What a commentary on our civilization, when being alone is considered suspect; when one has to apologize for it, make excuses, hide the fact that one practices it-like a secret vice!

It is in solitude that the works of hand, heart and mind are always conceived, and in solitude that individuality must be affirmed.

Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing, Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness; So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another, Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.

The nurse of full-grown souls is solitude.

A solitary, unused to speaking of what he sees and feels, has mental experiences which are at once more intense and less articulate than those of a gregarious man.

Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous-to poetry. But also, it gives birth to the opposite: to the perverse, the illicit, the absurd.

Solitude sometimes is best society, And short retirement urges sweet return.

Nature has presented us with a large faculty of entertaining ourselves alone; and often calls us to it, to teach us that we owe ourselves in part to society, but chiefly and mostly to ourselves.

Solitude is the playfield of Satan.

Life is for each man a solitary cell whose walls are mirrors.