97 Calming Solitude Quotes to Bring You Peace

These solitude quotes will help you clear your mind so you can focus on your own reflections and values.

In our increasingly connected society, we are experiencing solitude less and less often.

True solitude is not simply being physically alone, but also being disconnected from the percolating social world of the Internet and media.

Many people find themselves intentionally tuning out from the busy hum of these always-on connections, seeking some peace and solitude.

But is too much solitude a bad thing?

Certain cultures discourage solitude, fearing that an excessively lonely person may be prone to ruminating on negative ideas.

Indeed, mental health experts would worry over a person who chose to spend all of their time in solitude.

Without occasional check-ins, one could become out of touch with reality.

But a healthy balance of social activity with relaxed alone time could help a person reap the benefits of solitude.

Keep reading these solitude quotes and sayings to learn how many thinkers feel about alone time.

Don’t forget to also read these being alone quotes to conquer feeling lonely.

Check out our most popular quote article, a list of short inspirational quotes for daily inspiration. 

If you enjoy this collection, check out our inspirational quotes category page.

Quotes About the Beauty of Solitude

1.) “One can be instructed in society, one is inspired only in solitude.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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2. “In solitude the mind gains strength and learns to lean upon itself.” – Laurence Sterne

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3.) “To go out with the setting sun on an empty beach is to truly embrace your solitude.” – Jeanne Moreau

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4.) “One of the greatest necessities in America is to discover creative solitude.” – Carl Sandburg

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5.) “Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character.” – James Russell Lowell

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6.) “Solitude has its own very strange beauty to it.” – Liv Tyler

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7.) “Solitude is independence.” – Hermann Hesse

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8.) “The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.” – Albert Einstein

9.) “The best thinking has been done in solitude. The worst has been done in turmoil.” – Thomas A. Edison

10.) “Who hears music feels his solitude peopled at once.” – Robert Browning

11.) “The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.” – Aldous Huxley

12.) “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

13.) “I live in solitude. I have need of solitude to do the next day’s work. I can’t be to parties where the noise tires me. I can’t speak on the telephone. I must have complete calm.” – Yves Saint Laurent

14.) “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.” – Arthur Schopenhauer

15.) “It is only in solitude that I ever find my own core.” – Anne Morrow Lindbergh

16.) “Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone.” – Octavio Paz

17.) “I try to factor solitude into my life because more and more, that’s becoming a very precious and rare commodity.” – Robyn Davidson

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Solitude Quotes About Silence

18.) “Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing.” – William S. Boroughs

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19.) “I am a minimalist. I like saying the most with the least.” – Bob Newhart

20.) “Quiet people have the loudest minds.” – Stephen Hawking

21.) “I’m very shy really. I spend a lot of time in my room alone reading or writing or watching television.” – Johnny Cash

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22.) “A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy dare live.” – Bertrand Russell

23.) “I like solitude. I like the anomalous life. I like a quiet life.” – Eric Clapton

24.) “Wise men, when in doubt whether to speak or to keep quiet, give themselves the benefit of the doubt, and remain silent.” – Napoleon Hill

25.) “I think a lot, but I don’t say much.” – Anne Frank

26.) “Being introverted, it doesn’t mean necessarily being shy or being afraid of public speaking; it just means that it’s hard for me to interact with people for too long.” – Amy Schumer

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27.) “Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools speak because they have to say something.” – Plato

28.) “Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius.” – Edward Gibbon

29.) “Don’t underestimate me because I’m quiet. I know more than I say, think more than I speak and observe more than you know.” – Michaela Chung

Solitude Quotes About Loneliness

30.) “Solitude is painful when one is young, but delightful when one is more mature. – Albert Einstein

31.) “I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.” – Henry David Thoreau

32.) “Solitude would be ideal if you could pick the people to avoid.” – Karl Kraus

33.) “Solitude is fine, but you need someone to tell you that solitude is fine.” – Honoré de Balzac

