Solitude

In the solitude to which every man is always returning, he has a sanity and revelations, which in his passage into new worlds he will carry with him. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Quotes regarding solitude.

In spite of language, in spite of intelligence and intuition and sympathy, one can never really communicate anything to anybody. The essential substance of every thought and feeling remains incommunicable, locked up in the impenetrable strong-room of the individual soul and body. Our life is a sentence of perpetual solitary confinement. ~ Aldous Huxley
Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone. ~ Octavio Paz
We are rarely proud when we are alone. ~ Voltaire

Sourced

  • Alone, adj. In bad company.
  • But 'midst the crowd, the hum, the shock of men,
    To hear, to see, to feel, and to possess,
    And roam along, the world's tired denizen,
    With none who bless us, none whom we can bless.
  • '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.
  • Alone, alone, all, all alone,
    Alone on a wide, wide sea.
  • So lonely 'twas that God himself
    Scarce seemed there to be.
  • Who knows what true loneliness is — not the conventional word, but the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion.
  • 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.
  • For solitude sometimes is best society,
    And short retirement urges sweet return.
  • When, musing on companions gone,
    We doubly feel ourselves alone.
  • Solitude is the mother of anxieties.
  • We are rarely proud when we are alone.
    • Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary (1764).
  • O sacred solitude! divine retreat!
    Choice of the prudent! envy of the great,
    By thy pure stream, or in thy waving shade,
    We court fair wisdom, that celestial maid.
  • O! lost to virtue, lost to manly thought,
    Lost to the noble sallies of the soul!
    Who think it solitude to be alone.
    • Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1742-1745), Night III, line 6.
  • This sacred shade and solitude, what is it?
    'Tis the felt presence of the Deity,
    Few are the faults we flatter when alone.
    • Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1742-1745), Night V, line 172.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 729-31.
  • Converse with men makes sharp the glittering wit,
    But God to man doth speak in solitude.
  • I am as one who is left alone at a banquet, the lights dead and the flowers faded.
  • Alone!—that worn-out word,
    So idly spoken, and so coldly heard;
    Yet all that poets sing, and grief hath known,
    Of hope laid waste, knells in that word—ALONE!
  • Nunquam se minus otiosum esse quam cum otiosus; nec minus solum quam cum solus esset.
    • That he was never less at leisure than when at leisure; nor that he was ever less alone than when alone.
    • Cicero, De Officiis (44 B.C.), Book III, Chapter I. Also in Rep. I. 17. 27. A saying of Scipio Africanus, as quoted by Cato. Also attributed to St. Bernard of Clairvaux.
  • I praise the Frenchman; his remark was shrewd,—
    "How sweet, how passing sweet is solitude."
    But grant me still a friend in my retreat,
    Whom I may whisper—Solitude is sweet.
    • William Cowper, Retirement, line 739. The quotation is attributed to La Bruyère and to Jean Guez de Balzac.
  • Oh, for a lodge in some vast wilderness,
    Some boundless contiguity of shade,
    Where rumour of oppression and deceit,
    Of unsuccessful or successful war,
    Might never reach me more!
  • O solitude, where are the charms
    That sages have seen in thy face?
    Better dwell in the midst of alarms,
    Than reign in this horrible place.
  • Solitude is the nurse of enthusiasm, and enthusiasm is the true parent of genius. In all ages solitude has been called for—has been flown to.
    • Isaac D'Israeli, The Literary Character, Illustrated by the History of Men of Genius (1795-1822), Chapter X.
  • There is a society in the deepest solitude.
    • Isaac D'Israeli, The Literary Character, Illustrated by the History of Men of Genius (1795-1822), Chapter X.
  • So vain is the belief
    That the sequestered path has fewest flowers.
    • Thomas Doubleday, Sonnet, The Poet's Solitude.
  • Thrice happy he, who by some shady grove,
    Far from the clamorous world; doth live his own;
    Though solitary, who is not alone,
    But doth converse with that eternal love.
  • We enter the world alone, we leave it alone.
  • I was never less alone than when by myself.
  • Wer sich der Einsamkeit ergiebt,
    Ach! der ist bald allein.
  • Nobody with me at sea but myself.
  • Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife.
    • Thomas Gray, Elegy in a Country Churchyard, Stanza 19.
  • O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell,
    Let it not be among the jumbled heap
    Of murky buildings: climb with me the steep,—
    Nature's observatory—whence the dell,
    In flowery slopes, its river's crystal swell,
    May seem a span; let me thy vigils keep
    'Mongst boughs pavilion'd, where the deer's swift leap
    Startles the wild bee from the foxglove bell.
    • John Keats, Sonnet, O Solitude! If I Must With Thee Dwell.
  • Why should we faint and fear to live alone,
    Since all alone, so Heaven has willed, we die,
    Nor even the tenderest heart and next our own
    Knows half the reasons why we smile and sigh.
    • John Keble, Christian Year, Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Trinity.
  • Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character.
  • I feel like one who treads alone
    Some banquet hall deserted,
    Whose lights are fled, whose garlands dead,
    And all but he departed.
  • Now the New Year reviving old Desires,
    The thoughtful Soul to Solitude retires.
    • Omar Khayyam, Rubaiyat, FitzGerald's translation, Stanza 4.
  • Far in a wild, unknown to public view,
    From youth to age a reverend hermit grew;
    The moss his bed, the cave his humble cell,
    His food the fruits, his drink the crystal well,
    Remote from man, with God he pass'd the days;
    Prayer all his business, all his pleasure praise.
  • Whosoever is delighted in solitude, is either a wild beast or a god.
  • Shall I, like an hermit, dwell
    On a rock or in a cell?
  • Then never less alone than when alone.
  • Atque ubi omnia nobis mala solitudo persuadet.
    • And when Solitude leads us into all manner of evil.
    • Seneca, Epistle 25. Quoting Galgacus, leader of the Britains.
  • I love tranquil solitude
    And such society
    As is quiet, wise, and good.
  • A wise man is never less alone than when he is alone.
  • Alone each heart must cover up its dead;
    Alone, through bitter toil, achieve its rest.

