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solitude quotes

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“love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you.” Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
“Your bad love to yourselves maketh solitude a prison to you.” Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
“I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.” Henry David Thoreau, Walden
“Especially for someone in my line of work, solitude is, more or less, an inevitable circumstance. Sometimes, however, this sense of isolation, like acid spilling out of a bottle, can unconsciously eat away at a person’s heart and dissolve it.” Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
“I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself, with only the music of my heart for company.” Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
“The life of a solitary man will be certainly miserable, but not certainly devout.” Samuel Johnson, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia
“We know little, but that we must trust in what is difficult is a certainty that will never abandon us; it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be one more reason for us to do it.” Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
“At the bottom of her heart, however, she was waiting for something to happen. Like shipwrecked sailors, she turned despairing eyes upon the solitude of her life, seeking afar off some white sail in the mists of the horizon.” Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
“I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.” Henry David Thoreau, Walden
“Even brave men, and D'Arnot was a brave man, are sometimes frightened by solitude.” Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes
“And you should not let yourself be confused in your solitude by the fact that there is something in you that wants to move out of it.” Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
“your solitude will be a support and a home for you, even in the midst of very unfamiliar circumstances, and from it you will find all your paths.” Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
“Reading, solitude, idleness, a soft and sedentary life, intercourse with women and young people, these are perilous paths for a young man, and these lead him constantly into danger.” Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, or On Education
“Is there nowhere in an American house where one may be by one's self?” Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence
“I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than be crowded on a velvet cushion.” Henry David Thoreau, Walden
“I'm now quite cured of seeking pleasure in society, be it country or town. A sensible man ought to find sufficient company in himself.” Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
“On this account, nothing is more dangerous than solitude: there our imagination, always disposed to rise, taking a new flight on the wings of fancy, pictures to us a chain of beings of whom we seem the most inferior. All things appear greater...” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther
“It was my temper to avoid a crowd and to attach myself fervently to a few.” Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
“I believe that that love remains strong and intense in your memory because it was your first deep aloneness and the first inner work that you did on your life.” Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
“It is true that I miss intelligent companionship, but there are so few with whom I can share the things that mean so much to me that I have learned to contain myself. It is enough that I am surrounded with beauty…” Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild
“We are solitary. We can delude ourselves about this and act as if it were not true. That is all.” Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

Related topics

loneliness society prison crowd imagination difficulty confusion love heart beauty fear friendship privacy pain bravery youth memory danger trust pleasure

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Rainer Maria Rilke (6)
Henry David Thoreau (3)
Friedrich Nietzsche (1)
Haruki Murakami (1)
Henry Miller (1)
Edith Wharton (1)
Jon Krakauer (1)
Emily Brontë (1)
Gustave Flaubert (1)
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1)
Edgar Rice Burroughs (1)
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1)
Mary Shelley (1)
Samuel Johnson (1)

Related sources

Letters to a Young Poet (6)
Walden (3)
Madame Bovary (1)
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (1)
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1)
Frankenstein (1)
The Age of Innocence (1)
Wuthering Heights (1)
Tropic of Cancer (1)
The Sorrows of Young Werther (1)
Tarzan of the Apes (1)
Emile, or On Education (1)
Into the Wild (1)
The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1)