Solitary Man Quotes

• Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul.

  Marcus Aurelius

  Philosophical, Inspiration, Being Alone

  c. AD 170-180 Meditations, bk.4, no.3 (translated by M Staniforth).

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• We are all sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life.

  Tennessee Williams

  Lonely, Loneliness, Being Alone

  Orpheus Descending act 2, sc. 1 (1958)

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• The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence.

  Thomas Wolfe

  Loneliness, Solitary Life, Facts

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

  Willa Cather

  Friendship, Men, Joy

  Willa Cather (1938). “The novels and stories of Willa Cather ...”

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• The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, peculiar to myself and to a few other solitary men, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence.

  Tom Wolfe

  Life, Loneliness, Being Alone

  "The American Mercury", p. 467, "The Anatomy of Loneliness", October 1941.

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• Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry... no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Art, War, Men

  'Leviathan' (1651) pt. 1, ch. 13

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• For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche.

  Hermann Hesse

  Lonely, Men, Tree

  Hermann Hesse (1980). “Six Novels: With Other Stories and Essays”

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• In his lonely solitude, the solitary man feeds upon himself; in the thronging multitude, the many feed upon him. Now choose.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Lonely, Loneliness, Men

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• The task of the solitary man is to be even more solitary.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Men, Tasks, Solitary

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• The life of a solitary man will be certainly miserable, but not certainly devout.

  Samuel Johnson

  Men, Solitude, Miserable

  Samuel Johnson, Abraham Raimbach, Robert Smirke (1819). “Rasselas”, p.85

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• The wild bird that flies so lone and far has somewhere its nest and brood. A little fluttering heart of love impels its wings, and points its course. There is nothing so solitary as a solitary man.

  Edwin Hubbel Chapin

  Heart, Men, Wings

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• Prophets, mystics, poets, scientific discoverers are men whose lives are dominated by a vision; they are essentially solitary men . . . whose thoughts and emotions are not subject to the dominion of the herd.

  Bertrand Russell

  Men, Vision, Dominion

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell”, p.337, Routledge

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• The misanthrope, as an essentially solitary man, is not a man at all: he must be a beast or a god.

  Aristotle

  Men, Misanthrope, Beast

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• I sat, a solitary man, In a crowded London shop, An open book and empty cup On the marble table-top. While on the shop and street I gazed My body of a sudden blazed; And twenty minutes more or less It seemed, so great my happiness, That I was blessed and could bless.

  William Butler Yeats

  Book, Blessed, Men

  William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.255, Simon and Schuster

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• Christian society is like a bundle of sticks laid together, whereof one kindles another. Solitary men have fewest provocations to evil, but, again, fewest incitations to good. So much as doing good is better than not doing evil will I account Christian good-fellowship better than an hermitish and melancholy solitariness.

  Joseph Hall

  Christian, Men, Evil

  Joseph Hall, Josiah Pratt (1808). “The Works: Now First Collected : with Some Account of His Life and Sufferings. Devotional works”, p.21

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• Perhaps the sad and empty language that today's flabby humanity pours forth, will, in all its horror, in all its boundless absurdity, re-echo in the heart of a solitary man who is awake, and then perhaps that man, suddenly realizing that he does not understand, will begin to understand.

  Arthur Adamov

  Heart, Men, Echoes

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• Do I dare disturb the universe? Yes, I do, I do. I think. Jerry suddenly understood the poster--the solitary man on the beach standing upright and alone and unafraid, poised at the moment of making himself heard and known in the world, the universe.

  Robert Cormier

  Beach, Men, Thinking

  Robert Cormier (2013). “The Chocolate War”, p.196, Knopf Books for Young Readers

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• The history of ideas is the history of the grudges of solitary men.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Men, Ideas, Grudge

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