Quotes About Solitude that Resonate

The time when most of you should withdraw into yourself is when you are forced to be in a crowd.

The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.

As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.

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

I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teaching my blood whispers to me.

Don't fear solitude: If you are never alone, you cannot know yourself. But don't get too attached to it -- it may become an addiction.

I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself, with only the music of my heart for company.

How much better is silence; the coffee cup, the table. How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake. Let me sit here for ever with bare things, this coffee cup, this knife, this fork, things in themselves, myself being myself.

If a man cannot understand the beauty of life, it is probably because life never understood the beauty in him.

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.

Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong.

Talent develops in quiet places, character in the full current of human life.

If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius.

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.

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?

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.

Sail away, I sail away, I sail nowhere, nowhere, nowhere
Hear her laugh through the air
Down from the past into my lair
I want you in solitude.

If you are lonely when you are alone, you are in bad company.

And Wisdom's self
Oft seeks to sweet retired solitude,
Where, with her best nurse, Contemplation,
She plumes her feathers, and lets grow her wings,
That in the various bustle of resort
Were all too ruffled, and sometimes impaired.

Solitude holds a cup sparkling with bliss in her right hand, a raging dagger in her left; to the blest she offers her goblet, but stretches toward the wretch the ruthless steel!

How sweet, how passing sweet, is solitude!

The moon in all her immaculate purity hung in the sky, laughing at this world of dust. She congratulated me for my carefully considered maneuvers and invited me to share in her eternal solitude.

What is the difference in being alone with another and being alone by one's self?

I am the Cat who walks by himself, and all places are alike to me.

But your solitude will be a support and a home for you, even in the midst of very unfamiliar circumstances, and from it you will find all your paths.

I never said, 'I want to be alone.' I only said 'I want to be let alone!' There is all the difference.

There is a wilderness we walk alone
However well-companioned.

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more.

In solitude we are in the presence of mere matter (even the sky, the stars, the moon, trees in blossom), things of less value (perhaps) than a human spirit. Its value lies in the greater possibility of attention.

To feel themselves in the presence of true greatness many find it necessary only to be alone.

Solitude is the playfield of Satan.

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone.

Solitude is impractical and yet society is fatal.

Solitude vivifies, isolation kills.

In solitude we give passionate attention to our lives, to our memories, to the details around us.

We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and private: and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship.

Ordinary men hate solitude. But the Master makes use of it, embracing his aloneness, realizing he is one with the whole universe.

The secret of a good old age is simply an honorable pact with solitude.

Solitude was my only consolation -- deep, dark, deathlike solitude.

One of the best gifts we can give ourselves is time alone with God.

You will not find a soulmate in the quiet of your room. You must go to a noisy place and look in the quiet corners.

Some of us are born to a solitary life.

In solitude I find my answers.

Solitude sometimes is best society.

Solitude is a kind of freedom.

Writing, at its best, is a lonely life.

My solitude doesn't depend on the presence or absence of people; on the contrary, I hate who steals my solitude without, in exchange, offering me true company.

Society is no comfort, to one not sociable.

Solitude is the great teacher, and to learn its lessons you must pay attention to it.

In the temple of his spirit, each man is alone.

The mind is sharper and keener in seclusion and uninterrupted solitude.

In proportion as a person simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude.

A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy can live.

Solitude is un-American.

I was a man who thrived on solitude; without it I was like another man without food or water. Each day without solitude weakened me. I took no pride in my solitude; but I was dependent on it. The darkness of the room was like sunlight to me.

I am never less alone than when alone.

Once you know how to take care of yourself, company becomes an option.

Loneliness is one thing, solitude another.

Companionship is a foreign concept to some people. They fear it as much as the majority of people fear loneliness.

If you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it's not because they enjoy solitude. It's because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them.

The happiest of all lives is a busy solitude.

Without great solitude no serious work is possible.

Introverts live in two worlds: We visit the world of people, but solitude and the inner world will always be our home.

Be alone, that is the secret of invention; be alone, that is when ideas are born.

I never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude.

We need society, and we need solitude also, as we need summer and winter, day and night, exercise and rest.

In solitude, where we are least alone.

You cannot be lonely if you like the person you're alone with.

The best thinking has been done in solitude. The worst has been done in turmoil.

Solitude shows us what should be; society shows us what we are.

Who hears music feels his solitude peopled at once.

I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone.

The thoughtful soul to solitude retires.

Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone.

Our language has wisely sensed the two sides of being alone. It has created the word loneliness to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word solitude to express the glory of being alone.

Solitude is creativity's best friend, and solitude is refreshment for our souls.

There's a difference between solitude and loneliness.

In solitude the mind gains strength and learns to lean upon itself.