"As bad tragic actors cannot sing alone, but in company with many: so some persons cannot walk about alone. Man, if you are anything, both walk alone and talk to yourself, and do not hide yourself in the chorus. Examine a little at last, look around, stir yourself up, that you may know who you are."

Epictetus | Discourses of Epictetus

"I was standing in the most entire aloneness that I had ever been given. My heart expanded with joy at the thought of where I was and what I was doing. There was a new light on the water; the moon was going up and up, and I stood watching the stream with my back to the rock for a few minutes, not thinking of anything, with a deep feeling of nakedness and helplessness and intimacy."

James Dickey | Deliverance

Alone

The abode of the nightingale is bare,
Flowered frost congeals in the gelid air,
The fox howls from his frozen lair:
Alas, my loved one is gone,
I am alone:
It is winter.

Once the pink cast a winy smell,
The wild bee hung in the hyacinth bell,
Light in effulgence of beauty fell:
I am alone:
It is winter.

My candle a silent fire doth shed,
Starry Orion hunts o’erhead;
Come moth, come shadow, the world is dead:
Alas, my loved one is gone,
I am alone;
It is winter.

Walter de la Mare

"In solitude it was possible for her to get the greatest enjoyment from the presence of the man she loved. If his presence had been continuous, it would have kept on disappearing. Only when she was alone was she able to hold on to it."

Milan Kundera | Laughable Loves

Bamboo Lodge

Sitting in solitude in a bamboo grove,
I play the zither and then
Whistle to my heart’s content.
Deep into the forest is a pleasure
That people don’t understand.
The bright moon visits with leisure,
And only she can comprehend.

Wang Wei

"The satisfaction of being fully alone. Not the lethargy of lying on the couch or the dull monotony of drifting off in math class. Not the midnight wandering in a sleeping house or the pain of being left in a room after the door has been slammed shut. This alone is not a variation of any of those. This alone is its own being. Feeling the body, but not using it to sidetrack the mind. Moving with purpose, but not in a rush. Conversing not with the person next to you, but with all of the elements. Sweating and aching and climbing and making sure not to slip, not to fall, not to get too lost, but lost enough."

David Levithan | Every Day

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FLAR2-12 by Alex Jacque

"I love to be alone. I never found the 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."

Henry David Thoreau | Walden

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The visitor

It is one of the great paradoxes of solitude, that it offers us not an escape, not a paradise, not a dwelling place where we can haughtily maintain our integrity by ignoring a vicious and corrupt social world, but a way back to that world, and a new motive for being there. Moreover, it can enliven a new sense of what companionship means.

[Illustration by Sarah Maycock]

"Flee, my friend, into your solitude: I see you stung all over by the poisonous flies. Flee there, where a rough, strong breeze blows! Flee into your solitude!"

Friedrich Nietzsche | Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Snow

It began to snow at midnight. And certainly
the kitchen is the best place to sit,
even the kitchen of the sleepless.
It’s warm there, you cook yourself something, drink wine
and look out of the window at your friend eternity.
Why care whether birth and death are merely points
when life is not a straight line.
Why torment yourself eyeing the calender
and wondering what is at stake.
Why confess you don’t have the money
to buy Saskia shoes?
And why brag
that you suffer more than others.

If there were no silence here
the snow would have dreamed it up.
You are alone.
Spare the gestures. Nothing for show.

Vladimír Holan

Keep in Mind

if you die
I won’t put on a lilac dress
won’t buy, colored wreaths
with whispering wind in the ribbons
none of that
none

the hearse will come - will come
the hearse will go - will go
I’ll stand at the window - I’ll look
wave my hand
flutter my handkerchief
bid farewell
alone in that window

and in summer
in crazy May
I will lie down on the grass
warm grass
and with my hands will touch your hair
and with my lips will touch a bee’s pelt
prickly and beautiful
like your smile
like dusk

later it will be
silver - golden
perhaps golden and only red
for that dusk
that wind
which whispers love into grasses
stubbornly whispers love
will not allow me to rise
and go
so simply
to my cursed deserted house

Halina Poświatowska

Morning

She opened the shutters. She hung the sheets over the sill.
          She saw the day.
A bird looked at her straight in the eyes. “I am alone,” she whispered.
“I am alive.” She entered the room. The mirror too is a window.
If I jump from it I will fall into my arms.

Yannis Ritsos

Aloneness

Loneliness and aloneness
they are not the same

for the shell of the mind
hears echoes of many seas

it hears the calling of gulls
from this savage sky

and an ebbing tide
lapping the small white stones.

Ian Emberson

Oh Yes

there are worse things than
being alone
but it often takes decades
to realize this
and most often
when you do
it’s too late
and there’s nothing worse
than
too late.

Charles Bukowski