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Loneliness Quotes

Browse 4676 quotes about Loneliness.

Loneliness Quotes

“The surest cure for vanity is loneliness.”

Loneliness Lonely Cures Vanity Being Alone Feeling Lonely Being Lonely I Am Lonely Lonely And Alone Alone Lonely Lonely Heart

Author:Tom Wolfe

“Jealousy is no more than feeling alone against smiling enemies.”

“There's an old joke - um... two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of 'em says, "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know; and such small portions." Well, that's essentially how I feel about life - full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly.”

Knows Feels Wells Two Suffering Boys Loneliness Terrible Mountain Jokes Yeah Misery Ems Unhappiness Portions Resorts Elderly Old Jokes Annie Hall Misery And Suffering

Author:Woody Allen

“In the beginning, God created the earth, and he looked upon it in his cosmic loneliness. And God said, "Let Us make living creatures out of mud, so the mud can see what We have done." And God created every living creature that now moveth, and one was man. Mud as man alone could speak. God leaned close to mud as man sat, looked around, and spoke. "What is the purpose of all this?" he asked politely. "Everything must have a purpose?" asked God. "Certainly," said man. "Then I leave it to you to think of one for all this," said God. And He went away.”

Thinking Men Said Done Earth Purpose Speak Loneliness Creatures Sat Spokes Cosmic Mud Cradle Living Creatures Cats Cradle Bokonon

Author:Kurt Vonnegut

“He is one of those who has had the wilderness for a pillow, and called a star his brother. Alone. But loneliness can be a communion.”

Stars Nature Loneliness Brother Wilderness Communion Pillow

Author:Dag Hammarskjold

“We, unaccustomed to courage exiles from delight live coiled in shells of loneliness until love leaves its high holy temple and comes into our sight to liberate us into life. Love arrives and in its train come ecstasies old memories of pleasure ancient histories of pain. Yet if we are bold, love strikes away the chains of fear from our souls. We are weaned from our timidity In the flush of love's light we dare be brave And suddenly we see that love costs all we are and will ever be. Yet it is only love which sets us free.”

“Remember: the time you feel lonely is the time you most need to be by yourself. Life's cruelest irony.”

Source: Shampoo Planet

“The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence.”

Humans Whole Facts Belief Existence Loneliness Conviction Curious Inevitable Phenomenon Solitary Human Existence Loneliness In Life Solitary Life Solitary Man

Author:Thomas Wolfe

“we use TV as we use tranquilizers- to even things out, to blot out unpleasantness, to dilute confusion, distress, unhappiness, loneliness.”

Use Loneliness Tvs Confusion Unhappiness Distress

Book:The Age of Missing Information

Source: The Age of Missing Information

“Actually loneliness has a kind of fascination; it's a state of egotistical, inner grace that you can achieve only by standing guard on old, forgotten roads that no one travels anymore.”

Kind States Grace Achieve Loneliness Standing Forgotten Fascination Egotistical

Book:The Fencing Master

Source: The Fencing Master

“There is a loneliness that can be rocked. Arms crossed, knees drawn up, holding, holding on, this motion, unlike a ship's, smooths and contains the rocker. It's an inside kind--wrapped tight like skin. Then there is the loneliness that roams. No rocking can hold it down. It is alive. On its own. A dry and spreading thing that makes the sound of one's own feet going seem to come from a far-off place.”

Kind Seems Sound Alive Feet Loneliness Arms Skins Ships Knees Dry Smooth Holding On Rockers

Author:Toni Morrison

“Loneliness is the human condition. Cultivate it. The way it tunnels into you allows your soul room to grow. Never expect to outgrow loneliness. Never hope to find people who will understand you, someone to fill that space. An intelligent, sensitive person is the exception, the very great exception. If you expect to find people who will understand you, you will grow murderous with disappointment. The best you'll ever do is to understand yourself, know what it is that you want, and not let the cattle stand in your way.”

