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Loneliness Quotes

Browse 4676 quotes about Loneliness.

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Loneliness Quotes

“Sadness, lack of recognition, and loneliness turn into bitterness. When people believe that their identity is unrecognized, it feels like injustice—because it is. People who have been treated unjustly often lash out, seek ways to humiliate those who they feel have humiliated them. Loneliness thus leads to meanness. As the saying goes, pain that is not transformed gets transmitted.”

PainSadnessLonelinessInjusticeBitternessHumiliationMeannessLack Of Recognition
Book:How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen
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“She gathers you close amidst the churning currents. Never doubt that I will always love you, she whispers, and she dives. This time, there is no going up. No return to the surface. There’s a certain strange peace in that knowledge. At least you won’t be alone, you tell yourself. Even if the only person who stays with you is your murderer, it is still better than dying by yourself. You do not resist as she bears you down, nor do you cry (no tears beneath the ocean, after all). Instead, you think of Baba, crouched over the kitchen table as he whispers, All things are transient because now you understand him, so perfectly well. Darkness encroaches, still and quiet; the storm cannot touch these depths. Pressure compresses your lungs and bursts in your ears and it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter at all. Your silence matches Sea Sister’s in this salt-tinged world she inhabits. Then death arrives like a sudden breeze, and blows your spirit clean away.”

DeathSadnessLonelinessGhosts
Book:The Girl with a Thousand Faces
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“En mis días sobrios, mis acciones van en dirección contraria innumerables veces por donde quiero caminar, más que las veces en las que me he embriagado y mi caos con las palabras tiene aquel camuflaje que el alcohol otorga con balbuceos sin sentido ahogados en un fuerte sentimiento etílico. Pidiéndo implícitamente, a ti, que me auxilies en algún punto antes de retirarme del mismo suelo en el que nos encontramos. Tengo miedo a dónde iré después de nuestro encuentro pecador y sin suficiente recolección de eventos. Pero más miedo he tenido, en sobriedad, atemorizado de a dónde me guían mis torpes pasos y esta sofocación propia que mi cerebro le ordena a mis manos débiles atacar a su propio cascarón.”

SadnessLonelinessIsolationTristezaSoledadMiedoPreocupación
Author:Eliot Lira
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“There have been times when I felt that I might die of loneliness. People sometimes say they might die of boredom, that they're dying for a cup of tea, but for me, dying of loneliness is not a hyperbole. When I feel like that, my head drops and my shoulders slump and I ache, I physically ache, for human contact - I truly feel that I might tumble to the ground and pass away if someone doesn't hold me, touch me. I don't mean a lover - this recent madness aside, I had long since given up on any notion that another person might love me that way - but simply a human being.”

SadnessLonelinessLonely
Book:Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
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“Silenced by the world, I stand alone, My voice unheard, my thoughts unknown. The pain inside, it cuts so deep, A wound that's raw, that cannot sleep. The silence is the most painful part, It tears at me, it breaks my heart. I scream inside, but no one hears, I'm lost in darkness, consumed by fears. The world moves on, but I stand still, A prisoner of my own free will. I long to speak, to make a sound, But silence reigns, and I am bound. The pain is real, it's all I know, A never-ending, endless woe, I can't speak, I can't fight. It's painfully poetic how this heart has been silenced.”

PainSilenceSadnessLonelinessDepressionEmotionsMental HealthAlonePoeticThoughts On Life
Author:Leju Thomas
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“I'm tired of living in hatred and resentment. I'm tired of living unable to love anyone. I don't have a single friend - not one. And, worst of all, I can't even love myself. Why is that? Why can't I love myself? It's because I can't love anyone else. A person learns how to love himself through the simple acts of loving and being loved by someone else. Do you understand what I am saying? A person who is incapable of loving another cannot properly love himself. No, I'm not blaming you for this. Come to think of it, you may be such a victim. You probably don't know how to love yourself. Am I wrong about that?”

