“I expect to be alone all to-day—what a great privilege it is, not to feel solitude a trial, but a pleasure!”

Treating the capacity for contented solitude as a genuine privilege · Paris journal, 1830

• Joy
• Solitude

“I always admire the ocean most when there are no vessels whatever on its waves; and the solitude, stillness, and depopulation of the Highlands, were to me, heighteners of their charms.”

Finding landscape most powerful when human activity recedes from view · Scottish travel journal, 1834

• Beauty
• Nature
• Solitude

“How I wish I were, what I am not, and fear I never may be, weaned from the pleasures of this life, and given only to preparation for another!”

An unusually candid admission of the tension between earthly happiness and religious aspiration · Journal, 1832

• Faith
• Joy
• Mortality