“Loneliness is caused by an alienation from life. It is a loneliness from your real self.”

Real Self Loneliness Alienation Real Self Cybernetics Psycho Cybernetics

Book:PSYCHO-CYBERNETICS

Source: PSYCHO-CYBERNETICS

“I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom.”

Source: Visions of Poe: a personal selection of Edgar Allan Poe's stories and poems

“Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself.”

Writing Creativity Loneliness Cold Solitude Oneself Introspection Abyss Being Alone Descent

Author:Franz Kafka

“It's no good trying to get rid of your own aloneness. You've got to stick to it all your life. Only at times, at times, the gap will be filled in. At times! But you have to wait for the times. Accept your own aloneness and stick to it, all your life. And then accept the times when the gap is filled in, when they come. But they've got to come. You can't force them.”

Trying Force Waiting Accepting Loneliness Filled Sticks Gaps Filled In

Book:Delphi Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated)

Source: Delphi Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated)

“I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me.”

Thinking Poetry Heard Loneliness Singing Mermaid Trousers Flannels

Author:T. S. Eliot

“In all of us there is a hunger, marrow-deep, to know our heritage- to know who we are and where we have come from. Without this enriching knowledge, there is a hollow yearning. No matter what our attainments in life, there is still a vacuum, an emptiness, and the most disquieting loneliness.”

Source: Alex Haley: The Man Who Traced America's Roots

“the way i need you is a loneliness i cannot bear.”

Way Needs Loneliness Bears Need You I Need You

Book:The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

Source: The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

“It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”

“It's the only condition I know. Bitter Love, Loneliness, contempt for corruption, blind hope. It's where I live. A permanent state of bereavement. This is nothing new.”

Knows States Conditions Loneliness Blind Corruption Bitter Permanent Contempt Bereavement Nothing New Bitter Love

Author:Gregory Maguire

“Any human face is a claim on you, because you can't help but understand the singularity of it, the courage and loneliness of it. But this is truest of the face of an infant. I consider that to be one kind of vision, as mystical as any.”

Humans Kind Helping Faces Vision Loneliness Claims Mystical Infant Truest Singularity Human Faces

Book:Gilead: A Novel

Source: Gilead: A Novel

“But we are alone, darling child, terribly, isolated each from the other; so fierce is the world's ridicule we cannot speak or show our tenderness; for us, death is stronger than life, it pulls like a wind through the dark, all our cries burlesqued in joyless laughter; and with the garbage of loneliness stuffed down us until our guts burst bleeding green, we go screaming round the world, dying in our rented rooms, nightmare hotels, eternal homes of the transient heart.”

Source: Other Voices, Other Rooms

“What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more' ... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.”

Ifs Moments Happiness Night Heard Sadness Loneliness Divine Down And Stealing Teeth This Life Curse Judgement Demon Spokes What If Recurrence

Author:Friedrich Nietzsche

“Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”

“There was only the broad square with the scattered dim moons of the street lamps and with the monumental stone arch which receded into the mist as though it would prop up the melancholy sky and protect beneath itself the faint lonely flame on the tomb of the Unknown Soldier, which looked like the last grave of mankind in the midst of night and loneliness.”

Lasts Night Sky Streets Mankind Loneliness Moon Protect Stones Lonely Soldier Graves Flames Midst Melancholy Broads Squares Lamps Mist Tombs Props Arches

Author:Erich Maria Remarque

“We must become so alone, so utterly alone, that we withdraw into our innermost self. It is a way of bitter suffering. But then our solitude is overcome, we are no longer alone, for we find that our innermost self is the spirit, that it is God, the indivisible. And suddenly we find ourselves in the midst of the world, yet undisturbed by its multiplicity, for our innermost soul we know ourselves to be one with all being.”

Knows World Way Soul Self Spirit Suffering Loneliness Solitude Overcoming Bitter Midst Multiplicity Indivisible Spirit And Soul

Author:Hermann Hesse

“Greedhas no satiation point, since its consummation does not fill the inner emptiness, boredom, loneliness, and depression it is meant to overcome.”

