I love to be alone.
I never found a companion
that was so companionable as solitude.
Thoreau
I need to be alone . . .
I need the sunshine and the paving stones
of the streets without companions, without conversation,
face to face with myself, with only the music of my heart for company.
Henry Miller
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.
Schopenhauer
I live in that solitude
which is painful in youth,
but delicious in the years of maturity.
Einstein
Loneliness is the poverty of self;
solitude is richness of self.
May Sarton
But your solitude will be a support and a home for you,
even in the midst of very unfamiliar circumstances,
and from it you will find all paths.
Rilke
Wherever I am, the world comes after me.
It offers me its busyness. It does not believe
that I do not want it. Now I understand
why the old poets of China went so far and high
into the mountains, then crept into the pale mist.
Mary Oliver
"Why I Wake Early"
Uncontradicting solitude
Supports me on its giant palm;
And like a sea-anemone
Or simple snail, there cautiously
Unfolds, emerges, what I am.
Philip Larkin
In order to be open to creativity,
one must have the capacity for constructive use of solitude.
One must overcome the fear of being alone.
Rollo May
When from our better selves we have too long
Been parted by the hurrying world, and droop,
Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired,
How gracious, how benign, is Solitude.
Wordsworth
