Quotes about loneliness

"No one ever discovers the depths of his own loneliness."

Bernanos, Georges on loneliness
8 fans of this quote   

"Only in a house where one has learnt to be lonely does one have this solicitude for things. One's relation to them, the daily seeing or touching, begins to become love, and to lay one open to pain."

Bowen, Elizabeth on loneliness
6 fans of this quote   

"All men's misfortunes spring from their hatred of being alone."

Bruyere, Jean De La on loneliness
9 fans of this quote   

"Isolation is the sum total of wretchedness to a man."

Carlyle, Thomas on loneliness
3 fans of this quote   

"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."

Cheever, John on loneliness
6 fans of this quote   

"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."

Conrad, Joseph on loneliness
10 fans of this quote   

"The eternal quest of the human being is to shatter his loneliness."

Cousins, Norman on loneliness
23 fans of this quote   

"What torments my soul is its loneliness. The more it expands among friends and the daily habits or pleasures, the more, it seems to me, it flees me and retires into its fortress. The poet who lives in solitude, but who produces much, is the one who enjoys those treasures we bear in our bosom, but which forsake us when we give ourselves to others. When one yields oneself completely to one's soul, it opens itself to one, and then it is that the capricious thing allows one the greatest of good fortunes... that of sympathizing with others, of studying itself, of painting itself constantly in its works."

Delacroix, Eugene on loneliness
8 fans of this quote   

"You cannot be lonely if you like the person you're alone with."

Dyer, Wayne on loneliness
26 fans of this quote   

"It is strange to be known so universally and yet to be so lonely."

Einstein, Albert on loneliness
23 fans of this quote   

"Columbus discovered no isle or key so lonely as himself."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo on loneliness
4 fans of this quote   

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"There is none more lonely than the man who loves only himself."

Esra, Abraham Ibn on loneliness
7 fans of this quote   

"In cities no one is quiet but many are lonely; in the country, people are quiet but few are lonely."

Fisher, Geoffrey F. on loneliness
7 fans of this quote   

"At the innermost core of all loneliness is a deep and powerful yearning for union with one's lost self."

Francis, Brendan on loneliness
12 fans of this quote   

"One aged man -- one man -- can't fill a house."

Frost, Robert on loneliness   

"We enter the world alone, we leave the world alone."

Froude, James A. on loneliness
10 fans of this quote   

"I was never less alone than when by myself."

Gibbon, Edward on loneliness
4 fans of this quote   

"Loneliness is never more cruel than when it is felt in close propinquity with someone who has ceased to communicate."

Greer, Germaine on loneliness
15 fans of this quote   

"What makes loneliness an anguish is not that I have no one to share my burden, but this: I have only my own burden to bear."

Hammarskjold, Dag on loneliness
6 fans of this quote   

"It is very lonely sometimes, trying to play God."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on loneliness
3 fans of this quote   

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

Joplin, Janis on loneliness
3 fans of this quote   

"The essence of this man [Richard M. Nixon] is loneliness."

Kissinger, Henry on loneliness   

"Every time I look at you I get a fierce desire to be lonesome."

Levant, Oscar on loneliness
4 fans of this quote   

"We are never the same with others as when we are alone. We are different, even when we are in the dark with them."

Maeterlinck, Maurice on loneliness
12 fans of this quote   

"It's a terrible thing to be alone -- yes it is -- it is -- but don't lower your mask until you have another mask prepared beneath --as terrible as you like --but a mask."

Mansfield, Katherine on loneliness
6 fans of this quote   

"To most people loneliness is a doom. Yet loneliness is the very thing which God has chosen to be one of the schools of training for His very own. It is the fire that sheds the dross and reveals the gold."

Martin, Bernard M. on loneliness
5 fans of this quote   

"All men are lonely. But sometimes it seems to me that we Americans are the loneliest of all. Our hunger for foreign places and new ways has been with us almost like a national disease. Our literature is stamped with a quality of longing and unrest, and our writers have been great wanderers."

Mccullers, Carson on loneliness   

"In our extreme youth, in our most humiliating sorrow, we think we are alone. When we are older we find that others have suffered too."

Moarny, Suzanne on loneliness   

"When Christ said: I was hungry and you fed me, he didn't mean only the hunger for bread and for food; he also meant the hunger to be loved. Jesus himself experienced this loneliness. He came amongst his own and his own received him not, and it hurt him then and it has kept on hurting him. The same hunger, the same loneliness, the same having no one to be accepted by and to be loved and wanted by. Every human being in that case resembles Christ in his loneliness; and that is the hardest part, that's real hunger."

Mother Teresa on loneliness
5 fans of this quote   

"People are lonely because they build walls instead of bridges."

Newton, Joseph Fort on loneliness
19 fans of this quote   

"Man's loneliness is but his fear of life."

O'Neill, Eugene on loneliness
4 fans of this quote   

"A man is never completely alone in this world. At the worst, he has the company of a boy, a youth, and by and by a grown man --the one he used to be."

Pavese, Cesare on loneliness
3 fans of this quote   

"Strife is better than loneliness."

Proverb, Irish on loneliness
3 fans of this quote   

"Loneliness breaks the spirit."

Proverb, Jewish on loneliness
4 fans of this quote   

"If you are lonely when you are alone, you are in bad company."

Sartre, Jean-Paul on loneliness
17 fans of this quote   

"To live alone is the fate of all great souls."

Schopenhauer, Arthur on loneliness
11 fans of this quote   

"When thinking about companions gone, we feel ourselves doubly alone."

Scott, Sir Walter on loneliness
7 fans of this quote   

"It is a rather pleasant experience to be alone in a bank at night."

Sutton, William on loneliness   

"Of my friends I am the only one left."

Terence on loneliness
9 fans of this quote   

"Language has created the word loneliness to express the pain of being alone, and the word solitude to express the glory of being alone."

Tillich, Paul on loneliness
20 fans of this quote