34.) “There is a tremendous difference between alone and lonely. You could be lonely in a group of people. I like being alone. I like eating by myself. I go home at night and just watch a movie or hang out with my dog. I have to exert myself and really say, oh God, I’ve got to see my friends because I’m too content by myself.” – Drew Barrymore

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35.) “In order to be open to creativity, one must have the capacity for constructive use of solitude. One must overcome the fear of being alone.” – Rollo May

36.) “I want to be alone… with someone else who wants to be alone.” – Dimitri Zaik

37.) “Language has created the word ‘loneliness’ to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word ‘solitude’ to express the glory of being alone.” – Paul Tillich

38.) “This great misfortune – to be incapable of solitude.” – Jean de la Bruyère

39.) “There’s a difference between solitude and loneliness. I can understand the concept of being a monk for a while.” – Tom Hanks

40.) “It’s an interesting combination: Having a great fear of being alone, and having a desperate need for solitude and the solitary experience. That’s always been a tug of war for me.” – Jodie Foster

41.) “Only in solitude do we find ourselves; and in finding ourselves, we find in ourselves all our brothers in solitude.” – Miguel de Unamuno

42.) “There’s a difference between solitude and loneliness.” – Maggie Smith

43.) “Your inner voice is the voice of divinity. To hear it, we need to be in solitude, even in crowded places.” – A. R. Rahman

Solitude Quotes About Introversion

44.) “People empty me. I have to get away to refill.” – Charles Bukowski

45.) “I am rarely bored alone; I am often bored in groups and crowds.” – Laurie Helgoe

46.) “I have to be alone very often. I’d be quite happy if I spent from Saturday night until Monday morning alone in my apartment. That’s how I refuel.” – Audrey Hepburn

47.) “But generally speaking, I tend to be quiet and introspective.” – Rowan Atkinson

48.) “I always saw myself as this quiet, introspective, thoughtful person.” – Maggie Rogers

49.) “I don’t hate people, I just feel better when they aren’t around.” –  Charles Bukowski

50.) “I don’t want to be alone. I want to be left alone.” – Audrey Hepburn

51.) “Introverts live in two worlds: We visit the world of people, but solitude and the inner world will always be our home.” – Jenn Granneman

52.) “Blessed are those who do not fear solitude, who are not afraid of their own company, who are not always desperately looking for something to do, something to amuse themselves with, something to judge.” – Paulo Coelho

53.) “Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.” – Francis Bacon

54.) “I restore myself when I’m alone.” –  Marilyn Monroe

55.) “Your solitude will be a support and a home for you, even in the midst of very unfamiliar circumstances, and from it you will find all your paths.” –  Rainer Maria Rilke

56.) “Some people can’t stand being alone. I love solitude and silence. But when I come out of it, I’m a regular talking machine. It’s all or nothing for me.” – Celine Dion

57.) “I am a bit of a solitude person – a solitary personality. I like being on my own. I don’t have any major friendships or relationships with people.” – Anthony Hopkins

Other Eye-opening Solitude Quotes

58. “Solitude is a chosen separation for refining your soul. Isolation is what you crave when you neglect the first.” – Wayne Cordeiro

59. “We need solitude because when we’re alone, we’re free from obligations, we don’t need to put on a show, and we can hear our own thoughts.” – Tamim Ansary

60. “It’s not your enemies who condemn you to solitude, it’s your friends.” – Milan Kundera

61. “In solitude we realize that nothing human is alien to us.” – Henri J.M. Nouwen

62. “Solitude is where I place my chaos to rest and awaken my inner peace.” – Nikki Rowe

63. Like dry ground welcoming the rain, he let the solitude, silence, and loneliness soak in.” – Haruki Murakami

64. “Solitude is strength; to depend on the presence of the crowd is weakness. The man who needs a mob to nerve him is much more alone than he imagines.” – Paul Brunton

