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Loneliness quotes

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“We live, as we dream—alone...” Joseph Conrad, “Heart of Darkness” - 1899

“Nearly everyone has his box of secret pain, shared with no one.” John Steinbeck, “East of Eden” - 1952

“If one's different, one's bound to be lonely.” Aldous Huxley, “Brave New World” - 1932

“You can be lonely even when you're loved by many people, since you're still not anybody's 'one and only'.” Anne Frank, “The Diary of a Young Girl” - 1947

“I can live alone, if self-respect, and circumstances require me so to do. I need not sell my soul to buy bliss. I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all extraneous delights should be withheld, or offered only at a...” Charlotte Brontë, “Jane Eyre” - 16 October 1847

“It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance” - 1841

“Being in a minority, even a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.” George Orwell, “1984” - 1949

“Does no one want to know the truth here, Mr. Archer? The real loneliness is living among all these kind people who only ask one to pretend!"” Edith Wharton, “The Age of Innocence” - 1920

“He distrusted her affection; and what loneliness is more lonely than distrust?” George Eliot, “Middlemarch” - 1872

“I am alone in the midst of these happy, reasonable voices. All these creatures spend their time explaining, realizing happily that they agree with each other. In Heaven’s name, why is it so important to think the same things all together.” Jean-Paul Sartre, “Nausea” - 1938

“No one should be alone in their old age, he thought. But it is unavoidable.” Ernest Hemingway, “The Old Man and the Sea” - 1952

“I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself, with only the music of my heart for company.” Henry Miller, “Tropic of Cancer” - 1934

“Nobody likes being alone that much. I don't go out of my way to make friends, that's all. It just leads to disappointment.” Haruki Murakami, “Norwegian Wood” - 1987

“All great and precious things are lonely.” John Steinbeck, “East of Eden” - 1952

“My desolation does begin to make a better life.” William Shakespeare, “Antony and Cleopatra” - 1623

“Crying can bring relief, as long as you don't cry alone.” Anne Frank, “The Diary of a Young Girl” - 1947

“I'm afraid that some times you'll play lonely games too. Games you can't win 'cause you'll play against you.” Dr. Seuss, “Oh, The Places You'll Go!” - 1990

“Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.” C. S. Lewis, “Mere Christianity” - 1952

“Writing fiction, especially a long work of fiction, can be a difficult, lonely job; it’s like crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a bathtub. There’s plenty of opportunity for self-doubt.” Stephen King, “On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft” - 2000

“people living alone get used to loneliness.” F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Tender Is the Night” - 1934

“Is there nowhere in an American house where one may be by one's self?” Edith Wharton, “The Age of Innocence” - 1920

“It is not difficult to be alone if you are poor and a failure. An artist is always alone—if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness.” Henry Miller, “Tropic of Cancer” - 1934

“More and more I feel like a letter—deposited here, collected there. But a letter addressed to no one.” Margaret Atwood, “The Blind Assassin” - 2000

“it is natural to believe in God when you're alone—quite alone, in the night, thinking about death...” Aldous Huxley, “Brave New World” - 1932

“solitude can quickly destroy reason” Jules Verne, “The Mysterious Island” - 1874

“Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. They got no family. They don’t belong no place. They come to a ranch an’ work up a stake and then they go inta town and blow their stake, and the first thing you know...” John Steinbeck, “Of Mice and Men” - 1937

“Truth is truth, to the end of reckoning, we've cried. They are never alone that are accompanied with noble thoughts, we've shouted to ourselves.” Ray Bradbury, “Fahrenheit 451” - 1953

“To forget a friend is sad. Not every one has had a friend.” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, “The Little Prince” - 1943

“the man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready” Henry David Thoreau, “Walden” - 1854

“I do not fear to be alone or to be spurned for another or to leave whatever I have to leave. And I am not afraid to make a mistake, even a great mistake, a lifelong mistake, and perhaps as long as eternity too.” James Joyce, “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” - 1916

“She lives in a world of her own — a world of little glass ornaments, Mother...” Tennessee Williams, “The Glass Menagerie” - 1944

