LONELINESS QUOTES IV
quotations about loneliness
There was nothing lonelier than a man with a million friends.
WILLIAM SHATNER
The Ashes of Eden
Each way means loneliness -- and communion.
T. S. ELIOT
The Cocktail Party
Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is richness of self.
MAY SARTON
Journal of a Solitude
Loneliness will sit over our roofs with brooding wings.
BRAM STOKER
Dracula
No one ever discovers the depths of his own loneliness.
GEORGES BERNANOS
The Diary of a Country Priest
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
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
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
Lonely people, in talking to each other can make each other lonelier.
LILLIAN HELLMAN
The Autumn Garden
We live as we dream--alone.
JOSEPH CONRAD
Heart of Darkness
I don't think that loneliness is necessarily a bad or unconstructive condition. My own skill at jamming time may actually be dependent on some fluid mixture of emotions, among them curiosity, sexual desire, and love, all suspended in a solvent medium of loneliness.
NICHOLSON BAKER
The Fermata
Nothing is more sterile or lamentable than the man content to live within himself.
HAROLD PINTER
Tea Party
Tranquility, allied to loneliness, possessed no charms.
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT SHELLEY
Lodore
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
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
There is a wilderness we walk alone
However well-companioned.
STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT
Western Star
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
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
The loneliness you feel with another person, the wrong person, is the loneliest of all.
DEB CALETTI
The Fortunes of Indigo Skye
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