Hermit Quotes

“Man was born for society. However little He may be attached to the World, He never can wholly forget it, or bear to be wholly forgotten by it. Disgusted at the guilt or absurdity of Mankind, the Misanthrope flies from it: He resolves to become an Hermit, and buries himself in the Cavern of some gloomy Rock. While Hate inflames his bosom, possibly He may feel contented with his situation: But when his passions begin to cool; when Time has mellowed his sorrows, and healed those wounds which He bore with him to his solitude, think you that Content becomes his Companion? Ah! no, Rosario. No longer sustained by the violence of his passions, He feels all the monotony of his way of living, and his heart becomes the prey of Ennui and weariness. He looks round, and finds himself alone in the Universe: The love of society revives in his bosom, and He pants to return to that world which He has abandoned. Nature loses all her charms in his eyes: No one is near him to point out her beauties, or share in his admiration of her excellence and variety. Propped upon the fragment of some Rock, He gazes upon the tumbling waterfall with a vacant eye, He views without emotion the glory of the setting Sun. Slowly He returns to his Cell at Evening, for no one there is anxious for his arrival; He has no comfort in his solitary unsavoury meal: He throws himself upon his couch of Moss despondent and dissatisfied, and wakes only to pass a day as joyless, as monotonous as the former.”
― Matthew Gregory Lewis, The Monk

“Too lazy to be ambitious,
I let the world take care of itself.
Ten days' worth of rice in my bag;
a bundle of twigs by the fireplace.
Why chatter about delusion and enlightenment?
Listening to the night rain on my roof,
I sit comfortably, with both legs stretched out.”
― Ryokan

“Nobody enjoys the company of others as intensely as someone who usually avoids the company of others.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“And if they thought her aimless, if they thought her a bit mad, let them. It meant they left her alone. Marya was not aimless, anyway. She was thinking.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“A fine line separates the weary recluse from the fearful hermit. Finer still is the line between hermit and bitter misanthrope.”
― Dean Koontz, Velocity

“now it’s computers and more computers
and soon everybody will have one,
3-year-olds will have computers
and everybody will know everything
about everybody else
long before they meet them.
nobody will want to meet anybody
else ever again
and everybody will be
a recluse
like I am now.”
― Charles Bukowski, The Continual Condition: Poems

“I am not poor, I am not rich; nihil est, nihil deest, I have little, I want nothing: all my treasure is in Minerva’s tower...I live still a collegiate student...and lead a monastic life, ipse mihi theatrum [sufficient entertainment to myself], sequestered from those tumults and troubles of the world...aulae vanitatem, fori ambitionem, ridere mecum soleo [I laugh to myself at the vanities of the court, the intrigues of public life], I laugh at all.”
― Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy

“It was like hiking into a Hemingway story; everything was sepia-toned and bristling with subtext.”
― Leslie What, Crazy Love

“I understand I've made an unusual lifestyle choice. But the label 'crazy' bothers me. Annoys me. Because it prevents response. When someone asks if you're crazy, Knight lamented, you can either say yes, which makes you crazy, or you can say no, which makes you sound defensive, as if you fear that you really are crazy. There's no good answer.”
― Michael Finkel, The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit

“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
― Henry David Thoreau

“In theory I can do almost anything; certainly I have been told how. In practice I do as little as possible. I pretend to myself that I would be quite happy in a hermit's cave, living on gruel, if someone else would make the gruel. Gruel, like so many other things, is beyond me.”
― Margaret Atwood, Bluebeard's Egg

“I am alone
and my heart
is my own.

Loneliness.
Solitude.
The first is a curse,
the second a blessing.
I would rather be a hermit
than live with a stranger
who would make me feel
even more lonely
than when I am
truly
alone.”
― Margarita Engle, The Lightning Dreamer: Cuba's Greatest Abolitionist

“Through even perhaps no one's making but their own, there are people out there who don't at all feel themselves designed for other people because they're seldom understood; howbeit not in some rebellious, angsty way - just really, gravely mistaken.”
― Criss Jami

“Other than involving yourself with ungrateful vegetable matter, colour, vigour and fascination can be imparted into a small outdoor space by several other methods.

