“Solitude sometimes is best society.”

—  John Milton , book Paradise Lost

Source: Paradise Lost

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Solitude sometimes is best society." by John Milton?
John Milton photo
John Milton 190
English epic poet 1608–1674

Related quotes

Andrew Marvell photo

“Society is all but rude,
To this delicious solitude.”

Andrew Marvell (1621–1678) English metaphysical poet and politician

The Garden (1650-1652)

Emily Dickinson photo

“There is a solitude of space,
A solitude of sea,
A solitude of death, but these
Society shall be,
Compared with that profounder site,
That polar privacy,
A Soul admitted to Itself:
Finite Infinity.”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

The Single Hound, p. 265
Collected Poems (1993)

James Russell Lowell photo

“Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character.”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

Dryden
Literary Essays, vol. III (1870-1890)

Jonathan Franzen photo

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

Jonathan Franzen book The Corrections

Source: The Corrections

“Solitude shows us what should be; society shows us what we are.”

Richard Cecil (clergyman) (1748–1810) British Evangelical Anglican priest and social reformer

As quoted in Remains of Mr. Cecil (1836) edited by Josiah Pratt, p. 59.

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury photo

“Solitude shows us what should be; society shows us what we are.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Richard Cecil, as quoted in Remains of Mr. Cecil (1836) edited by Josiah Pratt, p. 59
Misattributed

Charles Bukowski photo

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

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer
Henry David Thoreau photo

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

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Source: Walden

James Otis Jr. photo

“If life, liberty, and property could be enjoyed in as great perfection in solitude as in society, there would be no need of government.”

James Otis Jr. (1725–1783) Lawyer in colonial Massachusetts

Argument Against the Writs of Assistance (1761)

Robert N. Bellah photo

“While there are practical and sometimes moral reasons for the decomposition of the family, it coincides neither with what most people in society say they desire nor, especially in the case of children, with their best interests.”

Robert N. Bellah (1927–2013) American sociologist

The Good Society, ch. 1 (1991)

Related topics