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Loneliness Quotes

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Loneliness Quotes

“Most days, I’ve got this impermanence thing down just great. It doesn’t bother me; what’s to bother? Most days, I sit comfortably with the knowledge that I’ll die alone, and I feel nothing so strongly as my embrace of my nothingness. Most days don’t really matter, because there is only this day, and right now I feel like fear is all I am. I don’t want you to leave. Just let me pretend you won’t.' He wrapped his arms around me and we slept. For that night, we would last forever.”

“Rezar, só rezo quando durmo. Os sonhos são as minhas únicas orações. Deus que não leve a mal. É que apenas me sobra uma pequena e temporária alma. Apenas à noite esse espírito se acende, em delicado sussurro para que nnguém mais escute.Peço desculpa por esta despromoção para bicho. Ter alma, contudo, é um peso que só morto sou capaz de suportar. Foi por isso que amei tanto, em tantos enganados amores.”

“In my recollection, there have been many places and people I have been both blessed and cursed to know. Much joy and heartache can come from immortality, for loneliness can be lethal. I have unfortunately witnessed many I cared for, both mortal and not, perish. I have never been able to own anything that was truly mine. Once, I possessed everything, but many moons have come since that time. -- Sacha Borishauski”

“Meditation is the art of being alone. It is to forget the whole world. It is to forget the worries, chaos and tensions of the world as if it does not exist anymore. When you come to that space inside you, when only you are and nothing else exists, that is aloneness. It is not loneliness. You are with yourself. You are not missing anything. For the first time you are with yourself, For the first time you are not lonely. Ordinarily people are lonely even when they are in a crowd of people. Even while they are with friends, they are lonely. One tries to forget the loneliness through alcohol, looking at TV or through being constantly occupied. One tries anything that can help you to forget yourself and your loneliness. But sooner or later you have to come back to yourself and your loneliness. People are lonely in crowds and lonely in their relationships. Meditation is what creates a miracle: you are alone, but you are not lonely. For the first time you are with yourself, for the first time you can love yourself in your aloneness. For the first time you find bliss of aloneness. The moment that you start finding the bliss of your aloneness, it becomes wisdom. Then you are not dependent on anybody. You have found the source of bliss within yourself. That is wisdom. Now you have freedom: you can be everywhere, and you can be blissful.”

“Meditation is the art of enjoying your own aloneness, and love is the art of relating with others. These two qualities are the most important in life.  Meditation is far more important than love, because love is only possible if meditation becomes possible. A person who cannot enjoy his own aloneness cannot enjoy relating with others. That is the basic reason why the two persons in a relationship  are always in  such a conflict. They basically meet out of need, because they cannot be alone. They feely empty and  they are unable to be alone. They have only a negative experience of aloneness, so it is like an inner wound that hurts. And one needs some support and somebody to cling to. So both people in a relationship desire the other for support. But sooner or later this will create conflict and frustration, because both are lonely and they want the other to fill their emptiness and loneliness. It is only two meditator that can relate out  of joy,  because  both are capable of being alone. There is no need for the other. Now they can relate, because they have something to share. They do not relate out of need, but out of joy and abundance. The meditator can love himself in his own aloneness. which means that he can enjoy everything. The ancient spiritual scriptures say that wherever a real meditator sits, the whole place becomes a sacred place.”

“I would forget that I'm just talking as a human being to fellow human beings. I would think of myself as something special, and that kind of thinking would make me feel isolated. It is this sense of separateness that isolates us from other people. In fact, this kind of arrogant way of thinking creates a sense of loneliness, and then anxiety.”

“Keep moving like a man late for destiny's call. You are surrounded by people terrified of nothing at all. Terrified of silence, so they fill up the space, with real estate, keto diets, and the weather in this place. With a new season of a show you haven't watched yet. You don't need to listen. You just need to sweat at their frequency. Nod every six seconds on the dot. Laugh when the group laughs, whether it's funny or not.”

“To a loner it hardly seems possible-not even plausible- that millions could agree on what God likes and dislikes and whether pork or beef is verboten. How, we muse, can millions nod in unison approving the validity of liturgy? How can the unseen move so many strangers in the exact same way? Those millions-nonloners, of course- would say it moves them alike because it is real. They would say the unanimity by which it moves them proves it is real. Loners cannot help but suspect something else afoot, something pedestrian. We know nonloners learn by imitation. We know they shore up their self-esteem through imitation, through securing a sense of belonging. Nonloners thrive on this, so why would it not tint their view of heaven? Among nonloners, religion fends off loneliness, one of their greatest fears, both within the soul and without.”

