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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.

In the ages of equality all men are independent of each other, isolated and weak.

the need of society drives the human porcupines together--only to be mutually repelled by the many prickly and disagreeable qualities of their nature

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

Great minds are like eagles, and build their nest in some lofty solitude.

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone; and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.

The young should early be trained to bear being left alone; for it is a source of happiness and peace of mind.

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.

Peace of mind is impossible without a considerable amount of solitude.

There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that a man cannot forget,--but not himself, his own character.

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.

My heart is as dry as that spring sometimes proves in a thirsty August, when I revert to the space that is between us; a length of passage enough to render obsolete the phrases of our English letters before they can reach you.

How sickness enlarges the dimensions of a man's self to himself! he is his own exclusive object.

To be together is for us to be at once as free as in solitude, as gay as in company.

One may be happy to a good degree, I think, in a faithful friend, a moderate fortune, and a retired life; further than this I know nothing to wish; but if there be anything beyond it, I wish it you.

but to have the spleen, and to dream upon't, is a punishment I would not wish my greatest enemy

Presently, after this was at an end, my mother died, and I was left at liberty to mourn her loss awhile.

you would wonder at seeing how possible it is to live as secludedly in the midst of a multitude as in the centre of solitude

One must not avoid one's tests, although they constitute perhaps the most dangerous game one can play, and are in the end tests made only before ourselves and before no other judge.

For solitude is a virtue with us, as a sublime bent and bias to purity, which divines that in the contact of man and man--in society--it must be unavoidably impure.

A gloomy sensation of agonising, everlasting solitude and remoteness, took conscious form in his soul.

Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disfranchised