Of Solitude

Let us leave aside that long comparison between the solitary and the active life. As for those fine statements that we are born not for ourselves but for the public, they are but deceptive words. The ambition that is the greatest enemy of society is the ambition to be admired and approved by it.

Contagion is very dangerous in crowds. You must either imitate the vicious or hate them. Both are dangerous: to imitate them because they are many, and to hate them because they are different. We must reserve a back shop all our own, entirely free, in which to establish our real liberty and our principal retreat and solitude.

“A man must be able to endure himself.”

In this retreat we should keep up our ordinary conversation with ourselves, and so private that no outside acquaintance or communication may find a place there. We should talk and laugh as if we had neither wife, nor children, nor possessions, nor followers, nor servants, so that when the time comes to lose them, it may be no new thing to us to do without them.

We have a soul that can be turned upon itself; it can keep itself company; it has the means to attack and the means to defend, the means to receive and the means to give. We need not fear that in this solitude we shall stagnate in tedious idleness.

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.