Quotes About Solitude

He wanted to be where no one would know who he was. He wanted to escape from himself.

Society, as we have constituted it, will have no place for me, has none to offer; but Nature, whose sweet rains fall on unjust and just alike, will have clefts in the rocks where I may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence I may weep undisturbed. She will hang the night with stars so that I may walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling, and send the wind over my footprints so that none may track me to my hurt: she will cleanse me in great waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole.

With age comes wisdom, but sometimes age comes alone.

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.

When I like people immensely I never tell their names to anyone. It is like surrendering a part of them. I have grown to love secrecy. It seems to be the one thing that can make modern life mysterious or marvelous to us. The commonest thing is delightful if one only hides it. When I leave town now I never tell my people where I am going. If I did, I would lose all my pleasure. It is a silly habit, I daresay, but somehow it seems to bring a great deal of romance into one's life.

Other people are quite dreadful. The only possible society is oneself.

A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.

But she is happiest alone. She is happiest alone.

A beautiful woman risking everything for a mad passion. A few wild weeks of happiness cut short by a hideous, treacherous crime. Months of voiceless agony, and then a child born in pain. The mother snatched away by death, the boy left to solitude and the tyranny of an old and loveless man. Yes, it was an interesting background. It posed the lad, made him more perfect as it were. Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.

If after I am free a friend of mine gave a feast, and did not invite me to it, I should not mind a bit. I can be perfectly happy by myself. With freedom, flowers, books, and the moon, who could not be perfectly happy?

Genius is lonely.

she wanted to find a place within the sounds where nobody could find her.

Sooner or later they all turn their backs. They all leave. That's gospel. I've been there. I've seen it. They all do.

In his book Pensées, a collection of fragments of theology and philosophy, the seventeenth-century French philosopher Pascal suggested that all of humanity's problems stem from our inability to sit, alone, in one room.

A volte sono depresso e non apro bocca per giorni. In quei casi, non deve pensare che sia di cattivo umore. Basta lasciarmi stare e presto mi passa.

Todo mal tienes dos remedios; el tiempo y el silencio.

Say you're in the middle of nowhere, nobody for miles and no hope of rescue. You sit down and start playing solitaire and somebody will immediately come along and tell you to play the red eight on the black nine.

Vivimos como soñamos, solos.

In the circle of light on the state in the midst of darkness, you have the sensation of being entirely alone... This is called solitude in public... During a performance, before an audience of thousands, you can always enclose yourself in this circle, like a snail in its shell... You can carry it wherever you go.

At one time in the world there were woods that no one owned

On this road there are no godspoke men. They are gone and I am left and they have taken with them the world.

He lay listening to the water drip in the woods. Bedrock, this. The cold and the silence. The ashes of the late world carried on the bleak and temporal winds to and fro in the void. Carried forth and scattered and carried forth again. Everything uncoupled from its shoring. Unsupported in the ashen air. Sustained by a breath, trembling and brief. If only my heart were stone.

When we're all gone at last then there'll be nobody here but death and his days will be numbered too. He'll be out in the road there with nothing to do and nobody to do it to. He'll say: where did everybody go? And that's how it will be. What's wrong with that?

He rose and turned toward the lights of town. The tidepools bright as smelterpots among the dark rocks where the phosphorescent seacrabs clambered back. Passing through the salt grass he looked back. The horse had not moved. A ship's light winked in the swells. The colt stood against the horse with its head down and the horse was watching, out there past men's knowing, where the stars are drowning and whales ferry their vast souls through the black and seamless sea.