Quintilian Quotes

I enjoy my own thoughts sometimes.

There's a difference between loneliness and solitude. You pursue solitude, I think. But loneliness is a completely different isolating thing.

Then never less alone than when alone.

The great omission in American life is solitude; not loneliness, for this is an alienation that thrives most in the midst of crowds, but that zone of time and space, free from the outside pressures, which is the incubator of the spirit.

Woe unto him that is never alone, and cannot bear to be alone.

Solitude, I reflected, is the one deep necessity of the human spirit to which adequate recognition is never given in our codes. It is looked upon as a discipline or penance, but hardly ever as the indispensable, pleasant ingredient it is to ordinary life, and from this want of recognition come half our domestic troubles.

I want to be alone with my thought.

A crowd is not necessarily company, but neither need it necessarily prevent thought or disturb peace of mind.

What is needed is, in the end, simply this: solitude, great inner solitude.

My 'aloneness' is extremely valuable to me.

You may never be less alone than when you are alone.

In solitude, where we are least alone.

The great virtue of being alone is that your mind can go its own way.

I have never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.

I like my quiet time. There is a writer's sensibility in me sometimes, where I step back.

For now she need not think of anybody. She could be herself, by herself. And that was what now she often felt the need of - to think; well not even to think. To be silent; to be alone.

I must stay alone and know that I am alone to contemplate and feel nature in full.

Well, what do you owe yourself? Do you dare take time out to listen to the grass grow, or can you even afford the expense of getting far enough away from life's daily cacophony to hear it grow if you took the time?

Days I enjoy are days when nothing happens, When I have no engagements written on my block, When no one comes to disturb my inward peace, When no one comes to take me away from myself And turn me into a patchwork, a jig-saw puzzle, A broken mirror that once gave a whole reflection, Being so contrived that it takes too long a time To get myself back to myself when they have gone.

Not all of us are called to be hermits, but all of us need enough silence and solitude in our lives to enable the deeper voice of our own self to be heard at least occasionally.

I wondered why it was that places are so much lovelier when one is alone.

being alone never felt right. sometimes it felt good, but it never felt right.

Can we not do without the society of our gossip a little while, - have our own thoughts to cheer us?

There is much to be said for solitude.

Staying within the world of a novel gives us the ability to be quiet and alone, two skills that are disappearing faster than the polar icecaps.