Careful Words

solitary (n.)

solitary (adj.)

  No arts, no letters, no society, and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679): The Leviathan. Part i. Chap. xviii.

The solitary monk who shook the world

From pagan slumber, when the gospel trump

Thunder'd its challenge from his dauntless lips

In peals of truth.

Robert Montgomery (1807-1855): Luther. Man's Need and God's Supply.

As if the man had fixed his face,

In many a solitary place,

Against the wind and open sky!

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): Peter Bell. Part i. Stanza 26.

A solitary shriek, the bubbling cry

Of some strong swimmer in his agony.

Lord Byron 1788-1824: Don Juan. Canto ii. Stanza 53.

Woes cluster. Rare are solitary woes;

They love a train, they tread each other's heel.

Edward Young (1684-1765): Night Thoughts. Night iii. Line 63.