James Russell

39.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

Connolly, Cyril

45.

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

Chekhov, Anton

46.

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

47.

I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.