Quotes About Loneliness

Being friendly to everybody, he very often has no friends for himself. Always consulting and giving advice, he often has nobody to go to with his own pains and problems. [...] Looking for acceptance, he tends to cling to his counselees [...] In this way he […] never feels safe, is always on the alert, and finally finds himself terribly misunderstood and lonesome.

The tendency exists to look for a solution to [loneliness] by establishing very demanding and often exhausting friendships. […] the stresses on many students are so intense that they often have inexhaustible needs for intimacy, and clinging friendships. But this is often encouraging the unrealistic fantasy that the true, real, faithful friend is somewhere waiting, able to take away all the feelings of frustration.

Rembrandt portrays the father as the man who has transcended the ways of his children. His own loneliness and anger may have been there, but they have been transformed by suffering and tears. I see the immense beauty of the father's emptiness and compassion.

We have probably wondered in our many lonesome moments if there is one corner in this competitive, demanding world where it is safe to be relaxed, to expose ourselves to someone else, and to give unconditionally. It might be very small and hidden, but if this corner exists, it calls for a search through the complexities of our human relationships in order to find it.

In 1970 I felt so lonely that I could not give; now I feel so joyful that giving seems easy. I hope that the day will come when the memory of my present joy will give me the strength to keep giving even when loneliness gnaws at my heart.

Why should I feel lonely? is not our planet in the Milky Way?

I have heard of a man lost in the woods and dying of famine and exhaustion at the foot of a tree, whose loneliness was relieved by the grotesque visions with which, owing to bodily weakness, his diseased imagination surrounded him, and which he believed to be real. So also, owing to bodily and mental health and strength, we may be continually cheered by a like but more normal and natural society, and come to know that we are never alone.

What if we feel a yearning to which no breast answers?

The doctors are all agreed that I am suffering from want of society. Was never a case like it. First, I did not know that I was suffering at all. Secondly, as an Irishman might say, I had thought it was indigestion of the society I got.

We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers.

We had been told in Bangor of a man who lived alone, a sort of hermit, at that dam [on the Allegash], to take care of it, who spent his time tossing a bullet from one hand to the other, for want of employment. This sort of tit-for-tat intercourse between his two hands, bandying to and fro a leaden subject, seems to have been his symbol for society.

This whole earth which we inhabit is but a point in space. How far apart, think you, dwell the two most distant inhabitants of yonder star, the breadth of whose disk cannot be appreciated by our instruments? Why should I feel lonely? Is not our planet in the Milky Way?

Wir sind meistens einsamer, wenn wir uns unter Menschen begeben, als wenn wir in unseren Zimmern bleiben.

I am no more lonely than the loon in the pond that laughs so loud, or than Walden Pond itself.

he uttered the cry of a creature hurled over an abyss...

This was the sound he cherished when alone in the stillness of his rooms. He sought and guarded the stillness, so that it might prevail there till the inevitable sounds of life, once more, comparatively coarse and harsh, should smother and deaden it—doubtless by the same process with which they would officiously heal the ache in his soul that was somehow one with it.

Oh we're not loved. We're not even hated. We're only just sweetly ignored.

Je m'ennuie à mort parfois moi-même. Alors il me paraît normal que je puisse t'ennuyer.

An unknown man in a lonely place is a permitted object of fear to a young woman privately bred.

I think I could die without its being noticed.

Oh dear, I'm quite alone, I've nothing on earth to do.

You've not only dried up my tears; you've dried up my soul.

some degree to her loss.  There was an odd pang for me in seeing her move about alone; I felt somehow responsible for it and asked myself why I couldn't have kept my hands off.  I had seen Jasper in the smoking-room more

It had freely been noted for him that he might be received as a dog among skittles, but that was on the basis of the old quantity.