Selected loneliness quotes

1. Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.

2. One may have a blazing hearth in one's soul and yet no one ever came to sit by it. Passers-by see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on their way.

3. How rich art is; if one can only remember what one has seen, one is never without food for thought or truly lonely, never alone.

4. Lovers lying two and two Ask not whom they sleep beside, And the bridegroom all night through Never turns him to the bride.

5. Sometimes, only one person is missing, and the whole world seems depopulated.

6. I have Social Disease. I have to go out every night. If I stay home one night I start spreading rumors to my dogs.

7. The surest sign of age is loneliness.

8. At some point in my life I'd honestly hoped love would rescue me from the cold, drafty castle I lived in. But at another point, much earlier I think, I'd quietly begun to hope for nothing at all in the way of love, so as not to be disappointed. It works. It gets to be a habit.

9. We movie stars all end up by ourselves. Who knows? Maybe we want to.

10. Everything about life makes me lonely.

11. I had fun, but I didn't really have anyone i particularly loved except for loving friends. But I have a certain amount of faith that it will come.

12. Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain; Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink And rise and sink and rise and sink again; Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath, Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone; Yet many a man is making friends with death Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.

13. Individuals bearing witness do not change history; only movements that understand their social world can do that. Movements encourage solidarity; the moral individual is likely, all unwittingly, to do the opposite, for bearing witness is lonely: it breeds feelings of superiority and moralistic anger against those who are not doing the same.

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

15. The end comes when we no longer talk with ourselves. It is the end of genuine thinking and the beginning of the final loneliness. The remarkable thing is that the cessation of the inner dialogue marks also the end of our concern with the world around us. It is as if we noted the world and think about it only when we have to report it to ourselves.

16. The kind of relatedness to the world may be noble or trivial, but even being related to the basest kind of pattern is immensely preferable to being alone.

17. May I kiss you then? On this miserable paper? I might as well open the window and kiss the night air.

18. My peers, lately, have found companionship through means of intoxication - it makes them sociable. I, however, cannot force myself to use drugs to cheat on my loneliness - it is all that I have - and when the drugs and alcohol dissipate, will be all that my peers have as well.

19. I spent my childhood alone, overweight and ugly, angry at everything, and knowing nothing of a life beyond this sadness.

20. Hitler is lonely. So is God. Hitler is like God.

21. I'm completely uninhabited.

22. On stage I make love to twenty five thousand people; and then I go home alone.

23. You will never be alone with a poet in your pocket.

24. In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable.

25. The problem with the loneliness I suffer is that the company of others has never been a cure for it.

26. I believe we are the only sentient beings in the universe, and I believe that 500 years from now, we will still be the only sentient beings around.

27. Love is a self-manifested notion depending on how lonely you are - so if you're really attracted to someone, and you're really lonely, I think you can fall in love in an instant. It's all about where you're at.

28. What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.

29. Left to ourselves, mechanistic and autonomic, we hanker for friends.

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

31. A career is wonderful, but you can't curl up with it on a cold night.

32. And amongst us one, Who most has suffer'd, takes dejectedly His seat upon the intellectual throne.

33. We, unaccustomed to courage exiles from delight live coiled in shells of loneliness until love leaves its high holy temple and comes into our sight to liberate us into life.

34. Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.

35. Success definitely brings on loneliness. People think you're lucky, that you have everything. They think you can go anywhere and do anything, but that's not the point. One hungers for the basic stuff.

36. Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.

37. My heart was a habitation large enough for many guests, but lonely and chill, and without a household fire. I longed to kindle one! It seemed not so wild a dream.

38. When I got older I decided I wanted to be a real writer. I tried to write about real things. I wanted to describe the world, because to live in an undescribed world was too lonely.

39. I thought the only lonely place was on the moon.

40. When so many are lonely as seem to be lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone.

41. But after the intimacy-inducing rituals of puberty, boys who would be men are told we must go it alone, we must achieve our heroism as the Lone Ranger, we must see the other men as threats to our masculine mastery, as objects of competition.

42. 'You asking me the way?' 'Yes,' I said, 'since I can't find it myself.' 'Give it up! Give it up!' said he, and turned with a sudden jerk, like someone who wants to be alone with his laughter.

43. I can't win. Love is Russian roulette for me. No one loves the real me inside. they're all in love with my fame, my stardom.

44. Hail, Sphinx: salutation from Julius Caesar! I have wandered in many lands, seeking the lost regions from which my birth into this world exiled me, and the company of creatures such as I myself. I have found flocks and pastures, men and cities, but no other Caesar, no air native to me, no man kindred to me, none who can do my day's deed, and think my night's thought.

45. When you get off stage with all these thousands of people loving you, the saddest part is to go back to your hotel room by yourself.

