Quotes about solitude

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“Solitude is a way to defend the spirit against the murderous din of our materialism.”

“I have not a desire but a need for solitude.”

“Our language has wisely sensed these two sides of man’s being alone. It has created the word “loneliness” to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word “solitude” to express the glory of being alone.”

“We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstacies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude.”

“Loneliness is black coffee and late-night television; solitude is herb tea and soft music. Solitude, quality solitude, is an assertion of self-worth, because only in the stillness can we hear the truth of our own unique voices.”

“Loneliness becomes a lover, solitude a darling sin.”

“Beauty beheld in solitude is even more lethal.”

“More than mother and son, they were accomplices in solitude.”

“Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.”

“Women need solitude in order to find again the true essence of themselves.”

“Solitude never hurt anyone. Emily Dickinson lived alone, and she wrote some of the most beautiful poetry the world has ever known… then went crazy as a loon."

Lisa Simpson”

“I felt myself in a solitude so frightful that I contemplated suicide. What held me back was the idea that no one, absolutely no one, would be moved by my death, that I would be even more alone in death than in life.”

“Give me solitude — give me Nature — give me again, O Nature, your primal sanities!”

“A confession : solitude no longer hurt me.”

“I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.”

“This was not my moment to be seeking romance and (as day follows night) to further complicate my already knotty life. This was my moment to look for the kind of healing and peace that can only come from solitude.”

“In solitude, we lose our loneliness.”

“but he only found her in the image that saturated his private and terrible solitude.”

“To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars.”

“One must learn an inner solitude, wherever one may be.”

“I have an immense appetite for solitude, like an infant for sleep, and if I don't get enough for this year, I shall cry all the next.”

“He needed his solitude at times, but he wasn't a hermit. He did a lot of socializing. Sometimes I think it was like he was storing up company for the times when he knew nobody would be around.”

“Throwing herself into learning helped Miri ignore the painful chill of solitude around her.”

“In solitude, at last, we’re able to let God define us the way we are always supposed to be defined—by relationship: the I-thou relationship, in relation to a Presence that demands nothing of us but presence itself. Not performance but presence”

“Sovereignty, loyalty, and solitude.”

“Lost in the solitude of his immense power, he began to lose direction.”

“her spirits wanted the solitude and silence which only numbers could give.”

“We need sometimes to escape into open solitudes, into aimlessness, into the moral holiday of running some pure hazard in order to sharpen the edge of life, to taste hardship, and to be compelled to work desperately for a moment at no matter what.”

“I love the solitude of reading. I love the deep dive into someone else's story, the delicious ache of a last page.”

“Great men are like eagles, and build their nest on some lofty solitude”

“I need solitude for my writing; not 'like a hermit' - that wouldn't be enough - but like a dead man.”

“Not that she objected to solitude. Quite the contrary. She had books, thank Heaven, quantities of books. All sorts of books.”

“I long for solitude and yet I cannot stand it.”

“Her body moved with the frankness that comes from solitary habits. But solitude is only a human presumption. Every quiet step is thunder to beetle life underfoot; every choice is a world made new for the chosen. All secrets are witnessed.”

“The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation.”

“…. solitude is, more or less, an inevitable consequence.”

“Somewhere in the depths of solitude, beyond wilderness and freedom, lay the trap of madness.”

“This was my moment to look for the kind of healing and peace that can only come from solitude.”

“Immersed in solitude, he would dream or read far into the night. By protracted contemplation of the same thoughts, his mind grew sharp, his vague, undeveloped ideas took on form.”

“We need solitude, because when we're alone, we're free from obligations, we don't need to put on a show, and we can hear our own thoughts.”

“Let me tell you this: if you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it's not because they enjoy solitude. It's because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them.”

“The solitude of writing is a solitude without which writing could not be produced, or would crumble, drained bloodless by the search for something else to write.”

“Was it really some other person I was so anxious to discover… or was it only my own solitude that I could not abide?”

