This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Life is an island in an ocean of loneliness, an island whose rocks are hopes, whose trees are dreams, whose flowers are solitude, and whose brooks are thirst. Your life, my fellow men, is an island separated from all other islands and regions. No matter how many are the ships that leave your shores for other climes, no matter how many are the fleets that touch your coast, you remain a solitary island, suffering the pangs of loneliness and yearning for happiness. You are unknown to your fellow men and far removed from their sympathy and understanding." - Kahlil Gibran
"Solitude has soft, silky hands, but with strong fingers it grasps the heart and makes it ache with sorrow. Solitude is the ally of sorrow as well as a companion of spiritual exaltation." - Kahlil Gibran
"Worship does not require solitude." - Kahlil Gibran
"Your spirit’s life, my brother, is encompassed by loneliness, and were it not for that loneliness and solitude, you would not be you, nor would I be I. Were it not for this loneliness and solitude, I would come to believe on hearing your voice that is was my voice speaking; or seeing your face, that it was myself looking into a mirror." - Kahlil Gibran
"Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is the richness of self." - May Sarton, pen name of Eleanore Marie Sarton
"The poor attend to their own virtue in solitude." - Mencius, born Meng Ke or Ko NULL
"It is only in solitude, when it has broken the thick crust of shame that separates us from one another and separates us all from God, that we have no secrets from God; only in solitude do we raise our hearts to the Heart of the Universe; only in solitude does the redeeming hymn of supreme confession issue from our soul." -
"A book is the most delightful companion.. An inanimate thing, yet it talks... It stimulates your latent talents. There is in the world no friend more faithful and attentive, no teacher more proficient... It will join you in solitude, accompany you in exile, serve as a candle in the dark, and entertain you in you loneliness. It will do you good, and ask no favor in return. It gives, and does not take." - Moses ibn Ezra, fully Rabbi Moses ben Jacob ibn Ezra, known as ha-Sallah "Writer of penitential prayers"
"Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone, and the only one who seeks out another. His nature -if that word can be used in reference to man, who has ‘invented’ himself by saying ‘no’ to nature- consists in his longing to realize himself in another. Man is nostalgia and a search for communion. Therefore, when he is aware of himself he is aware of his lack of another, that is, of his solitude." - Octavio Paz, born Octavio Paz Lozano
"The thoughtful Soul to Solitude retires." - Omar Khayyám
"Language has created the word loneliness to express the pain of being alone, and the word solitude to express the glory of being alone." - Paul Tillich, fully Paul Johannes Tillich
"Loneliness can be conquered only by those who can bear solitude." - Paul Tillich, fully Paul Johannes Tillich
"Self-conceit is always the companion of solitude." - Plato NULL
"A good marriage is that in which each appoints the other guardian of his solitude. Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole and against a wide sky." - Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke
"Make your ego porous. Will is of little importance, complaining is nothing, fame is nothing. Openness, patience, receptivity, solitude is everything." - Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke
"I hold this to be the highest task for a bond between two people: that each protects the solitude of the other." - Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke
"It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion - it is easy in solitude to live after your own; but the great man is he who, in the midst of the world, keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend, the cold, obscure shelter where moult the wings which will bear it farther than suns and stars. He who would inspire and lead his race must be defended from traveling with the souls of other men, from living, breathing, reading, and writing in the daily time-worn yoke of their opinions." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The great man is he who, in the midst of the crowd, keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"It is very easy in the world to live by the opinion of the world. It is very easy in solitude to be self-centered. But the finished man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. I knew a man of simple habits and earnest character who never put out his hands nor opened his lips to court the public, and having survived several rotten reputations of younger men, honor came at last and sat down with him upon his private bench from which he had never stirred." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Respect the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend, the cold, obscure shelter where molt the wings which bear it farther than suns and stars. He who would inspire and lead his race must be defended from traveling with the souls of their men, from living, breathing, reading, and writing in the daily, time worn yoke of their opinions." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The Sunday is the core of our civilization, dedicated to thought and reverence. It invites to the noblest solitude and to the noblest society." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Who hears music, feels his solitude peopled at once." - Robert Browning
"Solitude, the sly enemy that doth separate a man from well-doing." - Philip Sidney, fully Sir Philip Sidney