InspirationalSadnessLonelinessSelf LoveSadLonelyIntrovertIntrovert QuotesRelateable
Book:1Q84
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“Together, now at the age of many of the Proctors who watched our antics from Olympus, we watch the three boys ride their horses across a moonslit plain. The boys were us once. Drunk on victory, they carried an owl standard and howled like idiots at the moons. We were idiots. Trapped in a world of lies, maybe the howls were the truest things that came out of our mouths. We were all just lonely and in search of a pack.”

SadnessLoneliness
Book:Light Bringer
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“El caso es que toda mi existencia era, al final, un montón de hilos de los que había tirado en algún momento, pero que siempre había terminado por cortar antes de que pudiesen hacerse lo suficientemente largos como para ser resistentes. (...) No tenía mucho más. Curiosamente, me di cuenta de que todos los había cortado por mi cuenta, como si una parte de mí huyese de la compañía, de la amistad, del amor, de todo lo bueno. Quizá buscaba la tristeza, la soledad, la desdicha. Quizá las perseguía.”

SadnessLonelinessAche
Book:Nosotros en la Luna
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“It was hard to invest in a person when one saw how things passed. Take the ball player, for example, who dedicates his life, gets injured, and then watches the sport proceed without him. He sits on his leather couch, watching better athletes run across his television screen, younger ones on renovated fields. And he, who sacrificed his sweat, youth, and sanity to the sport and knew coaches, teammates, and even janitors at the stadium like brothers—is forced to still live afterward. His teammates said kind words before a match, hugged him after a goal, but now seem to be focused on new seasons and new goals. He gets left behind. Did none of it mean anything? He cries for the fast world to stop and says, “Slow down. This pains me. We were just here. I used to joke with you. We said we loved each other. Wait for me. Will you just wait for me?” Those hands he shook after a victory could not care for the weeping, broken-footed man hiding in the shadows of his home, once lit by the sun, once the life of the party. When Andrei walked into a job now, or even met someone for the first time, he thought: How long will it take you to forget me?”

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Book:A Happy Ghost
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“Sometimes, Andrei would feel like the moon. When he dined in solitude, when he masturbated to the couple at the hotel, or when he finished a book he could tell no one around him about, he felt singular and unaccompanied, like the stupid, radiating circle stuck in the sky. His soul would glow softly, through the darkness, deadened, but there, as if solemnly leaving a light on for anyone to come join him. Andrei would feel so far away from everyone else, like a floating object in space, lost in orbit, that no hand worried about, remembered, or attempted to retrieve.”

SadnessSocietyLonelinessSolitudeMoonDepressionAbandonment
Book:A Happy Ghost
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“Sometimes, a feeling would creep over Andrei. And actually, it would creep over the dead man’s son beside him, too. A particular awareness would swallow them both individually, in different moments in their lives, for a few seconds. They would lie in bed and out of nowhere, freeze as they remembered that all sensation would end. Everything they’d worked on would be entirely erased. Movement would cease. The visor of consciousness would be taken off. Andrei, and his new friend, would someday no longer have the capacity to try. And they would no longer remember that they could try. They would simply no longer remember.”

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Book:A Happy Ghost
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“People had tried to reel Raphael in from his silence. Their attempts were precisely why he felt so uncomfortable. He did not want to be saved or included. He liked to listen. When he asked a question, it was because he wanted to know the answer. But then they turned it around to ask, “What about you?” and this bothered Raphael, who believed the speaker only returned the question out of manners and so was never a real inquiry. Raphael would be pressured to respond and endure the painful seconds of saying something someone did not want to hear. He would trace their faltering eyes, then his words would crumble into sand, and his listener would never notice because they were not interested in the first place.”

RelationshipsFriendshipSilenceSadnessSocietyLonelinessSolitudeConversationDatingShyness
Book:A Happy Ghost
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“He frowned with difficulty at everyone’s quick transition. He felt something crack in the room. It was like the feeling an artist got when he closed up his gallery, walked upstairs to his living quarters, and stared at the window to watch his former crowd rush to party next door and forget his exhibition one martini at a time. It was like goodbye. There was an unsaid, incomprehensive quality of unfairness to endings. They lacked a transition. The guitarist’s identity, for example, was in her strumming ten seconds ago, not when she finished and looked up at the seduced crowd as “her” again. The singer’s heart was housed in his lyrics, not in his thick-accented voice that rooms never understood.”

