LONELINESS QUOTES II

quotations about loneliness

loneliness quote

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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My loneliness is like the tarmacs where planes never rest;
they touch and then take flight.
Let it be the launching pad for dreams,
brief respite for crafts that sweep the stars.

JAMIE ZWIEBEL

"The Lonely Season", Poems Written While Not Studying at Harvard


It's paradoxical that where people are the most closely crowded, in the big coastal cities in the East and West, the loneliness is the greatest.

ROBERT M. PIRSIG

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance


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

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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


We are all alone, born alone, die alone, and -- in spite of True Romance magazines -- we shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way.

HUNTER S. THOMPSON

The Proud Highway

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Confronted by too much emptiness ... the brain invents. Loneliness creates company as thirst creates water. How many sailors have been wrecked in pursuit of islands that were merely a shimmering?

MARGARET ATWOOD

The Year of the Flood

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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


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

THE BEATLES

"Eleanor Rigby", Revolver

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Many of the loneliest people in the world have plenty of company. Their lives are full of social activity. They are always doing. Sometimes they are like hunted creatures. The hunted look one can often see in their eyes. They would be astonished, perhaps resentful, if they were told that they were themselves the hunters. Sometimes they blame the people about them. Sometimes they blame the conditions of life. Themselves they never blame. With longing, they look out on the world as if seeking for someone to give help. They even become reproachful and say there is no one with sympathy for them or understanding. And yet help is always with them, waiting for a chance, in the inner consciousness.

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 a prerequisite for freedom. Freedom depends on the ability to reflect, and reflection can only begin when one is alone.

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

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Loneliness was an unsatisfied thirst for illusion.

KOBO ABE

The Woman in the Dunes

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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

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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

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Labor in loneliness is irksome.

MARK TWAIN

The Innocents Abroad


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

GERMAINE GREER

The Female Eunuch

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The survival of the fittest is going to make some man very lonesome some day.

EVAN ESAR

20,000 Quips & Quotes


Loneliness is one of the bugbears of mankind. With some people, it is a constant source of unhappiness. They make plans, sometimes exceedingly complex, to keep it at bay. They think that it lies outside. It really lies within their own consciousness.

JOHN DANIEL BARRY

"Loneliness", Reactions and Other Essays


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

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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