LONELINESS QUOTES
quotations about loneliness
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Lonely people, in talking to each other can make each other lonelier.
LILLIAN HELLMAN, The Autumn Garden
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
The strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone.
HENRIK IBSEN, An Enemy of the People
Each way means loneliness — and communion.
T. S. ELIOT, The Cocktail Party
Any decent society must generate a feeling of community. Community offsets loneliness. It gives people a vitally necessary sense of belonging. Yet today the institutions on which community depends are crumbling in all the techno-societies. The result is a spreading plague of loneliness.
ALVIN TOFFLER, The Third Wave
I was never less alone than when by myself.
EDWARD GIBBON, Autobiography
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
What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?
GEORGE ELIOT, Middlemarch
Solitude is dangerous for active minds. We need men who can think and can talk, around us. When we are alone for a long time, we people space with phantoms.
GUY DE MAUPASSANT, "The Horla"
Nothing is more sterile or lamentable than the man content to live within himself.
The most evident quality of human life is its loneliness.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY, Keystones of Thought
- 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
Loneliness was an unsatisfied thirst for illusion.
KOBO ABE, The Woman in the Dunes
- 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
The creak of bed springs suffering under the weight of a restless man is as lonely a sound as I know.
PATRICK DEWITT, The Sisters Brothers
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
Loneliness will sit over our roofs with brooding wings.
- There are those who worship loneliness, I’m not one of them
- In this age of fiberglass I’m searching for a gem
- The crystal ball up on the wall hasn’t shown me nothing yet
- I’ve paid the price of solitude, but at last I’m out of debt
Nothing makes us so lonely as our secrets.
PAUL TOURNIER, quoted in 1000 Pocket Positives: Inspiring Quotations
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