In this ever-faster-moving communications age with near-constant connectivity and burgeoning social media, one may occasionally wonder if solitude and a peaceful quiet are still possible – or even necessary. Many can attest that putting down the electronic device and going to the woods remains vital to our spirits. Here are some of our favorite quotes from those who shared this love of nature’s solitude with us.

“All good things are wild and free.” 
― Henry David Thoreau ” 

“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.” 
― John Muir

“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” 
― Lord Byron

“Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience” 
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“To sit in solitude, to think in solitude with only the music of the stream and the cedar to break the flow of silence, there lies the value of wilderness.” 
― John Muir

“I never found a companion so companionable as solitude.” 
― Henry David Thoreau

“Moments of solitude with Mother Nature are sunshine to a soul.” 
― Anthony Douglas Williams