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 very sad,
Too much company twice as bad.
WILLIAM ALLINGHAM
"Blackberries"
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
'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
Solitude is separate experience.
ALICE MEYNELL
"Solitude", The Spirit of Place and Other Essays
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
Solitude, though favorable to the development of genius, is not favorable to the growth of character.
GEORGE STILLMAN HILLARD
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
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"
In solitude, if we escape the example of bad men, we likewise want the conversation and counsel of the good.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
attributed, Day's Collacon
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"
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
Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
attributed, Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing
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
Solitude is independence. It had been my wish and with the years I had attained it. It was cold. Oh, cold enough! But it was also still, wonderfully still and vast like the cold stillness of space in which the stars revolve.
HERMANN HESSE
Steppenwolf
We're afraid of solitude because we're afraid of the feelings that will rise before we can be at ease, afraid to confront who we are when stripped of our "doing" nature. We feel a need to be surrounded by people, by activity; to entrain with another's rhythm -- anything but solitude ... Solitude takes practice. It requires facing down loneliness and realizing that there is nothing more important you can do. Far from being an indulgence, quiet contemplation -- "doing nothing" -- is as restorative as an elixir.
STEPHAN RECHTSCHAFFEN
Timeshifting: Creating More Time to Enjoy Your Life
And Wisdom's self
Oft seeks to sweet retired solitude,
Where, with her best nurse, Contemplation,
She plumes her feathers, and lets grow her wings,
That in the various bustle of resort
Were all too ruffled, and sometimes impaired.
JOHN MILTON
Comus
If you are lonely when you are alone, you are in bad company.
JEAN-PAUL SARTRE
Essays in Aesthetics
In solitude there grows what anyone brings into it, the inner beast too. Therefore solitude is inadvisable to many.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Thus Spoke Zarathustra