Quotes About Solitude

In wilderness is the preservation of the world.

When I would recreate myself, I seek the darkest wood, the thickest and the most interminable, and to the citizen, most dismal swamp. I enter the swamp as a sacred place--a sanctum sanctorum; there is the strength, the marrow of Nature.

People lead lives of quiet desperation.

A man may stand there [Cape Cod] and put all America behind him.

Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in reverie.

But the place which you have selected for your camp, though never so rough and grim, begins at once to have its attractions, and becomes a very centre of civilization to you: "Home is home, be it never so homely."

I, who cannot stay in my chamber for a single day without acquiring some rust, and when sometimes I have stolen forth for a walk at the eleventh hour of four o'clock in the afternoon, too late to redeem the day, when the shades of night were already beginning to be mingled with the daylight, have felt as if I had committed some sin to be atoned for.

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. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.

In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to society.

Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one.

In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness.

I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.

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

El talento se desarrolla en la soledad; el carácter, en el río de la vida".

Goethe: "El talento se desarrolla en la soledad; el carácter, en el río de la vida".

FROM AN EARLY date Johnson's intellectual interests were fostered in the family bookshop. It was there that he learned the geography of both company and solitude—in the society of his father's customers, and in the privacy of his reading. In 1706 Michael bought the library of the late William Stanley, ninth Earl of Derby, which comprised almost 3,000 volumes.

The essence of this man -- Richard M. Nixon is loneliness.

When information is contextualized, it becomes knowledge. When knowledge compels convictions, it becomes wisdom. Yet the internet inundates users with the opinions of thousands, even millions, of other users, depriving them of the solitude required for sustained reflection that, historically, has led to the development of convictions.

I made up my mind that I would hold on to nothing, that I would expect nothing, that henceforth I would live as an animal, a beast of prey, a rover, a plunderer.

I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself, with only the music of my heart for company.

You can never know where I am or what I am, But I am good company to you nonetheless, And really do regret I broke your inkwell." (From Meow of Myself, from LEAVES OF CATNIP )

The year wears away—the last year it is too—and I find myself near graduation, with every prospect of success. And from the beginning to the close my life has been one not of trouble, persecution, or punishment, but one of isolation only.

I need to do things on my own, need to be left alone.

Yes, I guess you could say I am a loner but I feel more lonely in a crowed room with boring people than I feel on my own