Solitude Quotes

I have never found a 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. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.

Henry David Thoreau

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

Octavio Paz

Solitude is such a potential thing. We hear voices in solitude, we never hear in the hurry and turmoil of life we receive counsels and comforts, we get under no other condition...

Amelia Ba

A good conscience fears no witness, but a guilty conscience is solicitous even in solitude. If we do nothing but what is honest, let all the world know it. But if otherwise, what does it signify to have nobody else know it, so long as I know it myself? Miserable is he who slights that witness.

Seneca

I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.

Albert Einstein

In the desert a fountain is springing, In the wide waste there still is a tree, And a bird in the solitude singing, Which speaks to my spirit of thee.

Lord Byron, Stanzas to Augusta

Solitude is the playfield of Satan.

Vladimir Nabokov

One can acquire everything in solitude except character.

Stendhal

Love from one being to another can only be that two solitudes come nearer, recognize and protect and comfort each other.

Han Suyin

One of the greatest necessities in America is to discover creative solitude.

Carl Sandburg

I love tranquil solitude And such society As is quiet, wise, and good.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

The great omission in American life is solitude... that zone of time and space, free from the outside pressures, which is the incinerator of the spirit.

Marya Mannes

To be exempt from the passions with which others are tormented, is the only pleasing solitude.

Joseph Addison