LONELINESS QUOTES III

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


Loneliness is one of the bugbears of mankind. With some people, it is a constant source of unhappiness. They make plans, sometimes exceedingly complex, to keep it at bay. They think that it lies outside. It really lies within their own consciousness.

JOHN DANIEL BARRY

"Loneliness", Reactions and Other Essays


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


No one ever discovers the depths of his own loneliness.

GEORGES BERNANOS

The Diary of a Country Priest

Tags: Georges Bernanos


The feeling of loneliness is unique to humans. A tree or a bird may seem to be lonely, but this is an attribute bestowed by the person making the observation. The tree or the bird is incapable of perceiving loneliness. This feeling occurs when a person is alone, and, moved by his emotions, associates his own circumstances with those of the bird or the tree that he sees before him. Since this feeling entails an element of self-examination, it is not a purely objective observation. The feeling of loneliness produced is thus a form of aesthetics, in that while observing one's external environment, one is at the same time examining the self that is located within it, and to a certain extent this is an affirmation of one's own personal worth.

GAO XINGJIAN

speech presented on receiving the Golden Plate Award at the Forty-first International Achievement Summit of the American Academy of Achievement, Jun. 8, 2002


Many of the loneliest people in the world have plenty of company. Their lives are full of social activity. They are always doing. Sometimes they are like hunted creatures. The hunted look one can often see in their eyes. They would be astonished, perhaps resentful, if they were told that they were themselves the hunters. Sometimes they blame the people about them. Sometimes they blame the conditions of life. Themselves they never blame. With longing, they look out on the world as if seeking for someone to give help. They even become reproachful and say there is no one with sympathy for them or understanding. And yet help is always with them, waiting for a chance, in the inner consciousness.

JOHN DANIEL BARRY

"Loneliness", Reactions and Other Essays Discussing Those States of Feeling and Attitude of Mind That Find Expression In Our Individual Qualities


Confronted by too much emptiness ... the brain invents. Loneliness creates company as thirst creates water. How many sailors have been wrecked in pursuit of islands that were merely a shimmering?

MARGARET ATWOOD

The Year of the Flood

Tags: Margaret Atwood


Self is the only prison that can ever bind the soul.

HENRY VAN DYKE

"The Prison and the Angel"

Tags: Henry Van Dyke


Tranquility, allied to loneliness, possessed no charms.

MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT SHELLEY

Lodore

Tags: Mary Shelley


The Loneliness One dare not sound --
And would as soon surmise
AS in its Grave go plumbing
To ascertain the size --
The Loneliness whose worst alarm
Is lest itself should see --
And perish from before itself
For just a scrutiny --
The Horror not to be surveyed --
But skirted in the Dark --
With Consciousness suspended --
And Being under Lock --
I fear me this -- is Loneliness --
The Maker of the soul
Its Caverns and its Corridors
Illuminate -- or seal --

EMILY DICKINSON

"The Loneliness One Dare Not Sound", Poems

Tags: Emily Dickinson


A lonely man is a lonesome thing, a stone, a bone, a stick, a receptacle for Gilbey's gin, a stooped figure sitting at the edge of a hotel bed, heaving copious sighs like the autumn wind.

JOHN CHEEVER

"The Sixties", John Cheever: The Journals


All the suffering that humanity ever knew can be traced to the one fact that no man in the history of the Galaxy ... could really understand one another. Every human being lived behind an impenetrable wall of choking mist within which no other but he existed.

ISAAC ASIMOV

Second Foundation

Tags: Isaac Asimov


Physical distance between people has nothing to do with loneliness. It's psychic distance.

ROBERT M. PIRSIG

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Tags: Robert M. Pirsig


Everyone's alone -- or so it seems to me.
They make noises, and think they are talking to each other;
They make faces, and think they understand each other.
And I'm sure they don't. Is that a delusion?

T. S. ELIOT

The Cocktail Party


Nothing is more sterile or lamentable than the man content to live within himself.

HAROLD PINTER

Tea Party

Tags: Harold Pinter


The main consequence of saying no to negative peer pressure is not just withstanding "the heat of the moment," as most adults think. Rather, it is coping with a sense of exclusion as others engage in the behavior and leave the adolescent increasingly alone. It is the loss of the shared experience. Further, the sense of exclusion remains whenever the group later recounts what happened. This feeling of loneliness then becomes pervasive but carries an easy solution -- go along with the crowd.

MICHAEL RIERA

Uncommon Sense for Parents With Teenagers

Tags: Michael Riera


It is loneliness that makes the loudest noise. This is as true of men as of dogs.

ERIC HOFFER

"Thoughts of Eric Hoffer", The New York Times Magazine, Apr. 25, 1971

Tags: Eric Hoffer


We live as we dream--alone.

JOSEPH CONRAD

Heart of Darkness


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


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