Doe Loneliness Overcoming Greed Boredom Emptiness Satiation

Book:To Have Or To Be?

Source: To Have Or To Be?

“My plea...is a plea to save the children. Too many of them walk with pain and fear, in loneliness and despair. Children need sunlight...They need kindness and refreshment and affection. Every home, regardless of the cost of the house, can provide an environment of love which will be an environment of salvation.”

Needs Children Home Pain House Walks Kindness Environment Loneliness Cost Despair Salvation Affection Sunlight Refreshments Save The Children

Author:Gordon B. Hinckley

“I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others--young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life.”

Sometimes Moments Young Night Felt Loneliness Haunting Dusk Feeling Lonely Clerks Poignant Great Gatsby Gatsby Great Gatsby Important

Book:F. Scott Fitzgerald: Trimalchio: An Early Version of 'The Great Gatsby'

Source: F. Scott Fitzgerald: Trimalchio: An Early Version of 'The Great Gatsby'

“As with many people, Charles, who could not talk, wrote with fullness. He set down his loneliness and his perplexities, and he put on paper many things he did not know about himself.”

People Knows Loneliness Paper Fullness Perplexity

Book:East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

“The trouble is not that I am single and likely to stay single, but that I am lonely and likely to stay lonely.”

Trouble Loneliness Lonely Companionship Single Being Single Being Lonely I Am Lonely Single Relationship I Am Single Happy Single Staying Single

Author:Charlotte Bronte

“The General Public is a statistical fiction created by a few exceptional men to make the loneliness of being exceptional a little easier to bear.”

Men Littles Fiction Loneliness Bears Easier Exceptional General Public

Author:Samuel R. Delany

“there is a loneliness in this world so great that you can see it in the slow movement of the hands of a clock”

World Hands Loneliness Movement This World Clock

Book:The Pleasures of the Damned: Selected Poems 1951-1993

Source: The Pleasures of the Damned: Selected Poems 1951-1993

“There in the center of that silence was not eternity but the death of time and a loneliness so profound the word itself had no meaning.”

Silence Loneliness Eternity Profound

Book:Sula

Source: Sula

“My mind swirled with memories of the life I had led. The constant struggle to keep up appearances, the pretenses, the smiles that had been met with tears. The long sleepless nights, the loneliness that cloaked my spirit and turned me into a true ghost.”

Mind Long Spirit Night Memories Struggle Loneliness Tears Mets Constant Appearance Ghost Pretense Sleepless Nights Constant Struggle

Book:Empress Orchid

Source: Empress Orchid

“Desire, loneliness, wind in the flowering almond— surely these are the great, the inexhaustible subjects to which my predecessors apprenticed themselves. I hear them echo in my own heart, disguised as convention.”

Heart Desire My Own Subjects Loneliness Wind Conventions Echoes Predecessors Flowering Almonds

Author:Louise Glück

“Even for me life had its gleams of sunshine.”

Life Loneliness Inspire Depression Sunshine Gleam

Book:The Bronte Sisters: Three Novels: Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights; and Agnes Grey (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

Source: The Bronte Sisters: Three Novels: Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights; and Agnes Grey (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

“We can also allow our Soulmate to pass us by,without accepting him or her,or even noticing. Then we will need another incarnation in order to find that Soulmate. And because of our selfishness, we will be condemned to the worst torture humankind ever invented for itself: loneliness.”

Needs Order Accepting Worst Loneliness Selfishness Torture Humankind Soulmate Incarnation Noticing

Author:Paulo Coelho

“The lonely one offers his hand too quickly to whomever he encounters.”

Hands Friendship Loneliness Offers Lonely Encounters Being Alone I Am Lonely

Book:The Portable Nietzsche

Source: The Portable Nietzsche

“Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.”