65. “In solitude, listen to your heart, for at that moment, it speaks nothing but the truth.” – Michael Bassey Johnson

66. “Solitude is like a riverbank where the truth is waiting for you with a boat.” – Shunya

67. “Solitude will teach you how to navigate your inner dialogue. In the space of silence you hear clearly, the voice of your own soul.” – Nikki Rowe

Solitude quotes to learn and live by

68. “Let me tell you this: if you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it’s not because they enjoy solitude. It’s because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them.” ― Jodi Picoult

69. “I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.” ― Charlotte Brontë

70. “If you’re lonely when you’re alone, you’re in bad company.” ― Jean-Paul Sartre

71. “I had already found that it was not good to be alone, and so made companionship with what there was around me, sometimes with the universe and sometimes with my own insignificant self; but my books were always my friends, let fail all else.” ― Joshua Slocum

72. “I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.” ― Henry David Thoreau

73. “I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself, with only the music of my heart for company.” ― Henry Miller

74. “Orlando naturally loved solitary places, vast views, and to feel himself for ever and ever and ever alone.” ― Virginia Woolf

75. “Whosoever is delighted in solitude, is either a wild beast or a god.” ― Aristotle

76. “I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other.” ― Rainer Maria Rilke

77. “We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and private: and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship.” ― C.S. Lewis

Solitude quotes to make you appreciate alone time

78. “Solitude appeared to me as the only fit state of man.” ― Walter Benjamin

79. “In solitude I find my answers.” ― Kristen Butler

80. “Solitude is a kind of freedom.”― Umberto Eco

81. “Some of us are born to a solitary life.” ― Philippa Gregory

82. “The happiest of all lives is a busy solitude.” ― Voltaire

83. “Solitude is where one discovers one is not alone.” ― Marty Rubin

84. The thoughtful soul to solitude retires.” ― Omar Khayyam

85. “Solitude is a catalyst for innovation.” ― Susan Cain

86. “Without great solitude no serious work is possible.” ― Pablo Picasso

87. “Solitude is a lost art in these days of ultra-connectedness.” ― Leo Babauta

Solitude Quotes To Make You Relax

88. “Give solitude a chance. You’ve got nothing to lose. And your life to gain back.” — Joshua Becker

89. “You need the rain to appreciate the sun, darkness to appreciate light, people to appreciate solitude.” — Maxime Lagacé

90. “With constant doses of solitude, life becomes magical.” — Adamas Shivananda

91. “Make the time to be alone. Your best ideas live within solitude.” — Robin Sharma

92. “Solitude is your most intimate companion, it’ll guide you back home. Stop running from yourself, be still.” — Yogi Ramdas

93. “The more you enjoy solitude, the simpler life becomes.” — Maxime Lagacé

94. “Solitude sometimes is the best society.” — John Milton

95. “Talent is nurtured in solitude… A creation of importance can only be produced when its author isolates himself, it is a child of solitude.” — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

96. “He who understands humanity seeks solitude.” — Ali ibn Abi Talib

97. “Solitude is the place of purification and transformation, the place of the great struggle and the great encounter.” — Henri Nouwen

What can you achieve in solitude?

Solitude allows you to clear your mind of the noise of others’ thoughts and influences for a while so you can focus on your own reflections and values.

In that time, you can channel your energy into your own priorities, whether they are creative, academic, professional, athletic, or simply personal.

You may wish to just center yourself in solitude to relax your mind and rebalance your thinking.

Although the desire for solitude is typically ascribed to introversion, all people can benefit from occasional alone time.

Some feel the need for more of it than others.

On the flip side, it’s also important to maintain some healthy social engagement.

It’s all too easy to become trapped in negative cycles of thinking when one doesn’t calibrate by spending time with others.

Be sure to always maintain balance, whether you love solitude or find it uncomfortable.

What’s your biggest takeaway from these solitude quotes and sayings?

Do you have any other favorite quotes to add?

Let us know in the comment section below.