Quotes About Loneliness

It is simply amazing, at that age, when you're thirteen or fourteen, how you can take being loved for granted, how (even when you are wanted) you can feel utterly alone.

Greene's writing—he was the first modern writer I liked. Before Greene, my heroes were all novelists from the nineteenth century. Living in the nineteenth century can expand your loneliness; as a writer, it's lonely living there.

Rituals are comforting; rituals combat loneliness.

The older they got, the more they needed; and the less anyone wanted or loved them.

Works of art are of an infinite loneliness," Rilke had written.

May you be spared such a moment of recognition as this—namely, the conviction that most of your happiness lies behind you, and the lion's share of your loneliness looms ahead.

There's no one around to answer all my questions now that Ben's gone. It's a stark fact that continually reasserts itself each time I wonder what I'm supposed to do now. That brown robe he wore might as well have been made of pure mystery; he clothed himself in it and then left nothing else behind on the Death Star. I

Pop used to say he hated to take time from books to earn a living. Man's never lonely with a book in his pocket, he'd say. Books gives a man ten thousand friends. Some are smart, some are funny, some are just pleasant for passing the time, but they're all good.

It keeps eternal whisperings around desolate shores

Then on the shore Of the wide world I stand alone, and think Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

Closer of lovely eyes to lovely dreams, Lover of loneliness, and wandering, Of upcast eye, and tender pondering! Thee must I praise above all other glories That smile us on to tell delightful stories.

X. I saw pale kings and princes too, Pale warriors, death-pale were they all; They cried—"La Belle Dame sans Merci Hath thee in thrall!" XI. I saw their starved lips in the gloam, With horrid warning gaped wide, And I awoke and found me here, On the cold hill's side. XII. And this is why I sojourn here, Alone and palely loitering, Though the sedge is wither'd from the lake, And no birds sing.

Oh what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, Alone and palely loitering?

I left poor Scylla in a niche and fled. My fever'd parchings up, my scathing dread Met palsy half way: soon these limbs became 640 Gaunt, wither'd, sapless, feeble, cramp'd, and lame.

There was Lorenzo slain and buried in, There in that forest did his great love cease; Ah! when a soul doth thus its freedom win, It aches in loneliness — is ill at peace 220

I am a shadow now, alas! alas! Upon the skirts of human-nature dwelling Alone: I chant alone the holy mass, While little sounds of life are round me knelling, And glossy bees at noon do fieldward pass, And many a chapel bell the hour is telling, 310 Paining me through: those sounds grow strange to me, And thou art distant in Humanity.

The stars look very cold about the sky, and I have many miles on foot to fare.

Of the wide world I stand alone, and think Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

There were several trees bleakly reaching into the fog. Any one of them might have been the one I was looking for.

Nobody loves you when you're down and out.

I've never really been wanted.

A man travelling on a train - like you or I - to Scotland, had two or two bad eggs in his pocket - and you know - no one would sit by him.

For without some sense of the past the future can be only loneliness: amnesia is a solitary affliction.

Letter home from college boy: "There are 370 boys here - I wish there were 369."