I have an immense appetite for solitude, like an infant for sleep, and if I don't get enough for this year, I shall cry all the next.—Thoreau to Daniel Ricketson, 9 September 1857
I have lately got back to that glorious society called Solitude.—Thoreau to H. G. O. Blake, 1 January 1859
I have never felt lonesome, or in the least oppressed by a sense of solitude, but once, and that was a few weeks after I came to the woods, when, for an hour, I doubted if the near neighborhood of man was not essential to a serene and healthy life. To be alone was something unpleasant.—Walden
I thrive best on solitude. If I have had a companion only one day in a week, unless it were one or two I could name, I find that the value of the week to me has been seriously affected. It dissipates my days, and often it takes me another week to get over it.—Journal, 28 December 1856
I was describing the other day my success in solitary and distant woodland walking outside the town. I do not go there to get my dinner, but to get that sustenance which dinners only preserve me to enjoy, without which dinners are a vain repetition.—Journal, 11 January 1857
I would that I were worthy to be any man's Friend.—A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
If we did not hear, however, we did listen, not without a reasonable expectation; that at least I have to tell,—only some utterly uncivilized, big-throated owl hooted loud and dismally in the drear and boughy wilderness, plainly not nervous about his solitary life, not afraid to hear the echoes of his voice there.—The Maine Woods
In the midst of a gentle rain while these thoughts prevailed, I was suddenly sensible of such sweet and beneficent society in Nature, in the very pattering of the drops, and in every sound and sight around my house, an  infinite and unaccountable friendliness all at once like an atmosphere sustaining me, as made the fancied advantages of human neighborhood insignificant, and I have never thought of them since.—Walden
It would be better if there were but one inhabitant to a square mile, as where I live.—Walden
It would give me such joy to know that a friend had come to see me and yet that pleasure I seldom if ever experience.—Journal, 23 December 1851
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