Henry David Thoreau Quotes

Society than solitude is worse, And man to man is still the greatest curse.

No doubt solitude is wholesome, but so is abstinence after a surfeit. The true life of man is in society.

I love people, and I love to be with people and to make music with people, but my natural state is to revert back to being by myself in my house, which is cool because that's where I practice and write and listen and study.

We are so mired in the complexity of our reactions to other people that when you come across someone who is asocial, there is a simplicity that is refreshing.

I think I'm a bit of a loner, and actually quite enjoy alone time; friends become people you want to actually spend time with rather than people who are just in your life. I think it's a nice place to be.

I dislike society because conversation exhausts my brain more than silent thought - again, I cannot hold my water long enough for a prolonged conversation.

I'm really shy, man. I don't really talk much. I just read, sit in my room and just read graphic novels because I don't have many friends and many people that like to talk to me.

I like being alone. I need a lot of alone time as a human. And especially on a movie set when you're around people all day long.

For me, I value connection a lot, talking to people and connecting. Don't get me wrong: I enjoy having my own time, but I think it's really important to have that connection, so living on Mars would be a struggle for me.

I'm not a social person. I don't like parties. I like small groups, we discuss ideas in my office.

I'm not a super social person.

As an introverted kid who lived in the middle of nowhere, my stories made up the whole of my social life. That meant that while other kids cultivated hobbies like skateboarding or playing the piano, I sat at home scribbling in notebooks.

For me, it's always been draining to be around people for too long because I'm naturally a pretty expressionless person. From an early age, I found being alone incredibly liberating.

People are really surprised when they meet me that I'm a recluse. People think I'm very gregarious and outgoing - and I am - I'm thinking about writing a book about it called 'The Gregarious Recluse.' How the more that you put me out there in front of audiences, the more that when I have down time I have to disappear.

I am social at times and sometimes, I want my privacy. There are days when I am at my chirpiest best and there are times when I wish to be left alone.

When it comes to our relationship with loneliness, specifically, it's important to understand how our relative introversion or extroversion informs our preference for social interaction.

I enjoy being out; I like being around people, but at a certain point in time, I kind of run out of charming, and I'm ready to go home, and I'm very comfortable alone.

I definitely enjoy my time by myself - and that's kind of the weird thing about touring; you're kind of constantly surrounded by people - but I actually do enjoy going out and doing things and being around people.

From an early age she had developed the art of being alone and generally preferred her own company to anyone else’s. She read books at enormous speed and judged them entirely on her ability to remove her from her material surroundings. In almost all the unhappiest days of her life she had been able to escape from her own inner world by living temporarily in someone else’s, and on the two or three occasions that she had been too upset to concentrate she had been desolate.

Most people leave work at the end of the day so they can surround themselves with people and talk, but those are both things I do all day anyway! So I tend to seek out peace in my private time.

When you live on your own for a long time, however, your personality changes because you go so much into yourself you lose the ability to be social, to understand what is and isn't normal behavior. There is an entire world inside yourself, and if you let yourself, you can get so deep inside it you will forget the way to the surface. Other people keep our souls alive, just like food and water does with our body.

If you can't stand solitude, perhaps others find you boring as well.

I stood lonely enough, but to that feeling of isolation I was accustomed: it did not oppress me much.

I am not looking for a friend; if I want a friend I'd buy a dog.

As for the dispute about solitude and society, any comparison is impertinent. It is an idling down on the plane at the base of a mountain, instead of climbing steadily to its top.