“i am a trickster who doesn't know solitude”

“Both looked back then on the wild revelry… and they lamented that it had cost them so much of their lives to find the paradise of shared solitude.”

“Solitude: a sweet absence of looks.”

“As the pain that can be told is but half a pain, so the pity that questions has little healing in its touch. What Lily craved was the darkness made by enfolding arms, the silence which is not solitude, but compassion holding its breath.”

“because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth”

“I, too, seem to be a connoisseur of rain, but it does not fill me with joy; it allows me to steep myself in a solitude I nurse like a vice I've refused to vanquish.”

“Funny how we think of romance as always involving two, when the romance of solitude can be ever so much more delicious and intense. Alone, the world offers itself freely to us. To be unmasked, it has no choice.”

“Like dry ground welcoming the rain, he let the solitude, silence, and loneliness soak in.”

“There is the solitude of suffering, when you go through darkness that is lonely, intense, and terrible. Words become powerless to express your pain; what others hear from your words is so distant and different from what you are actually suffering.”

“Language has created the word “loneliness” to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word “solitude” to express the glory of being alone.”

“I don’t know about birds
nor do I know the history of fire.
But I believe that my solitude should have wings”

“I felt emotions of gentleness and pleasure, that had long appeared dead, revive within me. Half surprised by the novelty of these sensations, I allowed myself to be borne away by them, and forgetting my solitude and deformity, dared to be happy.”

“If truth is what you seek, then the examined life will only take you on a long ride to the limits of solitude and leave you by the side of the road with your truth and nothing else.”

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

“Uncontradicting solitude
Supports me on its giant palm;
And like a sea-anemone
Or simple snail, there cautiously
Unfolds, emerges, what I am.”

“The solitude of writing is also quite frightening. It's quite close to madness, one just disappears for a day and loses touch.”

“I crawled back into myself all alone, just delighted to observe that I was even more miserable than before, because I had brought a new kind of distress and something that resembled true feeling into my solitude.”

“The secret of a good old age is simply an honorable pact with solitude.”

“And suddenly solitude fell across his heart like a dusty reflection. He closed his eyes. The dark doors within him opened and he entered. The next performance in the theater of Grenouille's soul was beginning.”

“The cure for loneliness is solitude.”

“A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds. His auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician.”

“After all this kind of fanfare, and even more, I came to a point where I needed solitude and to just stop the machine of 'thinking' and 'enjoying' what they call 'living,' I just wanted to lie in the grass and look at the clouds…”

“Even the solitude, I've actually grown to quite like… I do like the feeling of getting into my little car, knowing for the next couple of hours I'll have only the roads, the big gray sky and my daydreams for company.”

“Every woman I had ever met who walked through the world appraised and classified by an extraordinary physicality had also received the keys to an unbearable solitude. It was the coefficient of their beauty, the price they had to pay.”

“Added to the moral solitude of the murderer comes the solitude of the artist, which can acknowledge no authority, save that of another artist.”

“The moon in all her immaculate purity hung in the sky, laughing at this world of dust. She congratulated me for my carefully considered maneuvers and invited me to share in her eternal solitude.”

“That is why I write - to try to turn sadness into longing, solitude into remembrance.”

“Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself.”

“What we [writers] do might be done in solitude and with great desperation, but it tends to produce exactly the opposite. It tends to produce community and in many people hope and joy.”

“Fiction is a solution, the best solution, to the problem of existential solitude.”

“No man should go through life without once experiencing healthy, even bored solitude in the wilderness, finding himself depending solely on himself and thereby learning his true and hidden strength.”

“Then stirs the feeling infinite, so felt
In solitude, where we arealone.”

“I can be by myself because I'm never lonely; I'm simply alone, living in my heavily populated solitude, a harum-scarum of infinity and eternity, and Infinity and Eternity seem to take a liking to the likes of me.”

