LONELINESS QUOTES IV
quotations about loneliness
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
"The Sixties", John Cheever: The Journals
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
"The Mysterious Stranger", The Complete Short Stories
The main consequence of saying no to negative peer pressure is not just withstanding "the heat of the moment," as most adults think. Rather, it is coping with a sense of exclusion as others engage in the behavior and leave the adolescent increasingly alone. It is the loss of the shared experience. Further, the sense of exclusion remains whenever the group later recounts what happened. This feeling of loneliness then becomes pervasive but carries an easy solution -- go along with the crowd.
MICHAEL RIERA
Uncommon Sense for Parents With Teenagers
Nothing is more sterile or lamentable than the man content to live within himself.
HAROLD PINTER
Tea Party
Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is richness of self.
MAY SARTON
Journal of a Solitude
If all the beasts were gone, men would die from a great loneliness of spirit, for whatever happens to the beasts also happens to the man. All things are connected.
CHIEF SEATTLE OF THE SUWAMISH TRIBE
letter to President Franklin Pierce
Everyone's alone -- or so it seems to me.
They make noises, and think they are talking to each other;
They make faces, and think they understand each other.
And I'm sure they don't. Is that a delusion?
T. S. ELIOT
The Cocktail Party
All the suffering that humanity ever knew can be traced to the one fact that no man in the history of the Galaxy ... could really understand one another. Every human being lived behind an impenetrable wall of choking mist within which no other but he existed.
ISAAC ASIMOV
Second Foundation
How dear to the mind of the sage are the thoughts that are bred in loneliness; for there is as it were music at his heart, and he talketh within him as with friends.
MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER
Tupper's Proverbial Philosophy
Each way means loneliness -- and communion.
T. S. ELIOT
The Cocktail Party
There was nothing lonelier than a man with a million friends.
WILLIAM SHATNER
The Ashes of Eden
He felt the cold silence between worlds, the thrust of rocketships, the harsh, glamorous loneliness.
RAYMOND Z. GALLUN
"Prodigal's Aura"
A great many wise sayings have been uttered about the effects of solitary retirement; but the motives which impel men to seek it are not more various than the effects which it produces on different individuals. One thing is certain, that those who can with truth affirm that they are "never less alone than when alone," might generally add that they never feel more lonely than when not alone.
ARTHUR HELPS
Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd
Alone, amid the wide and desert world,
Without some heart to echo to our own,
How fev'rish all the pomp and play of life!--
There is a solitude that lifts the mind
To lofty things -- seclusion from the rush
And stir of the unfeeling crowd, whose days
Reap scarce a thought to sanctify their flight.
Far from the city din, may Wisdom haunt
Her lone retreats, and yet not live alone;
For is there not the fellowship of books
Divine, the company of kindling thoughts,
And all that Nature yields a grateful mind?
This is not loneliness: to look around
The peopled world, and 'mong its myriad hearts
To find no sympathies to nurse our own,
Oh, this is loneliness! that solitude
Of soul, which makes the world a desert seem.
ROBERT MONTGOMERY
"Loneliness", Religion and Poetry: Being Selections Spiritual and Moral
There is a wilderness we walk alone
However well-companioned.
STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT
Western Star
Loneliness doesn't have much to do with where you are.
HUGH HEFNER
Esquire, Jun. 2002
Even to loneliness there is an end, for those who are lonely enough, long enough.
THEODORE STURGEON
"Saucer of Loneliness"
Alone! -- that worn-out word,
So idly spoken, and so coldly heard;
Yet all that poets sing and grief hath known
Of hopes laid waste, knells in that word ALONE!
EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON
The New Timon
The loneliness you feel with another person, the wrong person, is the loneliest of all.
DEB CALETTI
The Fortunes of Indigo Skye
Late at night, when you're so lonely,
your shoulders curl toward the center of your body,
you call no one and you don't call out.
This is dignity. This is the pure loneliness
that made Christ think he was God.
This is why lunatics smile at their thoughts.
MICHAEL RYAN
"The Pure Loneliness", New and Selected Poems