212 Quotes About Solitude that Resonate

Remember that although the distinction can be difficult to draw, loneliness and solitude are different.

Solitude is a chosen separation for refining your soul. Isolation is what you crave when you neglect the first.

Solitude, if rightly used, becomes not only a privilege but a necessity. Only a superficial soul fears to fraternize with itself.

Solitude is very important in my work as a mode of inspiration, but isolation is not good in this respect. I am not writing poetry about isolation.

On being alone: I think it's a good thing to do; you get to know yourself, and I think that's the most important thing in the whole world.

Solitude is like punctuation. A paragraph without periods and commas would be exhausting to read.

Disappear. Then, come back even better.

Half the pleasure of solitude comes from having with us some friend to whom we can say how sweet solitude is.

People who take the time to be alone usually have depth, originality, and quiet reserve.

It is a joy to be hidden, and disaster not to be found.

We need solitude, because when we're alone, we're free from obligations, we don't need to put on a show, and we can hear our own thoughts.

Solitude can be used well by very few people. They who do must have a knowledge of the world to see the foolishness of it, and enough virtue to despise all the vanity.

Solitude is a necessary protest to the incursions and the false alarms of society's hysteria, a period of cure and recovery.

He who understands humanity seeks solitude.

Men fear silence as they fear solitude, because both give them a glimpse of the terror of life's nothingness.

When the superficial wearies me, it wearies me so much that I need an abyss in order to rest.

Solitude is a breeding ground for idiosyncrasy, and I relish that about it, the way it liberates whim.

Are there no solitudes out of the cave and the desert; or cannot the heart in the midst of crowds feel frightfully alone?

In the tumult of men and events, solitude was my temptation; now it is my friend. What other satisfaction can be sought once you have confronted History?

Friendship needs no words -- it is solitude delivered from the anguish of loneliness.

Only the bad man is alone.

True solitude is a din of birdsong, seething leaves, whirling colors, or a clamor of tracks in the snow.

O sacred solitude! divine retreat!
Choice of the prudent! envy of the great,
By thy pure stream, or in thy waving shade,
We court fair wisdom, that celestial maid.

I am now quite cured of seeking pleasure in society, be it country or town. A sensible man ought to find sufficient company in himself.

Work is not always required. There is such a thing as sacred idleness.

Solitude is indeed dangerous for a working intelligence. We need to have around us people who think and speak. When we are alone for a long time we people the void with phantoms.

It is known to many that we need solitude to find ourselves. Perhaps it is not so well known that we need solitude to find our fellows.

We live in a very tense society. We are pulled apart… and we all need to learn how to pull ourselves together… I think that at least part of the answer lies in solitude.

The strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone.

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

To go out with the setting sun on an empty beach is to truly embrace your solitude.

Solitude is dangerous. It's very addictive. It becomes a habit after you realise how peaceful and calm it is. It's like you don't want to deal with people anymore because they drain your energy.

The whole value of solitude depends upon oneself; it may be a sanctuary or a prison, a haven of repose or a place of punishment, a heaven or a hell, as we ourselves make it.

What call thou solitude? Is not the earth with various living creatures, and the air replenished, and all these at thy command to come and play before thee?

If you have a trust in and an expectation of your own solitude, everything that you need to know will be revealed to you.

Solitude vivifies; isolation kills.

Solitude is a good place to visit but a poor play to stay.

Solitude, isolation, are painful things and beyond human endurance.

I like silence; I'm a gregarious loner and without the solitude, I lose my gregariousness.

Solitude would be ideal if you could pick the people to avoid.

Introverts like being introverts. We are drawn to ideas, we are passionate observers, and for us, solitude is rich and generative.

You don't need to be a monk to find solitude, nor do you need to be a hermit to enjoy it.

Solitude is a lost art in these days of ultra-connectedness.

Solitude, in these days as much as ever, is an absolute necessity.

Solitude has its own very strange beauty to it.

Never be afraid to sit awhile and think.

You are born alone. You die alone. The value of the space in between is trust and love.

Solitude is the place of purification.

Solitude is where one discovers one is not alone.

Solitude begets whimsies.

People who abhor solitude may abhor company almost as much.

A great reader seldom recognizes his solitude.

Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is richness of self.

Only in solitude do we find ourselves; and in finding ourselves, we find in ourselves all our brothers in solitude.

People who smile while they are alone used to be called insane, until we invented smartphones and social media.

What would a man do, if he were compelled to live always in the sultry heat of society, and could never bathe himself in cool solitude?

You only grow when you are alone.

Loneliness expresses the pain of being alone and solitude expresses the glory of being alone.