“Among Norway rats, males ejaculate more sperm when copulating in the presence of male rivals, seemingly because the competition to reproduce persists all the way up the fallopian tube to the surface of the egg. For the same reason, an ape’s testicles are proportionate to the size of the male breeding pool. The male chimpanzee, surrounded by ruthless competition, has reproductive equipment that is truly prodigious, while the gorilla, living with a harem as the only male, has nothing to brag about. The evolutionary reason: A male without rivals needs no special adaptations to increase his odds of becoming a father. Once again, the social and the physiological cannot be separated any more than we can separate the length from the width of a rectangle.”

“Yet there are times when for no logical reason I feel an almost unbearable sense of isolation. Not only am I divided in myself, my underwater and above-water selves separated, but I feel wrenched away from everybody around me. This is part of being human, this knowing that we are all part of one another, inextricably involved; and at the same time alone, irrevocably alone.”

“Because I know what it's like to feel alone. I know what it's like to live in a paper world, to be good at hurting people, to think everybody should just shut up and do what you say. And then I remember that deep down, people are good, everybody's trying, and nobody deserves respect just for being powerful. So if I've got the voice in my head that tells me to crush people, then I think you probably have the voice that says the other thing too. If people keep calling us heroes and villains, they'll never know how close we came to listening to the other voice all those times.”

“Our uniqueness implies unique responsibility that we as individuals have in the world. It also implies an unavoidable loneliness. Here Ghandi’s words come to mind: “Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is still the truth.” We are all minorities of one in the sense of our uniqueness and loneliness. But in searching for the truth and the meaning of our lives, we “intercept” with others who are doing the same and our loneliness at least will not have to be experienced as isolation. And in chess too, we “intercept” with others in this common interest that is much like life, where everything we do matters, where we have to participate responsibly, and the more responsible our participation is, the more we feel at home. As such it can have a highly affirmative effect on the person, a sense that the individual gets: “Yes, I belong to this world, I am part of how things get decided, of how things get achieved. I share this with others.”

“True loneliness is the comet traveling alone through the universe, surrounded by vacuous space and nothingness at absolute zero. It would never have the chance to be seen by someone or approached by another. This dismal silence would simply continue for eons.”

“When he has finished his morning round, Bartholomew is tired and feels lonely. There is still a little time before lunch, and instead of returning to Brother Alice's empty office, he gives himself permission to visit the gardens. He hungers for the sight of birds, he wants to hear the leaves whisper around him and to sit so still the birds accept him as a shrub. He wants the birds to land on his limbs and mistake his eyes for berries. In this cold dry space between seasons, few birds remain. No snow has fallen yet, but the ducks and geese and hummingbirds are gone, while Bartholomew, bound to his clock and trapped inside, has missed their going, the shape and sound of their flight. A few crows and sparrows are the most he hopes to find as he wheels himself into his blind between bushes, birds as ordinary and steadfast as he is himself. The white sky is birdless above him and the wind's small dirge the only song he hears. Deeply he breathes and listens closely inside himself for his own heartbeat, for the clock that keeps his body's time. Eyes closed, he tries to clean his mind of images and of the voices that would tell him he should not be sitting here, that he is a thief of time, or that the Fathers know of and will punish the theft. He breathes and does not mark his breaths with numbers, only in-out, in-out, until he hears the hum of blood in his ears and the inside of his mind is a uniform, cool gray, unmarked by shadows. He waits for birds, but does not name his waiting. His eyes open, his breathing shallows and he hears the wind. Listens, embodied now, with tension in his body. The moan comes again, is fainter. Waits two, three, four. The source is very near him. He moves his chair from the blind and circles the bushes slowly. The voice cries again, and this time, he knows it calls to him. On the ground, which is black and dry, half hidden in the tangle of oldest, lowest branches, bare of leaves, a crow rests, wings pulled tight against its body, impersonating a black stone. The crow's head inclines toward one shoulder, the black dot of an eye regards him and shares its knowledge: I am dying. It is my time to die. The moan now is almost beyond hearing, a soft deep sound free both of anger and of pain. It is too late to speak or intervene. Bartholomew is chosen witness and he watches the death, silent and simple and wholly terrifying. The last breath is released, the bird-heart stops its beating, the film of a lid closing hides the round eye, the black head slumps to rest against the wing, and Bartholomew breathes slowly, without moving, and binds his mind to blankness. If a spirit leaves, he does not see or hear or feel it go. If he has a soul himself, it does not stir. The death of the crow defeats the Fathers' time. At last the lunch bell rings, and it almost surprises him to find he is alive, his body capable of hunger and of obedience to bells. His hands fly automatically to the controls of his chair, automatically he leaves the garden and steers toward the dining hall, looking back only once to the still black form, mostly obscured by branches. The great room is warm and full of people talking, laughing, eating, all oblivious to death, and what separates him from them, what makes him lonely in their company is his awareness that they each and all must die.”

