Can you be alone without being lonely? Can you spend time by yourself without craving noise or company of other people? Have you discovered the glory of quiet time spent alone, time spent listening to...

People say they are alone. But to whom do they say that? (Les gens disent qu’ils sont seuls. – Mais à qui le disent-ils?)

I choose solitude over cold kisses. If it isn’t love, it is poison.

Fame is an island, and right before the castaway, the getaway of being known without being known.

Aloneness is a gift. A beautiful gift to the human soul. True and consistent satisfaction comes from the bond you form with yourself. Nobody else is a constant

I can be alone without being lonely. In fact, those times of solitude are necessary respite for a beleaguered soul, set upon by the pressures of life. I need to take whatever moments I can...

Isolation is a way to know ourselves.

Find meaning. Distinguish melancholy from sadness. Go out for a walk. It doesn’t have to be a romantic walk in the park, spring at its most spectacular moment, flowers and smells and outstanding poetical imagery...

I can’t help you, I can only guide you, and you are the one who can help yourself.

It is widely believed that interpersonal relationships of an intimate kind are the chief, if not the only, source of human happiness. Yet the lives of creative individuals often seem to run counter to this...

I prefer to be left alone with my books.

She herself is a haunted house. She does not possess herself; her ancestors sometimes come and peer out of the windows of her eyes and that is very frightening. She has the mysterious solitude of...

You will loose your sense of solitude on days when all the boaters come streaming by,

I think I’m learningthat sometimes the bravest thing is not to face the world,but to turn away from it.

He liked to read with the silence and the golden color of the whiskey as his companions. He liked food, people, talk, but reading was an inexhaustible pleasure. What the joys of music were to...

The measure of your solitude is the measure of your capacity for communion.

…since I realized that he (Picasso) lived in a self-enclosed world and that his solitude was therefore total, I wanted to explore my own solitude.

Tu n’as rien appris, sinon que la solitude n’apprend rien, que l’indifférence n’apprend rien: c’était un leurre, une illusion fascinante et piégée. Tu étais seul et voilà tout et tu voulais te protéger: qu’entre le...

Solitude is indeed dangerous for a working intelligence. We need to have around us people who think and speak. When we are alone for a long time we people the void with phantoms

I place solitude in a frame on my desk and call it, the one I love.

Es que hasta la alegría que produce la presencia del hombre a quien se ama se siente mejor a solas. Si la presencia fuera de el continua, sólo estaría presente en su constante transcurrir. Detenerla...

In the case of the solitary, his seclusion, even when it is absolute and ends only with life itself, has often as its primary cause a disordered love of the crowd, which so far overruled...

Let us not be bored

you know the way of the wind in the night—the desolate alleys my soul takes

A man with nothing to lend should refrain from borrowing.

There are times when a man should sleep entwined in the warm flesh of a woman, his flanks plummeting into the perfumed bedding while she lovingly rolls her sweet shoulders into his chest. Whereas, there...

La solitude qui enveloppe les oeuvres d’art est infinie, etil n’estrien qui permette de moins les atteindre que la critique. Seul l’amour peut les appréhender, les saisir et faire preuve de justesse à leur endroit:

Anyone can retire into a quiet place, wrote Evelyn Underhill, but it’s the shutting of the door that makes the difference. Solitude is a time for stripping away everything in order to focus on God....

Their drift away from others produced a selfish privacy and they had lost the refuge and the consolation of a clan. Baptists, Presbyterians, tribe, army, family, some encircling outside thing was needed. Pride, she thought....

i will forever be collidingwith a billion unnamedundiscovered stars, each of uson our own orbital paths.

There is a wilderness we walk aloneHowever well-companioned

I sat, a solitary man,In a crowded London shop,An open book and empty cupOn the marble table-top.While on the shop and street I gazedMy body of a sudden blazed;And twenty minutes more or lessIt seemed,...

In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion.”[The Minotaur]

Since the age of five I had been one of those people who was an indefatigable reader, more inclined to go off by myself with a book than do any of the dozens of things...

I decided that maybe we left each other alone too much. Leaving each other alone was killing us.

In solitude, struggles occur that no one else knows about. Inner battles are fought here that seldom become fodder for sermons or illustrations for books. God, who probes our deepest thoughts during protracted segments of...

Everyday brought me further away from other people, I had been placed out of the world’s sight, as if in a cupboard, and I hoped it would stay that way. I developed a yearning for...

Loneliness becomes a lover, solitude a darling sin.

A writer takes earnest measures to secure his solitude and then finds endless ways to squander it.

Healthy introspection, without undermining oneself; it is a rare gift to venture into the unexplored depths of the self, without delusions or fictions, but with an uncorrupted gaze.

I have an immense appetite for solitude, like an infant for sleep, and if I don’t get enough for this year, I shall cry all the next.

I never said, ‘I want to be alone.’ I only said ‘I want to be let alone!’ There is all the difference.

Was it really some other person I was so anxious to discover…or was it only my own solitude that I could not abide?

The rhythm of solitude, once so intimidating, began to feel comfortable. Aloneness, I was learning, does not have to equal loneliness.

In mid-wood silence, thus, how sweet to be;Where all the noises, that on peace intrude,Come from the chittering cricket, bird, and bee,Whose songs have charms to sweeten solitude.

Phoebe Marks was a person who never lost her individuality. Silent and self-contained, she seemed to hold herself within herself, and take no colour from the outer world.

I think solitude is a really positive thing. I cherish solitude immensely. In today’s society, there’s so much pressure to communicate, eat out, be friends with people. Why can’t you read a book on your...

I shivered in thosesolitudeswhen I heardthe voiceofthe saltin the desert.

When you are alone, bless the solitude; when you are with someone, bless the togetherness! Think of the seagull: It flies alone happily; it flies with another happily too! Solitude is a food; togetherness is...

There is no other company in the world I’ve found more pleasurable than my own. For no one else has ever been as accepting of me or as thoroughly entertained by my quirkiness. It is...