LONELINESS QUOTES III

quotations about loneliness

loneliness quote

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

HENRY VAN DYKE

"The Prison and the Angel"

Tags: Henry Van Dyke


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


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


If one's different, one's bound to be lonely.

ALDOUS HUXLEY

Brave New World

Tags: Aldous Huxley


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


Tranquility, allied to loneliness, possessed no charms.

MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT SHELLEY

Lodore

Tags: Mary Shelley


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


Loneliness will sit over our roofs with brooding wings.

BRAM STOKER

Dracula

Tags: Bram Stoker


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


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


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


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

HAROLD PINTER

Tea Party

Tags: Harold Pinter


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

THE BEATLES

"Eleanor Rigby", Revolver

Tags: The Beatles


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


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


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

LILLIAN HELLMAN

The Autumn Garden

Tags: Lillian Hellman


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