“It is far better to be alone, than to be in bad company.”
Solitude is not the same as loneliness, though they often get confused. This collection explores both — the ache of isolation and the quiet power of being comfortable in your own company. Some of these quotes will make you want to reach out to someone; others will make you want to sit with yourself a while longer.
“Look at the sky. We are not alone. The whole universe is friendly to us and conspires only to give the best to those who dream and work.”
“It is far better to be alone, than to be in bad company.”
“We are all sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life.”
“Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them. Leave them alone.”
“Woman is fine for her own satisfaction alone. No man will admire her the more, no woman will like her the better for it. Neatness and fashion are enough for the former, and a something of shabbiness or impropriety will be most endearing to the latter.”
“In the U.S. alone, weather disasters caused $50 billion in economic damages in 2010.”
“I have the handicap of being born with a special language to which I alone have the key.”
“I love my friends and family, but I also love it when they can't find me and I can spend all day reading or walking all alone, in silence, eight thousand miles away from everyone. All alone and unreachable in a foreign country is one my most favorite possible things to be.”
“Inside myself is a place where I live all alone and that is where I renew my springs that never dry up.”
“I alone of English writers have consciously set myself to make music out of what I may call the sound of sense.”
“It is strange to be known so universally and yet to be so lonely.”
“Only that thing is free which exists by the necessities of its own nature, and is determined in its actions by itself alone.”
“Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.”
“I think it's interesting that 'cologne' rhymes with 'alone.'”
“Should we find a second form of life right here on our doorstep, we could be confident that life is a truly cosmic phenomenon. If so, there may well be sentient beings somewhere in the galaxy wondering, as do we, if they are not alone in the universe.”
“The capacity for not feeling lonely can carry a very real price, that of feeling nothing at all.”