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51,574. There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more. (Nature & Sea & Pleasure & Woods & Solitude & Isolation) Lord Byron, Child Harold’s Pilgrimage
88,867. 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. (Solitary & Alone) ibid.
88,868. This is to be alone; this, this is solitude! (Solitary & Alone) ibid. II:26
88,869. In solitude, when we are least alone. (Solitary & Alone) ibid. III:90
88,870. Among them, but not of them. (Solitary & Alone) ibid. III:113
88,871. '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. (Solitary & Alone) ibid. IV:33
5,547. 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. (Freedom & Alone & Solitude) Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms
5,872. Man is alone in being a social solitary. (Evolution & Solitary & Humanity) Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man: The Long Childhood 13/13, BBC 1973
6,228. Every select man strives instinctively for a citadel and a privacy, where he is FREE from the crowd, the many, the majority – where he may forget ‘men who are the rule’, as their exception; – exclusive only of the case in which he is pushed straight to such men by a still stronger instinct, as a discerner in the great and exceptional sense. (Individual & Solitude & Crowd & Isolation) Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
98,686. The Great Man ... is colder, harder, less hesitating, and without fear of ‘opinion’; he lacks the virtues that accompany respect and ‘responsibility’, and altogether that is the ‘virtue of the herd’. If he cannot lead, he goes alone ... He knows he is incommunicable: he finds it tasteless to be familiar ... When not speaking to himself, he wears a mask. There is a solitude within him that is inaccessible to praise or blame. (Genius & Greatness & Solitary & Superiority) Friedrich Nietzsche
6,328. The importance of solitude is to help you to differentiate your own thoughts from those you have studied, read, heard, or unintentionally absorbed. (Self & Solitude & Think) Tonya Sheridan
9,728. It is closing time in the gardens of the West and from now on an artist will be judged only by the resonance of his solitude or the quality of his despair. (Art & Solitude & Despair) Cyril Connolly, Horizon December 1949 – January 1950
23,565. There is no greater solitude than the Samurai’s. (GBH Films & Solitude) Le Samourai 1967 starring Alain Delon & Francois Perier & Nathalie Delon & Cathy Rosier & Jacques Leroy & Michael Boisrond & Robert Favart & Jean-Pierre Posier & Catherine Joudan et al, director Jean-Pierre Melville, opening caption
24,336. I require solitude. (Star Trek: The Next Generation & Solitude) Star Trek: The Next Generation: Sarek s3e23, ambassador to wife
50,437. The world is a prison in which solitary confinement is preferable. (Prison & Solitude) Karl Kraus
57,817. Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god. (Beast & Gods & Solitude) Francis Bacon
86,958. 'No, I live in a solitude that is painful in youth but delicious in the years of maturity – Einstein.' (Robot & Solitude) Human I, Channel 4 2015, old man in chair to social workers
63,093. The very fine line between loneliness and solitude, reflection; being alone always appealed to me when I was a kid. (Alone & Solitude & Loneliness) Brad Mehldau
76,858. If you are idle, be not solitary; if you are solitary, be not idle. (Idle & Solitude) Samuel Johnson, James Boswell’s The Life of Samuel Johnson
72,868. There is a fellowship more quiet even than solitude, and which, rightly understood, is solitude made perfect. (Fellowship & Solitude) Robert Louis Stevenson
88,846. I love all waste
And solitary places. (Solitude & Isolation) Percy Bysshe Shelley, Julian and Maddalo
67,949. For I am best
When least in company. (Company & Alone & Solitude & Isolation) William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night I iv 36-37, Orsino
88,847. I hold this to be the highest task for a bond between two people: that each protects the solitude of the other. Rainer Maria Rilke, letter 1902
88,848. And I was taught to feel, perhaps too much,
The self-sufficing power of Solitude. William Wordsworth, The Prelude 1850
88,873. They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude. William Wordsworth, I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
88,849. How sweet is harmless solitude!
What can its joys control?
Tumults and noise may not intrude,
To interrupt the soul. Mary Mollineux, Solitude 1670
88,850. Do not allow yourself to be imprisoned by any affection. Keep your solitude. The day, if it ever comes, when you are given true affection there will be no opposition between interior solitude and friendship, quite the reverse. It is even by this infallible sign that you will recognize it. (Solitary & Affection) Simone Weil
88,851. Solitude is fine but you need someone to tell that solitude is fine. Honoré de Balzac
88,852. Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous – to poetry. But also, it gives birth to the opposite: to the perverse, the illicit, the absurd. Thomas Mann, Death in Venice and Other Tales
88,853. 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. I took no pride in my solitude; but I was dependent on it. The darkness of the room was like sunlight to me. Charles Bukowski, Factotum
88,854. Whosoever is delighted in solitude, is either a wild beast or a god. Aristotle
88,855. I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity. Albert Einstein
88,856. Solitude sometimes is best society. John Milton, Paradise Lost
63,089. In solitude
What happiness? who can enjoy alone,
Or all enjoying, what contentment find? (Alone & Happiness & Solitude & Contentment) John Milton, Paradise Lost 8:364
88,858. I need solitude for my writing; not ‘like a hermit’ – that wouldn’t be enough – but like a dead man. Franz Kafka
88,859. Solitude was my only consolation – deep, dark, deathlike solitude. Mary Shelley
88,860. 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,
Its flowery slopes, its river’s crystal swell,
May seem a span; let me thy vigils keep
’Mongst boughs pavillion’d, where the deer’s swift leap
Startles the wild bee from the fox-glove bell.
But though I’ll gladly trace these scenes with thee,
Yet the sweet converse of an innocent mind,
Whose words are images of thoughts refin’d,
Is my soul’s pleasure; and it sure must be
Almost the highest bliss of human-kind,
When to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee. John Keats, To Solitude