Seclusion Quotes

• The mind is sharper and keener in seclusion and uninterrupted solitude. Originality thrives in seclusion free of outside influences beating upon us to cripple the creative mind. Be alone-that is the secret of invention: be alone, that is when ideas are born.

  Nikola Tesla

  Loneliness, Being Alone, Creativity

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• Go into seclusion and rest your mind on the silence.

  Dharma Mittra

  Yoga, Silence, Mind

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• Originality thrives in seclusion free of outside influences

  Nikola Tesla

  Solitude, Originality, Influence

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• 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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• Get yourself to a vantage point of seclusion and view the world with your eyes alone. Think of the infinite spaces of the skies and the world beneath.

  Charles E. Burchfield

  Eye, Thinking, Views

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• Seclusion is the price of greatness.

  Paramahansa Yogananda

  Wisdom, Greatness, Solitude

  Yogananda (Paramahansa) (1966). “Self-realization Magazine”

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• There are men so incorrigibly lazy that no inducement that you can offer will tempt them to work; so eaten up by vice that virtue is abhorrent to them, and so inveterately dishonest that theft is to them a master passion. When a human being has reached that stage, there is only one course that can be rationally pursued. Sorrowfully, but remorselessly, it must be recognized that he has become lunatic, morally demented, incapable of self-government, and that upon him, therefore, must be passed the sentence of permanent seclusion from a world in which he is not fit to be at large.

  William Booth

  Passion, Men, Self

  William Booth (1890). “In Darkest England, and the Way Out”, Bryce

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• From all kinds of flowers,
  Seek teachings everywhere,
  Like a deer that finds
  A quiet place to graze,
  Seek Seclusion to digest
  All you have gathered. . .

  Namkhai Norbu

  Flower, Teaching, Deer

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• My solitude doesn’t depend on the presence or absence of people; on the contrary, I hate who steals my solitude without, in exchange, offering me true company.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Hate, Being Alone, Offering

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• I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Lonely, Halloween, Fall

  Henry David Thoreau, Laura Ross (2009). “Walden, Or, Life in the Woods: Bold-faced Ideas for Living a Truly Transcendent Life”, p.50, Sterling Publishing Company, Inc.

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• Your life is an island separated from all other islands and continents. Regardless of how many boats you send to other shores or how many ships arrive upon your shores, you yourself are an island separated by its own pains, secluded in its happiness

  Khalil Gibran

  Peace, Pain, Islands

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• Be alone, that is the secret of invention; be alone, that is when ideas are born.

  Nikola Tesla

  Inspirational, Being Alone, Ideas

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• History shows that the majority of people that have done anything great have passed their youth in seclusion.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Being Alone, Creativity, People

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• I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Inspirational, Life, Death

  Walden ch. 2 (1854)

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• The charms of seclusion are seldom combined with the conveniences of civilization.

  Ethel Smyth

  Civilization, Charm, Convenience

  Ethel Smyth (1922). “Streaks of life”

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• . . . in seclusion, she had secluded herself from a thousand natural and healing influences; that, her mind, brooding solitary, had grown diseased, as all minds do and must and will that reverse the appointed order of their Maker . . .

  Charles Dickens

  Healing, Order, Expectations

  Charles Dickens (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Charles Dickens (Illustrated)”, p.7428, Delphi Classics

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• In a crowd, on a journey, at a banquet even, a line of thought can itself provide its own seclusion.

  Quintilian

  Journey, Ideas, Crowds

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• The best convent for a woman is the seclusion of her own home. There she may find her vocation and fight her battles, and there she may learn the reality and the earnestness of life.

  Elizabeth Prentiss

  Home, Fighting, Reality

  Elizabeth Prentiss (1871). “Stepping Heavenward. By the author of 'The flower of the family'.”, p.235

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• Give to a wounded heart seclusion; consolation nor reason ever effected anything in such a case.

  Honore de Balzac

  Grief, Heart, Giving

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• As for solitude, I cannot understand how certain people seek to lay claim to intellectual stature, nobility of soul and strength of character, yet have not the slightest feeling for seclusion; for solitude, I maintain, when joined with a quiet contemplation of nature, a serene and conscious faith in creation and the Creator, and a few vexations from outside is the only school for a mind of lofty endowment.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Character, School, People

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1963). “Goethe's world view: presented in his reflections and maxims”

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• A man's thinking goes on within his consciousness in a seclusion in comparison with which any physical seclusion is an exhibition to public view.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Men, Thinking, Views

  Ludwig Wittgenstein (1958). “Philosophical Investigations”

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• HIBERNATE, v. i. To pass the winter season in domestic seclusion. There have been many singular popular notions about the hibernation of various animals. Many believe that the bear hibernates during the whole winter and subsists by mechanically sucking its paws. It is admitted that it comes out of its retirement in the spring so lean that it has to try twice before it can cast a shadow.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Retirement, Spring, Believe

  Ambrose Bierce (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated)”, p.2418, Delphi Classics

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• Take young researchers, put them together in virtual seclusion, give them an unprecedented degree of freedom and turn up the pressure by fostering competitiveness.

  James D. Watson

  Science, Giving, Together

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• Few are there that will leave the secure seclusion of the scholar's life, the peaceful walks of literature and learning, to stand out a target for the criticism of unkind and hostile minds.

  Felix Adler

  Peaceful, Mind, Criticism

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• The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid: the state of being alone.

  James A. Baldwin

  Art, Creativity, Being Alone

  "The Creative Process" by James A. Baldwin originally published in The National Culture Center's "Creative America", 1962, and later published in James A. Baldwin "The Price of the Ticket", 1985.

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