James Russell Lowell Quotes

In solitude, where we are least alone.

My imagination is a monastery and I am its monk.

You may not enjoy loneliness, because loneliness is sad. But solitude is something else; solitude is what you look forward to when you want to be alone, when you want to be with yourself. So, solitude is something we all need from time to time.

I have never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.

To read is to withdraw.To make oneself unavailable. One would feel easier about it if the pursuit inself were less...selfish.

I must stay alone and know that I am alone to contemplate and feel nature in full.

In solitude, when we are least alone.

In solitude we are in the presence of mere matter (even the sky, the stars, the moon, trees in blossom), things of less value (perhaps) than a human spirit. Its value lies in the greater possibility of attention.

In the world of the dreamer there was solitude: all the exaltations and joys came in the moment of preparation for living. They took place in solitude.

Staying within the world of a novel gives us the ability to be quiet and alone, two skills that are disappearing faster than the polar icecaps.

I, who so love a hermit life for a good part of the day, find myself living in public, and almost losing my identity.

I go in solitude, so as not to drink out of everybody's cistern. When I am among the many I live as the many do, and I do not think I really think; after a time it always seems as if they want to banish myself from myself and rob me of my soul.

I prize the privilege of being alone.

There are places and moments in which one is so completely alone that one sees the world entire.

I was never less alone than when by myself.

You want to read a book? That requires introspection. It requires time away from people and time away from the constant need to communicate and to connect.

I feel calm when I'm on my own.

There's a difference between solitude and loneliness. I can understand the concept of being a monk for a while.

I'm somewhat in my own cloud.

I love to spend a lot of time on my own. I can seriously go into my own head and often love to let myself travel where I don't know where I'm going.

Sometimes I get lonely, but it's nice to be alone.

Everywhere I have sought rest and not found it, except sitting in a corner by myself with a little book.

I enjoy my own thoughts sometimes.

All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.

I've always kind of lived in my own world.