LifeArtSadnessLonelinessSingersGoodbyeArtistsEndingsGoodbyesMusicians
Book:A Happy Ghost
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“A man, perhaps an inch shorter than Andrei, sensing the height comparison, slowly passed him. The stranger still wore an N-95 mask. The pandemic ended three years ago, but Andrei identified why masks were still worn by others. While millions had died from COVID-19, others silently and ashamedly rejoiced in the virus’ demands. The requirement of face masks made it mandatory for everyone to cover more than half of their face. And for those who disliked their face, they, for nearly two years, had the chance to go out in the world and not be ugly for once. Suddenly, while they were not beautiful, they were not hideous. Neutrality can do so much for someone. This period was like a gift for those with horrid teeth, large features, cystic acne, injuries, scarring, and discoloration. Never before were so many people looked straight in the eyes. Masks were some people’s only chance to show who they were. And now, when the pandemic had ended, they were back in the shadows. Large groups of people, however, as Andrei had seen, still wore them, beneath the excuse that the virus could still return. "I would love to kiss one of you on the cheek, he thought.”

SadnessSocietyLonelinessUglyIsolationCovid 19PandemicUglinessCovidFace Masks
Book:A Happy Ghost
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“He yawned, his face performing that universal mixture of a smile and a frown as he stretched his arms out. One was not sure why faces did this—either waking people were activating their muscles in preparation for the day or more soulfully, the smile was gratitude for life and the frown to follow was recognition of what that life entailed.”

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Book:A Happy Ghost
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“Andrei was in an elusive period in life, much like a snow leopard. He’d spent a couple of years having successfully filtered out all that was terrible and ugly in his life, from old shoes to lifeless people. However, the purification finished and he had not yet found the glint of gold to replace the damned. He had nowhere to place his lifted foot. Instead, his moral foot hovered, awkwardly, a crepuscular flesh, trembling every night, unable to set itself in a correct place. He lived in that hanging imbalance every day, and some would say this period of searching takes a while. But to him, all it did was take. Not a while. The peace of his life just takes. And takes. And takes. While Andrei may not suffer from the heat of stress or common negativity that improperly placed feet do, he lived cold, in a void, without the luxury of finding a worthy arrangement for his leopard paw.”

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Book:A Happy Ghost
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“Pornography did not serve him either. Andrei used to have his personal kinks and fetishes, but after a while, nothing could get him off. For a long time, the only videos he would search were the ones titled: “Who is she?” The only thing that vitalized his self-play was the prospect of some woman on the earth no one knew of and could not find. There was something infinite to these tapes, not the appearance of the girls, but the agitating dissatisfaction and momentary access of a not-so-innocent stranger who men innocently lost forever. It consisted of poorly recorded videos, posted from a smartphone or webcam, and a desperate number of melancholy comments trying to search for the mystery woman. There were plenty of these recordings. But it broke Andrei even more when eventually he knew all the girls no one knew.”

SadnessLonelinessSolitudeAddictionMasculinityPornographyMasturbationPornThe InternetPorn Addiction
Book:A Happy Ghost
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“He kissed the wall and bent his knees. For an instant, he grew ashamed and sad. He himself was not touched very often. Andrei sensed how pathetic he must have looked, but he was much too lonely to care. He sped up and could feel the devil cheering, “Lower. Go as low as hell,” and he limboed his way into that hell. And it was freezing and it was hot. One knows they are truly gone when their own tears start to lubricate their self-play. Andrei kept going, stroking wet, painfully, finishing at the same time the man did. And then the door opened.”

