369 Solitude Quotes

Nothing is more capable of troubling our reason, and consuming our health, than secret notions of jealousy in solitude.

Delacroix, Wagner, Baudelaire - all great theorists, bent on dominating other minds by sensuous means. Their one dream was to create the irresistible effect - to intoxicate, or overwhelm. They looked to analysis to provide them with the keyboard on which to play, with certainty, on man's emotions, and they sought in abstract meditation they key to sure and certain action upon their subject - man's nervous and psychic being.

I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.

How many voices have escaped you until now, the venting furnace, the floorboards underfoot, the steady accusations of the clock numbering the minutes no one will mark. The terrible clarity this moment brings, the useless insight, the unbroken dark.

I really do work in solitude.

To really be centered and to really work well and to think about the kinds of things that I need to think about, I need to spend large amounts of time alone.

It seems to me that today, if the artist wishes to be serious - to cut out a little original niche for himself, or at least preserve his own innocence of personality - he must once more sink himself in solitude. There is too much talk and gossip; pictures are apparently made, like stock-market prices, by competition of people eager for profit; in order to do anything at all we need (so to speak) the wit and ideas of our neighbors as much as the businessmen need the funds of others to win on the market. All this traffic sharpens our intelligence and falsifies our judgment.

My personal hobbies are reading, listening to music, and silence.

To die alone, on rock under sun at the brink of the unknown, like a wolf, like a great bird, seems to me very good fortune indeed.

By all means use some time to be alone.

When you close your doors, and make darkness within, remember never to say that you are alone, for you are not alone; nay, God is within, and your genius is within. And what need have they of light to see what you are doing?

With some people solitariness is an escape not from others but from themselves. For they see in the eyes of others only a reflection of themselves.

By circumstance and perhaps also by inclination, I think in complete intellectual isolation. To expect others to help me think seems to me almost like expecting them to help me digest my food.

A man by himself is in bad company.

What are we when we are alone? Some, when they are alone, cease to exist.

The kind of relatedness to the world may be noble or trivial, but even being related to the basest kind of pattern is immensely preferable to being alone.

My peers, lately, have found companionship through means of intoxication - it makes them sociable. I, however, cannot force myself to use drugs to cheat on my loneliness - it is all that I have - and when the drugs and alcohol dissipate, will be all that my peers have as well.

I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best.

In the end all books are written for your friends. The problem after writing One Hundred Years of Solitude was that now I no longer know whom of the millions of readers I am writing for; this upsets and inhibits me. It's like a million eyes are looking at you and you don't really know what they think.

The best an American can look forward to is the lonely pleasure of one who stands at long last on a chilly and inhospitable mountaintop where few have been before, where few can follow and where few will consent to believe he has been.

Lonely children often have imaginary playmates but I was never lonely; rather, I was solitary, and wanted no company at all other than books and movies, and my own imagination.

Solitude is fine, but you need someone to tell you that solitude is fine.

Our social relationships are limited, most of the time, to gossip and criticizing people's behavior. This observation slowly pushed me to isolate from the so-called social life. My days pass by in solitude.

My witness is the empty sky.

The nurse of full-grown souls is solitude.

It is curious how tyrannical the habit of reading is, and what shifts we make to escape thinking. There is no bore we dread being left alone with so much as our own minds.

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

We fear violence less than our own feelings. Personal, private, solitary pain is more terrifying than what anyone else can inflict.

Oft, on a plat of rising ground, I hear the far-off curfew sound Over some wide-watered shore, Swinging low with sullen roar.

Only by going alone in silence, without baggage, can one truly get into the heart of the wilderness. All other travel is mere dust and hotels and baggage and chatter.

Keep close to Nature's heart... and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.

Take a course in good water and air; and in the eternal youth of Nature you may renew your own. Go quietly, alone; no harm will befall you.

The beating of my own heart Was all the sound I heard.

Now hollow fires burn out to black, And lights are guttering low: Square your shoulders, lift your pack, And leave your friends and go. Oh never fear, man, nought's to dread, Look not to left nor right: In all the endless road you tread There's nothing but the night.

My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities.

He clasps the crag with crooked hands; Close to the sun in lonely lands, Ring'd with the azure world, he stands. The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls; He watches from his mountain walls, And like a thunderbolt he falls.

An ordinary man can...surround himself with two thousand books..and thenceforward have at least one place in the world in which it is possible to be happy.

It is a very strange sensation to inexperienced youth to feel itself quite alone in the world, cut adrift from every connection, uncertain whether the port to which it is bound can be reached, and prevented by many impediments from returning to that it has quitted.

On the other hand, I mean, that is what writers have always been supposed to do, was to rely on their own devices and to--I mean, writing is a lonely business.

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

How dreary - to be - Somebody! How public - like a Frog - To tell one's name - the livelong June - To an admiring Bog!

Disraeli felt that 'nothing could compensate his obscure youth, not even a glorious old age.' Practically all writers and artists are aware of their destiny and see themselves as actors in a fateful drama. With me, nothing is momentous: obscure youth, glorious old age, fateful coincidences - nothing really matters. I have written a number of good sentences. I have kept free of delusions. I know I am going to die soon.

