The quote database

It tends to isolate them from each other, to concentrate every man's attention upon himself; and it lays open the soul to an inordinate love of material gratification.

Ordinary people are sociable and complaisant just from the very opposite feeling;--to bear others' company is easier for them than to bear their own.

The prime reason for social intercourse is mutual need; and as soon as that is satisfied, boredom drives people together once more.

It is the monotony of his own nature that makes a man find solitude intolerable.

all the misfortunes of men arise from one thing only, that they are unable to stay quietly in their own chamber

Nothing is so insupportable to man as to be completely at rest, without passion, without business, without diversion, without study.

This west coast makes me remember with pleasure the free, unbounded plains of Patagonia; yet, with the true spirit of contradiction, I cannot forget how sublime is the silence of the forest.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived

In society you will not find health, but in nature.

Reverie is a loose dreaming into which a man falls; meditation is a strong, purposeful thinking into which a man rises.

Every feature became more rigidly alpine, without, however, producing any chilling effect; for going to the mountains is like going home.

Let us tell ambition that it is she herself who gives us a taste of solitude; for what does she so much avoid as society?

Retire yourself into yourself, but first prepare yourself there to receive yourself: it were a folly to trust yourself in your own hands, if you cannot govern yourself.

Ambition is of all others the most contrary humour to solitude; glory and repose are things that cannot possibly inhabit in one and the same place.

Whereas having many friends puts people apart and severs and disunites them, by transferring and shifting the tie of friendship too frequently, and does not admit of a mixture and welding of goodwill by the diffusing and compacting of intimacy.

Society we must have; but let it be society, and not exchanging news, or eating from the same dish.

Now, to be properly enjoyed, a walking tour should be gone upon alone.

The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do, just as one pleases.