Solitude

Thus let me live, unseen, unknown, Thus unlamented let me die, Steal from the world, and not a stone Tell where I lie.

I am alone; all drowns in the Pharisees’ hypocrisy. To live your life is not as simple as to cross a field. 1

Solitude is a virtue for us, since it is a sublime inclination and impulse to cleanliness which shows that contact between people, “society”, inevitably makes things unclean. Somewhere, sometime, every community makes people—“base.

The solitary speaks."One receives as a reward for much ennui , ill-humour and boredom, such as a solitude without friends, books, duties or passions must entail, one harvests those quarters of an hour of the deepest immersion in oneself and nature. He who completely entrenches himself against boredom also entrenches himself against himself: he will never get to drink the most potent refreshing draught from the deepest well of his own being.

A: But why this solitude? - B: I am not at odds with anyone. But when I am alone I seem to see my friends in a clearer and fairer light than when I am with them; and when I loved and appreciated music the most, I lived far from it. It seems I need a distant perspective if I am to think well of things.

I’m not living with you. We occupy the same cage.

In a crowd, on a journey at a banquet even, a line of thought can itself provide its own seclusion.

Alone and warming his five wits,

 

If you are alone you belong entirely to yourself. If you are accompanied by even one companion you belong only half to yourself or even less in proportion to the thoughtlessness of his conduct and if you 45 have more than one companion you will fall more deeply into the same plight.

Yes, in the sea of life enisled, With echoing straits between us thrown, Dotting the shoreless watery wild, We mortal millions live alone .

I hold this to be the highest task for a bond between two people: that each protects the solitude of the other.

I have never lost an obstinate sense of detachment, of the need for solitude—a feeling which increases over the years.

We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone.

The lonely one offers his hand too quickly to whomever he encounters.

The worst loneliness is not to be comfortable with yourself.

We’re all of us sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life!

Loneliness is the way by which destiny endeavors to lead man to himself.

There’s none of these so lonely and poor of old,

One can acquire everything in solitude except character.

Believe me, friend Hellishnoise: the greatest events—they are not our loudest but our stillest hours.

We’re all of us sentenced to solitary

As a writer you are free. You are about the freest person that ever was. Your freedom is what you have bought with your solitude.

With fame I become more and more stupid, which of course is a very common phenomenon.

You are surprised, aren’t you, at the contrast between my fame throughout the world… and the isolation and quiet in which I live here. I wished for this isolation all my life, and now I have finally achieved it here in Princeton.