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Book:A Happy Ghost
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“Andrei avoided the internet as well and this evasion only added to his gloom. He loved music, especially old songs, and he loved movies, of all sorts. If he had the patience, sometimes he would read. While most of the pages he turned bored him to sleep, certain books with certain lines disarranged him. Some literature brought him to his feet, laughing and howling in his room. When the book was right, it was bliss and he wept. His room hushed with serenity and indebtedness. When he turned to his computer, however, or took out his phone, he would inevitably come across a viral trend or video that took the art he loved and turned it into a joke. The internet, in Andrei’s desperate eyes, managed to make fun of everything serious. And if one did not laugh, they were not intelligent. The internet could not be slowed and no protest to criticize its exploitation of art could be made because recreations of art hid perfectly under the veneer of mockery and was thus, impenetrable. It was easy to use Chopin’s ‘Sonata No. 2’ for a quick laugh, to reduce the ‘Funeral March’ to background music. It was a sneaky way for a digital creator to be considered an artist—and parodying the classics made them appear cleverer than the original artist. Meanwhile, Andrei’s body had healed playing Chopin alone in his apartment. He would frailly replay movie moments, too, that he later found the world edited and ripped apart with its cheap teeth. And everyone ate the internet’s crumbs. This cruel derision was impossible to escape. But enough jokes, memes, and glam over someone’s precious source of life would eventually make a sensitive body numb. And Andrei was afraid of that. He needed his fountain of hope unblemished. For this reason, he escaped the internet’s claws and only surrendered to it for e-mails, navigation, and the weather.”

ArtInspirationSadnessLonelinessInternetSocial MediaVulnerabilityAdulthoodSensitivityNumbness
Book:A Happy Ghost
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“This is a special kind of depression. It comes from the great burden laid on our shoulders. A depression you can't shake off, so that it is part and parcel of you all the time you go on with your military activities. This depression leads to melancholy. It's od to point to somebody young and say: there goes a sad man. That is our lot. One of the things that weighs me down most is that it's forbidden to speak of this sadness outside the limits of the army. In fact, I'm forbidden to share it with anyone. The main reason is the secrecy that surrounds everything that has to do with the military. In order to explain the depression, you have to talk about its origins, and that's prohibited, of course. Another reason is that it's almost impossible to explain the nature of this sadness to anyone who doesn't know it; the sadness will always be interpreted as something else. Within itself it's not mentioned-- It exists, but for each man separately. it is never discussed. Thus another factor comes into the picture-- loneliness. But loneliness, sadness and depression are the lot of great masses of people in this world. Well, then, What kind of God-forsaken world are we living in? It contains so much beauty, so much grandeur and nobility- but men destroy everything that is beautiful in the world. It seems, indeed, that from time immemorial we have been forgotten by the gods.”

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Author:Jonathan Netanyahu
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“... then came a period when nothing soothed me ... there was no balm in the festive herbal splendor of my kitchen, no balm in the exhaustive evening showers before and after the Brooklyn Bridge excursion ... the waking hours weighted themselves between my legs, and there was no relief in sight .. I took to the reading of memoirs ... it was one of my finer moments when I discovered that no human life escapes the tribulation of solitude ...”

ReadingSadnessLonelinessSolitudeDepressionMemoirsTribulations
Book:Whatever Happened to Interracial Love?
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“He felt the woman he devoted half of his life to slipping through his fingers: the pain lying in his desire for her, but the truth lying in his inability to love her. Sooner or later their sand castle built on beaches of make believe would crumble, washed away by the hungering tide of time and all he could do was watch it vanish, watching her fade out to sea.”

SadnessLonelinessHopelessnessLove Lost
Book:Tales of the Sibling Not-So-Grim
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“In case you didn’t know I too went home after the ceremony And replayed the silent pauses of our failed encounter. I thought of a new clever thing I wish I said And you’ll never know it and I won’t know yours. In case you didn’t know I imagine weddings within the first hour of meeting you I felt your peek, but pretended not to look your way I looked you up online and now don’t know where to start That you whispered in my ear and I’ll masturbate To the once hot air on my neck. In case you didn’t know When I turned the corner, I cried. I thought I heard you, too. Maybe both our loved ones Share the same hospital. In case you didn’t know I wore bright colors and made the afternoon men laugh, But tonight I’ll drink to darkness because I have no one. They pay me well, but I only want that other thing— Your poetry, in case I didn’t know.”

PoetryQuotesSadnessLonelinessPoemsIntrovertShynessThe Goodbye SongModern Poetry
Book:The Goodbye Song
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