LONELINESS QUOTES IV

quotations about loneliness

loneliness quote

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


All the lonely people, where do they all come from?

THE BEATLES

"Eleanor Rigby", Revolver

Tags: The Beatles


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

LILLIAN HELLMAN

The Autumn Garden

Tags: Lillian Hellman


Labor in loneliness is irksome.

MARK TWAIN

The Innocents Abroad


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

Tags: Sylvia Plath


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


How dear to the mind of the sage are the thoughts that are bred in loneliness; for there is as it were music at his heart, and he talketh within him as with friends.

MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER

Tupper's Proverbial Philosophy

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

MAY SARTON

Journal of a Solitude

Tags: May Sarton


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


Each way means loneliness -- and communion.

T. S. ELIOT

The Cocktail Party

Tags: T. S. Eliot


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

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He felt the cold silence between worlds, the thrust of rocketships, the harsh, glamorous loneliness.

RAYMOND Z. GALLUN

"Prodigal's Aura"


Loneliness doesn't have much to do with where you are.

HUGH HEFNER

Esquire, Jun. 2002

Tags: Hugh Hefner


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

WILLIAM SHATNER

The Ashes of Eden

Tags: William Shatner


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


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

STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT

Western Star

Tags: Stephen Vincent Benét


Even to loneliness there is an end, for those who are lonely enough, long enough.

THEODORE STURGEON

"Saucer of Loneliness"


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


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

DEB CALETTI

The Fortunes of Indigo Skye


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