“Already, he was dreaming of a refined solitude, a comfortable desert, a motionless ark in which to seek refuge from the unending deluge of human stupidity.”

Ibid., p. 101
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Os meus sonhos são um refúgio estúpido, como um guarda-chuva contra um raio.

The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise (2017)

The Labyrinth of Solitude (1950)
Variant: Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone.
Context: Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone, and the only one who seeks out another. His nature – if that word can be used in reference to man, who has 'invented' himself by saying 'no' to nature – consists in his longing to realize himself in another. Man is nostalgia and a search for communion. Therefore, when he is aware of himself he is aware of his lack of another, that is, of his solitude.

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

The Unsaved: The Mirror of Solitude (p. 150-1)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

Stanzas to Augusta (1816), reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Le Théâtre du peuple (1903)
Context: Theatre supposes lives that are poor and agitated, a people searching in dreams for a refuge from thought. If we were happier and freer we should not feel hungry for theatre.... A people that is happy and free has need of festivities more than of theatres; it will always see in itself the finest spectacle.

Source: Meditations (c. AD 121–180), Book VIII, 48

The Revenge, Act IV, sc. i.