'Tis not for golden eloquence I pray,
A godlike tongue to move a stony heart—
Methinks it were full well to be apart
In solitary uplands far away,
Betwixt the blossoms of a rosy spray,
Dreaming upon the wonderful sweet face
Of Nature, in a wild and pathless place.

    • Frederick Tennyson, Sonnet, From A Treasury Of English Sonnets. Edited by David M. Main.
  • I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.
  • I could live in the woods with thee in sight,
    Where never should human foot intrude:
    Or with thee find light in the darkest night,
    And a social crowd in solitude.
  • Impulses of deeper birth
    Have come to him in solitude.
  • They flash upon that inward eye
    Which is the bliss of solitude.
  • Often have I sighed to measure
    By myself a lonely pleasure,—
    Sighed to think I read a book,
    Only read, perhaps, by me.
↑Jump back a section

Unsourced

  • The earth is a beehive; we all enter by the same door but live in different cells.
  • I'm not lonely, I'm just alone.
    • Angel from Angel tv series.
  • He who delights in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.
  • Solitude is not a voice, just an echo.
  • Little do men perceive what solitude is, and how far it extendeth. For a crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love.
  • Solitude, though it may be silent as light, is like light, the mightiest of agencies; for solitude is essential. All come into this world alone; all leave it alone.
  • It is simpler to be self-dependent. The height, the deity of man is, to be self-sustained, to need no gift, no foreign force. Society is good when it does not violate me; but best when it is likest to solitude.
  • This is that which we call Character, — a reserved force which acts directly by presence, and without means. It is conceived of as a certain undemonstrable force, a Familiar or Genius, by whose impulses the man is guided, but whose counsels he cannot impart; which is company for him, so that such men are often solitary, or if they chance to be social, do not need society, but can entertain themselves very well alone.
  • We dress our garden, eat our dinners, discuss the household with our wives, and these things make no impression, are forgotten next week; but in the solitude to which every man is always returning, he has a sanity and revelations, which in his passage into new worlds he will carry with him. Never mind the ridicule, never mind the defeat: up again, old heart! — it seems to say, — there is victory yet for all justice; and the true romance which the world exists to realize, will be the transformation of genius into practical power.
  • When you close your doors, and make darkness within, remember never to say that you are alone, for you are not alone; nay, God is within, and your genius is within. And what need have they of light to see what you are doing?
  • For in spite of language, in spite of intelligence and intuition and sympathy, one can never really communicate anything to anybody. The essential substance of every thought and feeling remains incommunicable, locked up in the impenetrable strong-room of the individual soul and body. Our life is a sentence of perpetual solitary confinement.
  • Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone.
  • Solitude, the feeling and knowledge that one is alone, alienated from the world and oneself-is not an exclusively Mexican characteristic. All men, at some moment in their lives feel themselves to be alone. And they are. To live is to be seperated from what we were in order to approach what we are going to be in the future. Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition.
  • Seek to be alone much to commune with Nature and be thus inspired by her mighty whisperings within your consciousness. Nature is a most jealous god, for she will not whisper her inspiring revelations to you unless you are absolutely alone with her.
  • Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is the richness of self.
  • When everything has left you, you are alone; when you have left everything behind, there is solitude.
  • The chief sign that a man has any nobility in his character is the little joy he takes in other people's company.
  • In solitude the mind gains strength and learns to lean upon itself.
  • All humans are frightened of their own solitude. But only in solitude can we learn to know ourselves, learn to handle our own eternal aloneness.
  • Solitude is for me a fount of healing which makes my life worth living.
  • I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.
  • Follow my ways and I will lead you To golden-haired suns, Logos and music, blameless joys, Innocent of questions And beyond answers. For I, Solitude, am thine own Self: I, Nothingness, am thy All. I, Silence, am thy Amen.
  • Our language has wisely sensed the two sides of being alone. It has created the word loneliness to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word solitude to express the glory of being alone.
  • Thus let me live, unseen, unknown; Thus unlamented let me dye; Steal from the world, and not a stone Tell where I lye.
↑Jump back a section

External links

Wikipedia
Wikipedia has an article about:
Wiktionary-logo-en.svg
Look up solitude in Wiktionary, the free dictionary
↑Jump back a section

Read in another language

This page is available in 1 language

Last modified on 18 September 2012, at 15:34