I cannot endure the horror, the evil, which comes to self in solitude.

Woe unto him that is never alone, and cannot bear to be alone.

Solitude is the mother of anxieties.

He who lives in solitude may make his own laws.

The solution to alone-ness is not more solitude, but companionship and community.

Solitude is not the same as loneliness. Solitude is a solitary boat floating in a sea of possible companions.

There's staggering power in leaving the world and heading out into some solitude for at least an hour every day.

Make the time to be alone. Your best ideas live within solitude.

Fall
in love
with your solitude.

Retire at various times into the solitude of your own heart, even while outwardly engaged in discussions or transactions with others, and talk to God.

One can acquire everything in solitude except character.

Solitude is out of fashion. Our companies, our schools and our culture are in thrall to an idea I call the New Groupthink, which holds that creativity and achievement come from an oddly gregarious place.

I want to be able to be alone, to find it nourishing -- not just a waiting.

Solitude cherishes great virtues and destroys little ones.

We are all sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life.

Spend some time alone. There's so much you don't know about yourself.

Be able to be alone. Lose not the advantage of solitude.

Solitude gives birth to the original in us.

Solitude produces originality, bold and astonishing beauty, poetry. But solitude also produces perverseness, the disproportianate, the absurd and the forbidden.

Loneliness is to be avoided, solitude is to be sought.

Solitude isn't loneliness. Solitude is when the entire serene universe seems to surround and hold you quietly.

If you use that time where you're alone in ways that bring you joy and peace, then that solitude can have a really positive effect on your life.

Solitude appeared to me as the only fit state of man.

A solitude is the audience-chamber of God.

How different a creature is man in society and man in solitude!

Give solitude a chance. You've got nothing to lose. And your life to gain back.

Solitude is the place where we can connect with profound bonds that are deeper than the emergency bonds of fear and anger.

Alone ... The word is life endured and known. It is the stillness where our spirits walk And all but inmost faith is overthrown.

Your inner voice is the voice of divinity. To hear it, we need to be in solitude, even in crowded places.

Solitude is pleasant. Loneliness is not.

But the delights of solitude don't only consist of dreaming. Next in enjoyment, I think, comes planning.

People who grow bored in their own company seem to me in danger.

Alone let him constantly meditate in solitude on that which is salutary for his soul, for he who meditates in solitude attains supreme bliss.

Wrong solitude vinegars the soul, right solitude oils it.

Only in intimate communion with solitude may man find himself. Solitude is good company and my architecture is not for those who fear or shun it.

Solitude sharpens awareness of small pleasures otherwise lost.

How can you hear your soul if everyone is talking?

My imagination functions much better when I don't have to speak to people.

Uncontradicting solitude
Supports me on its giant palm;
And like a sea-anemone
Or simple snail, there cautiously
Unfolds, emerges, what I am.

Solitude is strength; to depend on the presence of the crowd is weakness. The man who needs a mob to nerve him is much more alone than he imagines.

Solitude does not consist in living alone; it consists in living with others, with people who take no interest in you.

No doubt solitude is wholesome, but so is abstinence after a surfeit. The true life of man is in society.

Sometimes, the most profound of awakenings come wrapped in the quietest of moments.

The things one experiences alone with oneself are very much stronger and purer.

In solitude one finds only what he carries there with him.

A man can stand a lot as long as he can stand himself. He can live without hope, without friends, without books, even without music, as long as he can listen to his own thoughts.

Cultivate solitude and quiet and a few sincere friends, rather than mob merriment, noise and thousands of nodding acquaintances.

Solitude is the strength of being alone. It's where we become our best company.

They who do not fear darkness have learned to light their own candle.

Man loves company even if it is only that of a small burning candle.

Although the wish for solitude can be a denial of dependence, a capacity for solitude may be its fullest acknowledgment.

Solitude is the soul's holiday.

We think we are unique, special and deserving of happiness, but we are terrified of being alone.

Solitude helps you reflect.

Loneliness is inner emptiness. Solitude is inner fulfillment.

Man forms himself in his own interior, and nowhere else.

If solitude deprives of the benefit of advice, it also excludes from the mischief of flattery. But the absence of others' applause is generally supplied by the flattery of one's own breast.

Then stirs the feeling infinite, so felt
In solitude, where we are least alone.

Sometimes the only kind of innovation comes when you have some solitude; when you step away.

Frightening things happen in solitude.

The beaten path is the safest, but the traffic's terrible.

The value of solitude -- one of it's values -- is, of course, that there is nothing to cushion against attacks from within.