Solitude

Solitude is the reaction of the soul without an object and without a product.
~ William Rounseville (W.R.) Alger, The Solitudes of Nature and of Man, or, The Loneliness of Human Life (1867). Part II. The Solitudes of Man. Physical Solitude and Spiritual Loneliness

There is more loneliness in life than there is communication.
~ William Rounseville (W.R.) Alger, The Solitudes of Nature and of Man, or, The Loneliness of Human Life (1867). Part I. The Solitudes of Nature. Gregariousness and Solitariness

A day on the Hills! -- true king am I,
In my solitude, public to earth and sky.
~ William Allingham, from Songs Ballads and Stories (1877). Day and Night Songs. Our Mountain

Where Day and Night and Day go by,
And bring no touch of human sound.
~ William Allingham, from Day and Night Songs (1854). The Ruined Chapel

Some times I need to apologize, sometimes I need to admit that I ain't right, sometimes I should just keep my mouth shut, or only say hello, sometimes I still feel I'm walking alone.
~ Billie Joe Armstrong

And I alone of all mankind
Were left in loneliness behind.
~ William Barnes, from Poems, Partly of Rural Life in National English (1846). A Winter Night

'Tis the heart's voice that fills the solitude!
~ William Beattie, Polynesia; or, Missionary Toils and Triumphs in the South Seas (1839). Part the Second

These descents of mine beneath the sea seemed to partake of a real cosmic character. First of all there was the complete and utter loneliness and isolation, a feeling wholly unlike the isolation felt when removed from fellow men by mere distance. ... It was a loneliness more akin to a first venture upon the moon or Venus.
~ Charles William ("Will") Beebe

I'm a loner as a person, but then I always was, even as a child.
~ Bill Bixby, interview with Yvonne-Wyatt Rees, The Incredible Success of Bill Bixby (c. 1980).

Everything that lives
Lives not alone, nor for itself.
~ William Blake, from The Book of Thel (1789).

[T]he adventurer is an individualist and an egotist, a truant from obligations. His road is solitary, there is no room for company on it. What he does, he does for himself. His motive may be simple greed.
~ William Bolitho, Twelve Against the Gods (1929). Introduction

You know I'm so lonesome
Way these blues keep doggin' me
Yeah baby but that's all right
I will be up someday.
~ William Lee Conley ("Big Bill") Broonzy, Big Bill Blues (Song, 1932).

He who, from zone to zone,
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone,
Will lead my steps aright.
~ William Cullen Bryant, from Poems (1821). To a Waterfowl (originally printed in the North American Review: 1817; written in 1815)

[L]et me often to these solitudes
Retire, and in thy presence reassure
My feeble virtue.
~ William Cullen Bryant, from Poems (1832 edition). Forest Hymn (written in 1825)

While glow the heavens with the last steps of day,
Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue
Thy solitary way!
~ William Cullen Bryant, from Poems (1821). To a Waterfowl (originally printed in the North American Review: 1817; written in 1815)

One measure of a man is his capacity for enduring solitude.
~ (William) Bliss Carman, The Kinship of Nature (1903). Solitary the Thrush

He had the uneasy manner of a man who is not among his own kind, and who has not seen enough of the world to feel that all people are in some sense his own kind.
~ Willa Sibert Cather, The Song of the Lark (1915). Part I. Friends of Childhood. Chapter XII

He seemed to be at the root of the matter; Desire under all desires, Truth under all truths. He seemed to know, among other things, that he was solitary and must always be so; he had never married, never been a father. He was earth, and would return to earth.
~ Willa Sibert Cather, The Professor's House (1925). Book II: The Professor, Chapter 2

Where are the loves that we have loved before
When once we are alone, and shut the door?
~ Willa Sibert Cather, from April Twilights (1903). L'Envoi

True friends have no solitary joy or sorrow.
~ William Ellery Channing (D.D.), in Dr. Channing's Note-book (1887). Friendship

To Fancy we are sometimes company,
And solitude's the friendliest face we see.
~ William Ellery Channing, the younger, from Thoreau, the Poet-Naturalist (1873). Memorial Verses, VII: Stillriver, The Winter Walk

While we are not and cannot become the world's policeman, neither can we become a prisoner of world events, isolated and tucked safely away in a continental cocoon.
~ William S. Cohen, Statement to the Senate Armed Service Committee (22 January 1997).

