LONELINESS QUOTES IV

quotations about loneliness

loneliness quote

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.

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

The Great Gatsby

Tags: F. Scott Fitzgerald


Why do people have to be this lonely? What's the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?

HARUKI MURAKAMI

Sputnik Sweetheart

Tags: Haruki Murakami


There is a wilderness we walk alone
However well-companioned.

STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT

Western Star

Tags: Stephen Vincent Benét


No one ever discovers the depths of his own loneliness.

GEORGES BERNANOS

The Diary of a Country Priest

Tags: Georges Bernanos


Loneliness
Got a mind of its own
The more people around
The more you feel alone

BOB DYLAN

"Marchin' to the City", The Bootleg Series

Tags: Bob Dylan


And I was alone, had been for a while, and might be for a while, but it no longer frightened me the way it had. I was discovering something terrifyingly simple: there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. I was discovering this in the way, I suppose, that everybody does, but having tried, endlessly, to do something about it.

JAMES BALDWIN

Just Above My Head

Tags: James Baldwin


I see around me games and fun but I'm not asked to play.
Whence this awful loneliness amid life's grand buffet?

ROBERT H. OLANDER

The Traveler and Other Poems


I don't think that loneliness is necessarily a bad or unconstructive condition. My own skill at jamming time may actually be dependent on some fluid mixture of emotions, among them curiosity, sexual desire, and love, all suspended in a solvent medium of loneliness.

NICHOLSON BAKER

The Fermata

Tags: Nicholson Baker


A great many wise sayings have been uttered about the effects of solitary retirement; but the motives which impel men to seek it are not more various than the effects which it produces on different individuals. One thing is certain, that those who can with truth affirm that they are "never less alone than when alone," might generally add that they never feel more lonely than when not alone.

ARTHUR HELPS

Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd

Tags: Arthur Helps


There was nothing lonelier than a man with a million friends.

WILLIAM SHATNER

The Ashes of Eden

Tags: William Shatner


Each way means loneliness -- and communion.

T. S. ELIOT

The Cocktail Party

Tags: T. S. Eliot


Alone, amid the wide and desert world,
Without some heart to echo to our own,
How fev'rish all the pomp and play of life!--
There is a solitude that lifts the mind
To lofty things -- seclusion from the rush
And stir of the unfeeling crowd, whose days
Reap scarce a thought to sanctify their flight.
Far from the city din, may Wisdom haunt
Her lone retreats, and yet not live alone;
For is there not the fellowship of books
Divine, the company of kindling thoughts,
And all that Nature yields a grateful mind?
This is not loneliness: to look around
The peopled world, and 'mong its myriad hearts
To find no sympathies to nurse our own,
Oh, this is loneliness! that solitude
Of soul, which makes the world a desert seem.

ROBERT MONTGOMERY

"Loneliness", Religion and Poetry: Being Selections Spiritual and Moral


Alone! -- that worn-out word,
So idly spoken, and so coldly heard;
Yet all that poets sing and grief hath known
Of hopes laid waste, knells in that word ALONE!

EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON

The New Timon

Tags: Edward Bulwer-Lytton


Tranquility, allied to loneliness, possessed no charms.

MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT SHELLEY

Lodore

Tags: Mary Shelley


Who knows what true loneliness is -- not the conventional word, but the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion. Now and then a fatal conjunction of events may lift the veil for an instant. For an instant only. No human being could bear a steady view of moral solitude without going mad.

JOSEPH CONRAD

Under Western Eyes

Tags: Joseph Conrad


The loneliness you feel with another person, the wrong person, is the loneliest of all.

DEB CALETTI

The Fortunes of Indigo Skye


Lonely people, in talking to each other can make each other lonelier.

LILLIAN HELLMAN

The Autumn Garden

Tags: Lillian Hellman


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.

JANET FITCH

White Oleander


Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is richness of self.

MAY SARTON

Journal of a Solitude

Tags: May Sarton


There is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream, a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought--a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!

MARK TWAIN

"The Mysterious Stranger", The Complete Short Stories

Tags: Mark Twain