46. What exasperated her was Charles's total unawareness of her ordeal. His conviction that he was making her happy she took as a stupid insult: such self-righteousness could only mean that he didn't appreciate her.

47. Poor little thing! She's gasping for love like a carp on a kitchen table gasping for water.

48. And the broad who served the whisky She was a big old friendly girl. And she tried to fight her empty nights By smilin' at the world.

49. 'I am the midnight watchman down at Miller's Tool and Die. And I watch the metal rusting, and I watch the time go by. A week ago at the diner I stopped to get a bite. And this here lovely lady she sat two seats from my right. And Lord, Lord, Lord she was alright. Oh she was so damned beautiful that she'd warm a winter's frost. But she was long past lonely, and well nigh unto lost. Now I'm not much of a mover, or a pick-em-up easy guy, But I decided to glide on over, and give her one good try. And Lord, Lord, Lord she was worth a try.'

50. 'The moonlight shown upon her as she lay back in my bed. It was the kind of scene I only had imagined in my head. I just could not believe it, to think that she was real. And as I tried to tell her she said 'Shhh.. I know just how you feel. And if you want to come here with me, then that's all right with me. 'Cause I've been oh so lonely, lovin' someone is a better way to be. anywhere's a better way to be.' '

51. The waitress took a bar rag, and she wiped it across her eyes. And as she spoke her voice came out as something like a sigh. She said 'I wish that I was beautiful, or that you were halfway blind. And I wish I weren't so dog-gone fat, I wish that you were mine. And I wish that you'd come with me, when I leave for home. For we both know all about loneliness, and livin' all alone.'

52. You see, ten years ago it was the front seat Drivin' stoned and feelin' no pain. Now here I am straight and sittin' in the back Hitting Sixteen Parkside Lane.

53. And here Bartleby makes his home, sole spectator of a solitude which he has seen all populous- a sort of innocent and transformed Marius brooding among the ruins of Carthage!

54. Man dwells apart, though not alone, He walks among his peers unread; The best of thoughts which he hath known For lack of listeners are not said.

55. Flow my tears, fall from your springs, Exil'd for ever: let me mourn Where night's black bird her sad infamy sings, There let me live forlorn.

56. Hitler: I'm not going to lie to you, it took a while. There were moments all along where I knew something was wrong. I remember one time... I think it was in Munich. We were having a rally. 100,000 people all chanting my name. The bonfires were going. The whole shebang. It should have been a crowning moment, but I clearly remember thinking, What am I doing here? I hate crowds.

57. 'I don't have a social life right now. I try to -- it's something that I miss -- but David Foster told me: 'The golden microphone is in front of your mouth. You have to sing into it or it will get passed onto someone else.' It's very lonely, what I'm doing. Even though you have a lot of people around you, they're not experiencing it first-hand. It's hard to name more than five close friends. As much as people want to understand, it's hard when you don't see someone for five months at a time, and they're like, 'C'mon, make time.' But I don't have time. My days are gone. There are a lot of firsts for me. And I'm not going to toss it off. It would be silly to say, 'No, I'd rather go see a movie.' I know there will be time for that later.'

58. Ooh, it gets dark! It gets lonely, On the other side from you. I pine a lot. I find the lot Falls through without you. I'm coming back, love. Cruel Heathcliff, my one dream, My only master.

59. Maybe you're lonely, And only want a little company, But keep your recipes For the rats to eat, And may they rest in peace with coffee homeground.

60. Matthew Leiah Keller sat beneath a watershed tree and brooded. Other children played all around him, but they ignored Matt. So did two teachers on monitor duty. People usually ignored Matt when he wanted to be alone. Uncle Matt was gone. Gone to a fate so horrible that the adults wouldn't even talk about it.

61. I may be schizophrenic, but I'll always have each other.

62. You know who I always depend on? Not strangers, not friends. The telephone! That's my best friend. I seldom write letters, but I love calling friends, especially late at night, when I can't sleep.

63. Singing, 'Here came a mortal, But faithless was she: And alone dwell for ever The kings of the sea.'

64. With silent strides Odysseus then shot back the bolt, passed lightly through the courtyard and sped down the street. Some saw him take the graveyard's zigzag mountain path, some saw him leap on rocks that edged the savage shore, some visionaries saw him in the dead of night swimming and talking secretly with the sea-demons, but only a small boy saw him in a lonely dream sit crouched and weeping by the dark sea's foaming edge.

65. Has life left you so hungry that you'll swallow even the poor imitation of love?

66. No one had known him. No one knows me. No one knows who I am or what I can do.

67. You have so little love for your own life?' You don't know, you've never been alone like I have, but in my solitude I've discovered something. That I'm passing through the world invisibly. Even when people see or speak to me it's as if I didn't exist, as if I had no right to exist. I tread across their lands and they don't see me. I act and act and act and nothing makes any difference in the world. But they touch me.

