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There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more. Lord Byron, Child Harold’s Pilgrimage
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. ibid.
This is to be alone; this, this is solitude! ibid. II:26
In solitude, when we are least alone. ibid. III:90
Among them, but not of them. ibid. III:113
’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. ibid. IV:33
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
Man is alone in being a social solitary. Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man 13/13: The Long Childhood, BBC 1973
Every select man strives instinctively for a citadel and a privacy, where he is FREE from the crowd, the many, the majority – where he may forget ‘men who are the rule’, as their exception; – exclusive only of the case in which he is pushed straight to such men by a still stronger instinct, as a discerner in the great and exceptional sense. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
The Great Man ... is colder, harder, less hesitating, and without fear of ‘opinion’; he lacks the virtues that accompany respect and ‘responsibility’, and altogether that is the ‘virtue of the herd’. If he cannot lead, he goes alone ... He knows he is incommunicable: he finds it tasteless to be familiar ... When not speaking to himself, he wears a mask. There is a solitude within him that is inaccessible to praise or blame. Friedrich Nietzsche
The importance of solitude is to help you to differentiate your own thoughts from those you have studied, read, heard, or unintentionally absorbed. Tonya Sheridan
It is closing time in the gardens of the West and from now on an artist will be judged only by the resonance of his solitude or the quality of his despair. Cyril Connolly, Horizon December 1949 – January 1950
There is no greater solitude than the Samurai’s. Le Samourai 1967 starring Alain Delon & Francois Perier & Nathalie Delon & Cathy Rosier & Jacques Leroy & Michael Boisrond & Robert Favart & Jean-Pierre Posier & Catherine Joudan et al, director Jean-Pierre Melville, opening caption
I require solitude. Star Trek: The Next Generation s3e23: Sarek, ambassador to wife
The world is a prison in which solitary confinement is preferable. Karl Kraus
No, I live in that solitude which is painful in youth but delicious in the years of maturity. Albert Einstein
The very fine line between loneliness and solitude, reflection; being alone always appealed to me when I was a kid. Brad Mehldau
If you are idle, be not solitary; if you are solitary, be not idle. Samuel Johnson, James Boswell’s The Life of Samuel Johnson
There is a fellowship more quiet even than solitude, and which, rightly understood, is solitude made perfect. Robert Louis Stevenson
I love all waste
And solitary places. Percy Bysshe Shelley, Julian and Maddalo
For I am best
When least in company. William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night I iv 36-37, Orsino
I hold this to be the highest task for a bond between two people: that each protects the solitude of the other. Rainer Maria Rilke, letter 1902
And I was taught to feel, perhaps too much,
The self-sufficing power of Solitude. William Wordsworth, The Prelude 1850
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude. William Wordsworth, I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
How sweet is harmless solitude!
What can its joys control?
Tumults and noise may not intrude,
To interrupt the soul. Mary Mollineux, Solitude, 1670
Do not allow yourself to be imprisoned by any affection. Keep your solitude. The day, if it ever comes, when you are given true affection there will be no opposition between interior solitude and friendship, quite the reverse. It is even by this infallible sign that you will recognize it. Simone Weil
Solitude is fine but you need someone to tell that solitude is fine. Honoré de Balzac
Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous – to poetry. But also, it gives birth to the opposite: to the perverse, the illicit, the absurd. Thomas Mann, Death in Venice and Other Tales
I was a man who thrived on solitude; without it I was like another man without food or water. Each day without solitude weakened me. I took no pride in my solitude; but I was dependent on it. The darkness of the room was like sunlight to me. Charles Bukowski, Factotum
Whosoever is delighted in solitude, is either a wild beast or a god. Aristotle
In solitude
What happiness? who can enjoy alone,
Or all enjoying, what contentment find? John Milton, Paradise Lost 8:364
Solitude sometimes is best society. ibid. 9:249
I need solitude for my writing; not ‘like a hermit’ – that wouldn’t be enough – but like a dead man. Franz Kafka