SOLITUDE

Related Subjects: Desolation, Hermit, Isolation, Meditation, Retirement, Retreat

1. There is a solitude in seeing you,
   Followed by your company when you are gone.—WITTER BYNNER, Lightning
   

2. Part of me remained forever at Latitude 80° 08' South: what survived of my youth, my vanity, perhaps, and certainly my skepticism. On the other hand I did take away something that I had not fully possessed before: appreciation of the sheer beauty and miracle of being alive, and a humble set of values. All this happened four years ago. Civilization has not altered my ideas. I live more simply now, and with more peace.—ADMIRAL BYRD, Alone
   

3. In solitude, where we are least alone.—BYRON, Childe Harold
   

4. Alone, alone, all, all alone;
   Alone on a wide, wide sea.—COLERIDGE, The Ancient Mariner
   

5. So lonely 'twas, that God himself
   Scarce seemed there to be.—COLERIDGE, The Ancient Mariner
   

6. Oh for a lodge in some vast wilderness,
   Some boundless contiguity of shade,
   Where rumour of oppression and deceit,
   Of unsuccessful or successful war,
   Might never reach me more.—COWPER, The Task
   

7. Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend.—EMERSON, Conduct of Life
   

8. When you have shut your doors, and darkened your room, remember never to say that you are alone, for you are not alone; but God is within, and your genius is within,—and what need have they of light to see what you are doing?—EPICTETUS, Discourses
   

9. I was never less alone than when by myself.—GIBBON, Decline & Fall
   

10. The great source of terror to infancy is solitude.—WILLIAM JAMES, Psychology
    

11. Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character.—LOWELL
    

12. The nurse of full-grown souls is solitude.—LOWELL, Columbus
    

13. For solitude sometimes is best society,
    And short retirement urges sweet return.—MILTON, Paradise Lost
    

14. Nature has presented us with a large faculty of entertaining ourselves alone; and often calls us to it, to teach us that we owe ourselves partly to society, but chiefly and mostly to ourselves.—MONTAIGNE, Essays
    

15. The bonds that unite another person to ourself exist only in our mind. Memory as it grows fainter relaxes them, and notwithstanding the illusion by which we would fain be cheated and with which, out of love, friendship, politeness, deference, duty, we cheat other people, we exist alone. Man is the creature that cannot emerge from himself, that knows his fellows only in himself; when he asserts the contrary, he is lying.—MARCEL PROUST, The Sweet Cheat Gone
    

16. Better be alone than in bad company.—Proverb
    

17. A solitary man is either a brute or an angel.—Proverb
    

18. I might have been a goldfish in a glass bowl for. all the privacy I got.—SAKI, Reginald
    

19. To be alone is the fate of all great minds—a fate deplored at times, but still always chosen as the less grievous of two evils.—SCHOPENHAUER
    

20. My dismal scene I needs must act alone.—SHAKESPEARE, Romeo and Juliet
    

21. I love tranquil solitude
    And such society
    As is quiet, wise, and good.—SHELLEY, Rarely, Rarely, Comest Thou
    

22. One can acquire everything in solitude—except character.—STENDHAL
    

23. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companiable as solitude.—THOREAU
    

24. When from our better selves we have too long
    Been parted by the hurrying world, and droop,
    Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired,
    How gracious, how benign, is Solitude.—WORDSWORTH, The Prelude