Quotes About Loneliness

but ever since the painting had vanished from under me I'd felt drowned and extinguished by vastness—not just the predictable vastness of time, and space, but the impassable distances between people even when they were within arm's reach of each other

Sometimes, during the course of the listless day (dazed hours on the sofa, paging dully through the Encyclopaedia Britannica) these thoughts struck Harriet with such fresh force that she crawled in the closet and closed the door and cried, cried with her face in the taffeta skirts of her mother's dusty old party dresses, sick with the certainty that what she felt was never going to get anything but worse.

unbearable claustrophobia of the soul

When I got to my room it was silver and alien with moonlight

It is a terrible thing to learn as a child that one is a being separate from all the world, that no one and no thing hurts along with one's burned tongues and skinned knees, that one's aches and pains are all one's own. Even more terrible, as we grow older, to learn that no person, no matter how beloved, can ever truly understand us. Our own selves make us most unhappy, and that's why we're so anxious to lose them, don't you think? Remember the Erinyes?

Hordes of people on the street, lighted Christmas trees sparkling high on penthouse balconies and complacent Christmas music floating out of shops, and weaving in and out of crowds I had a strange feeling of being already dead

We can't choose what we want and don't want and that's the hard lonely truth. Sometimes we want what we want even if we know it's going to kill us. We can't escape who we are.

A world of ticking clocks and creaking floorboards.

Please don't be alarmed, you'd be surprised how many charming people are walking our streets, the mere ghosts of themselves.

Por qué siento esta necesidad tan horrible de forzar a los otros a que vean las cosas como yo? Es infantil; ¿por qué habrían de hacerlo? En el fondo, me da miedo encontrarme a solas con mis sentimientos.

There were no passing cars to call out to. You couldn't call for help from a police car, anyway; he didn't think you could.

Oh, Marigold!" Lymond spoke plaintively. "A silken tongue, a heart of cruelty. Don't berate us. We're only poor scoundrels—vagabonds—scraps of society; unlettered and untaught.

He said something, and became aware that he was expected to leave. He felt like a dog, he thought, whose master had died. He left the house, but did not remember the journey to Fenchurch Street.

In a lifetime of empty rooms, this was another.

Other people married young, to men they didn't know, and had no dispensation such as she had. To sleep alone; to plan her own destiny. A virgin married, with a son not her own….Kate always said, thought Philippa, blinking, that the Somervilles were mad to a man.

You don't understand,' she said. In her lap, the loose hands had ground together: between the fair brows a single line showed, of anger and disgust and a kind of futile perplexity. 'You don't understand: how can you? You were born into a household, with parents and wealth; you knew your friends and your enemies; you knew your position in life; whom you were fighting for: whom you were against. I am alone. Every man is my enemy.

The sea demands a man who knows the sea and respects it. A man who is prepared to be lonely. There is no isolation like that of the helm in a storm, except the isolation when it is windless.

Brainwashing, thought Mrs. Pollifax contemptuously, and suddenly realized that she was not afraid. She had endured other crises without losing her dignity--births, widowhood, illnesses--and she was experienced enough to know now that everything worthwhile took time and loneliness, perhaps even one's death as well.

A pity, she thought, that taking a stand on moral issues had to prove so lonely these days

If they are cold, these English women, it is because they are frozen with neglect.

Then she told herself to stop her nonsense. If you looked for things to make you feel hurt and wretched and unnecessary, you were certain to find them, more easily each time, so easily, soon, that you did not even realize you had gone out searching. Women alone often developed into experts at the practice. She must never join their dismal league.

Little Words When you are gone, there is nor bloom nor leaf, Nor singing sea at night, nor silver birds; And I can only stare, and shape my grief In little words. I cannot conjure loveliness, to drown The bitter woe that racks my cords apart. The weary pen that sets my sorrow down Feeds at my heart. There is no mercy in the shifting year, No beauty wraps me tenderly about. I turn to little words- so you, my dear, Can spell them out.

I'm quite all right. I'm not even scared. You see, I've learned from looking around, there is something worse than loneliness--and that's the fear of it.

I don't know, she said. We used to squabble a lot when we were going together and then engaged and everything, but I thought everything would be so different as soon as you were married. And now I feel so sort of strange and everything. I feel so sort of alone.