If you are afraid of being lonely, don’t try to be right.
—Jules Renard (1864–1910) French Writer, Diarist
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
No one ever discovers the depths of his own loneliness.
—Georges Bernanos (1888–1948) French Author
We are most of us very lonely in this world; you who have any who love you, cling to them and thank God.
—Unknown
The essence of this man [Richard M. Nixon] is loneliness.
—Henry Kissinger (b.1923) American Diplomat, Academician
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
Loneliness is the ultimate poverty
—Pauline Phillips (Abigail van Buren) (b.1918) American Columnist
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
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
The surest cure for vanity is loneliness.
—Thomas Wolfe (1900–38) American Novelist
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
A man is never completely alone in this world. At the worst, he has the company of a boy, a youth, and by and by a grown man—the one he used to be.
—Cesare Pavese (1908–50) Italian Novelist, Poet, Critic, Translator
We enter the world alone, we leave the world alone.
—James Anthony Froude (1818–94) British Historian, Novelist, Biographer, Editor
The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature. As long as this exists, and it certainly always will, I know that then there will always be comfort for every sorrow, whatever the circumstances may be. And I firmly believe that nature brings solace in all troubles.
—Anne Frank (1929–45) Holocaust Victim
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
Lonely people, in talking to each other can make each other lonelier.
—Lillian Hellman (1905–84) American Playwright, Dramatist, Memoirist
It is strange to be known so universally and yet to be so lonely.
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born Physicist
One aged man—one man—can’t fill a house.
—Robert Frost (1874–1963) American Poet
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
What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.
—Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) American Novelist, Short Story Writer
Loneliness is the most terrible poverty.
—Mother Teresa (1910–97) Roman Catholic Missionary, Nun
Be good and you will be lonely.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
Loneliness is the universal problem of rich people.
—Joan Collins (b.1933) English Actress
There is no loneliness greater than the loneliness of a failure. The failure is a stranger in his own house.
—Eric Hoffer (1902–83) American Philosopher, 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
If you are lonely when you are alone, you are in bad company.
—Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–80) French Philosopher, Playwright, Novelist, Screenwriter, Political Activist
Man’s loneliness is but his fear of life.
—Eugene O’Neill (1888–1953) 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
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
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
When thinking about companions gone, we feel ourselves doubly alone.
—Walter Scott (1771–1832) Scottish Novelist, Poet, Playwright, Lawyer
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 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
To live alone is the fate of all great souls.
—Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German 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
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
There is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream, a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought—a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
Of my friends I am the only one left.
—Terence (c.195–159 BCE) Roman Comic Dramatist
Columbus discovered no isle or key so lonely as himself.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
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
We’re all in this alone.
—Lily Tomlin (b.1939) American Comedy Actress
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
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
Loneliness is something you can’t walk away from.
—William Feather (1889–1981) American Publisher, Author
The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved.
—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
The eternal quest of the individual human being is to shatter his loneliness.
—Norman Cousins (1915–90) American Journalist, Author, Academic, Activist
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
Pray that your loneliness may spur you into finding something to live for, great enough to die for.
—Dag Hammarskjold (1905–61) Swedish Statesman, UN Diplomat
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