Alone Quotes
Byron, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Emil Cioran, Edward Young and Wordsworth lead. Edward Gibbon’s Memoirs (1796) supplies the sentence that sums up the page: he was never less alone than when by himself. Shelley, in 1821, loves tranquil solitude and such society as is quiet, wise and good, and Pope’s Ode on Solitude wants a few paternal acres and the air of one’s own ground.
Three entries are flagged. “Solitude is the mother of anxieties,” credited to Publilius Syrus, is disputed. A passage about sitting and thinking in solitude to the music of the stream and the cedar, credited to John Muir, is marked misattributed, and the note points to a Sierra Club page on Muir misquotes. “Solitude is fine, but you need someone to tell you that solitude is fine” is credited to Balzac and marked misattributed.
When, musing on companions gone,
We doubly feel ourselves alone.
I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.
Man struggles to find life outside himself, unaware that the life he is seeking is within him.”
The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom.
Converse with men makes sharp the glittering wit,
But God to man doth speak in solitude.
Wise men sometimes avoid the world, that they may not be surfeited with it.
Perfect solitude is when, for a whole day, no human eye has beheld your face.