Loneliness is something you can’t walk away from.
—William Feather (1889–1981) American Publisher, Author
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
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
Loneliness is the ultimate poverty
—Pauline Phillips (Abigail van Buren) (1918–2013) American Advice Columnist, Radio Personality
Strife is better than loneliness.
—Irish Proverb
If you are afraid of being lonely, don’t try to be right.
—Jules Renard (1864–1910) French Writer, Diarist
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
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
Loneliness is the most terrible poverty.
—Mother Teresa (1910–97) Roman Catholic Missionary, Nun
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 Writer, Cartoonist, Animator
At the innermost core of all loneliness is a deep and powerful yearning for union with one’s lost self.
—Brendan Behan (1923–64) Irish Poet, Novelist, Playwright
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
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
Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone.
—Octavio Paz (1914–98) Mexican Poet, Diplomat
We enter the world alone, we leave the world alone.
—James Anthony Froude (1818–94) British Historian, Novelist, Biographer, Editor
Of my friends I am the only one left.
—Terence (c.195–159 BCE) Roman Comic Dramatist
The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved.
—Mother Teresa (1910–97) Roman Catholic Missionary, Nun
I was never less alone than when by myself.
—Edward Gibbon (1737–94) English Historian, Politician
Skillful listening is the best remedy for loneliness, loquaciousness, and laryngitis.
—William Arthur Ward (1921–94) American Author
To live alone is the fate of all great souls.
—Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German Philosopher
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
All men’s misfortunes spring from their hatred of being alone.
—Jean de La Bruyere (1645–96) French Satiric Moralist, Author
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
Loneliness breaks the spirit.
—Yiddish Proverb
It would be naive to think that the problems plaguing mankind today can be solved with means and methods which were applied or seemed to work in the past.
—Mikhail Gorbachev (1931–2022) Soviet Head of State
There is none more lonely than the man who loves only himself.
—Abraham ibn Ezra (1089–1167) Spanish Jewish Scholar, Poet
Loneliness is never more cruel than when it is felt in close propinquity with someone who has ceased to communicate.
—Germaine Greer (b.1939) Australia Academic, Journalist, Scholar, Writer
We’re all of us sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life!
—Tennessee Williams (1911–83) American Playwright
On stage I make love to twenty five thousand people; and then I go home alone.
—Janis Joplin (1943–1970) American Singer-songwriter
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