Motivational Quotes

Solitude

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

- Miller, Henry

Best Quotes about Solitude

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

Renard, Jules

A man by himself is in bad company.

Hoffer, Eric

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

Huxley, Aldous

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

Hoagland, Edward

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

Miller, Henry

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

Home, Henry

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

Connolly, Cyril

In solitude, where we are least alone.

Byron, Lord

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

Marvell, Andrew

10.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

Dahlberg, Edward

17.

I have never found a companion so companionable as solitude.

Thoreau, Henry David

18.

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

Camus, Albert

19.

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

20.

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

Einstein, Albert

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.

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

Browne, Jackson

23.

The good and the wise lead quiet lives.

Euripides

24.

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

25.

Life without a friend is death without a witness.

Proverb, Spanish

26.

Solitude is un-American.

Jong, Erica

27.

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

28.

A solitude is the audience-chamber of God.

Landor, Walter Savage

29.

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

Einstein, Albert

30.

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

Chekhov, Anton

31.

This great misfortune -- to be incapable of solitude.

Bruyere, Jean De La

32.

Well has he lived who has lived well in obscurity.

Ovid

33.

The best thinking has been done in solitude.

Edison, Thomas A.

34.

Solitude is impractical and yet society is fatal.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

35.

Solitude begets whimsies.

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley

36.

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

Boufflers

37.

We never touch but at points.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

38.

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

39.

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

Lowell, James Russell

40.

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

Sterne, Laurence

41.

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

42.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

43.

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

Dunaway, Faye

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.

Solitude cherishes great virtues and destroys little ones.

Smith, Sydney

46.

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

47.

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

Mathews, William

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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