Motivational Quotes

Solitude

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

Best Quotes about Solitude

Well has he lived who has lived well in obscurity.

Ovid

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

One can acquire everything in solitude except character.

Stendhal, Henri B.

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

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

Renard, Jules

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

Connolly, Cyril

The good and the wise lead quiet lives.

Euripides

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

In solitude, where we are least alone.

Byron, Lord

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

Einstein, Albert

13.

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

14.

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

15.

A solitude is the audience-chamber of God.

Landor, Walter Savage

16.

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

17.

We never touch but at points.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

18.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

19.

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

Huxley, Aldous

20.

Solitude cherishes great virtues and destroys little ones.

Smith, Sydney

21.

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

22.

The best thinking has been done in solitude.

Edison, Thomas A.

23.

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

24.

This great misfortune -- to be incapable of solitude.

Bruyere, Jean De La

25.

Solitude is un-American.

Jong, Erica

26.

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

Dahlberg, Edward

27.

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

Marvell, Andrew

28.

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

29.

Solitude begets whimsies.

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley

30.

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

Chekhov, Anton

31.

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

Sterne, Laurence

32.

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

Camus, Albert

33.

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

34.

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

Hoagland, Edward

35.

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

36.

Life without a friend is death without a witness.

Proverb, Spanish

37.

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

Dunaway, Faye

38.

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

Miller, Henry

39.

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

Mathews, William

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

43.

I have never found a companion so companionable as solitude.

Thoreau, Henry David

44.

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.

45.

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

Home, Henry

46.

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

47.

Solitude is impractical and yet society is fatal.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

48.

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

Brandeis, Louis D.

49.

Solitude: a sweet absence of looks.

Kundera, Milan

50.

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