To fly from, need not be to hate, makind: All are not fit with them to stir and toil, Nor is it discontent to keep the mind Deep in its fountain. - Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, 1818.

Then stirs the feeling infinite, so felt
In solitude, where we are least alone.

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more

Solitude is the playfield of Satan. - Pale Fire, 1962.

A man has to live with himself, and he should see to it that he always has good company.

Regrets are idle; yet history is one long regret. Everything might have turned out so differently. - My Summer in a Garden.