LONELINESS QUOTES III
quotations about loneliness
Confronted by too much emptiness ... the brain invents. Loneliness creates company as thirst creates water. How many sailors have been wrecked in pursuit of islands that were merely a shimmering?
MARGARET ATWOOD
The Year of the Flood
The feeling of loneliness is unique to humans. A tree or a bird may seem to be lonely, but this is an attribute bestowed by the person making the observation. The tree or the bird is incapable of perceiving loneliness. This feeling occurs when a person is alone, and, moved by his emotions, associates his own circumstances with those of the bird or the tree that he sees before him. Since this feeling entails an element of self-examination, it is not a purely objective observation. The feeling of loneliness produced is thus a form of aesthetics, in that while observing one's external environment, one is at the same time examining the self that is located within it, and to a certain extent this is an affirmation of one's own personal worth.
GAO XINGJIAN
speech presented on receiving the Golden Plate Award at the Forty-first International Achievement Summit of the American Academy of Achievement, Jun. 8, 2002
We live as we dream--alone.
JOSEPH CONRAD
Heart of Darkness
Loneliness is never more cruel than when it is felt in close proximity with someone who has ceased to communicate.
GERMAINE GREER
The Female Eunuch
Lonely people, in talking to each other can make each other lonelier.
LILLIAN HELLMAN
The Autumn Garden
Each way means loneliness -- and communion.
T. S. ELIOT
The Cocktail Party
Nothing is more sterile or lamentable than the man content to live within himself.
HAROLD PINTER
Tea Party
No one ever discovers the depths of his own loneliness.
GEORGES BERNANOS
The Diary of a Country Priest
If one's different, one's bound to be lonely.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
Brave New World
Is it really possible to avoid loneliness, or to keep it in control? Surely. The matter is wholly personal. The way to begin is, oddly enough, by learning how to be impersonal, to stop the eternal concern for oneself, in caring more and more for the things of interest outside. For loneliness, though it may seem unselfish, is really a kind of selfishness. It is emphasis of self even while being a depreciation of self. If the lonely people would only stop thinking about themselves they would cease to be lonely.
JOHN DANIEL BARRY
"Loneliness", Reactions and Other Essays Discussing Those States of Feeling and Attitude of Mind That Find Expression In Our Individual Qualities
There was nothing lonelier than a man with a million friends.
WILLIAM SHATNER
The Ashes of Eden
Self is the only prison that can ever bind the soul.
HENRY VAN DYKE
"The Prison and the Angel"
Labor in loneliness is irksome.
MARK TWAIN
The Innocents Abroad
There is a wilderness we walk alone
However well-companioned.
STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT
Western Star
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
Many of the loneliest people in the world have plenty of company. Their lives are full of social activity. They are always doing. Sometimes they are like hunted creatures. The hunted look one can often see in their eyes. They would be astonished, perhaps resentful, if they were told that they were themselves the hunters. Sometimes they blame the people about them. Sometimes they blame the conditions of life. Themselves they never blame. With longing, they look out on the world as if seeking for someone to give help. They even become reproachful and say there is no one with sympathy for them or understanding. And yet help is always with them, waiting for a chance, in the inner consciousness.
JOHN DANIEL BARRY
"Loneliness", Reactions and Other Essays Discussing Those States of Feeling and Attitude of Mind That Find Expression In Our Individual Qualities
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
Loneliness is the human condition. Cultivate it. The way it tunnels into you allows your soul room to grow. Never expect to outgrow loneliness. Never hope to find people who will understand you, someone to fill that space. An intelligent, sensitive person is the exception, the very great exception. If you expect to find people who will understand you, you will grow murderous with disappointment. The best you'll ever do is to understand yourself, know what it is that you want, and not let the cattle stand in your way.
JANET FITCH
White Oleander
He felt the cold silence between worlds, the thrust of rocketships, the harsh, glamorous loneliness.
RAYMOND Z. GALLUN
"Prodigal's Aura"