“Even now, I like to look in the mirror. Over the years, I’ve followed the progress of the wrinkles furrowing my brow. My cheeks have grown thinner and my lips have become pale, but it’s all me and I feel a sort of fondness for the reflection in the mirror. [...] I was just over forty. That was twenty-two years ago. I suppose I am an old woman, but I still love looking at my face. I don’t know if it’s beautiful or ugly, but it is the only human face I ever see. I smile at it and receive a friendly smile back.”

“[The Gaze of an Invisible Stranger] In western Europe and north America In the cities of cruelty, racism, freedom & democracy, Cities of exile and alienation, You see many young people Who’d rather die than greet a stranger, You observe how they master the art of ignoring And not acknowledging the humanity of anyone Who is not their height and weight Whose features, skin color, and eyes are different than theirs… In return, you observe cities filled with older people Who delight at a nod or greeting from any stranger Who are hungry for the slightest kind human touch From any by passerby… Making you, the Invisible Stranger, wonder: Did these same elderly folks raise the young ones? Are they merely inheriting a world of their creation? Do the young ones realize The isolation, loneliness, and desolation awaiting them tomorrow? [Original poem published in Arabic on January 3, 2023, at ahewar.org]”

“Andrei perched on the rooftop of the cinema and looked out at Westwood’s nightlife bustling before him. He was mounted on the single, cream, stoned gargoyle built above in the corner of the theatre. He and his gothic animal breathed under the cold moon. Yes. He always felt like the moon—generally unnoticed by the world, that never minds—and navigated richly through his life alone and uninterrupted, like a ghost. Truth is an unobvious color. Those who attempt truth will never make billboards or conversations but usually sift in the background in awkward veritas.”

“If, by the virtue of charity or the circumstance of desperation, you ever chance to spend a little time around a Substance-recovery halfway facility like Enfield MA's state-funded Ennet House, you will acquire many exotic new facts [...] That certain persons simply will not like you no matter what you do. Then that most nonaddicted adult civilians have already absorbed and accepted this fact, often rather early on [...] That sleeping can be a form of emotional escape and can with sustained effort be abused [...] That purposeful sleep-deprivation can also be an abusable escape. That gambling can be an abusable escape, too, and work, shopping, and shoplifting, and sex, and abstention, and masturbation, and food, and exercise, and meditation/prayer [...] That loneliness is not a function of solitude [...] That if enough people in a silent room are drinking coffee it is possible to make out the sound of steam coming off the coffee. That sometimes human beings have to just sit in one place and, like, hurt [...] That there is such a thing as raw, unalloyed, agendaless kindness [...] That the effects of too many cups of coffee are in no way pleasant or intoxicating [...] That if you do something nice for somebody in secret, anonymously, without letting the person you did it for know it was you or anybody else know what it was you did or in any way or form trying to get credit for it, it's almost its own form of intoxicating buzz. That anonymous generosity, too, can be abused [...] That it is permissible to want [...] That there might not be angels, but there are people who might as well be angels.”

“You knew my mother as a wise woman, the kind of woman who would listen to anyone with a problem, who always had coffee in the house to serve a grieving family who had lost a loved one in the night and enough flour and ghee to make a tray of bitlawah for the celebration of a birth. She was the keeper of life and death. Her face, creased by years and by the sun, was the first thing most people had ever seen—and the last. [...] For as long as I have been her daughter, my mother has been the loneliest woman I have ever known.”