Ralph Waldo Emerson Solitude Quotations

Culture is the suggestion, from certain best thoughts, that a man has a range of affinities through which he can modulate the violence of any master-tones that have a droning preponderance in his scale, and succor him against himself. Culture redresses this imbalance, puts him among equals and superiors, revives the delicious sense of sympathy, and warns him of the dangers of solitude and repulsion.

Solitude is impractical, and society fatal. We must keep our head in the one and our hands in the other. The conditions are met, if we keep our independence, yet do not lose our sympathy.

My doom and my strength is to be solitary.

But your isolation must not be mechanical, but spiritual, that is, must be elevation.

The solitary knows the essence of the thought, the scholar in society only its fair face.

Keep the town for occasions, but the habits should be formed in retirement.

The saint and poet seek privacy to ends the most public and universal: and it is the secret of culture, to interest the man more in his public, than in his private quality.

Great men do not content us. It is their solitude, not their force, that makes them conspicuous.

Go cherish your soul; express companions; set your habits to a life of solitude; then will the faculties rise fair and full within.

The height, the deity of man is to be self-sustained, to need no gift, no foreign force. Society is good when it does not violate me, but best when it is likest to solitude.

Solitude is naught and society is naught. Alternate them and the good of each is seen.

We walk alone in the world.

Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend

You will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it.

Solitude is impractical and yet society is fatal.

Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius, the stern friend, the cold, obscure shelter where moult the wings which will bear it farther than suns and stars.

Isolation must precede true society.

It is a sign of our times, conspicuous to the coarsest observer, that many intelligent and religious persons withdraw themselves from the common labors and competitions of the market and the caucus, and betake themselves to a certain solitary and critical way of living, from which no solid fruit has yet appeared to justify their separation.

Respect the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude.