Daily Inspiration Quote by Richard Steele

Steele turns solitude from a scenic retreat into a psychological jailbreak. The line doesn’t romanticize being alone; it insists the real luxury is being unhooked from the compulsions that make other people miserable. “Exempt” is doing quiet, moral heavy lifting: it’s not the monk’s vow or the misanthrope’s snub, but a rare kind of immunity. And by calling passions “torments,” Steele punctures the era’s fashionable celebration of feeling. Desire, jealousy, vanity, grievance - these aren’t proof you’re alive; they’re instruments that play you.

The subtext is pointedly social. Steele wrote in a London of coffeehouses, party papers, and reputations made and ruined in public. In that world, “passions” aren’t private weather; they’re contagious, performed, and weaponized. Solitude becomes “pleasing” only when it’s not just physical separation from the crowd but separation from the crowd’s emotional economy: the need to be admired, to win, to retaliate, to keep up. It’s a diagnosis of status culture before we had that phrase.

There’s also a sly discipline hidden inside the comfort. Steele isn’t saying the sensitive should flee society; he’s arguing that the best company is possible only after self-government. The cleanest irony is that his ideal solitude is less about being alone than about being unprovokable. That’s not withdrawal. It’s power.