How sweet, how passing sweet, is solitude!
But grant me still a friend in my retreat,
Whom I may whisper, Solitude is sweet.
~ William Cowper, from Poems by William Cowper of the Inner Temple, Esq. (1782). Retirement

I am out of humanity's reach.
I must finish my journey alone,
Never hear the sweet music of speech;
I start at the sound of my own.
~ William Cowper, Verses Supposed to be Written by Alexander Selkirk (1782).

O Solitude! where are the charms
That sages have seen in thy face?
Better dwell in the midst of alarms
Than reign in this horrible place.
~ William Cowper, Verses Supposed to be Written by Alexander Selkirk (1782).

Oh for a lodge in some vast wilderness,
Some boundless contiguity of shade,
Where rumour of oppression and deceit,
Of unsuccessful or successful war,
Might never reach me more!
~ William Cowper, The Task (1785). Book II. The Time-Piece

Mother Hubbard, you see, was old: there being no mention of others, we may presume she was alone; a widow -- a friendless, old, solitary widow. Yet did she dispair? Did she sit down and weep, or read a novel, or wring her hands? No! She went to the cupboard.
~ William Ulick O'Connor Cuffe, Mock Sermon: Old Mother Hubbard (1877).

I also love a quiet place
That's green, away from all mankind;
A lonely pool, and let a tree
Sigh with her bosom over me.
~ William Henry (W.H.) Davies, from Farewell to Poesy (1910). The Kingfisher

The world is full of horrors, falsehoods, slights;
Woods' silent shades have only true delights.
~ William Drummond (of Hawthornden), from Poems: Amorous, Funerall, Divine, Pastorall, in Sonnets, Songs, Sextains, Madrigals (1616). Urania; or, Spiritual Poems

Thrice happy he, who by some shady grove,
Far from the clamorous world, doth live his own;
Though solitary, who is not alone,
But doth converse with that eternal love.
~ William Drummond (of Hawthornden), from Flowers of Zion; or Spiritual Poems (1623). The Praise of a Solitary Life

[I]n his heart he is a solitary individual, pitted heroically against the world.
~ William James "Will" Durant, The Story of Civilization, Volume I (1935). Our Oriental Heritage

The sea, unmated creature, tired and lone,
Makes on its desolate sands eternal moan.
~ Frederick William Faber, The Sorrowful World.

Knowing not grieving remembers a thousand savage and lonely streets.
~ William Faulkner, Light in August (1932).

And I alone of human birth
Seemed all that walked the soundless earth.
~ William Freeland, from A Birth Song: And Other Poems (1882). Dawn

Give me a nook and a book,
And let the proud world spin around.
~ William Freeland, from A Birth Song: And Other Poems (1882). A Nook and a Book

I went back to my lounge chair. Alone.
~ William Goldman, The Princess Bride (1973). Introduction

People have become so empty that they can't even entertain themselves. They have to pay other people to amuse them, to make them laugh, to try to make them feel warm and happy and comfortable for a few minutes, to try to lose that awful, frightening, hollow feeling--that terrible, dreaded feeling of being lost and alone.
~ Billy Graham

Leisure and time and the varying mood
Are waiting beyond in the solitude.
~ William Griffith, from Candles in the Sun (1921). Tramping

On the road, the lonely road,
Under the cold white moon,
Under the ragged trees he strode;
He whistled and shifted his weary load --
Whistled a foolish tune.
~ William Wallace Harney, from The Spirit of the South (1909). The Stab

I like solitude, when I give myself up to it, for the sake of solitude.
~ William Hazlitt, in New Monthly Magazine (January 1822). On Going a Journey

So I asked him to play "Trav'lin' All Alone." That came closer than anything to the way I felt. And some part of it must have come across. The whole joint quieted down. If someone had dropped a pin, it would have sounded like a bomb. When I finished, everybody in the joint was crying in their beer, and I picked thirty-eight bucks up off the floor ...
~ Billie Holiday

We're company enough for ourselves.
~ William Dean Howells, The Landlord at Lion's Head (1897). VIII

No more fiendish punishment could be devised, were such a thing physically possible, than that one should be turned loose in society and remain absolutely unnoticed by all the members thereof.
~ William James, The Principles of Psychology (1890). Vol. 1. Chapter X: The Consciousness of Self

