This page lists my all-time favorite solitude quotes to embrace your aloneness and stillness.
You can find links to more intentional living quotes at the bottom of this page.
When you’re ready to dive deeper, here’s some recommended reading on solitude:
25+ Solitude Quotes to Embrace Your Aloneness
“I have lately got back to that glorious society called Solitude.” — Henry David Thoreau
“Loneliness is when you’re missing people, aloneness is when you’re enjoying yourself.” — Anthony de Mello
“The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear.” — Rumi
“The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.” — Albert Einstein
“Without great solitude no serious work is possible.” — Pablo Picasso
“Within you, there is a stillness and a sanctuary to which you can retreat at anytime and be yourself.” — Hermann Hesse
“People look for retreats … in the country, by the coast, or in the hills … when it is possible for you to retreat into yourself at any time you want. There is nowhere that a person can find a more peaceful and trouble-free retreat than in his own mind.” — Marcus Aurelius
“Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius.” — Edward Gibbon
“If solitude is the school of genius, as the historian Edward Gibbon put it, then the crowded, busy world is the purgatory of the idiot.” — Ryan Holiday
“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” — Blaise Pascal
“Don’t just do something; stand there.” — Martin Gabel
“The nearer a man comes to a calm mind, the closer he is to strength.” — Marcus Aurelius
“Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity.” ― John Muir
“Be alone, that is the secret of invention; be alone, that is when ideas are born.” — Nikola Tesla
“Peace is in the emptiness. Emptiness is in the fast of the mind.” — Lao Tzu
“Do not speak — unless it improves on silence.” — Buddhist proverb
“Contemplation is the highest expression of man’s intellectual and spiritual life. It is that life itself, fully awake, fully active, fully aware that it is alive. It is spiritual wonder. It is spontaneous awe at the sacredness of life, of being.” — Thomas Merton
“To pray and work in the morning and to labor and rest in the afternoon, and to sit still again in meditation in the evening when night falls upon that land and when the silence fills itself with darkness and with stars. This is a true and special vocation. There are few who are willing to belong completely to such silence, to let it soak into their bones, to breathe nothing but silence, to feed on silence, and to turn the very substance of their life into a living and vigilant silence.” — Thomas Merton
“People don’t have enough silence in their lives because they don’t have enough solitude. And they don’t get enough solitude because they don’t seek out or cultivate silence. It’s a vicious cycle that prevents stillness and reflection, and then stymies good ideas, which are almost always hatched in solitude.” — Ryan Holiday
“Ordinary men hate solitude. But the Master makes use of it, embracing his aloneness, realizing he is one with the whole universe.” — Lao Tzu (Tao Te Ching, Stephen Mitchell Version)
“The motto of the philosopher Epicurus, which was taken up by the great essayist Montaigne as well, was lathe biōsas. Live in obscurity. The French saying, Pour vivre heureux, vivons cachés: ‘In order to live happily, live hidden.'” — Ryan Holiday
“In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.” — Albert Camus
“As long as there are enemies within the fortress, they will continue to sally forth; if they are destroyed as they emerge, the fortress will fall into our hands.” — Ramana Maharshi
“Solitude, which is one of the most agreeable sensations of the natural man, is one of the most painful and alarming sensations of the civilised man. The civilised man needs to be born again that he may enter the kingdom of Nature; for to enter either the kingdom of grace or of Nature the same process is necessary—we must become as little children.” — W. J. Dawson
“You want to rest your mind. You want to learn how to settle into your mind. Now, I look forward to solitary confinement. You leave me alone for a day, it will be the happiest day I’ve had in awhile. That is a superpower that I think everybody can attain.” — Naval Ravikant
More Intentional Living Quotes:
