But when you're deprived of it for a lengthy period then you value human companionship. But you have to survive and so you devise all kinds of mental exercises and it's amazing.

In the last 5 years American employers have lost over $150 billion of productivity to depression alone. That is more than the GDP of 28 different States during the same period.

As I've gotten older I've occasionally found myself nostalgic for earlier periods of solitude though I realize that's also likely a false nostalgia as I know there was nothing I wanted more during those periods than to not be alone whatever that means.

Probably nothing serious or worthwhile can be accomplished without one's willingness to be alone for sustained periods of time which is not to say that one must live alone obsessively.

Adulthood is the ever-shrinking period between childhood and old age. It is the apparent aim of modern industrial societies to reduce this period to a minimum.

Childhood: the period of human life intermediate between the idiocy of infancy and the folly of youth - two removes from the sin of manhood and three from the remorse of age.

Men of age object too much consult too long adventure too little repent too soon and seldom drive business home to the full period but content themselves with a mediocrity of success.

Probably the happiest period in life most frequently is in middle age when the eager passions of youth are cooled and the infirmities of age not yet begun as we see that the shadows which are at morning and evening so large almost entirely disappear at midday.

Middle age is the awkward period when Father Time starts catching up with Mother Nature.