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.
Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character.
He who possesses a firm faith, although in solitude, is not alone.
Whosoever is delighted in solitude, is either a wild beast or a god.
It is better to dwell in the wilderness, than with a contentious and an angry woman.
Solitude is non-communication, the absence of others, the presence of a self sufficient to itself.
I am as one who is left alone at a banquet, the lights dead and the flowers faded.