101
By this practice he may obtain the solitude of adversity without its melancholy, its instructions without its censures, and its sensibility without its perturbations.
The complete collection
All quotes
Every quote we hold, 2473 of them from 233 people across 1123 works. Filter it, sort it, and follow any citation back to the source.
2418 checked at source
Filter the collection
Category
Feeling
Attribution
102
Very, very early in my boyhood I had acquired the habit of going about alone to amuse myself in my own way.
103
The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do, just as one pleases.
104
There is then no sympathy, but an uneasy craving after it, and a dissatisfaction which pursues you on the way, and in the end probably produces ill-humour.
105
Most of the friends I have seen have turned out the bitterest enemies, or cold, uncomfortable acquaintance.
William Hazlittverified·On Living to One's-Self, in Table Talk: Essays on Men and Manners·January 1821
106
Clumsy indeed are all words the moment the wooden stage of commonplace life is left.
107
Whosoever is delighted in solitude, is either a wild beast or a god
Wrongly attributed
Sold everywhere as Aristotle's, and the thought is his — Politics I.2 argues that anyone who cannot live in society is either a beast or a god. But this English sentence is Bacon's, in Of Friendship, and he does not endorse it. He introduces it as a speech by someone unnamed that puts "more truth and untruth together in few words" than any he knows, then argues only the first half holds: a hatred of society has something of the savage beast in it, but it is "most untrue that it should have any character of the divine nature". The line is quoted as wisdom by people who have not read the sentence that follows it.