Quotes About Solitude

My shoulders hunch even harder. I'm allergic to family occasions. Sometimes I think we'd do better as Dandelion seeds - no family, no history, just floating off into the world, each on our own piece of fluff.

Goodbye to the sun that shines for me no longer;

Comply, and fear not, for my load of woe Is incommunicable to all but me.

Thou wouldst make a good monarch of a desert

What a splendid king you'd make of a desert island-- you and you alone.

I'd wall up my loathsome body like a prison, blind to the sound of life, not just the sight.

My sorrow is my castle.

I have only one friend, and that is echo. Why is it my friend? Because I love my sorrow, and echo does not take it away from me. I have only one confidant, and that is the silence of night. Why is it my confidant? Because it remains silent.

The present state of the world and the whole of life is diseased. If I were a doctor and were asked for my advice, I should reply, 'Create silence'.

I have walked myself into my best thoughts and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it.

When you are one of several, then you have lost your freedom; you cannot send for your traveling boots whenever you wish, you cannot move aimlessly about in the world. ~ Either/Or

The genius differs from us men in being able to endure isolation, his rank as a genius is proportionate to his strength for enduring isolation, whereas we men are constantly in need of the others, the herd; we die, or despair, if we are not reassured by being in the herd, of the same opinion as the herd.

You should therefore say: alone in one's boat, alone with one's care, alone with one's despair, which one is craven enough to want rather to keep than submit to the pain of being healed.

Where I will find peace other than in oblivion?

Let's learn to live, for we must die alone.

I live a reasonably simple life, off the beaten track.

I am not only retired from all public employments, but I am retiring within myself, and shall be able to view the solitary walk and tread the paths of private life with heartfelt satisfaction.

Aloneness, like life, becomes more interesting when you realize it's a present.

two people can sleep in the same bed and still be alone when they close their eyes

It is a lonely life sometimes, like throwing a stone into the deep darkness. It might hit something, but you can't see it. The only thing you can do is to guess, and to believe.

You are by yourself for the best years of your life. You sleep in airports. If it doesn't kill you it makes you strong.

Sometimes you have to leave the world in order to learn how to live in it. Thoreau shunned society, went to the woods, and came back with a new understanding of life.

Thus was my first year's life in the woods completed; and the second year was similar to it. I finally left Walden September 6th,1847.

One of the odd enjoyments in life is to be alone in a room full of people. To have them there as unknowing human filler in your wide shot.