Top 61 Good Solitude Quotes
#1. Solitude is only a good idea if you have the right people along to share it.
Jack McDevitt
#2. Far from the madding crowd is a mistake on a honeymoon ... Solitude! Wherever you are, if you're on a honeymoon, you'll get quite as much solitude as is good for you every twenty-four hours. Constant change and distraction
that's what wants arranging for. Solitude will arrange itself.
Arnold Bennett
#3. Solitude in the presence of natural beauty and grandeur is the cradle of thought and aspirations which are not only good for the individual, but which society can ill do without.
John Stuart Mill
#4. I usually find myself hiking in a place that not a lot of people go hiking, just trying to find some solitude. I like being out in the middle of nowhere. Not always, but it's a good place to go to just reflect and think, and it's something I really enjoy.
Rami Malek
#5. The good citizen when he opens his door in the evening must be banker, golfer, husband, father; not a nomad wandering the desert, a mystic staring at the sky, a debauchee in the slums of San Francisco, a soldier heading a revolution, a pariah howling with skepticism and solitude.
Virginia Woolf
#6. You have to free yourself from your mental conditioning through association with the holy, through doing good works, through meditating, through laughter, through love and through solitude.
Frederick Lenz
#7. When I'm writing solitude feels very good. But when I'm not writing it feels lonely ... Having a big family solves that problem.
Michael Chabon
#8. I had already found that it was not good to be alone, and so made companionship with what there was around me, sometimes with the universe and sometimes with my own insignificant self; but my books were always my friends, let fail all else.
Joshua Slocum
#9. For the rest, silence or good music, not much food, a lot of solitude, walks on the Heath, the time to think while others ... well, often fall apart. Not so bad, not so bad at all. Being queer and self-sufficient is the best present at this season.
Will Self
#10. My alone feels so good, I'll only have you if you're sweeter than my solitude.
Warsan Shire
#11. He was for the open lands and long rides. That this seemed a good fate was something he would marvel over later, in his solitude.
Stephen King
#13. Colonel Aureliano Buendia could understand only that the secret of good old age is simply an honorable pact with solitude- 205
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
#14. A good marriage is that in which each appoints the other guardian of his solitude
Rainer Maria Rilke
#15. In marriage, the point is not to achieve a rapid union by tearing down and toppling all boundaries. Rather, in a good marriage, each person appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude and thus shows him the greatest faith he can bestow.
Rainer Maria Rilke
#16. Father and Ivy used to go off on their excursions, never knowing that I was relieved when they were gone. That I'd wear my nightgowns all day and read from dawn till dusk.
Suzanne Palmieri
#17. You are right; I am not good at moving in society. Be merciful. You do not understand me; I live in the woods by choice
that is my happiness. Here, where I am all alone, it can hurt no one that I am as I am; but when I go among others, I have to use all my will power to be as I should.
Knut Hamsun
#18. It is not good for man to cherish a solitary ambition. Unless there be those around him, by whose example he may regulate himself, his thoughts, desires, and hopes will become extravagant, and he the semblance, perhaps the reality, of a madman
Nathaniel Hawthorne
#19. Cave is a good word ... The memory of a cave I used to know was always in my mind, with its lofty passages, its silence and solitude, its shrouding gloom, its sepulchral echoes, its fleeting lights, and more than all, its sudden revelations ...
Mark Twain
#20. I've seen women-and men too, sometimes-as canna bear the sound of their own thoughts, and they maybe dinna make such good matches with those who can.
Diana Gabaldon
#21. Consider well before you immerse yourself in solitude whether your own company will be good for you.
Marie Von Ebner-Eschenbach
#22. Only in intimate communion with solitude may man find himself. Solitude is good company and my architecture is not for those who fear or shun it.
Luis Barragan
#23. Making good use of our limited time - the limited time from birth to death, as well as our limited time each day - is the key to developing inner steadiness and calm.
Pema Chodron
#24. You get good at being by yourself and you're condemned to a life sentence of solitude. You think, "Wait a minute! I should have been a tap dancer or something". But in my life, I feel like I take my stories to people orally.
Sandra Cisneros
#25. The height, the deity of man is to be self-sustained, to need no gift, no foreign force. Society is good when it does not violate me, but best when it is likest to solitude.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#27. Coldplay frontman Chris Martin has found his niche in making the sound of solitude a triumphant experience, like Good Will Hunting: The Musical.
Chris Martin
#28. I think being an only child created in me a degree of self-reliance, which I'm glad of. It made me perfectly happy with my own company and perhaps was good conditioning for the protracted solitude of writing books as slowly as I do.
Alan Hollinghurst
#29. I like solitude. It is when you truly hear and speak your natural, unadulterated mind, and out comes your most stupid self as well as your most intelligent self. It is when you realize who you are and the extents of the good and the evils which you are capable of.
Criss Jami
#30. Isolation, but it's a good vulnerability. Humbling. I actually seek out solitude.
Brendan Dooling
#31. It is in your power to withdraw yourself whenever you desire. Perfect tranquility within consists in the good ordering of the mind, the realm of your own.
