… and an epigram on the modern age that the only use it knows for solitude is to make it a punishment, a jail sentence.
― Søren Kierkegaard

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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, Steppenwolf

There are times when
… I can find myself in a book, too, for two or three hours. But afterward I have such an urge to go out and reach for other people. Very often they’re not around. There’s also a metaphysical loneliness. We all feel it. The burden of living one’s own life is experiencing sensations that no one…

…and children are still the way you were
…as a child, sad and happy in just the same way and if you think of your childhood, you once again live among them, among the solitary children, and the grownups are nothing, and their dignity has no value. ― Rainer Maria Rilke

There is no doubt that solitude is a challenge
… and to maintain balance within it a precarious business. But I must not forget that, for me, being with people or even with one beloved person for any length of time without solitude is even worse. I lose my center. I feel dispersed, scattered, in pieces. I must have time alone in which to…

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, Sailing Alone around the World

You once said that
… you would like to sit beside me while I write. Listen, in that case I could not write at all. For writing means revealing oneself to excess; that utmost of self-revelation and surrender, in which a human being, when involved with others, would feel he was losing himself, and from which, therefore, he will always…