He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.

Yes! in the sea of life enisled, With echoing straits between us thrown, Dotting the shoreless watery wild, We mortal millions live alone.

Little do men perceive what solitude is, and how far it extendeth. For a crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love.

Those that want friends to open themselves unto are cannibals of their own hearts.

The person who tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being. His heart withers if it does not answer another heart. His mind shrinks away if he hears only the echoes of his own thoughts and finds no other inspiration.

If from society we learn to live, 'Tis Solitude should teach us how to die; It hath no flatterers.

To fly from, need not be to hate, mankind: All are not fit with them to stir and toil, Nor is it discontent to keep the mind Deep in its fountain.

Only solitary men know the full joys of friendship. Others have their family; but to a solitary and an exile his friends are everything.

Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong.

There are days when solitude is a heady wine that intoxicates you with freedom, others when it is a bitter tonic, and still others when it is a poison that makes you beat your head against the wall.