Religion was too vague. God was different. He was something real, something I could feel. But there were only certain times when I could feel it. I used to lie between cool, clean sheets at night after I'd had a bath, after I had washed my hair and scrubbed my knuckles and finger-nails and teeth. Then I could lie quite still in the dark with my face to the window with the trees in it, and talk to God. 'I am clean, now. I've never been as clean. I'll never be cleaner.' And somehow, it was God. I wasn't sure that it was: just something cool and dark and clean.

But we may go further, and affirm most truly, that it is a mere and miserable solitude to want true friends; without which the world is but a wilderness; and even in this sense also of solitude, whosoever in the frame of his nature and affections, is unfit for friendship, he taketh it of the beast, and not from humanity.

Lost in the solitude of his immense power, he began to lose direction. He was bothered by the people who cheered him in neighboring villages, and he imagined that they were the same cheers they gave the enemy. Everywhere he met adolescents who looked at him with his own eyes, who spoke to him with his own voice, who greeted him with the same mistrust with which he greeted them, and who said they were his sons. He felt scattered about, multiplied, and more solitary than ever. He was convinced that his own officers were lying to him. He fought with the Duke of Marlborough. 'The best friend a person has,' he would say at that time, 'is one who has just died.' (p. 166)

In that Macondo forgotten even by the birds, where the dust and the heat had become so strong that it was difficult to breathe, secluded by solitude and love and by the solitude of love in a house where it was almost impossible to sleep because of the noise of the red ants, Aureliano, and Amaranta Ursula were the only happy beings, and the most happy on the face of the earth. (p. 404)

After all, human beings are like that. When they are alone they want to be with others, and when they are with others they want to be alone.

Dear Night! this world's defeat; The stop to busy fools; care's check and curb; The day of spirits; my soul's calm retreat Which none disturb! Christ's progress, and His prayer-time; The hours to which high Heaven doth chime.

Well, we're grasping for two things at once. Partly for communion with others - that's the deepest instinct in us. And partly, we're seeking security. By constant communion with others we hope we shall be able to accept the horrible fact of our total solitude. We're always reaching out for new projects, new structure, new systems in order to abolish - partly or wholly - our insight into our loneliness. If it weren't so, religious systems would never arise.

Count me o'er earth's chosen heroes,-they were souls that stood alone, While the men they agonized for hurled the contumelious stone, Stood serene, and down the future saw the golden beam incline To the side of perfect justice, mastered by their faith divine, By one man's plain truth to manhood and to God's supreme design.

I stole a lot when I was a kid, but I wouldn't steal one candy; I'd take the whole carton. I also used to like to break into other people's houses and sit in their rooms. I found it very comforting to be in someone's empty house.

The truth was that he died from solitude, the enemy known but to few on this Earth, and whom only the simplest of us are fit to withstand. The brilliant Costaguanaro of the boulevards had died from solitude and want of faith in himself and others.

All writing is an antisocial act, since the writer is a man who can speak freely only when alone; to be himself he must lock himself up, to communicate he must cut himself off from all communication; and in this there is something always a little mad. (p. 97)

In every aspect of the day Jesus was aware of the Father. He beheld Him in the clouds and in the shadows of the clouds that pass over the earth. He saw the Father's face reflected in the quiet pools, and the faint print of His feet upon the sand; and He often closed His eyes to gaze into the Holy Eyes. The night spoke to Him with the voice of the Father, and in solitude He heard the angel of the Lord calling to Him. And when He stilled Himself to sleep He heard the whispering of the heavens in His dreams. He was often happy with us, and He would call us brothers. Behold, He who was the first Word called us brothers, though we were but syllables uttered yesterday.

I restore myself when I'm alone. A career is born in public - talent in privacy.

He believes that he doesn't want to leave here, but there is still too much of peter in him. Or too much of me. None of us could be happy for long, doing nothing. Or perhaps it's just that none of us could be happy living with no other company than ourself.

Dar'st thou amid the varied To live alone, an isolated thing?

But now we are a mob. Man does not stand in awe of man, nor is his genius admonished to stay at home, to put itself in communication with the internal ocean, but it goes abroad to beg a cup of water of the urns of other men. We must go alone. I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.

Good-bye, proud world! I'm going home: Thou art not my friend, and I'm not thine.

The gang serves lies, the passionate Man plays his part; the cold passion for truth Hunts in no pack.

And once again I am I will not say alone, no, that's not like me, but, how shall I say, I don't know, restored to myself, no, I never left myself, free, yes, I don't know what that means but it's the word I mean to use, free to do what, to do nothing, to know, but what, the laws of the mind perhaps, of my mind, that for example water rises in proportion as it drowns you and that you would do better, at least no worse, to obliterate texts than to blacken margins, to fill in the holes of words till all is blank and flat and the whole ghastly business looks like what is, senseless, speechless, issueless misery.

There is not wind enough to twirl The one red leaf, the last of its clan, That dances as often as dance it can, Hanging so light, and hanging so high, On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky.

