It is not so much for love of the world that we seek it, as to escape our own companionship.

We could not endure solitude, were it not for the powerful companionship of hope, or of some unseen one. [ Jean Paul ]

If a traveler does not meet with one who is his better or his equal, let him firmly keep to his solitary journey; there is no companionship with a fool. [ Max Muller ]

What is companionship where nothing that improves the intellect is communicated, and where the larger heart contracts itself to the model and dimension of the smaller? [ Landor ]

Constant companionship is not enjoyable, any more than constant eating. We sit too long at the table of friendship, when we outsit our appetites for each other's thoughts. [ Bovee ]

As we look up into these glorious culminations, how grand life becomes! To be forever with the Lord, and forever changing into His likeness, and, still more, forever deepening in the companionship of His thought and bliss, from glory to glory - could we desire more? [ Bishop R. S. Foster ]

It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds. In the best books great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their soul into ours. God be thanked for books; they are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages. Books are the true levellers; they give to all, who will faithfully use them, the society, the spiritual presence, of the best and greatest of our race. No matter how poor I am, I shall not pine for want of intellectual companionship, and I may become a cultivated man, though excluded from what is called the best society in the place where I live. [ W. E. Channing ]