Motivational Quotes

Solitude

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

- Dahlberg, Edward

Best Quotes about Solitude

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

Carlyle, Thomas

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 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

Life without a friend is death without a witness.

Proverb, Spanish

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

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

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

Renard, Jules

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

A man by himself is in bad company.

Hoffer, Eric

10.

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

Lowell, James Russell

11.

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

12.

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

Camus, Albert

13.

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

Marvell, Andrew

14.

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

15.

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

Miller, Henry

16.

Solitude is impractical and yet society is fatal.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

17.

Well has he lived who has lived well in obscurity.

Ovid

18.

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

19.

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

Dahlberg, Edward

20.

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

Brandeis, Louis D.

21.

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

22.

Go away, I'm all right!

Wells, H.G.

23.

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

Connolly, Cyril

24.

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

Hoagland, Edward

25.

Solitude begets whimsies.

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley

26.

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

Dunaway, Faye

27.

Solitude cherishes great virtues and destroys little ones.

Smith, Sydney

28.

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

Boufflers

29.

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

30.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

31.

Solitude is un-American.

Jong, Erica

32.

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

Einstein, Albert

33.

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

Einstein, Albert

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

Home, Henry

37.

We never touch but at points.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

38.

A solitude is the audience-chamber of God.

Landor, Walter Savage

39.

I have never found a companion so companionable as solitude.

Thoreau, Henry David

40.

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

Browne, Jackson

41.

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

42.

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

43.

One can acquire everything in solitude except character.

Stendhal, Henri B.

44.

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

45.

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

46.

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.

47.

In solitude, where we are least alone.

Byron, Lord

48.

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

49.

This great misfortune -- to be incapable of solitude.

Bruyere, Jean De La

50.

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

Sterne, Laurence