To wish to escape from solitude is cowardice. Friendship is not to be sought, not to be dreamed, not to be desired; it is to be exercised (it is a virtue). [p.274]

The Curfew tolls the knell of parting day, The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea, The plowman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

I leant upon a coppice gate When Frost was spectre-gray, And Winter's dregs made desolate The weakening eye of day.

What is fame? Everybody knows your name: never again are you alone.

Only solitary men know the full joys of friendship. Others have their family - but to a solitary and an exile his friends are everything.

The great pines stand at a considerable distance from each other. Each tree grows alone, murmurs alone, thinks alone. They do not intrude upon each other. The Navajos are not much in the habit of giving or of asking help. Their language is not a communicative one, and they never attempt an interchange of personality in speech. Over their forests there is the same inexorable reserve. Each tree has its exalted power to bear.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear the lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray, I hear it in the deep heart's core.

We and the labouring world are passing by: Amid men's souls, that waver and give place Like the pale waters in their wintry race, Under the passing stars, foam of the sky, Lives on this lonely face.

Minnaloushe creeps through the grass Alone, important and wise, And lifts to the changing moon His changing eyes.

I have found nothing half so good As my long-planned half solitude, Where I can sit up half the night With some friend that has the wit Not to allow his looks to tell When I am unintelligible.

I am out of humanity's reach. I must finish my journey alone, Never hear the sweet music of speech; I start at the sound of my own.

Love had he found in huts where poor men lie; His daily teachers had been woods and rills, The silence that is in the starry sky, The sleep that is among the lonely hills.

I'm a social caterpillar. I am not a social butterfly

This inescapable duty to observe oneself: if someone else is observing me, naturally I have to observe myself too; if none observe me, I have to observe myself all the closer

Breakfast is the only meal of the day that I tend to view with the same kind of traditionalized reverence that most people associate with Lunch and Dinner. I like to eat breakfast alone, and almost never before noon; anybody with a terminally jangled lifestyle needs at least one psychic anchor every twenty-four hours, and mine is breakfast. In Hong Kong, Dallas or at home - and regardless of whether or not I have been to bed - breakfast is a personal ritual that can only be properly observed alone, and in a spirit of genuine excess. The food factor should always be massive: four Bloody Marys, two grapefruits, a pot of coffee, Rangoon crepes, a half-pound of either sausage, bacon, or corned beef hash with diced chiles, a Spanish omelette or eggs Benedict, a quart of milk, a chopped lemon for random seasoning, and something like a slice of Key lime pie, two margaritas, and six lines of the best cocaine for dessert:. Right, and there should also be two or three newspapers, all mail and messages, a telephone, a notebook for planning the next twenty-four hours and at least one source of good music:. All of which should be dealt with outside, in the warmth of a hot sun, and preferably stone naked.

She dwelt among the untrodden ways Beside the springs of Dove, A maid whom there were none to praise And very few to love:

The rainy Pleiads wester, Orion plunges prone, The stroke of midnight ceases, And I lie down alone.

Now remember courage, go to the door, Open it and see whether coiled on the bed Or cringing by the wall, a savage beast Maybe with golden hair, with deep eyes Like a bearded spider on a sunlit floor Will snarl-and man can never be alone.

This dead of midnight is the noon of thought, And Wisdom mounts her zenith with the stars.

Where glowing embers through the room Teach light to counterfeit a gloom, Far from all resort of mirth, Save the cricket on the hearth.

Sand-strewn caverns, cool and deep, Where the winds are all asleep.

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers - stern and wild ones, - and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.

Yet now despair itself is mild, Even as the winds and waters are; I could lie down like a tired child, And weep away the life of care Which I have borne and yet must bear, Till death like sleep might steal on me, And I might feel in the warm air My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony.

We live in an old chaos of the sun, Or an old dependency of day and night, Or island solitude, unsponsored, free, Of that wide water, inescapable. Deer walk upon our mountains, and quail Whistle about us their spontaneous cries; Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness; And, in the isolation of the sky, At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make Ambiguous undulations as they sink, Downward to darkness, on extended wings.

'In great misfortunes,' he told himself, 'people want to be alone. They have a right to be. And the misfortunes that occur within one are the greatest. Surely the saddest thing in the world is falling out of love - if once one has ever fallen in.' Falling out, for him, seemed to mean falling out of all domestic and social relations, out of his place in the human family, indeed.

I praise the Frenchman [Voltaire], 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.

And sings a solitary song That whistles in the wind.

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.

If one keeps loving faithfully what is really worth loving, and does not waste one's love on insignificant and unworthy and meaningless things, one will get more light by and by and grow stronger. Sometimes it is well to go into the world and converse with people, and at times one is obliged to do so, but he who would prefer to be quietly alone with his work, and who wants but very few friends, will go safest through the world and among people. And even in the most refined circles and with the best surroundings and circumstances, one must keep something of the original character of an anchorite, for other wise one has no root in oneself; one must never let the fire go out in one's soul, but keep it burning. And whoever chooses poverty for himself and loves it possesses a great treasure, and will always clearly hear the voice of his conscience; he who hears and obeys that voice, which is the best gift of God, finds at least a friend in it, and is never alone.

To be a husbandman, is but a retreat from the city; to be a philosopher, from the world