Half the pleasure of solitude, it has been remarked, arises from our having a friend at hand to whom we can say, How delightful this retirement is!
~ William Jay, Morning Exercises for the Closet: For Every Day in the Year (1828). Feb. 12

I don't care what you say anymore, this is my life
Go ahead with your own life and leave me alone.
~ Billy Joel, in 52nd Street (1978 album). My Life

Some people sleep all alone every night
Instead of taking a lover to bed
Some people find that it's easier to hate
Than to wait anymore.
~ Billy Joel, in An Innocent Man (1983 album). An Innocent Man

They're sharing a drink they call loneliness
But it's better than drinking alone.
~ Billy Joel, in Piano Man (1973 album). Piano Man

Try finding a place where it's so quiet, you can hear the earth turn round its axis.
~ Wim Kan

Nowhere can a person find greater solitude than alone in flight.
~ William Langewiesche, published in The Atlantic Monthly (December 1993). The Turn

He did not live, he observed life from a window, and too often was inclined to content himself with no more than what his friends told him they saw when they looked out of a window ...
~ W. Somerset Maugham, from A Writer's Notebook (1949). 1937 entry

Sometimes I've thought of an island lost in a boundless sea, where I could live in some hidden valley, among strange trees, in silence. There I think I could find what I want.
~ W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence (1919).

We seek pitifully to convey to others the treasures of our heart, but they have not the power to accept them, and so we go lonely, side by side but not together, unable to know our fellows and unknown by them.
~ W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence (1919).

Atheism leads not to badness but only to an incurable sadness and loneliness.
~ William Pepperell (W.P.) Montague, Belief Unbound, a Promethean Religion for the Modern World (1930).

When a writer knows home in his heart, his heart must remain subtly apart from it. He must always be a stranger to the place he loves, and its people.
~ Willie Morris, in Life magazine (June 1981). Coming on Back

The lonely one offers his hand too quickly to whomever he encounters.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

No matter how many there may be in our family, no matter how many friends we may have, we are in a certain sense forced to lead a lonely life, because we have all the days of our existence to live with ourselves.
~ William Lyon ("Billy") Phelps, Happiness (August 1927).

Let's put it this way: I was a mad man. And I'm saying, hell, a mad man, he should just stay at home. There ain't no use trying to get out there and talk to nobody, because there ain't nobody listening. So I stayed to myself ...
~ Wilson Pickett, The Edmonton Sun (11 August 2000). 'Wicked Pickett' is a new man

Again I repaired to the park and sat in the moon shade. I thought and thought, and wondered why none could tell me what I asked for.
~ William Sydney Porter (O. Henry), from The Voice of the City: Further Stories of the Four Million (1908). The Voice of the City

The lonesomest thing in all the world is a soul when it is making ready to go on its mysterious, far journey.
~ William Sydney Porter (O. Henry), from The Trimmed Lamp, and Other Stories of the Four Million (1907). The Last Leaf

Cultivate solitude and quiet and a few sincere friends, rather than mob merriment, noise and thousands of nodding acquaintances.
~ William Powell

We never knock, for nobody's there--
Just me and my shadow, all alone and feeling blue.
~ Billy Rose, Me and My Shadow (1927 song)

While the train was going by, I knew that a man will go away without ever having reached anywhere, and never will the image of loveliness just beyond all things, all ends and edges, over and above and within, cease to be in his sleep until he is truly one who is no longer alive, and no longer able to sleep at all.
~ William Saroyan, in The Saroyan Special: Selected Short Stories (1948). My Home, My Home

And I alone remain idle and free.
~ William Bell Scott, from Poems (1854). Sunday Morning Alone

I feel as if I was
The only living thing
On all this blighted earth;
And so I frowst and shrink,
And crouching by my hearth,
I hear the thoughts I think.
~ Robert William Service, Ballads of a Cheechako (1909). The Telegraph Operator

I myself am best
When least in company.
~ William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night. Act I, scene iv

Leave me alone;
For I must think of that which company
Would not be friendly to.
~ William Shakespeare, King Henry VIII. Act V, scene i

Society, is no comfort
To one not sociable.
~ William Shakespeare, Cymbeline. Act IV, scene ii

The saying is true, "The empty vessel makes the greatest sound."
~ William Shakespeare, King Henry V. Act IV, scene iv

