Solitude - Quotes

All humans are frightened of their own solitude. But only in solitude can we learn to know ourselves, learn to handle our own eternal aloneness. - Han Suyin

All men’s misfortunes spring from their hatred of being alone. This great misfortune – to be incapable of solitude. - Jean de La Bruyere

Be alone sometime to ponder over your life. All distinguished thinkers spent a little time in solitude. - Unknown

Being alone never felt right. sometimes it felt good, but it never felt right. - Charles Bukowski

By all means sometimes be alone; salute thyself; see what thy soul doth wear; dare to look in thy chest; and tumble up and down what thou findest there. - William Wordsworth

Each of us is alone in the world. It takes great courage to meet the full force of your aloneness… When you face your aloneness, something begins to happen. Gradually, the sense of bleakness changes into a sense of true belonging. This is a slow and open-ended transition but it is utterly vital in order to come into rhythm with your own individuality. - John O’Donohue

He who does not enjoy solitude will not love freedom. - Arthur Schopenhauer

He who lives in solitude may make his own laws. - Publilius Syrus

I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. - Henry David Thoreau

I lived in solitude in the country and noticed how the monotony of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind. - Albert Einstein

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. - Henry David Thoreau

I think it’s very healthy to spend time alone. You need to know how to be alone and not be defined by another person. - Oscar Wilde

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

In solitude, there is healing. Speak to your soul. Listen to your heart. Sometimes in the absence of noise we find the answers. - Dodinsky

It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinions; it is easy in solitude to live after your own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Know how to be solitary is central to the art of living. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape. - Unknown

Little do people perceive what solitude is, and how far it extend. For a crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love. - Francis Bacon

Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is the richness of self. - May Sarton

Loneliness expresses the pain of being alone and solitude expresses the glory of being alone. - Paul Tillich

Most people have never known solitude.... But there are a few of the other kind who can go back to their rooms anywhere and close the door on the whole world, and feel that they need never emerge. - Louis Aragon

One can be instructed in society, one is inspired only in solitude. - Gary Mark Gilmore

Only in solitude do we find ourselves. - Miguel de Unanimo

Only when one is connected to one’s own core is one connected to others, I am beginning to discover. And, for me, the core, the inner spring, can best be found through solitude. - Anne Morrow Lindbergh

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

Solitude has soft, silky hands, but with strong fingers it grasps the heart and makes it ache with sorrow. Solitude is the ally of sorrow as well as a companion of spiritual exaltation. - Kahlil Gibran

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

Solitude is for me a fount of healing which makes my life worth living. Talking is often a torment for me, and I need many days of silence to recover from the futility of words. - Carl Jung

Solitude is painful when one is young, but delightful when one is more mature. - Albert Einstein

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. - Paul Brunton

Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius, the stern friend, the cold, obscure shelter where moult the wings which will bear it farther than suns and stars. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Solitude, though it may be silent as light, is like light, the mightiest of agencies; for solitude is essential to man. All men come into this world alone and leave it alone. - Thomas de Quincey

Solitude, whether endured or embraced, is a necessary gateway to original thought. - Jane Hirshfield

The best thinking has been done in solitude. - Thomas A. Edison

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

The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude. - Aldous Huxley

The sorrowful spirit finds relaxation in solitude. It abhors people, as a wounded deer deserts the herd and lives in a cave until it is healed or dead. - Kahlil Gibran

The whole value of solitude depends upon one’s self; 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. - John Lubbock

The worst solitude is to be destitute of sincere friendship. - Francis Bacon

There are days when solitude is a heady wine that intoxicates you with freedom, others when it is a bitter tonic, and still others when it is a poison that makes you beat your head against the wall. - Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

There is a society in the deepest solitude. - Isaac Disraeli 

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 E. Barr

What a lovely surprise to finally discover how unlonely being alone can be. - Ellen Burstyn

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

Without great solitude no serious work is possible. - Pablo Picasso

Wrong solitude vinegars the soul, right solitude oils it. - Jane Hirshfield