68. Why have I made myself as solitary as the dead?

69. Hello, I'm a multimillionaire who is pathologically lonely and so filled with pent-up longings that you have only to think of a desire and I'll satisfy it. Mind if I come in?

70. It's in the nature of young men to be lonely. Did you think you were unique?

71. She felt very much alone. She did not make friends very easily, but I don't want to make out that she was always miserable. When she was in middle age, she was quite a charming and lively person, because the actress in her would come out. She'd been an actor, as I said earlier on. It wasn't until she became a guru herself after Gurdjieff died, that she became a rather self-important, morose kind of Pamela.

72. I am a rock. I am an island.

73. Waiting for a bottle of truth. I'm just a lonely guy in my youth. ~ 'Black'

74. So she won't sleep better alone, And he won't sleep better alone, No they won't feel better alone. ~ 'Sleep Better'

75. I was so, so lost and unhappy. If you listen to the songs on the first album, you can hear it. They're really sad songs and they come from a lonely place. The relationship broke up, and I went into free fall. I saw drugs as a way of avoiding:the darkness.

76. I need contact Nothing seems to please I need contact.

77. Ich bin auf der Welt zu allein und doch nicht allein genug, um jede Studen zu weihen. Ich bin auf der Welt zu gering und doch nicht klein genug, um vor dir zu sein wie ein Ding, dunkel und klug. Ich will meinen Willen und will meinen Willen begleiten die Wege zur Tat; und will in stillen, irgendwie zorgernden Zeiten, wenn etwas naht, unter den Wissenden sein oder allein.

78. Next morning, when the golden sunne was risen, And new had bid good morrow to the mountaines; When night her silver light had lockt in prison, Which gave a glimmering on the christall fountaines: Then ended sleepe, and then my cares began, Ev'n with the uprising of the silver swan. Oh, glorious sunne! quoth I, viewing the sunne, That lightenst everie thing but me alone: Why is my summer season almost done, My spring-time past, and ages autumne gone? My harvest's come, and yet I reapt no corne: My love is great, and yet I am forlorne.

79. With my wife, I've got no sex life. The dog keeps watching me in the bedroom so he can learn how to sit up and beg. I told him to watch my wife so he can learn how to roll over and play dead.

80. Along with the loss of the sense of self has gone a loss of our language for communicating deeply personal meanings to each other. This is one important side of the loneliness now experienced by people in the Western world.

81. I shall then live alone... and I already wonder with whom.

82. All the world is sad and dreary, Everywhere I roam.

83. I was all alone in my head - exactly what i had once wanted. It made me feel lost.

84. No dolphin came, no Nereid stirred; Nor cruel Tom, nor Susan heard. A favourite has no friend!

85. Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tow'r The moping owl does to the moon complain.

86. When I set out for Lyonnesse, A hundred miles away, The rime was on the spray, And starlight lit my lonesomeness.

87. We two kept house, the Past and I, The Past and I; I tended while it hovered nigh, Leaving me never alone.

88. 'Cause it can feel like perfection, but never all the time. But you don't wanna be alone again.

89. I don't wanna end up in a room all alone. Don't want to end up someone I don't even know.

90. But let me get to the point, let's roll another joint. And turn the radio loud, I'm too alone to be proud. You don't know how it feels, you don't know how it feels to be me.

91. Now I'm walkin' this street on my own, but she's with me wherever I go.

92. There's rain on the road and the faithful have gone. In a crowd all alone walking 'round in a song.

93. And sometime around 2 AM you end up taking advantage of yourself. Ain't no way around that. Making a scene with a magazine.

94. What chieftain, walking by himself, crying Most miserable, most victorious, Does not see these separate figures one by one, And yet see only one, in his old coat, His slouching pantaloons, beyond the town, Looking for what was, where it used to be?

95. D'you need a friend? Yeah, me too...

96. I could bear to suffer... so many have suffered. But why must it be like this? I have not deserved it. I have been true in friendship; I have faithfully nursed others in sickness... Why must I die like this, alone with my mortal enemy?

97. I have met them at close of day Coming with vivid faces From counter or desk among grey Eighteenth-century houses. I have passed with a nod of the head Or polite meaningless words, Or have lingered awhile and said Polite meaningless words.

98. My fiftieth year had come and gone, I sat, a solitary man, In a crowded London shop, An open book and empty cup On the marble table-top. While on the shop and street I gazed My body of a sudden blazed; And twenty minutes more or less It seemed, so great my happiness, That I was blessed and could bless.

99. And the blue gentian flower, that, in the breeze, Nods lonely, of her beauteous race the last.

100. Everything is changed - for you. But it is still the same, too. The loneliness you feel has come to you because you are no longer a child. But the whole world has always been full of that loneliness. The loneliness does not come from the War. The War did not make it. It was the loneliness that made the War.