I have never found a companion that was so companionablt as solitude. We are, for the most part, more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.

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

Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong.

To dare to live alone is he rarest courage; since there are many who had rather meet their bitterest enemy in the field, than their own hearts in the closet.

There are places and moments in which one is so completely alone that one sees the world entire.

Children love to be alone because alone is where they know themselves, and where they dream.

We are rarely proud when we are alone.

Solitude, though it may be silent as light, is like light, the mightiest of agencies; for solitude is essential to man. All men come into this world alone and leave it alone.

You cannot be lonely if you like the person you're alone with.

Isolation is aloneness that feels forced upon you like a punishment. Solitude is aloneness you choose and embrace. I think great things can come out of solitude, out of going to a place where all is quiet except the beating of your heart.

. . . I think we're all lonely. I think that's the human condition. I think we all feel loneliness, but I'm not afraid of it and I'm not afraid of being alone. I see the suffering of feeling lonely. I have felt loneliness; I've felt lonely with people and without them. But I've only grown from it, learned from it. The negative impact has disappeared for me in the face of all the positive things I've learned. I find that when you get upset by loneliness or you feel like crying or you get that painful feeling, it isn't a bad thing. I just look at it as feelings.

I have moments of loneliness, yes, but I'm not hurting anyone and the only real fear I have about the whole thing is the idea of having to grow old alone.

Sleeping by yourself at night can make you feel alone.

Nothing makes us so lonely as our secrets.

If you could hear the voice in my heart, it would tell you, "I'm afraid I'm alone. Won't somebody please help me?"

Even in the presence of others she was completely alone.

Minus solum, cum quam solus esset. (We are never less alone than when we are alone.)

It's so lonely when you don't even know yourself.

Everyone is alone. It's just easier to take in a relationship.

We're all alone. But we're all alone, together.

I quit. I give up; nothing's good enough for anybody else, it seems. . . When I'm all alone it's the best way to be. When I'm by myself nobody else can say goodbye. Everything is temporary anyway.

Man can never know the kind of loneliness a woman knows. Man lies in a woman's womb only to gather strength, he nourishes himself from this fusion, and then he rises and goes into the world, into his work, into battle, into art. He is not lonely. He is busy. The memory of the swim in amniotic fluid gives him energy, completion. The woman may be busy too, but she feels empty. Sensuality for her is not only a wave of pleasure in which she has bathed, and a charge of electric joy at contact with another. When man lies in her womb, she is fulfilled, each act of love as a taking of man within her, an act of birth and rebirth, of child-bearing and man-bearing. Man lies in her womb and is reborn each time anew with a desire to act, to be. But for woman, the climax is not in the birth, but in the moment the man rests inside of her.

In the world of the dreamer there was solitude: all the exaltations and joys came in the moment of preparation for living. They took place in solitude. But with action came anxiety, and the sense of insuperable effort made to match the dream, and with it came weariness, discouragement, and the flight into solitude again. And then in solitude, in the opium den of remembrance, the possibility of pleasure again.

I have no friends. I walk alone.

You can be more alone with other people than you are by yourself even with people you love.

Did you ever notice how the lonely one is always standing in the sun? It's because, inside his mind, he is leaving the group behind. He closes his eyes and he escapes, to anywhere, his favorite place. The sun's warmth becomes the scent of a pine tree, or its brightness like the depths of the sea. He might go to the ocean or to the woods. He'd stay there forever, if he only could. When he goes there, he's reminded that he's part of a world bigger than one man ever sees. It's in this place independence he knows. Does he need the group? Absolutely not! And when he returns, still smelling salt air or pine, the group wonders where he had gone all this time. They don't understand why he smiles so wide. They want to; he knows they could if they tried. It's then that they realize that he is not the lonely one, and then they all come to stand in the sun.

The loneliness was still there, but it was getting louder and easier to dance to.

I've got everything I need except a man. And I'm not one of those women who thinks a man is the answer to everything, but I'm tired of being alone.

Loneliness is about the scariest thing there is.

I wish I could touch, but she was in her own isolation both, like on Miss America. She couldn't hear me through the glass.

Loneliness is the human condition. Cultivate it. The way it tunnels into you allows your soul room to grow. Never hope to find people who will understand you, someone to fill that space. An intelligent, sensitive person is the exception, the very great exception. If you expect to find people who will understand you, you will grow murderous with disappointment. The best you'll ever do is to understand yourself, know what it is that you want, and not let the cattle stand in your way.

What was the point in such loneliness around people? At least if you were by yourself, you had a good reason to be lonely.

It is better to be lost than to be saved all alone.

I get this overwhelming sensation that I'm not alone, that I'm not crazy. It's a little comforting.

I am in seclusion even within a crowd. Why say anything if you'll only be chastised and ridiculed?

Alone beside the moorland spring, once again you are aware of your loneliness - as it is and always has been. As it always has been - even when, at times, the friendship of others veiled its nakedness.
But the spring is alive. And your sentry duty remains to you.

This thing just fell into my lap and it is an opportunity to escape urban blight. I'm a social retard, and I have a hard time dealing with people. I don't like crowds, I don't like noise, I don't like people, I don't like being questioned. I just want to be left alone.

I got my mind. And what goes on in it. Which is to say, I got me. . . my lonely is mine.

Well, the crisis is past and all is well, the sheep returns to the fold. We're all sheep who have strayed at times, truth is truth, to the end of reckoning, we've cried. They are never alone that are accompanied with noble thoughts, we've shouted to ourselves.

Solitude is a silent storm that breaks down all our dead branches; yet it sends our living roots deeper into the living heart of the living earth.

Then came a time I can hardly describe, a season underground. A bird trapped in a sewer, wings beating against the ceiling in that dark wet place, while the city rumbled on overhead. Her name was lost. Her name was Nobody's Daughter.

We are not lovers. We do not even know each other. We look alike, but we have nothing to say.

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