Solitude is a state of isolation, seclusion, or lack of contact, association, or similarity with other people. Short-term solitude is often valued as a time when one may work, think or rest without being disturbed, or for the sake of desirable privacy. Loneliness is a state of sorrow associated with undesired solitude.
A
- While God created Adam, who was alone, He said, 'It is not good for man to be alone. He also created a woman, from the earth, as He had created Adam himself, and called her Lilith. Adam and Lilith immediately began to fight. She said, 'I will not lie below,' and he said, 'I will not lie beneath you, but only on top. For you are fit only to be in the bottom position, while I am to be the superior one.' Lilith responded, 'We are equal to each other inasmuch as we were both created from the earth.' But they would not listen to one another. When Lilith saw this, she pronounced the Ineffable Name and flew away into the air.
- Adam and Lilith in Alphabet of Sirach
- My feeling is that as far as creativity is concerned, isolation is required. The creative person is, in any case, continually working at it. His mind is shuffling his information at all times, even when he is not conscious of it. The presence of others can only inhibit this process, since creation is embarrassing. For every new good idea you have, there are a hundred, ten thousand foolish ones, which you naturally do not care to display.
- Isaac Asimov Isaac Asimov’s Advice for Being Creative (1959, first published October 20, 2014)
B
- R. Hanina said: One may not sleep in a house alone [in a lonely house], and whoever sleeps in a house alone is seized by Lilith.
- Babylonian Talmud on Tractate Shabbath 151b
- Whosoever is delighted in solitude, is either a wild beast or a god.
- Francis Bacon, 'Essays', XXVII “On Friendship” (1612, rewritten 1625). Bacon is paraphrasing from Aristotle, 'Politics', 1253a25-30
- He never is alone that is accompanied with noble thoughts.
- Beaumont and Fletcher, Love's Cure (1647)
- Alone, adj. In bad company.
- Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic's Dictionary (1906); republished as The Devil's Dictionary (1911).
- Le sage quelquefois évite le monde, de peur d’être ennuyé.
- Wise men sometimes avoid the world, that they may not be surfeited with it.
- Jean de La Bruyère, Les Caractères (1688), “Of Society and Conversation,” #83
- 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.
- Charles Bukowski, Factotum (1975)
- 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.- Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto II (1812), Stanza 26
- This is to be alone; this, this is solitude!
- Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto II (1812), Stanza 26
- In solitude, when we are least alone.
- Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto III (1816), Stanza 90
- Among them, but not of them.
- Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto III (1816), Stanza 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.- Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto IV (1818), Stanza 33
C
- A man is born alone and dies alone; and he experiences the good and bad consequences of his karma alone; and he goes alone to hell or the Supreme abode.
- Chanakya, in Chanakya Niti, p. 13
- Alone, alone, all, all alone,
Alone on a wide, wide sea.- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798; 1817), Part IV
- So lonely 'twas that God himself
Scarce seemed there to be.- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798; 1817), Part VII
- 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.
- Joseph Conrad, in Under Western Eyes (1911), Part I, Chapter 2
D
- The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom.
- William O. Douglas, dissenting, Public utilities Commission v. Pollak, 343 U.S. 451, 467 (1952)
E
- Although I am a typical loner in my daily life, my awareness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice has prevented me from feelings of isolation.
- Albert Einstein, in My Credo (1932)
- I gang my own gait and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties I have never lost an obstinate sense of detachment, of the need for solitude — a feeling which increases with the years.
- Albert Einstein, in Mein Weltbild (My World-view) (1931)
- I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.
- Albert Einstein, in "Self-Portrait" (1936), p. 5
- Man is, at one and the same time, a solitary being and a social being. As a solitary being, he attempts to protect his own existence and that of those who are closest to him, to satisfy his personal desires, and to develop his innate abilities. As a social being, he seeks to gain the recognition and affection of his fellow human beings, to share in their pleasures, to comfort them in their sorrows, and to improve their conditions of life. Only the existence of these varied, frequently conflicting, strivings accounts for the special character of a man, and their specific combination determines the extent to which an individual can achieve an inner equilibrium and can contribute to the well-being of society.
