1,686 Quotes About Solitude

I tend to avoid people who always have something to say … and those who expect me to always have something to say.

Houses, like people, are apt to become rather eccentric if left too much on their own; this house was the architectural equivalent of an old gentleman in a worn dressing-gown and torn slippers, who got up and went to bed at odd times of day, and who kept up a continual conversation with friends no one else could see.

Solitude is a chosen separation for refining your soul. Isolation is what you crave when you neglect the first.

I think one travels more usefully when they travel alone, because they reflect more."(Letter to John Banister, Jr., June 19, 1787)

I crawled back into myself all alone, just delighted to observe that I was even more miserable than before, because I had brought a new kind of distress and something that resembled true feeling into my solitude.

How can you hear your soul if everyone is talking?

Everybody is a stranger, but that's the danger in going my own way.

What is the difference in being alone with another and being alone by one's self?

Perhaps there are those who are able to go about their lives unfettered by such concerns. But for those like us, our fate is to face the world as orphans, chasing through long years the shadows of vanished parents. There is nothing for it but to try and see through our missions to the end, as best we can, for until we do so, we will be permitted no calm.