“I walk without flinching through the burning cathedral of the summer. My bank of wild grass is majestic and full of music. It is a fire that solitude presses against my lips.”

“Funny how we think of romance as always involving two, when the romance of solitude can be ever so much more delicious and intense.”

“What Lily craved was the darkness made by enfolding arms, the silence which is not solitude, but compassion holding its breath.”

“Wildness had never been a part of her life. Home, work, home, work. That's all her life had consisted of, really. She'd told Maddox that she'd been glad for her solitude, bu the truth was, there were times she'd been starved for touch. Any touch.”

“… loneliness is not a function of solitude.”

“Solitude will be welcomed or endured or avoided, according as a man's personal value is large or small.”

“It is really a matter of ending this silence and solitude, of breathing and stretching one's arms again.”

“He could have had his choice of any woman in the district. And he chose solitude. Not solitude – that sounds too peaceful. More like solitary confinement.”

“As regards intellectual work it remains a fact, indeed, that great decisions in the realm of thought and momentous discoveries and solutions of problems are only possible to an individual, working in solitude.”

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

“Jamie enjoyed solitude, but loneliness was a constant ache.”

“She frowned at him. 'You are in love with solitude.'
'Is there a better cure for the world than solitude?”

“they simply never understand,
do they,
that sometimes solitude
is
one of the most beautiful
things
on earth?”

“Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you.”

“Tyrants conduct monologues above a million solitudes. —ALBERT CAMUS, THE REBEL”

“Solitude is indeed dangerous for a working intelligence. We need to have around us people who think and speak. When we are alone for a long time we people the void with phantoms”

“Letter writing is the only device combining solitude with good company.”

“Books are solitudes in which we meet.”

“He really had been through death, but he had returned because he could not bear the solitude.”

“Then, bidding farewell to The Knick-Knack, I went to collect the few personal belongings which, at that time, I held to be invaluable: my cat, my resolve to travel, and my solitude.”

“Education…is a companion which no misfortunes can depress, no clime destroy, no enemy alienate, no despotism enslave: at home a friend, abroad an introduction, in solitude a solace, in society an ornament: it chastens vice, it guides virtue, it gives at once a grace and government to genius. Without it, what is man? A splendid slave, a reasoning savage.”

“He took his way to the abode of sacred Loyalty, seeking to discover her hidden purpose. It chanced that the goddess, who loves solitude, was then in a distant region of heaven, pondering in her heart the high concerns of the gods. Then he who gave peace to Nemea accosted her thus with reverence: "Goddess more ancient than Jupiter, glory of gods and men, without whom neither sea nor land finds peace, sister of Justice…"”
Ad limina sanctae contendit Fidei secretaque pectora temptat. arcanis dea laeta polo tum forte remoto caelicolum magnas uoluebat conscia curas. quam tali adloquitur Nemeae pacator honore: 'Ante Iouem generata, decus diuumque hominumque, qua sine non tellus pacem, non aequora norunt, iustitiae consors...'

“Tombed in the solid night of starless space;
From nearest living orb so far removed,
That light, of all material things most swift,
Myriads on myriads of earth's years must speed,
Ere the mere outskirts of that Stygian gloom,
If ever, it might reach,-at rest eterne,
Lies the cold wreck of an extinguished sun.
Prime glory once of all heaven's radiant host;
Body, for soul of purest light most fit-
'Tween its first darkening, and eclipse complete,
Streamed years which might eternity appear;
While into ether, like the particles,
Invisible, which are the breath of flowers,
The mighty bulk its softer elements
Still ever was exhaling. As when flesh
And sinew of earth's monster Mastodon,
By the slow wasting of the elements,
All are dissolved, and hard, enduring bones
Alone remain,- even so, of this immense,-
When, by the ocean waves of centuries,
Millions succeeding millions, worn away,-
The adamantine skeleton alone,
In darkness, silence, utter solitude,
A ruin for eternity, was left.”