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Loneliness quotes

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

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

“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

“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

“Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, Friendship

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

“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

“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

“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

“A multitude of people, and yet a solitude!” Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

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

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

“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

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

“I felt so lonesome, all of a sudden. I almost wished I was dead.” J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“I had always been good company for myself.” Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye

“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!

“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

“He was a lonely ghost uttering a truth that nobody would ever hear. But so long as he uttered it, in some obscure way the continuity was not broken. It was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the human heritage.” George Orwell, 1984

“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

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

“Maybe ever’body in the whole damn world is scared of each other.” John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men

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

“All Alone! Whether you like it or not, Alone will be something you'll be quite a lot. And when you're alone, there's a very good chance you'll meet things that scare you right out of your pants.” Dr. Seuss, Oh, The Places You'll Go!

“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

“I often stood in front of the mirror alone, wondering how ugly a person could get.” Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye

“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

“The best remedy for those who are frightened, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere they can be alone, alone with the sky, nature and God.” Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

“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

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

“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

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

“Virtue is not left to stand alone. He who practises it will have neighbors.” Confucius, Analects

“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

“Deep down, the young are lonelier than the old.” Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

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

“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

“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

“It is strange people should be so greedy, when they are alone in the world!” Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“He moves fastest who moves alone.” Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom

“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

“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

“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

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

“There is something demoralizing about watching two people get more and more crazy about each other, especially when you are the only extra person in the room.” Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“I'm free, I think. I shut my eyes and think hard and deep about how free I am, but I can't really understand what it means. All I know is I'm totally alone. All alone in an unfamiliar place, like some solitary explorer who's lost his compass and...” Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

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

“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

“I saw now that a man alone is but a being that may become a man—that he is but a need, and therefore a possibility.” George MacDonald, Lilith

“Being prime minister is a lonely job.” Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years

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Related topics

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

Related authors

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

Related sources

The Diary of a Young Girl (4)
Jane Eyre (3)
Ham on Rye (3)
Heart of Darkness (3)
Oh, The Places You'll Go! (3)
Nausea (3)
East of Eden (2)
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (2)
Brave New World (2)
Little Women (2)
Tropic of Cancer (2)
1984 (2)
The Stand (2)
The Age of Innocence (2)
Survivor (2)
Of Mice and Men (2)
Sputnik Sweetheart (2)
The Story of my Experiments with Truth (1)
A Game of Thrones (1)
Analects (1)