Solitude Quotes

Solitude has soft, silky hands, but with strong fingers it grasps the heart and makes it ache with sorrow.

Kahlil Gibran

I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.

Henry David Thoreau

The mark of solitude is silence, as speech is the mark of community. Silence and speech have the same inner correspondence and difference as do solitude and community. One does not exist without the other. Right speech comes out of silence, and right silence comes out of speech.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

History shows that the majority of people that have done anything great have passed their youth in seclusion.

Thomas Carlyle

By all means use sometimes to be alone. Salute thyself: see what thy soul doth wear. Dare to look in thy chest; for 'Tis thine own: And tumble up and down what thou findst there. Who cannot rest till he good fellows find, he breaks up house, turns out of doors his mind.

George Herbert

In solitude, be a multitude to thyself. Tibullus by all means use sometimes to be alone.

George Herbert

Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing, only a signal shown, and a distant voice in the darkness; So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another, only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I love to be alone. I never found the companion that is 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.

Henry David Thoreau

Even if loving meant leaving, or solitude, or sorrow, love was worth every penny of its price.

Paulo Coelho

When you are in company, do not forget what you have found out when you were thinking in solitude; and when you are meditating in solitude, think about what you found out by communicating with other people.

Leo Tolstoy

Violent passions are formed in solitude. In the busy world no object has time to make a deep impression.

Henry Home

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

May Sarton

A man by himself is in bad company.

Eric Hoffer

With some people solitariness is an escape not from others but from themselves. For they see in the eyes of others only a reflection of themselves.

Eric Hoffer

In the world a man lives in his own age; in solitude in all ages.

William Mathews

Two Paradises t'were in one, to live in Paradise alone.

Andrew Marvell

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

Arthur Schopenhauer

There is convincing evidence that the search for solitude is not a luxury but a biological need. Just as humans posses a herding instinct that keeps us close to others most of the time, we also have a conflicting drive to seek out solitude. If the distance between ourselves and others becomes too great, we experience isolation and alienation, yet if the proximity to others becomes too close, we feel smothered and trapped.

Jeffrey Kottler

The best thinking has been done in solitude.

Thomas Alva Edison

I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.

Henry David Thoreau