Marcus Aurelius
#32. A good conscience fears no witness, but a guilty conscience is solicitous even in solitude. If we do nothing but what is honest, let all the world know it. But if otherwise, what does it signify to have nobody else know it, so long as I know it myself? Miserable is he who slights that witness.
Seneca The Younger
#33. Go, little Book! From this my solitude
I cast thee on the Waters,
go thy ways:
And if, as I believe, thy vein be good,
The World will find thee after many days.
Be it with thee according to thy worth:
Go, little Book; in faith I send thee forth.
Robert Southey
#34. There is so much obligatory generosity to being a good mother, a good wife, a good friend. Solitude is an acceptable form of selfishness.
Anna Quindlen
#35. Every day solitude for a particular time period is a good way to refresh physically and is a great opportunity to rise spiritually!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#36. Solitude, seeming a sanctuary, proves a grave; a sepulchre in which the living lie, where all good qualities grow sick and die
William Cowper
#37. Solitude is good in the evening. Dublin is a quiet city when you get to a certain age, when your friends settle down and have kids. Nothing much happens here.
Colm Toibin
#38. Usually, we think that "good" loneliness is what we call "solitude," the choice of some alone-time. But I want to press on with the negative dimension, to look at ways in which a fundamental sense of being separated from others shapes who we are and why.
Thomas L. Dumm
#39. Solitude is naught and society is naught. Alternate them and the good of each is seen.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#40. However softly we speak, God is so close to us that he can hear us; nor do we need wings to go in search of him, but merely to seek solitude and contemplate him within ourselves, without being surprised to find such a good Guest there.
John Of The Cross
#41. Solitude is very important in my work as a mode of inspiration, but isolation is not good in this respect. I am not writing poetry about isolation.
Wislawa Szymborska
#42. My public life is before you; and I know you will believe me when I say, that when I sit down in solitude to the labours of my profession, the only questions I ask myself are, What is right? What is just? What is for the public good?
Joseph Howe
#43. I had to learn - since I'm divorced now and everyone is like, 'Oh my God, you're single, what's going on?' - that if I don't like to spend time with myself, how can I ask someone else to enjoy spending time with me? I'm getting to learn how to enjoy my solitude and have a good time.
Gabrielle Union
#44. Nothing can supply the place of books. They are cheering or soothing companions in solitude, illness, affliction. The wealth of both continents would not compensate for the good they impart.
William Henry Channing
#45. I have found nothing half so good / As my long-planned half solitude, / Where I can sit up half the night / With some friend that has the wit ...
William Butler Yeats
#46. But give thanks, at least, that you still have Frost's poems; and when you feel the need of solitude, retreat to the companionship of moon, water, hills and trees. Retreat, he reminds us, should not be confused with escape. And take these poems along for good luck!
Robert Graves
#47. Letter writing is the only device combining solitude with good company.
George Gordon Byron
#48. Much better stay in company!
To love you must have someone else,
Giving requires a legatee,
Good neighbours need whole parishfuls
Of folk to do it on - in short,
Our virtues are all social; if,
Deprived of solitude, you chafe,
It's clear you're not the virtuous sort.
Philip Larkin
#49. It is good to be alone, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult should be one more reason to do it.
Rainer Maria Rilke
#50. God is the solitude of men. There was only me: I alone decided to commit Evil; alone, I invented Good. I am the one who cheated, I am the one who performed miracles, I am the one accusing myself today, I alone can absolve myself; me, the man.
Jean-Paul Sartre
#51. Regardless of how dead we feel in a crowd, we cling to the uniquely American assumption that associating is good and necessary and solitude is suspect.
Laurie A. Helgoe
#53. Being alone never felt right. sometimes it felt good, but it never felt right.
Charles Bukowski
#54. Come let us mock at the good
That fancied goodness might be gay,
And sick of solitude
Might proclaim a holiday:
Wind shrieked and where are they?
William Butler Yeats
#55. Next to a shot of some good, habit-forming narcotic, there is nothing like travelling alone as a 'builder-upper.
Robert Benchley
#56. What good is a Bill of Rights that does not include the right to play, to wander, to explore, the right to stillness and solitude, to discovery and physical freedom?
Edward Abbey
#57. Still, Luce held firm to the belief that quiet and solitude were good for you, offering peace, or at least hope for peace.
Charles Frazier
#58. If that which we have found is the corruption of solitude, then what can men wish for save corruption? If this is the great evil of being alone, than what is good and what is evil?
Ayn Rand
#59. I've discovered it is not sufficient simply to try to take time for quietness but that I must, with all diligence, make time. Whatever keeps me from prayer, solitude, and the Bible, however good it appears, is my enemy if I am to be God's devoted friend and follower.
Tommy Barnett
#60. Solitude is an essential element for the spiritual health of a child. If we only stimulate our children - keep them busy with endless stories with no space to be alone - that's not good.
Henri Nouwen
#61. Arcadio had seen her many times working in her parents' small food store but he had never taken a good look at her because she had that rare virtue of never existing completely except at the opportune moment.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
