I celebrate myself, and what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease… observing a spear of summer grass.
—Walt Whitman (1819–92) American Poet, Essayist, Journalist, American, Poet, Essayist, Journalist
Lonely people, in talking to each other can make each other lonelier.
—Lillian Hellman (1905–84) American Playwright, Dramatist, Memoirist
The dread of loneliness is greater than the fear of bondage, so we get married.
—Cyril Connolly (1903–74) British Literary Critic, Writer
It is loneliness that makes the loudest noise. This is as true of men as of dogs.
—Eric Hoffer (1902–83) American Philosopher, Author
Columbus discovered no isle or key so lonely as himself.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
When so many are lonely as seem to be lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone.
—Tennessee Williams (1911–83) American Playwright
We’re all lonely for something we don’t know we’re lonely for. How else to explain the curious feeling that goes around feeling like missing somebody we’ve never even met?
—David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American Novelist, Essayist
Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the spaces between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.
—Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American Poet
Language has created the word “loneliness” to express the pain of being alone, and the word “solitude” to express the glory of being alone.
—Paul Tillich (1886–1965) American Lutheran Theologian, Philosopher
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 (1912–82) American Novelist, Short-story Writer
All men are lonely. But sometimes it seems to me that we Americans are the loneliest of all. Our hunger for foreign places and new ways has been with us almost like a national disease. Our literature is stamped with a quality of longing and unrest, and our writers have been great wanderers.
—Carson McCullers (1917–67) American Novelist
It would do the world good if every man in it would compel himself occasionally to be absolutely alone. Most of the world’s progress has come out of such loneliness.
—Bruce Fairchild Barton (1886–1967) American Author, Advertising Executive, Politician
Loneliness is something you can’t walk away from.
—William Feather (1889–1981) American Publisher, Author
To live alone is the fate of all great souls.
—Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German Philosopher
The essence of this man [Richard M. Nixon] is loneliness.
—Henry Kissinger (b.1923) American Diplomat, Academician
The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved.
—Mother Teresa (1910–97) Roman Catholic Missionary, Nun
I’m afraid sometimes you’ll play lonely games too, games you can’t win because you’ll play against you.
—Theodor Seuss Geisel (‘Dr. Seuss’) (1904–91) American Children’s Books Writer, Writer, Cartoonist, Animator
When thinking about companions gone, we feel ourselves doubly alone.
—Walter Scott (1771–1832) Scottish Novelist, Poet, Playwright, Lawyer
Be good and you will be lonely.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
Better be alone than in bad company.
—Thomas Fuller (1608–61) English Cleric, Historian
Only in a house where one has learnt to be lonely does one have this solicitude for things. One’s relation to them, the daily seeing or touching, begins to become love, and to lay one open to pain.
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973) Irish Novelist, Short-story Writer
Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.
—Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961) Swiss Psychologist, Psychiatrist, Philosopher
We are most of us very lonely in this world; you who have any who love you, cling to them and thank God.
—Unknown
When Christ said: “I was hungry and you fed me,” he didn’t mean only the hunger for bread and for food; he also meant the hunger to be loved. Jesus himself experienced this loneliness. He came amongst his own and his own received him not, and it hurt him then and it has kept on hurting him. The same hunger, the same loneliness, the same having no one to be accepted by and to be loved and wanted by. Every human being in that case resembles Christ in his loneliness; and that is the hardest part, that’s real hunger.
—Mother Teresa (1910–97) Roman Catholic Missionary, Nun
Isolation is the sum total of wretchedness to a man.
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish Historian, Essayist
I have always sought to guide the future— but it is very lonely sometimes trying to play God.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841–1935) American Jurist, Author
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 (1857–1924) Polish-born British Novelist
Here I sit between my brother the mountain and my sister the sea. We three are one in loneliness, and the love that binds us together is deep and strong and strange.
—Kahlil Gibran (1883–1931) Lebanese-born American Philosopher, Poet, Painter, Theologian, Sculptor
What makes loneliness an anguish is not that I have no one to share my burden, but this: I have only my own burden to bear.
—Dag Hammarskjold (1905–61) Swedish Statesman, UN Diplomat
The gift of loneliness is sometimes a radical vision of society or one’s people that has not previously been taken into account.
—Alice Walker (b.1944) American Novelist, Activist
What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) (1819–80) English Novelist
The end comes when we no longer talk with ourselves. It is the end of genuine thinking and the beginning of the final loneliness.
—Eric Hoffer (1902–83) American Philosopher, Author
You can get help from teachers, but you are going to have to learn a lot by yourself, sitting alone in a room.
—Theodor Seuss Geisel (‘Dr. Seuss’) (1904–91) American Children’s Books Writer, Writer, Cartoonist, Animator
We’re all in this alone.
—Lily Tomlin (b.1939) American Comedy Actress
Loneliness breaks the spirit.
—Yiddish Proverb
We’re all of us sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life!
—Tennessee Williams (1911–83) American Playwright
All men’s misfortunes spring from their hatred of being alone.
—Jean de La Bruyere (1645–96) French Satiric Moralist, Author
All alone! Whether you like it or not, alone is something you’ll be quite a lot.
—Theodor Seuss Geisel (‘Dr. Seuss’) (1904–91) American Children’s Books Writer, Writer, Cartoonist, Animator
Of my friends I am the only one left.
—Terence (c.195–159 BCE) Roman Comic Dramatist
It’s a terrible thing to be alone—yes it is—it is—but don’t lower your mask until you have another mask prepared beneath—as terrible as you like—but a mask.
—Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923) New Zealand-born British Author
Man’s loneliness is but his fear of life.
—Eugene O’Neill (1888–1953) American Playwright
Skillful listening is the best remedy for loneliness, loquaciousness, and laryngitis.
—William Arthur Ward (1921–94) American Author
The surest cure for vanity is loneliness.
—Thomas Wolfe (1900–38) American Novelist
We are never the same with others as when we are alone. We are different, even when we are in the dark with them.
—Maurice Maeterlinck (1862–1949) Belgian Poet, Playwright, Essayist
People think they know me, but they don’t. Not really. Actually, I am one of the loneliest people on this earth. I cry sometimes, because it hurts. It does. To be honest, I guess you could say that it hurts to be me.
—Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American Singer-Songwriter
The eternal quest of the individual human being is to shatter his loneliness.
—Norman Cousins (1915–90) American Journalist, Author, Academic, Activist
I was never less alone than when by myself.
—Edward Gibbon (1737–94) English Historian, Politician
No one ever discovers the depths of his own loneliness.
—Georges Bernanos (1888–1948) French Author
Loneliness is the most terrible poverty.
—Mother Teresa (1910–97) Roman Catholic Missionary, Nun
Strife is better than loneliness.
—Irish Proverb