“Be able to be alone. Lose not the advantage of solitude, and the society of thyself.”
“Solitude
Happy the man, whose wish and care
A few paternal acres bound,
Content to breathe his native air
In his own ground.
Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,
Whose flocks supply him with attire;
Whose trees in summer yield him shade,
In winter fire.
Blest, who can unconcern’dly find
Hours, days, and years, slide soft away
In health of body, peace of mind,
Quiet by day.
Sound sleep by night; study and ease
Together mix’d, sweet recreation,
And innocence, which most does please
With meditation.
Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;
Thus unlamented let me die;
Steal from the world, and not a stone
Tell where I lie.”
“The physiognomy of a deserted highway expresses solitude to a degree that is not reached by mere dales or downs, and bespeaks a tomb-like stillness more emphatic than that of glades and pools. The contrast of what is with what might be, probably accounts for this.”
Source: The Woodlanders
“Anyone can retire into a quiet place, wrote Evelyn Underhill, but it's the shutting of the door that makes the difference. Solitude is a time for stripping away everything in order to focus on God. (Matt 6:6)”
Source: God's Joyful Surprise: Finding Yourself Loved
“The greatest thing in the world is to know how to live to yourself.”
“Crime, too, means solitude, even if a thousand people join together to commit it.”
Source: Caligula and Three Other Plays
“Solitude is dangerous to reason, without being favourable to virtue: pleasures of some sort are necessary to the intellectual as to the corporeal health; and those who resist gaiety, will be likely for the most part to fall a sacrifice to appetite; for the solicitations of sense are always at hand, and a dram to a vacant and solitary person is a speedy and seducing relief.
Remember that the solitary mind is certainly luxurious, probably superstitious, and possibly mad: the mind stagnates for want of employment, grows morbid, and is extinguished like a candle in foul air.”
Source: Anecdotes of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. during the last twenty years of his life
“Wives, children, and goods must be had, and especially health, by him that can get it; but we are not so to set our hearts upon them that our happiness must have its dependence upon them; we must reserve a backshop, wholly our own and entirely free, wherein to settle our true liberty, our principal solitude and retreat. And in this we must for the most part entertain ourselves with ourselves, and so privately that no exotic knowledge or communication be admitted there; there to laugh and to talk, as if without wife, children, goods, train, or attendance, to the end that when it shall so fall out that we must lose any or all of these, it may be no new thing to be without them. We have a mind pliable in itself, that will be company; that has wherewithal to attack and to defend, to receive and to give: let us not then fear in this solitude to languish under an uncomfortable vacuity.”
Source: The Essays of Michael De Montaigne, Vol. 2 of 3 (Classic Reprint): Translated Into English, With Very Considerable Amendments and Improvements From the Most Accurate French Edition of Peter Coste
“Dost
Bir gece habersiz bize gel
Merdivenler gıcırdamasın
Öyle yorgunum ki hiç sorma
Sen halimden anlarsın
Sabahlara kadar oturup konuşalım
Kimse duymasın
Mavi bir gökyüzümüz olsun kanatlarımız
Dokunarak uçalım.
insanlardan buz gibi soğudum,
işte yalnız sen varsın
Öyle halsizim ki hiç sorma
Anlarsın.”
“Sometimes she wants to drift away like ocean waves and sometimes she wants to stay still like a river, wrapped in solitude.”