I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time.
To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating.
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. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will. Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows. The really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge College is as solitary as a dervish in the desert.
The farmer can work alone in the field or the woods all day, hoeing or chopping, and not feel lonesome, because he is employed; but when he comes home at night he cannot sit down in a room, at the mercy of his thoughts, but must be where he can "see the folks", and recreate, and as he thinks remunerate himself for his day's solitude; and hence he wonders how the student can sit alone in the house all night and most of the day without ennui and "the blues"; but he does not realize that the student, though in the house, is still at work in his field, and chopping in his woods, as the farmer in his, and in turn seeks the same recreation and society that the latter does, though it may be a more condensed form of it.
(These paragraphs are in 'Walden", Henry D. Thoreau, 1971, p.136)
我發現大部份時間保持孤獨是有益處的.
與人為伴, 即使是最好的伙伴, 那伙伴關係不久也會變得厭倦無趣.
我愛獨處.
我從未找到比孤獨更為可伴的伴侶;
在我們外出擠身在人群裡時, 常常是比我們留在自己房間裡時, 更覺孤獨.
不管身在何處, 當一個人思想或工作時, 他總是孤獨的.
孤獨是不能以人與人之間的空間距離來衡量的.
住在劍橋學院蜂窩似宿舍的那個真正用心的學生, 和處身在沙漠中的那個托缽僧一樣孤獨; 農人竟日在田裡或林裡工作, 鋤草伐木, 而不覺孤獨. 因為那是他在工作的緣故, 但日入以後回到家裡, 卻不能在室中獨坐, 由於胡思亂想, 不得安寧, 必須找個能看見人的地方消遣消遣, 以酬償其日間的孤獨; 因而他會驚奇, 為什麼那個學生能整天整夜獨坐在屋裡面而不覺無趣與沮喪, 然而, 他不知道, 那個學生雖然是在屋裡, 卻仍是在他的田裡耕種, 在他的林裡伐木, 就像這農人在他的田裡工作一樣, 而且工作以後, 也要像農人一樣, 找點消遣, 找點社交, 只是這種社交消遣的方式較為收縮而已.
亨利 大衛 梭羅(1817~1862) 是我最崇敬的思想家,散文家,及自然主義大師.
當我們急於探索和學習一切的同時 我們總希望一切都神秘而未被人發現 希望陸地和海洋
永遠原始 因為奧秘 而使我們無法測度
～梭羅