"He who needs have company must needs have sometimes bad company. Be able to be alone; lose not the advantage of solitude and the society of thyself; nor be only content but delight to be alone and single with Omnipotency. He who is thus prepared, the day is not uneasy, nor the night black to him. Darkness may bound his eyes, not his imagination. In his bed he may lie, like Pompey and his sons, in all quarters of the earth; may speculate the universe, and enjoy the whole world in the hermitage of himself." -
"Leisure and solitude are the best effect of riches, because mother of thought. Both are avoided by most rich men, who seek company and business, which are signs of being weary of themselves." - William Temple, fully Sir William Temple, 1st Baronet
"Hell is oneself. Hell is alone, and the other figures in it merely projections. There is nothing to escape from and nothing to escape to. One is always alone... the final desolation of solitude in the phantasmal world of imagination, shuffling memories, and desires." - T. S. Eliot, fully Thomas Sterns Eliot
"Solitude, though it may be silent as light, is like light, the mightiest of agencies: for solitude is essential to man. All men come into their world alone; all leave it alone." - Thomas De Quincey, fully Thomas Penson De Quincey
"Solitude, though it may be silent as light, is like light, the mightiest of agencies; for solitude is essential to man." - Thomas De Quincey, fully Thomas Penson De Quincey
"Suppleness is an extremely important quality of soul... When you find tolerance in yourself for the competing demands of the soul, life becomes more complicated, but also more interesting. An example might be the contradictory needs of solitude and social life." - Thomas Moore
"The happiest of all lives is a busy solitude." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
"The heart beats louder and the soul hears quicker in silence and solitude." - Wendell Phillips
"Men fear silence as they fear solitude, because both give them a glimpse of the terror of life's nothingness." - André Maurois, born born Emile Salomon Wilhelm Herzog
"True character arises from a deeper well than religion. It is the internalization of moral principles of a society, augmented by those tenets personally chosen by the individual, strong enough to endure through trials of solitude and adversity. The principles are fitted together into what we call integrity, literally the integrated self, wherein personal decisions feel good and true. Character is in turn the enduring source of virtue. It stands by itself and excites admiration in others." -
"True character arises from a deeper well than religion. It is the internalization of moral principles of a society, augmented by those tenets personally chosen by the individual, strong enough to endure through trials of solitude and adversity. The principles are fitted together into what we call integrity, literally the integrated self, wherein personal decisions feel good and true. Character is in turn the enduring source of virtue. It stands by itself and excites admiration in others" - E. O. Wilson, fully Edward Osborne "E.O." Wilson
"As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness" - Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
"For the total development of the human being, solitude as a means of cultivating sensitivity becomes a necessity. One has to know what it means to be alone, what it is to meditate, what it is to die; and the implications of solitude, of meditation, of death, can be known only by seeking them out. These implications cannot be taught, they must be learnt. One can indicate, but learning by what is indicated is not the experiencing of solitude or meditation. To experience what is solitude and what is meditation, one must be in in a state of inquiry; only a mind that is in a state of inquiry is capable of learning. But when inquiry is suppressed by previous knowledge, or by the authority and experience of another, then learning becomes mere imitation, and imitation causes a human being to repeat what is learnt without experiencing it." - Jiddu Krishnamurti
"God is absence. God is the solitude of man. " - Jean-Paul Sartre
"The contemplation of night should lead to elevating rather than to depressing ideas. Who can fix his mind on transitory and earthly things, in presence of those glittering myriads of worlds; and who can dread death or solitude in the midst of this brillings, animated universe, composed of countless suns and worlds, all full of light and life and motion?" - Jean Paul, born Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, aka Jean Paul Richter
"We could not endure solitude were it not for the powerful companionship of hope, or of some unseen one." - Jean Paul, born Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, aka Jean Paul Richter
"Often we must go outside society to confirm that we live inside the continuum of creation. One seeks solitude to know relatedness." - Joan Halifax, fully Roshi Joan Jiko Halifax
"The whole value of solitude depends upon oneself; it may be a sanctuary or a prison, a haven of repose or a place of punishment, a heaven or a hell, as we ourselves make it." - John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury, 4th Baronet, Sir John Lubbock
"Modern man’s discovery of the fundamental aloneness and solitude in a universe indifferent to his fate is due to an expectation that it was in the universe where care for what is ultimately precious was to be found. He now suffers from the collapse of naïve self-deception and oversimplification. Our era marks the end of simplification, the end of personal exclusiveness, the end of self-defense through aloofness, the end of a sense of security. " - Abraham Joshua Heschel
"The secret of solitude is that there is no solitude." - Joseph Cook