- Albert Einstein, Why Socialism? (1949), Monthly Review New York (May 1949)
- We never touch but at points.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals (1836)
- What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual & in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness & meanness. It is the harder because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
H
- Well, if I were the last man on Earth, really the last man on Earth, where everybody's dead but me, first I would go over to the art museum and bring back a Rembrandt or two, as Neville does; you dont notice it much in the film, but it counted for me. He can do what he wants. He doesn't have to change his clothes. He just goes into a store and picks up a new set of pants and a shirt. Whatever he wants. And there's plenty of gas, so he doesn't have to worry about gas prices. And we do that, too. I think that was part of what we were trying for, to present to an audience what it would be like to be the last man on Earth.
- If I were truly the last man on Earth, I would talk to myself. I've been out in the woods, hunting and things. There's no one else to talk to, so you talk to yourself. Why not? In Neville's case, there is no one else to talk to. That's part of the beginning of the film. When he finds that there is actually someone else alive, that changes the direction of his behavior.
L
- Lugalbanda lies idle in the mountains, in the faraway places; he has ventured into the Zabu mountains. No mother is with him to offer advice, no father is with him to talk to him. No one is with him whom he knows, whom he values, no confidant is there to talk to him. In his heart he speaks to himself.
- Lugalbanda and the Anzud Bird, Ur III Period (21st century BCE).
- Why will you go alone and keep company with no one on the journey? If our beneficent spirit does not stand by you there, if our good protective deity does not go with you there, you will never again stand with us where we stand, you will never again dwell with us where we dwell, you will never again set your feet on the ground where our feet are. You will not come back from the great mountains, where no one goes alone, whence no one returns to mankind!
- Uruk's soldiers to Lugalbanda, in Lugalbanda and the Anzud Bird, Ur III Period (21st century BCE).
- We have heard of the solitude of the wide ocean, of the sandy desert, of the pathless forest; but, for a real, thorough, and entire knowledge, far beyond Zimmerman’s, of the pleasures of solitude, commend us to a young damsel doomed to a sofa and female society, while quadrille after quadrille is formed in her sight, and the waltzes go round like stars with whose motions we have nothing to do.
- Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Romance and Reality (1831), Vol I Chapter 7
M
- A person who lives in a place where the norms of behavior are evil and the inhabitants do not follow the straight path should move to a place where the people are righteous and follow the ways of the good.
If all the places with which he is familiar and of which he hears reports follow improper paths, as in our times, ... he should remain alone in seclusion. ...
If they are wicked and sinful and do not allow him to reside there unless he mingle with them and follow their evil behavior, he should go out to caves, thickets, and deserts.
- Maimonides, Laws Concerning Character Traits, Chapter 6, Section 1
- I am alone, I am not lonely.
- Michael Mann, Heat (1995), Neil McCauly
- 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 (1637), line 375
- For solitude sometimes is best society,
And short retirement urges sweet return.- John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book IX, line 249
N
- Where there have been powerful governments, societies, religions, public opinions, in short wherever there has been tyranny, there the solitary philosopher has been hated; for philosophy offers an asylum to a man into which no tyranny can force its way, the inward cave, the labyrinth of the heart.
- Friedrich Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, trans. Hollingdale, “Schopenhauer as educator,” § 3.3, p. 139
- These people who have fled inward for their freedom also have to live outwardly, become visible, let themselves be seen; they are united with mankind through countless ties of blood, residence, education, fatherland, chance, the importunity of others; they are likewise presupposed to harbour countless opinions simply because these are the ruling opinions of the time; every gesture which is not clearly a denial counts as agreement.
- Friedrich Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, trans. Hollingdale, “Schopenhauer as educator,” § 3.3, p. 139
P
- Then there is a very small remnant, Adeimantus, I said, of worthy disciples of philosophy: perchance some noble nature, brought up under good influences, and in the absence of temptation, who is detained by exile in her service, which he refuses to quit; or some lofty soul born in a mean city, the politics of which he contemns or neglects; and perhaps there may be a few who, having a gift for philosophy, leave other arts, which they justly despise, and come to her; and peradventure there are some who are restrained by our friend Theages' bridle (for Theages, you know, had everything to divert him from philosophy; but his ill-health kept him from politics). My own case of the internal sign is indeed hardly worth mentioning, as very rarely, if ever, has such a monitor been vouchsafed to any one else. Those who belong to this small class have tasted how sweet and blessed a possession philosophy is, and have also seen and been satisfied of the madness of the multitude, and known that there is no one who ever acts honestly in the administration of States, nor any helper who will save any one who maintains the cause of the just. Such a savior would be like a man who has fallen among wild beasts—unable to join in the wickedness of his fellows, neither would he be able alone to resist all their fierce natures, and therefore he would be of no use to the State or to his friends, and would have to throw away his life before he had done any good to himself or others. And he reflects upon all this, and holds his peace, and does his own business. He is like one who retires under the shelter of a wall in the storm of dust and sleet which the driving wind hurries along; and when he sees the rest of mankind full of wickedness, he is content if only he can live his own life and be pure from evil or unrighteousness, and depart in peace and good will, with bright hopes.
