LONELINESS QUOTES III
quotations about loneliness
If all the beasts were gone, men would die from a great loneliness of spirit, for whatever happens to the beasts also happens to the man. All things are connected.
CHIEF SEATTLE OF THE SUWAMISH TRIBE
letter to President Franklin Pierce
Loneliness doesn't have much to do with where you are.
HUGH HEFNER
Esquire, Jun. 2002
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
It's paradoxical that where people are the most closely crowded, in the big coastal cities in the East and West, the loneliness is the greatest.
ROBERT M. PIRSIG
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
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
He felt the cold silence between worlds, the thrust of rocketships, the harsh, glamorous loneliness.
RAYMOND Z. GALLUN
"Prodigal's Aura"
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
Loneliness is never more cruel than when it is felt in close proximity with someone who has ceased to communicate.
GERMAINE GREER
The Female Eunuch
God, but life is loneliness, despite all the opiates, despite the shrill tinsel gaiety of "parties" with no purpose, despite the false grinning faces we all wear. And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter -- they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long.
SYLVIA PLATH
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
The survival of the fittest is going to make some man very lonesome some day.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
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
Lonely people, in talking to each other can make each other lonelier.
LILLIAN HELLMAN
The Autumn Garden
Even to loneliness there is an end, for those who are lonely enough, long enough.
THEODORE STURGEON
"Saucer of Loneliness"
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
No one ever discovers the depths of his own loneliness.
GEORGES BERNANOS
The Diary of a Country Priest
Self is the only prison that can ever bind the soul.
HENRY VAN DYKE
"The Prison and the Angel"
Loneliness will sit over our roofs with brooding wings.
BRAM STOKER
Dracula
Each way means loneliness -- and communion.
T. S. ELIOT
The Cocktail Party
My loneliness is like the tarmacs where planes never rest;
they touch and then take flight.
Let it be the launching pad for dreams,
brief respite for crafts that sweep the stars.
JAMIE ZWIEBEL
"The Lonely Season", Poems Written While Not Studying at Harvard
Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is richness of self.
MAY SARTON
Journal of a Solitude