People Inspirational Doe Important Seems Certain Views Loneliness Profound Chaos Oneself Communicate Gifted Being Alone Memories Dreams Reflections

Book:Memories, dreams, reflections

Source: Memories, dreams, reflections

“And yet all loneliness, angers, hatreds, envies, and itchings that it contains, if rolled into one single experience and put into the scale against the least moment of the joy that is felt by the least in Heaven, would have no weight that could be registered at all. Bad cannot succeed even in being bad as truly as good is good.”

Ifs Moments Joy Heaven Felt Loneliness Succeed Hatred Weight Envy Scales Itching Great Divorce Being Bad

Author:C. S. Lewis

“They flank me - depression on my left, loneliness on my right. They don't need to show their badges. I know these guys very well. ... Then they frisk me. They empty my pockets of any joy I had been carrying there. Depression even confiscates my identity; but he always does that.”

Knows Needs Wells Doe Shows Joy Guy Left Loneliness Identity Depression Empty Pockets Badges

Author:Elizabeth Gilbert

“There might be some hours of loneliness. But there was something wonderful even in loneliness. At least you belonged to yourself when you were lonely.”

Might Hours Wonderful Loneliness Lonely

Book:The Collected Works of Lucy Maud Montgomery: 20 Novels & 170+ Short Stories, Poems, Letters and Memoirs (Including The Complete Anne Shirley Series, Chronicles of Avonlea & Emily Starr Trilogy): Anne of Green Gables, Anne of Avonlea, Anne of Windy Poplars, Rainbow Valley, Rilla of Ingleside, Emily of New Moon, The Story Girl, The Golden Road, Pat of Silver Bush, The Blue Castle & many more

Source: The Collected Works of Lucy Maud Montgomery: 20 Novels & 170+ Short Stories, Poems, Letters and Memoirs (Including The Complete Anne Shirley Series, Chronicles of Avonlea & Emily Starr Trilogy): Anne of Green Gables, Anne of Avonlea, Anne of Windy Poplars, Rainbow Valley, Rilla of Ingleside, Emily of New Moon, The Story Girl, The Golden Road, Pat of Silver Bush, The Blue Castle & many more

“When I get lonely these days, I think: So BE lonely, Liz. Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience. But never again use another person's body or emotions as a scratching post for your own unfulfilled yearnings.”

Source: The Complete Elizabeth Gilbert: Eat, Pray, Love; Committed; The Last American Man; Stern Men & Pilgrims

“It's an odd feeling-farewell-there is some envy in it. Men go off to be tested for courage and if we're tested at all, it's for patience, for doing without, for how well we can endure loneliness.”

Ifs Men Wells Feelings Loneliness Endure Envy Odd Farewell Tested

Author:Isak Dinesen

“A boy told me if he roller-skated fast enough his loneliness couldn't catch up to him, the best reason I ever heard for trying to be a champion. What I wonder tonight pedaling hard down King William Street is if it translates to bicycles. A victory! To leave your loneliness panting behind you on some street corner while you float free into a cloud of sudden azaleas, pink petals that have never felt loneliness, no matter how slowly they fell.”

Source: Fuel: Poems

“I’m here. I love you. I don’t care if you need to stay up crying all night long, I will stay with you... There’s nothing you can ever do to lose my love. I will protect you until you die, and after your death I will still protect you. I am stronger than Depression and I am braver than Loneliness and nothing will ever exhaust me.”

“Courage is the price that Life exacts for granting peace, The soul that knows it not, knows no release, From little things; Knows not the livid loneliness of fear Nor mountain heights where bitter joy can hear The sound of wings.”

Source: Last flight

“Market moralities and mentalities-- fueled by economic imperatives to make a profit at nearly any cost-- yield unprecedented levels of loneliness, isolation, and sadness. And our public life lies in shambles, shot through with icy cynicism and paralyzing pessimism. To put it bluntly, beneath the record-breaking stock markets on Wall Street and bipartisan budget-balancing deals in the White House lurk ominous clouds of despair across this nation.”

Source: Restoring Hope: Conversations on the Future of Black America