- Plato, The Republic, 496d
- He who lives in solitude may make his own laws.
- Publius Syrus, The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus as translated by D. Lyman (1856), # 432
R
- A man with no friends, only live for revenge
Live his life off the henge, cut, through a thousand men
Blade swing with the force of a cyclone
Cut crystal and bone, pistol and chrome
Stand in my path, you're a dead man
I cut the whole world in half for the Number One headband
Quest of a lonely soul, on a lonely road- RZA, Afro Samurai Theme
S
- People are rendered sociable by their inability to endure solitude, that is to say, their own society. They become sick of themselves. It is this vacuity of soul which drives them to intercourse with others. ... Such people, it may be said, possess only a small fraction of humanity in themselves; and it requires a great many of them put together to make up a fair amount of it,—to attain any degree of consciousness as men. A man, in the full sense of the word,—a man par excellence—does not represent a fraction, but a whole number: he is complete in himself.
- Arthur Schopenhauer, Counsels and Maxims, T. B. Saunders, trans., § 9.
- 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. Constraint is always present in society, like a companion of whom there is no riddance; and in proportion to the greatness of a man’s individuality, it will be hard for him to bear the sacrifices which all intercourse with others demands.
- Arthur Schopenhauer, Counsels and Maxims, T. B. Saunders, trans., § 9
- When you find human society disagreeable and feel yourself justified in flying to solitude, you can be so constituted as to be unable to bear ... it for any length of time, which will probably be the case if you are young. Let me advise you, then, to form the habit of taking some of your solitude with you into society, to learn to be to some extent alone even though you are in company; not to say at once what you think, and, on the other hand, not to attach too precise a meaning to what others say; rather, not to expect much of them, either morally or intellectually, and to strengthen yourself in the feeling of indifference to their opinion, which is the surest way of always practicing a praiseworthy toleration. If you do that, you will not live so much with other people, though you may appear to move amongst them: your relation to them will be of a purely objective character. This precaution will keep you from too close contact with society, and therefore secure you against being contaminated or even outraged by it. Society is in this respect like a fire—the wise man warming himself at a proper distance from it; not coming too close, like the fool, who, on getting scorched, runs away and shivers in solitude, loud in his complaint that the fire burns.
- Arthur Schopenhauer, Counsels and Maxims, T. B. Saunders, trans., § 9
- When, musing on companions gone,
We doubly feel ourselves alone.- Walter Scott, Marmion (1808), Canto II. Introduction
- Satan had his companions, fellow devils, to admire and encourage him, but I am solitary and abhorred.
- Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818), the monster, speaking to Victor Frankenstein in Ch. 15.
- It is better to dwell in the wilderness, than with a contentious and an angry woman.
- Solitude is the mother of anxieties.
- Publilius Syrus, Moral Sayings (1st century B.C.)
T
- The mind is sharper and keener in seclusion and uninterrupted solitude. No big laboratory is needed in which to think. Originality thrives in seclusion free of outside influences beating upon us to cripple the creative mind. Be alone, that is the secret of invention; be alone, that is when ideas are born.
- Nikola Tesla quoted in Nikola Tesla's Life & Work by István G. Kocsis, (2015).
- I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will... The really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge College is as solitary as a dervish in the desert. The farmer can work alone in the field or the woods all day, hoeing or chopping, and not feel lonesome, because he is employed...
- If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours … In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness.
- Modern civilization is so complex as to make the devotional life all but impossible. It wears us out by multiplying distractions and beats us down by destroying our solitude, where otherwise we might drink and renew our strength before going out to face the world again.
“The thoughtful soul to solitude retires,” said the poet of other and quieter times; but where is the solitude to which we can retire today? Science, which has provided men with certain material comforts, has robbed them of their souls by surrounding them with a world hostile to their existence.- A. W. Tozer, Of God and Men, p. 125
- There is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a Dream, a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And You are but a Thought — a vagrant Thought, a useless Thought, a homeless Thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities.
V
- We are rarely proud when we are alone.
- Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary (1764)
W
- Self-expression is impossible in relation with other men; their self-expression interferes with it. The greatest heights of self-expression in poetry, music, painting – are achieved by men who are supremely alone.
- Colin Wilson,The Outsider
- Similar though Marx and Thoreau may be in their accounts of the consequences of living in a society defined by money, their suggestions for how to respond to it are poles apart. Forget the Party. Forget the revolution. Forget the general strike. Forget the proletariat as an abstract class of human interest. Thoreau's revolution begins not with discovering comrades to be yoked together in solidarity but with the embrace of solitude. For Thoreau, Marx's first and fatal error was the creation of the aggregate identity of the proletariat. Error was substituted for error. The anonymity and futility of the worker were replaced by the anonymity and futility of the revolutionary. A revolution conducted by people who have only a group identity can only replace one monolith of power with another, one misery with another, perpetuating the cycle of domination and oppression. In solitude, the individual becomes most human, which is to say most spiritual.
- Curtis White, “The spirit of disobedience: An invitation to resistance,” Harper’s, April 2006, pp. 37-38
Y
- 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.- Edward Young, Love of Fame (1725-28), Satire V, line 254
- 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.- John Stuart Blackie, Sonnet, Highland Solitude
- I am as one who is left alone at a banquet, the lights dead and the flowers faded.
- Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Last Days of Pompeii, Chapter V
- 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!- Edward Bulwer-Lytton, New Timon, Part II
- 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!- William Cowper, The Task (1785), Book II, line 1
- 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.- William Cowper, verses supposed to be written by Alexander Selkirk
- 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.- William Drummond of Hawthornden, Urania; or, Spiritual Poems
- We enter the world alone, we leave it alone.
- James Anthony Froude, Short Studies on Great Subjects, Sea Studies
- I was never less alone than when by myself.
- Edward Gibbon, Memoirs, Volume I, p. 117
- Wer sich der Einsamkeit ergiebt,
Ach! der ist bald allein.- Whoever gives himself up to solitude,
Ah! he is soon alone. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister, II. 13
- Whoever gives himself up to solitude,
- Nobody with me at sea but myself.
- Oliver Goldsmith, The Haunch of Venison (1776)
- 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.
- James Russell Lowell, Among my Books, Dryden
- I feel like one who treads alone
Some banquet hall deserted,
Whose lights are fled, whose garlands dead,
And all but he departed.- Thomas Moore, Oft in the Stilly Night
- Until I truly loved, I was alone.
- Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton, The Lady of La Garaye, Part II, line 381
- Now the New Year reviving old Desires,
The thoughtful Soul to Solitude retires.- Omar Khayyam, Rubaiyat, FitzGerald's translation, Stanza 4
- You must show him … by leaving him severely alone.
- Charles Stewart Parnell, Speech at Ennis (19 September 1880)
- 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.- Thomas Parnell, The Hermit
- Shall I, like an hermit, dwell
On a rock or in a cell?- Sir Walter Raleigh, Poem. See Cayley's Life of Raleigh, Volume I
- Then never less alone than when alone.
- Samuel Rogers, Human Life, line 759
- Atque ubi omnia nobis mala solitudo persuadet.
- And when Solitude leads us into all manner of evil.
- Seneca the Younger, Epistle 25. Quoting Galgacus, leader of the Britains
- I love tranquil solitude
And such society
As is quiet, wise, and good.- Percy Bysshe Shelley, Rarely, Rarely, Comest Thou
- There's a natural law of karma that vindictive people, who go out of their way to hurt others, will end up broke and alone.
- Solitude is the best nurse of wisdom.
- Laurence Sterne, Letters. No. 82
- A wise man is never less alone than when he is alone.
- Jonathan Swift, Essay on the Faculties of the Mind
- Alone each heart must cover up its dead;
Alone, through bitter toil, achieve its rest.- Bayard Taylor, The Poet's Journal, First Evening, conclusion
- '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.
- Henry David Thoreau, 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.- Tibullus, Elegies, Elegy I
- Impulses of deeper birth
Have come to him in solitude.- William Wordsworth, A Poet's Epitaph
- They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude.- William Wordsworth, I Wandered Lonely. Lines in the poem written by Mrs. Wordsworth
- Often have I sighed to measure
By myself a lonely pleasure,—
Sighed to think I read a book,
Only read, perhaps, by me.- William Wordsworth, To the Small Celandine
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