
“Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.”
Variant: He who delights in solitude is either a wild beast or a God.
Of Friendship
Essays (1625)
“Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.”
Variant: He who delights in solitude is either a wild beast or a God.
“Whosoever is delighted in solitude, is either a wild beast or a god.”
Lonesome Traveler (1960)
Context: 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. Learning for instance, to eat when he's hungry and sleep when he's sleepy.
The Weight of Glory (1949)
“Thus they are destitute of that very lovely and exquisitely natural friendship, which is an object of desire in itself and for itself, nor can they learn from themselves how valuable and powerful such a friendship is. For each man loves himself, not that he may get from himself some reward for his own affection, but because each one is of himself dear to himself. And unless this same feeling be transferred to friendship, a true friend will never be found; for a true friend is one who is, as it were, a second self.”
Ita pulcherrima illa et maxime naturali carent amicitia per se et propter se expetita nec ipsi sibi exemplo sunt, haec vis amicitiae et qualis et quanta sit. Ipse enim se quisque diligit, non ut aliquam a se ipse mercedem exigat caritatis suae, sed quod per se sibi quisque carus est. Quod nisi idem in amicitiam transferetur, verus amicus numquam reperietur; est enim is qui est tamquam alter idem.
Section 80; translation by J. F. Stout
Laelius De Amicitia – Laelius On Friendship (44 BC)
“Friendship needs no words — it is solitude delivered from the anguish of loneliness.”
Variant translation: Friendship needs no words — it is a loneliness relieved of the anguish of loneliness.
Markings (1964)
Martin Luther as quoted in Tappert, Theodore G. (1959). The Book of Concord: the Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, p. 595
“Somewhere in the depths of solitude, beyond wilderness and freedom, lay the trap of madness.”
Source: The Monkey Wrench Gang (1975)
Spiritual Canticle of The Soul and The Bridegroom