[M]y heart is a lonely hunter that hunts on a lonely hill.
~ William Sharp (as Fiona MacLeod), From the Hills of Dream: Mountain Songs and Island Runes (1896). From the Heart of a Woman. The Lonely Hunter

I hear the little children of the wind
Crying solitary in lonely places.
~ William Sharp (as Fiona MacLeod), from Poems and Dramas (1910). Through The Ivory Gate. Little Children of the Wind

I want to live the perfect life. The only way to live the perfect life is to live it in seclusion. I have always hated crowds.
~ William James "Billy" Sidis, quoted in The Prodigy (1986).

Yes, solitude is wholesome, very wholesome, -- when we need a respite.
~ William Gilmore Simms, Egeria: Or, Voices of Thought and Counsel for the Woods and Wayside (1853).

Lonely, lonely, lonely -- your spirit's sinkin' down
You find you're not the only stranger in this town.
~ Billy Squier, in Don't Say No (1981 album). Lonely Is The Night

Lonely is the night when you find yourself alone.
Your demons come to light and your mind is not your own.
~ Billy Squier, in Don't Say No (1981 album). Lonely Is The Night

Man does not become lonely because of circumstances, he makes himself lonely.
~ Wilhelm Stekel, Marriage at the Crossroads (1931).

Solitude is the mother of greatness. He who would transcend must no longer measure himself by the common standard.
~ Wilhelm Stekel, Disguises of Love: Psycho-analytical Sketches (1922 translation). Chapter XIX. Brevities

Like a felon suddenly thrown into solitary confinement, I found myself feeding off the unburned fat of inward resources I barely knew I possessed.
~ William Styron, Sophie's Choice (1979).

It is a rather pleasant experience to be alone in a bank at night.
~ William "Willie" Sutton, in I, Willie Sutton (1953). Chapter V. On My Own and Into Sing Sing

I can truly say, that, among many great employments that have fallen to my share, I have never asked or sought for any one of them, but often endeavoured to escape from them, into the ease and freedom of a private scene, where a man may go his own way and his own pace, in the common paths or circles of life.
~ Sir William Temple, 1st Baronet, in The Works of Sir William Temple, Bart., Vol. I (1731). Miscellanea. Part II. Upon the gardens of Epicurus, or, Of gardening in the year 1685

As we go on the downhill journey, the milestones are gravestones, and on each more and more names are written; unless haply you live beyond man's common age, when friends have dropped off, and, tottering, and feeble, and unpitied, you reach the terminus alone.
~ William Makepeace Thackeray, Roundabout Papers (1863). On Letts' Diary

[W]e are most of us very lonely in the world. You who have any who love you, cling to them, and thank God.
~ William Makepeace Thackeray, Lovel the Widower (1861). Chapter VI: Cecilia's Successor

My overcoat is worn out; my shirts also are worn out. And I ask to be allowed to have a lamp in the evening; it is indeed wearisome sitting alone in the dark.
~ William Tyndale, Letter while imprisoned at Vilvoorde (Autumn, 1535).

When I walk by myself alone,
It doth me good my songs to render.
~ William Wager, The Longer Thou Livest the More Fool Thou Art (c. 1568).

Skillful listening is the best remedy for loneliness, loquaciousness, and laryngitis.
~ William Arthur Ward

It is pleasant to me to feel if I wander through some lovely wood that nobody knows where I am; and when I go home I do not explain too particularly where I have been.
~ William Hale White (aka Mark Rutherford), in Last Pages from a Journal (1915). Part III. Notes

If you are alone, a lively place can be the best place to be.
~ William H. Whyte, The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces (1980).

Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone;
For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own.
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox, from Poems of Passion (1883). Miscellanious Poems. Solitude

Most of the time I played by myself. Even then I was a loner, and I have stayed a loner all my life. [It] can make a man seem a little distant or aloof -- but it has helped pull me through some tight spots and hard times.
~ Roy Wilkins

Lovely lay it along in its lonely den!
~ William, the poet, Romance of William and the Werwolf; or, William of Palerne (c. 1350).

