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SOLITUDE quotes
To be exempt from the passions with which others are tormented, is the only pleasing solitude.
It had been hard to have put more truth and untruth together in a few words than in that speech, "Whosoever is delighted with solitude is either a wild beast or a god."
It would do the world good if every man in it would compel himself occasionally to be absolutely alone. Most of the world's progress has come out of such loneliness.
Converse with men makes sharp the glittering wit, but God to man doth speak in solitude.
Get away from the crowd when you can. Keep yourself to yourself, if only for a few hours daily.
Unsociable humors are contracted in solitude, which will, in the end, not fail of corrupting the understanding as well as the manners, and of utterly disqualifying a man for the satisfactions and duties of life. Men must be taken as they are, and we neither make them or ourselves better by flying from or quarreling with them.
An entire life of solitude contradicts the purpose of our being, since death itself is scarcely an idea of more terror.
If from society we learn to live, it is solitude should teach us how to die.
Amid 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 to bless us, none whom we can bless; this is to be alone; this, this is solitude.
Solitude has but one disadvantage; it is apt to give one too high an opinion of one's self. In the world we are sure to be often reminded of every known or supposed defect we may have.
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.
In solitude, where we are least alone.
Solitude shows us what we should be; society shows us what we are.
How sweet, how passing sweet, is solitude! but grant me still a friend in my retreat, whom I may whisper, solitude is sweet.
Solitude, seeming a sanctuary, proves a grave; a sepulchre in which the living lie, where all good qualities grow sick and die.
Solitude is one of the highest enjoyments of which our nature is susceptible. It is also, when too long continued, capable of being made the most severe, indescribable, unendurable source pf anguish.
It is easy, in the world, to live after the world's opinion; it is easy, in solitude, to live after your own; but the great man is he who, in the midst of the crowd, keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend, the cold, obscure shelter where moult the wings which will bear it farther than suns and stars. He who would inspire and lead his race must be defended from traveling with the souls of other men, from living, breathing, reading, and writing in the daily, time-worn yoke of their opinions.
Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius.
We ought not to isolate ourselves, for we cannot remain in a state of isolation. Social intercourse makes us the more able to bear with ourselves and with others.
It has been said that he who retires to solitude is either a beast or an angel; the censure is too severe, and the praise unmerited: the discontented being, who retires from society, is generally some good-natured man, who has begun his life without experience, and knew not how to gain it in his intercourse with mankind.
What would a man do if he were compelled to live always in the sultry heat of society, and could never better himself in cool solitude?
Alone, man—weak, tottering—yet with God this handful of dust made to be unmade, moulded to be molding, grasps the ungraspable, utters the ineffable, and when what seems too profound for human intelligence sweeps into the horizon, solitude is no more and misery has departed.
If the mind loves solitude, it has thereby acquired a loftier character, and it becomes still more noble when the taste is indulged in.
The strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone.
Half the pleasure of solitude comes from having with us some friend to whom we can say how sweet solitude is.
The love of retirement has in all ages adhered closely to those minds which have been most enlarged by knowledge, or elevated by genius. Those who enjoyed everything generally supposed to confer happiness have been forced to seek it in the shades of privacy.
I really only have Perfect Fun with myself. Other people won't stop and look at the things I want to look at or, if they do, they stop to please me or to humor me or to keep the peace.
In the world a man lives in his own age; in solitude in all ages.
Solitude is sometimes best society, and short retirement urges sweet return.
It is the mark of a superior man that, left to himself, he is able endlessly to amuse, interest and entertain himself out of his personal stock of meditations, ideas, criticisms, memories, philosophy, humor and what not.
Until I truly loved I was alone.
You cannot build up a character in a solitude; you need a formed character to stand a solitude.
One hour of thoughtful solitude may nerve the heart for days of conflict— girding up its armor to meet the most insidious foe.
That which happens to the soil when it ceases to be cultivated, happens to man himself when he foolishly forsakes society for solitude; the brambles grow up in his desert heart.
Solitude and company may be allowed to take their turns: the one creates in us the love of mankind, the other that of ourselves; solitude relieves us when we are sick of company, and conversation when we are weary of being alone, so that the one cures the other. There is no man so miserable as he that is at a loss how to use his time.
No doubt solitude is wholesome, but so is abstinence after a surfeit.—The true life of man is in society.
Living a good deal alone will, I believe, correct me of my faults; for a man can do without his own approbations in society, but he must make great exertions to gain it when he lives alone. Without it I am convinced solitude is not to be endured.
Solitude cherishes great virtues and destroys little ones.
In solitude the mind gains strength and learns to lean upon itself; in the world it seeks or accepts of a few treacherous supports—the feigned compassions of one, the flattery of a second, the civilities of a third, the friendship of a fourth; they all deceive, and bring the mind back to retirement, reflection, and books.
A wise man is never less alone than when he is alone.
Solitude is a good school, but the world is the best theatre; the institution is best there, but the practice here; the wilderness hath the advantage of discipline, and society opportunities of perfection.
Leisure and solitude are the best effect of riches, because mother of thought. Both are avoided by most rich men, who seek company and business; which are signs of their being weary of themselves.
This sacred shade and solitude, what is it? It is the felt presence of the Deity.—Few are the faults we flatter when alone.—By night an atheist half believes a God.
Oh! lost to virtue, lost to manly thought, lost to the noble sallies of the soul, who think it solitude to be alone.
O sacred solitude! divine retreat! choice of the prudent! envy of the
great! by thy pure stream, or in thy waving shade, we count fair wisdom.
Those beings only are fit for solitude, who like nobody, and are liked by nobody.
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