In the 18th century, the inclusion of a hermit on one's estate was regarded as the epitome of country house style. There is absolutely no reason why today's dandy should not avail himself of the same privilege. It's a straightforward enough matter to entice a hopelessly drunk vagrant back to your premises using the simple lure of an opened bottle of wine. Once there, dress him in a bed sheet, wreathe his head in foliage and invite him to take up residence in an old barrel with the promise of unlimited alcohol, tobacco and scraps from your table in return for a sterling display of relentless solitude. Such a move not only provides the disadvantaged with ideal employment opportunities, but also enhances your reputation for stylish romanticism. Watch your friends gape in wonderment at the picturesque spectacle as your hermit sporadically peers out the top of the barrel and matters a few Enigma tic words of wisdom.”
― Vic Darkwood Gustav Temple, The Chap Almanac: An Esoterick Yearbook for the Decadent Gentleman

“The true artist resides on the inside.
The outside is chaos, bondage and destruction.
The inside is peace, freedom, and creation.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, The Oneironaut’s Diary

“This was the pattern of my days, a simple life led by natural rhythms rather than the requirements and expectations of others.”
― Neil Ansell, Deep Country: Five Years in the Welsh Hills

“Was I hiding from reality, on the outside looking in? Or, was I living my reality, on the outside looking out?”
― Heather Durham, Going Feral: Field Notes on Wonder and Wanderlust

“She could hide in this small, dull life.”
― Sandra Newman, The Heavens

“When reduced to nothing more than principle of the mind, humility will never be low enough for humility. On principle, the man who lives in the small mountain cottage is more large and luxurious than the man who lives in the tiny shack; the man who lives in the tiny shack, than the man who sleeps on the bank; the man who sleeps on the bank, than the man who wanders the desert; the man who wanders the desert at least has legs to wander while many other men do not. To reduce by the standards of men is to morally compete against men, and to reduce by one's own standards is ego-driven. A man can decrease his life to death and never reach true lowliness because humility on principle of the mind is not humility at all but rather its opposite: the pride of competition - only in reverse. Therefore it seems that, perhaps, true humility is nothing one can achieve; it hides in purity of the heart given only by the one perfect Christ.”
― Criss Jami

“We had been told in Bangor of a man who lived alone, a sort of hermit, at that dam [on the Allegash], to take care of it, who spent his time tossing a bullet from one hand to the other, for want of employment. This sort of tit-for-tat intercourse between his two hands, bandying to and fro a leaden subject, seems to have been his symbol for society.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Canoeing in the Wilderness

“Just because a man is a hermit doesn't mean he's hiding.”
― Paul Doiron, The Caretaker

“I dont want anybody talking about me. To say where I was or what I said when I was there. I mean, you could talk about me maybe. But nobody could say that it was me. I could be anybody. I think in times like these the less said the better. If something had happened and we were survivors and we met on the road then we'd have something to talk about. But we're not. So we dont.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“You don't ever leave your house.'

'People don't look at me there.”
― Soman Chainani, The School for Good and Evil

“And I realize my own culpability here--I don't want to spend the time and energy figuring how to solve my own rodent problems, so instead I nuke them. The irony is that, ostensibly, I have to come to this remote homestead to learn about Nature, with a capital N. To meditate on wilderness, on wildness. Only instead of apprenticing myself to the most basic concerns of such a life... I'm cheating myself of any real learning by opting for short-term solutions to long-term problems. It's a poisoning of the mind and the imagination, and what hemorrhages is a sense of responsibility to anything beyond my own comfort. But I do it, time and again. When the bait is gone, I put out another.”
― Steve Edwards, Breaking into the Backcountry

“The silence outside was reflected by a growing silence within. Any interior monologue quietened to a whisper, then faded away entirely.”
― Neil Ansell, Deep Country: Five Years in the Welsh Hills

“Nonetheless innuendo and imperfectly definable actions hover over the actions of the hermit.”
― Finn Fordham, Lots of Fun at Finnegans Wake: Unravelling Universals

“Looked around at the wind-blasted peaks and the swirls of mist moving past them. It was hard to take my eyes away. I had been up on some of them, and I would be up there again. There was something different to see each time, and something different from each one. All those streamlets to explore and all those tracks to follow through the glare of the high basins and over the saddles. Where did they lead? What was beyond? What stories were written in the snow? I watched an eagle turn slowly and fall away, quick-sliding across the dark stands of spruce that marched in uneven ranks up the slopes. His piercing cry came back on the wind. I thought of the man at his desk staring down from a city window at the ant colony streets below, the man toiling beside the thudding and rumbling of machinery, the man commuting to his job the same way at the same time each morning, staring at but not seeing the poles and the wires and the dirty buildings flashing past. Perhaps each man had his moment during the day when his vision came, a vision not unlike the one before me.”
― Richard Proenekke, More Readings from One Man's Wilderness: The Journals of Richard L. Proenneke, 1974-1980

“Had my first building inspector at the job. A gray jay, affectionately known as camp robber, came in his drab uniform of gray and white and black to look things over from his perch on a branch end. The way he kept tilting his head and making those mewing sounds, I'd say he was being downright critical. I welcomed his company just the same.”
― Richard Proenekke

“The hermit is the person to whom the judgment of a society matters the most.”
― PROUST MARCEL

“I keep seeing memes about how people dodge people they know in public. The consensus is that we don't want to be seen or bothered and don't want to catch up or commit to small talk with you. So, my question is: Are the people who we are dodging and who bother us, seeing these memes also?”
― Niedria D. Kenny