Quotes About Solitude that Resonate
Welcome to our curated collection of quotes about solitude. We hope you enjoy pondering them, and if you do, please tell others about them.
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.

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.
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.
Half the pleasure of solitude comes from having with us some friend to whom we can say how sweet solitude is.
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.
Men fear silence as they fear solitude, because both give them a glimpse of the terror of life's nothingness.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Introverts like being introverts. We are drawn to ideas, we are passionate observers, and for us, solitude is rich and generative.
Solitude is the place of purification.
Longer Version/[Notes]:
Solitude is the place of purification and transformation, the place of the great struggle and the great encounter.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Be able to be alone. Lose not the advantage of solitude.
Longer Version/[Notes]:
Be able to be alone. Lose not the advantage of solitude, and the society of thyself.
Solitude gives birth to the original in us.
Longer Version/[Notes]:
Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous -- to poetry. But also, it gives birth to the opposite: to the perverse, the illicit, the absurd.
Solitude produces originality, bold and astonishing beauty, poetry. But solitude also produces perverseness, the disproportianate, the absurd and the forbidden.
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 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.
But the delights of solitude don't only consist of dreaming. Next in enjoyment, I think, comes planning.
Alone let him constantly meditate in solitude on that which is salutary for his soul, for he who meditates in solitude attains supreme bliss.
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.
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.
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.
Although the wish for solitude can be a denial of dependence, a capacity for solitude may be its fullest acknowledgment.
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.
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.

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!
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.
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 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.
A man can be himself only so long as he is alone.
Longer Version/[Notes]:
A man can be himself only so long as he is alone; and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.

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.
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.
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.
The mind is sharper and keener in seclusion and uninterrupted solitude.
Longer Version/[Notes]:
The mind is sharper and keener in seclusion and uninterrupted solitude. Originality thrives in seclusion free of outside influences beating upon us to cripple the creative mind. Be alone that is the secret of invention: be alone, that is when ideas are born.
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.

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.
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.
Introverts live in two worlds: We visit the world of people, but solitude and the inner world will always be our home.
I never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude.
Longer Version/[Notes]:
I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers.
We need society, and we need solitude also, as we need summer and winter, day and night, exercise and rest.
Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone.
Longer Version/[Notes]:
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.
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.
