Quotes About Solitude

I wish I could go away somewhere but the only problem with that is that I'd have to go, too.

I am closer to who I want to be when I am alone lately. With people, I hear my voice and I just wonder who or what I'm doing all this for. Spreading myself out in front of people. Devaluing my ostensible worth by being so readily available to almost any random pedestrian who wanders into the crosswalk of my focus. If someone is within an earshot I shoot off at the mouth.

I was sitting by myself the other night doing the usual things one does when spending time alone with yourselves. You know, making mountains out of molehills, hiking up to the top of the mountains, having a Hostess Twinkie and then throwing myself off the mountain. Stuff like that.

Maybe no man is an island, but some sure look like one.

I wish I could go away somewhere but the only problem with that is that I'd have to go, too.

She: One of us is boring. He: Why do you say that? She: Because … well, we're just sitting here, not talking. He: What's wrong with that? She: Well, I don't know. Probably nothing—it's just that we don't need each other for it. He: For what? She: Being quiet.

We all have to feel empty sometimes.

She wished there was some place where she could go to hum it out loud. Some kind of music was too private to sing in a house cram fall of people. It was funny, too, how lonesome a person could be in a crowded house.

In his face there came to be a brooding peace that is seen most often in the faces of the very sorrowful or the very wise. But still he wandered through the streets of the town, always silent and alone.

The trouble with me is that for a long time I have just been an I person. All people belong to a We except me. Not to belong to a We makes you too lonesome.

time they began that lonely journey into

You need a village, if only for the pleasure of leaving it. A village means that you are not alone, knowing that in the people, the trees, the earth, there is something that belongs to you, waiting for you when you are not there.

You call me a misanthrope because I avoid society. You err; I love society. Yet in order not to hate people, I must avoid their company.

I must stay alone and know that I am alone to contemplate and feel nature in full; I have to surrender myself to what encircles me, I have to merge with my clouds and rocks in order to be what I am. Solitude is indispensible for my dialogue with nature.

Keep apart, keep apart, and preserve one's soul alive—that is the teaching for the day. It is ill to have been born in these times, but one can make a world within the world.

High mountains are a feeling, but the hum Of human cities torture.

If I could always read I should never feel the want of company.

The stars are forth, the moon above the tops Of the snow-shining mountains.—Beautiful! I linger yet with Nature, for the night Hath been to me a more familiar face Than that of man; and in her starry shade Of dim and solitary loveliness, I learn'd the language of another world.

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore.

Let him! He is great but in his greatness he is no happier than we in our conflict! Goodness would not make evil; and what else hath he made? but let him sit on his vast solitary throne, creating worlds to make eternity less burthensome to his immense existence.

In quiet we had learn'd to dwell- Myvery chains and I grew friends, So much a long communion tends- To make us what we are:-even I Regain'd my freedom with a sigh.

Then stirs the feeling infinite, so felt In solitude, where we are least alone.

I only go out to get me a fresh appetite for being alone.

Your own space, man, it's so important. That's why we were doomed because we didn't have any. It is like monkeys in a zoo. They die. You know, everything needs to be left alone.