quotations about solitude
Solitude holds a cup sparkling with bliss in her right hand, a raging dagger in her left; to the blest she offers her goblet, but stretches toward the wretch the ruthless steel!
FRIEDRICH GOTTLIEB KLOPSTOCK
Der Messias
Solitude is separate experience.
ALICE MEYNELL
"Solitude", The Spirit of Place and Other Essays
Sail away, I sail away, I sail nowhere, nowhere, nowhere
Hear her laugh through the air
Down from the past into my lair
I want you in solitude
THREE FISH
"Solitude"
I love solitude, but I prize it most when plenty of company is available.
SAUL BELLOW
letter to Albert Glotzer, April 19, 1996
Solitude is very sad,
Too much company twice as bad.
WILLIAM ALLINGHAM
"Blackberries"
Let me tell you this: if you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it's not because they enjoy solitude. It's because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them.
JODI PICOULT
My Sister's Keeper
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.
COLETTE
Earthly Paradise: An Autobiography
Solitude, though favorable to the development of genius, is not favorable to the growth of character.
GEORGE STILLMAN HILLARD
attributed, Day's Collacon
'Tis solitude should teach us how to die;
It hath no flatterers; vanity can give
No hollow aid; alone--man with his God must strive.
LORD BYRON
Childe Harold
Dawn breaks, I am alone
I'm awake, eyes unopened
Half in the dark, half in the room
Half in the light sealed by your womb
Sail soon my eyes out in the dark
Oceans of sighs, adrift in her bark
Islands lay scattered, island won't talk
Life hardly matters here in the dark
I want you in solitude
I need you in solitude
THREE FISH
"Solitude"
There's a river flowing away from my door
Think I'll sail away
Oh, and one day baby
I will feel no pain
Think it's raining in my soul
Flowing from my eyes
Think this morning will see us
Say our last goodbyes
I'm leaving Lady Solitude behind me
You understand
RICHARD HAWLEY
"Lady Solitude"
In solitude there grows what anyone brings into it, the inner beast too. Therefore solitude is inadvisable to many.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
What would a man do, if he were compelled to live always in the sultry heat of society, and could never bathe himself in cool solitude?
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
The American Notebooks, 1836
A man can be himself only so long as he is alone; and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
Essays and Aphorisms
Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
attributed, Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing
Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows. The really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge College is as solitary as a dervish in the desert.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Walden: Or, Life in the Woods
The human animal needs a freedom seldom mentioned, freedom from intrusion. He needs a little privacy quite as much as he wants understanding or vitamins or exercise or praise.
PHYLLIS MCGINLEY
The Province of the Heart
If you are lonely when you are alone, you are in bad company.
JEAN-PAUL SARTRE
Essays in Aesthetics
Driftin' Dreamin'
In an Azure mood,
Stardust gleamin'
Thru my solitude:
Here in my seclusion,
You're a blue illusion
While I'm in this Azure interlude.
ELLA FITZGERALD
"Azure"
How much better is silence; the coffee cup, the table. How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake. Let me sit here for ever with bare things, this coffee cup, this knife, this fork, things in themselves, myself being myself.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
The Waves