“Solitary the thrush,The hermit withdrawn to himself, avoiding thesettlements,Sings by himself a song.Song of the bleeding throat!”

“A man could no longer be private and withdrawn. The world allows no hermits.”

“Solitary. But not in the sense of being alone. Not solitary in the way Thoreau was, for example, exiling himself in order to find out where he was; not solitary in the way Jonah was, praying for deliverance in the belly of the whale. Solitary in the sense of retreat. In the sense of not having to see himself, of not having to see himself being seen by anyone else.”

“In solitude the solitary man consumes himself, in the crowd the crowd consumes him.”

“He had withdrawn solely for his own personal pleasure, only to be near to himself. No longer distracted by anything external, he basked in his own existence and found it splendid.”

“But Socrates cannot but have been meditating upon something?... Can he ever remain solitary with himself -- and silent to his very soul!”