The Quotes canon
Sourced and curated.
Every quote has been curated by hand and carefully authenticated.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Rainer Maria Rilke2 quotes
Love your solitude and bear with sweet-sounding lamentation the suffering it causes you. — Rainer Maria Rilke · 1929I hold this to be the highest task for a bond between two people: that each protects the solitude of the other. — Rainer Maria Rilke · 1902Alexander Pope1 quote
Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;
Thus unlamented let me die;
Steal from the world, and not a stone
Tell where I lie. — Alexander Pope · 1700Blaise Pascal1 quote
We shall die alone. — Blaise Pascal · 1662Fred Rogers1 quote
Solitude is different from loneliness, and it doesn't have to be a lonely kind of thing. — Fred Rogers · 2003Freya Stark1 quote
The true call of the desert, of the mountains, or the sea, is their silence-free of the network of dead speech. — Freya Stark · 1948Georg Trakl1 quote
I drank the silence of God from a spring in the woods. — Georg Trakl · 1912Henrik Ibsen1 quote
The strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone. — Henrik Ibsen · 1882Hermann Hesse1 quote
Solitude is independence. It had been my wish and with the years I had attained it. It was cold. Oh, cold enough! But it was also still, wonderfully still and vast like the cold stillness of space in which the stars revolve. — Hermann Hesse · 1927John Clare1 quote
I long for scenes where man hath never trod
A place where woman never smiled or wept
There to abide with my Creator God
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie
The grass below, above, the vaulted sky. — John Clare · 1848John Milton1 quote
In solitude
What happiness? who can enjoy alone,
Or all enjoying, what contentment find? — John Milton · 1667Joseph Conrad1 quote
We live, as we dream—alone. — Joseph Conrad · 1899Lord Byron1 quote
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the Lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I Love not Man the Less, but Nature more. — Lord Byron · 1818Marcus Aurelius1 quote
Nowhere can a man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul. — Marcus Aurelius · 180Michel de Montaigne1 quote
A man should keep for himself a little back shop, all his own, quite unadulterated, in which he establishes his true freedom and chief place of seclusion and solitude. — Michel de Montaigne · 1580Ryan Bingham1 quote
Tonight most people will be welcomed home by jumping dogs and squealing kids. Their spouses will ask about their day, and tonight they'll sleep. The stars will wheel forth from their daytime hiding places; and one of those lights, slightly brighter than the rest, will be my wingtip passing over. — Ryan Bingham · 2009Samuel Taylor Coleridge1 quote
Alone, alone, all, all alone,
Alone on a wide wide sea! — Samuel Taylor Coleridge · 1798Seneca1 quote
Nothing to my way of thinking is a better proof of a well-ordered mind than a man's ability to stop just where he is and pass some time in their own company. — Seneca · 65