Solitude is good for the soul. It gives an opportunity for a certain amount of thought, for taking stock of one's self. If every one could be persuaded to an hour's solitary self-consideration each day, the world would be bettered thereby.
~ Ben Ames Williams, The Great Accident (1920). Book III. Chapter IV. Wint To Joan

Hear that lonesome whippoorwill?
He sounds too blue to fly.
The midnight train is whining low,
I'm so lonesome I could cry.
~ Hank Williams, I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry

We're trying to find something, but we don't even know what it is.
~ Thomas Lanier ("Tennessee") Williams, Summer and Smoke (1948).

All rooms are lonely where there is only one person.
~ Thomas Lanier ("Tennessee") Williams, Orpheus Descending (1957).

We're all of us sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life!
~ Thomas Lanier ("Tennessee") Williams, Orpheus Descending (1957). Act II, scene i

When so many are lonely as seem to be lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone.
~ Thomas Lanier ("Tennessee") Williams, Camino Real (1953). Prologue

But we who are wiser
shut ourselves in
on either hand
and no one knows
whether we think good
or evil.
~ William Carlos Williams, from Al Que Quiere! A Book of Poems (1917). Pastoral

I am lonely, lonely.
I was born to be lonely,
I am best so!
~ William Carlos Williams, from Al Que Quiere! A Book of Poems (1917). Danse Russe

It is only in isolate flecks that
something
is given off
No one
to witness
and adjust, no one to drive the car.
~ William Carlos Williams, from Spring and All (1923). To Elsie

The man turns and there --
his solitary track stretched out
upon the world.
~ William Carlos Williams, from Sour Grapes (1921). Blizzard

[T]o it alone I shall now confine myself.
~ George Wilson, The Five Gateways of Knowledge (1856).

There is no creature as lonely as the dweller in the intellect.
~ William Winter, The Wallet of Time: Containing Personal, Biographical, and Critical Reminiscence of the American Theatre. Vol. II (1913). I. Mary Anderson

And I was taught to feel, perhaps too much,
The self-sufficing power of Solitude.
~ William Wordsworth, The Prelude (1805). Book II: Childhood and School-time (Continued)

As if the man had fixed his face,
In many a solitary place,
Against the wind and open sky!
~ William Wordsworth, Peter Bell, A Tale in Verse (1819). Part 1

Behold her, single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland lass!
Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!
~ William Wordsworth, from Memorials of a Tour in Scotland (1803). VIII. The Solitary Reaper

He travels on, a solitary Man,
His age has no companion.
~ William Wordsworth, from Lyrical Ballads with Other Poems, Vol. 2 (1800). The Old Cumberland Beggar

I am not One who much or oft delight
To season my fireside with personal talk, --.
~ William Wordsworth, from Poems in Two Volumes, Volume II (1807). Personal Talk. Stanza 1

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils.
~ William Wordsworth, from Poems in Two Volumes, Volume I (1807). I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud (1804).

No human ear shall ever hear me speak;
No human dwelling ever give me food,
Or sleep, or rest: but, over waste and wild,
In search of nothing, that this earth can give,
But expiation, will I wander on --
A Man by pain and thought compelled to live,
Yet loathing life -- till anger is appeased
In Heaven, and Mercy gives me leave to die.
~ William Wordsworth, The Borderers (1795-96).

Oft on my way have I
Stood still, though but a casual passenger,
So much I felt the awfulness of life.
~ William Wordsworth, The Excursion (1836 version). Book II: The Solitary

[S]olitude permits the mind to feel.
~ William Wordsworth, The Excursion (1814). Book VIII: The Parsonage

When from our better selves we have too long
Been parted by the hurrying world, and droop,
Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired,
How gracious, how benign, is Solitude.
~ William Wordsworth, The Prelude (1805). Book IV: Summer Vacation

Why William, sit you thus alone,
And dream your time away?
~ William Wordsworth, from Lyrical Ballads (1798). Expostulation and Reply

But I'll have no leading-strings; I can walk alone: I hate a harness, and will not tug on in a faction, kissing my leader behind, that another slave may do the like to me.
~ William Wycherley, The Plain Dealer (1674). Act I, scene i

My fiftieth year had come and gone,
I sat, a solitary man,
In a crowded London shop,
And open book and empty cup
On the marble table-top.
~ William Butler Yeats

What shall I do for pretty girls
Now my old bawd is dead?
~ William Butler Yeats, from Last Poems (1938-39). John Kinsella's Lament for Mrs Mary Moore