“the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Source: Self-Reliance

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Ralph Waldo Emerson 727

American philosopher, essayist, and poet 1803–1882

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“It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Self-Reliance
Source: The Complete Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and light. He who works for sweetness and light, works to make reason and the will of God prevail.”

Matthew Arnold book Culture and Anarchy

Source: Culture and Anarchy (1869), Ch. I, Sweetness and Light
Context: The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and light. He who works for sweetness and light, works to make reason and the will of God prevail. He who works for machinery, he who works for hatred, works only for confusion. Culture looks beyond machinery, culture hates hatred; culture has one great passion, the passion for sweetness and light.

“In solitude the trumpets of solitude
Are not of another solitude resounding;
A little string speaks for a crowd of voices.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), It Must Change

“There is no companion like solitude. One who knows how to tune himself to the inner silence, even in the midst of the din and roar of the marketplace, enjoys a most recreative solitude.”

Chinmayananda Saraswati (1916–1993) Indian spiritual teacher

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“He who can listen to the music in the midst of noise can achieve great things.”

Vikram Sarabhai (1919–1971) (1919-1971), Indian physicist

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Source: Vikram Ambalal Sarabhai, 14 December 2013, New Mexico Museum of Space History http://www.nmspacemuseum.org/halloffame/detail.php?id=120,

“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

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“And this that you call solitude is in fact a big crowd.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

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“Solitude: a sweet absence of looks.”

Milan Kundera (1929–2023) Czech author of Czech and French literature

“It's the man who dares to take, who is independent, not he who gives.”

D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter

Letter to John Middleton Murry, 27 November 1913 http://books.google.com/books?id=NyudR_ePn8sC&q=%22It%27s+the+man+who+dares+to+take+who+is+independent+not+he+who+gives%22&pg=PA112#v=onepage

“I praise the Frenchman [Voltaire], his remark was shrewd —
How sweet, how passing sweet, is solitude!
But grant me still a friend in my retreat
Whom I may whisper — solitude is sweet.”

William Cowper Retirement

Source: Retirement (1782), Line 739.

“the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”

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