“Every loneliness is a pinnacle.” Ayn Rand, “The Fountainhead” - 1943

“It was a lonely life to lead, for I had nothing to think of, having been made such a little while before.” L. Frank Baum, “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” - 1900

“Writing is a lonely job. Having someone who believes in you makes a lot of difference. They don’t have to make speeches. Just believing is usually enough.” Stephen King, “On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft” - 2000

“Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why?” Haruki Murakami, “Sputnik Sweetheart” - 1999

“Still am I the richest and most to be envied—I, the lonesomest one!” Friedrich Nietzsche, “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” - 1891

“But his soul was mad. Being alone in the wilderness, it had looked within itself, and, by heavens! I tell you, it had gone mad.” Joseph Conrad, “Heart of Darkness” - 1899

“But even so, every now and then I would feel a violent stab of loneliness. The very water I drank, the very air I breathed, would feel like long, sharp needles. The pages of a book in my hands would take on the threatening metallic gleam of razor...” Haruki Murakami, “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” - 1997

“It is a very strange sensation to inexperienced youth to feel itself quite alone in the world, cut adrift from every connection, uncertain whether the port to which it is bound can be reached, and prevented by many impediments from returning to...” Charlotte Brontë, “Jane Eyre” - 16 October 1847

“People used what they called a telephone because they hated being close together and they were too scared of being alone.” Chuck Palahniuk, “Survivor” - 1999

“There was an emptiness about the heart of life; an attic room. Women must put off their rich apparel. At midday they must disrobe.” Virginia Woolf, “Mrs Dalloway” - 1925

“Oh, the places you'll go! There is fun to be done! There are points to be scored. There are games to be won. And the magical things you can do with that ball will make you the winning-est winner of all.” Dr. Seuss, “Oh, The Places You'll Go!” - 1990

“I am alone in this white, garden-rimmed street. Alone and free. But this freedom is rather like death.” Jean-Paul Sartre, “Nausea” - 1938

“Sometimes I feel so—I don’t know—lonely. The kind of helpless feeling when everything you’re used to has been ripped away. Like there’s no more gravity, and I’m left to drift in outer space with no idea where I’m going.” Haruki Murakami, “Sputnik Sweetheart” - 1999

“When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives.” George R. R. Martin, “A Game of Thrones” - 1996

“if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Nature” - 1836

“Even for me life had its gleams of sunshine.” Charlotte Brontë, “Jane Eyre” - 16 October 1847

“I couldn't have felt more of lonely desolation somehow, had I been robbed of a belief or had missed my destiny in life....” Joseph Conrad, “Heart of Darkness” - 1899

“If we don’t have each other, we go crazy with loneliness. When we do, we go crazy with togetherness.” Stephen King, “The Stand” - 1978

“We were alone. Where, I could not say, hardly imagine. All was black, and such a dense black that, after some minutes, my eyes had not been able to discern even the faintest glimmer.” Jules Verne, “Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea” - 1870

Related topics

death friendship truth madness life God freedom self strength youth hypocrisy forgetting belief world writing despair depression society solitude isolation

Related authors

Haruki Murakami (5)
Stephen King (4)
John Steinbeck (4)
Anne Frank (4)
Charlotte Brontë (3)
Dr. Seuss (3)
Ralph Waldo Emerson (3)
Joseph Conrad (3)
Charles Bukowski (3)
Henry Miller (3)
Jean-Paul Sartre (3)
George Orwell (2)
Aldous Huxley (2)
Virginia Woolf (2)
Louisa May Alcott (2)
Jules Verne (2)
Edith Wharton (2)
Chuck Palahniuk (2)
William Shakespeare (1)
William Makepeace Thackeray (1)

Related sources

The Diary of a Young Girl (4)
Jane Eyre (3)
Oh, The Places You'll Go! (3)
Heart of Darkness (3)
Ham on Rye (3)
Nausea (3)
1984 (2)
Brave New World (2)
Little Women (2)
The Age of Innocence (2)
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (2)
East of Eden (2)
Tropic of Cancer (2)
Survivor (2)
Sputnik Sweetheart (2)
Of Mice and Men (2)
The Stand (2)
Vanity Fair (1)
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1)
Antony and Cleopatra (1)