Top 185 Solitude Quotes

I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.

Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character.

Since the time of St. Jerome, it was mandatory for any kind of scholar or thinker to spend time out in the desert in solitude. It’s no coincidence that the desert has been a major part of the visionary or mystical experience from the beginning of time.

Everyone has their moments of solitude, difficulties, and vulnerability.

From the night, his solitude, the poet finds day and starts a diary that is lethal to the inert. The dark landscape yields a dialogue.

My father was the church organist; the village curate was my mother’s brother, a former monk from the order of Pijar, a very well-educated and ascetic man who loved nothing but solitude.

If you’re constantly stimulated by being called away to the buzzing and the excitement of what’s on your phone, solitude seems kind of scary.

Much of the time I’m an introvert, by choice spending a lot of time on my own. I suppose liking my solitude is part of a writer’s sensibility.

Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius.

Solitude would be ideal if you could pick the people to avoid.

In the tumult of men and events, solitude was my temptation; now it is my friend. What other satisfaction can be sought once you have confronted History?

Solitude is part of my life, and I don’t mind that. I like it. I love it. I don’t allow loneliness to be part of my life, let’s put it that way. I really won’t allow it. If I feel lonely, I phone somebody or I go for a walk or a swim, get the endorphins going, because I hate feeling lonely.

The weight of the world is love. Under the burden of solitude, under the burden of dissatisfaction.

Aside from what it teaches you, there is simply the indescribable degree of peace that can be achieved on a sailing vessel at sea. I guess a combination of hard work and the seemingly infinite expanse of the sea – the profound solitude – that does it for me.

When from our better selves we have too long been parted by the hurrying world, and droop. Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired, how gracious, how benign is solitude.

Often, marriage was solitude, with company.

People who abhor solitude may abhor company almost as much.

The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.

Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is the richness of self.

Who hears music feels his solitude peopled at once.

My public life is before you; and I know you will believe me when I say, that when I sit down in solitude to the labours of my profession, the only questions I ask myself are, What is right? What is just? What is for the public good?

I love nature, I really do. I love the great outdoors, I love the concept of quiet, peaceful solitude shared only with the loons calling to each other across the water, and Bambi and Thumper in the forest, and a simple tent between me and the starry, starry sky.

In solitude the mind gains strength and learns to lean upon itself.

When you have a lot of solitude, any living thing becomes a companion.

I usually find myself hiking in a place that not a lot of people go hiking, just trying to find some solitude. I like being out in the middle of nowhere. Not always, but it’s a good place to go to just reflect and think, and it’s something I really enjoy.

A lot of directors prefer the solitude of the editing process, but I revel in the craziness of what a film set is.

I am always able to find that solitude. I am always able to find that peace. Which is tight. That is what has helped me keep going.

The strongest reason for giving woman all the opportunities for higher education, for the full development of her faculties, her forces of mind and body… is the solitude and personal responsibility of her own individual life.

Emily Dickinson has haunted my life – her poems, her persona, all the tales about her solitude. Ever since I discovered her in the seventh grade, I’ve had a crush on that spinster in white, who had such a heroic and startling inner landscape of her own.

He who lives in solitude may make his own laws.

I need quiet and solitude to work. Darkness is best. If I am wide awake, I can’t write.

Love is made by two people, in different kinds of solitude. It can be in a crowd, but in an oblivious crowd.

I reflected much on that vain desire, which had pursued me for so many years, of being in solitude in order to be a Christian. I have now, thought I, solitude enough; but am I therefore the nearer being a Christian? Not if Jesus Christ be the model of Christianity.

I owe my solitude to other people.

Frightening things happen in solitude.

One can acquire everything in solitude except character.

The sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be divorced. Every other wound we seek to heal – every other affliction to forget: but this wound we consider it a duty to keep open – this affliction we cherish and brood over in solitude.

Everyone needs solitude, especially a person who is used to thinking about what she experiences. Solitude is very important in my work as a mode of inspiration, but isolation is not good in this respect. I am not writing poetry about isolation.

The conductor’s stand is not a continent of power, but rather an island of solitude.

The thoughtful soul to solitude retires.

As I’ve gotten older I’ve occasionally found myself nostalgic for earlier periods of solitude, though I realize that’s also likely a false nostalgia, as I know there was nothing I wanted more during those periods than to not be alone, whatever that means.

We leave TVs on in our house. I listen to my record player constantly to just hear music. I’m really intrigued by this idea of solitude.

Solitude is very important in my work as a mode of inspiration, but isolation is not good in this respect. I am not writing poetry about isolation.

It’s clear to me that anyone, anywhere, can experience loneliness, isolation, solitude, and estrangement; and most people probably do encounter these things at some point in their lives.

Being solitary is being alone well: being alone luxuriously immersed in doings of your own choice, aware of the fullness of your won presence rather than of the absence of others. Because solitude is an achievement.

There’s just an incredible amount of loneliness as a mother, all this solitude no one really speaks to.

But when I lived as a monk, solitude is often spoken of as a strength. And so the first thing I’d recommend is finding one thing that you can do every single day that brings you joy. It may be reading a book you love. It may be looking at a beautiful piece of art.

The rigors of creativity – the self-doubt, the revising, the solitude – do require a kind of self-consumption. It comes at a cost; a cost that isn’t for everyone.

Some people can’t stand being alone. I love solitude and silence. But when I come out of it, I’m a regular talking machine. It’s all or nothing for me.

There’s a difference between solitude and loneliness. I can understand the concept of being a monk for a while.

I grew up in the suburbs of Connecticut – during the school time of year – but I preferred it in New Hampshire. I preferred the culture, the landscape, the relative solitude. I’ve always loved it.

Look at Austen. In her novels, you get a dance, followed by an encounter, followed by a letter, then a period of solitude. No flashbacks and no backstory. Let’s have no more back story!

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.

Only in solitude do we find ourselves; and in finding ourselves, we find in ourselves all our brothers in solitude.

God is absence. God is the solitude of man.

There are days when solitude is a heady wine that intoxicates you with freedom, others when it is a bitter tonic, and still others when it is a poison that makes you beat your head against the wall.

Alone let him constantly meditate in solitude on that which is salutary for his soul, for he who meditates in solitude attains supreme bliss.

Extraordinary things happen in solitude.

Solitude has its own very strange beauty to it.

In solitude, we find ourselves; we prepare ourselves to come to conversation with something to say that is authentic, ours.

No matter how much we love our family and friends, a part of us needs the occasional moment of solitude as a plant needs water. It is the inmost core of each of us that, that part which nobody can define but which we all recognize because it never changes.

How can we have our privacy? How can we have our independence now in these times with these cameras? Because I think privacy and our solitude is really important.

Real misanthropes are not found in solitude, but in the world; since it is experience of life, and not philosophy, which produces real hatred of mankind.