LONELINESS QUOTES III
quotations about loneliness
When I get lonely these days, I think: So BE lonely, Liz. Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience. But never again use another person's body or emotions as a scratching post for your own unfulfilled yearnings.
ELIZABETH GILBERT
Eat, Pray, Love
The truly solitary being is not the man who is abandoned by men, but the man who suffers in their midst, who drags his desert through the marketplace and deploys his talents as a smiling leper, a mountebank of the irreparable.
EMIL CIORAN
A Short History of Decay
Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is richness of self.
MAY SARTON
Journal of a Solitude
Labor in loneliness is irksome.
MARK TWAIN
The Innocents Abroad
He felt the cold silence between worlds, the thrust of rocketships, the harsh, glamorous loneliness.
RAYMOND Z. GALLUN
"Prodigal's Aura"
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
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
The survival of the fittest is going to make some man very lonesome some day.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
Is it really possible to avoid loneliness, or to keep it in control? Surely. The matter is wholly personal. The way to begin is, oddly enough, by learning how to be impersonal, to stop the eternal concern for oneself, in caring more and more for the things of interest outside. For loneliness, though it may seem unselfish, is really a kind of selfishness. It is emphasis of self even while being a depreciation of self. If the lonely people would only stop thinking about themselves they would cease to be lonely.
JOHN DANIEL BARRY
"Loneliness", Reactions and Other Essays Discussing Those States of Feeling and Attitude of Mind That Find Expression In Our Individual Qualities
I tell ya a guy gets too lonely an' he gets sick.
JOHN STEINBECK
Of Mice and Men
There was nothing lonelier than a man with a million friends.
WILLIAM SHATNER
The Ashes of Eden
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
Loneliness will sit over our roofs with brooding wings.
BRAM STOKER
Dracula
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
Tranquility, allied to loneliness, possessed no charms.
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT SHELLEY
Lodore
The ideal attitude is to be able to live in a way that, no matter what the conditions may be, loneliness is impossible. The mountain-dwellers, suddenly thrown into a great city, would become wretched victims of loneliness. They would long for solitude just as other kinds of lonely people long for company. Without their mountains, without the association that helped to establish their habits, they would feel themselves indeed helpless and alone. The people in the streets are alien, irritating. The huddled buildings are an ache. The noise is a torment. The loss of the familiar they may find so intolerable as to drive them precipitately back.
JOHN DANIEL BARRY
"Loneliness", Reactions and Other Essays Discussing Those States of Feeling and Attitude of Mind That Find Expression In Our Individual Qualities
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
Late at night, when you're so lonely,
your shoulders curl toward the center of your body,
you call no one and you don't call out.
This is dignity. This is the pure loneliness
that made Christ think he was God.
This is why lunatics smile at their thoughts.
MICHAEL RYAN
"The Pure Loneliness", New and Selected Poems
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
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