#solitude

Be able to be alone. Lose not the advantage of solitude, and the society of thyself. ↗

— Thomas Browne

#advantage #alone #lose #society #solitude

People who abhor solitude may abhor company almost as much. ↗

— Mason Cooley

#almost #company #may #much #people

Fortunately art is a community effort - a small but select community living in a spiritualized world endeavoring to interpret the wars and the solitudes of the flesh. ↗

— Allen Ginsberg

#community #effort #endeavoring #flesh #fortunately

The best thinking has been done in solitude. The worst has been done in turmoil. ↗

— Thomas A. Edison

#best #done #solitude #thinking #turmoil

Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character. ↗

— James Russell Lowell

#character #needful #society #solitude #wholesome

I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion. ↗

— Henry David Thoreau

#fall #solitude #fall

I wondered why it was that places are so much lovelier when one is alone. How commonplace and stupid it would be if I had a friend now, sitting beside me, someone I had known at school, who would say: “By-the-way, I saw old Hilda the other day. You remember her, the one who was so good at tennis. She’s married, with two children.” And the bluebells beside us unnoticed, and the pigeons overhead unheard. I did not want anyone with me. Not even Maxim. If Maxim had been there I should not be lying as I was now, chewing a piece of grass, my eyes shut. I should have been watching him, watching his eyes, his expression. Wondering if he liked it, if he was bored. Wondering what he was thinking. Now I could relax, none of these things mattered. Maxim was in London. How lovely it was to be alone again. ↗

— Daphne du Maurier

#solitude #love

Lonely was much better than alone. ↗

— Toni Morrison

#solitude #lonely

there is only one solitude, and it is vast, heavy, difficult to bear, and almost everyone has hours when he would gladly exchange it for any kind of sociability, however trivial or cheap, for the tiniest outward agreement with the first person who comes along.... ↗

— Rainer Maria Rilke

#solitude #poets

And you should not let yourself be confused in your solitude by the fact that there is something in you that wants to move out of it. ↗

— Rainer Maria Rilke

#solitude #poets