c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
There was one of his lonelinesses coming, one of those times when he walked the streets or sat, aimless and depressed, biting a pencil at his desk. It was a self-absorption with no comfort, a demand for expression with no outlet, a sense of time rushing by, ceaselessly and wastefully - assuaged only by that conviction that there was nothing to waste, because all efforts and attainments were equally valueless.
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned
...At least you got Soda. I ain't got nobody." "Shoot," I said, startled out of my misery, "you got the whole gang. Dally didn't slug you tonight cause you're the pet. I mean, golly, Johnny, you got the whole gang." "It ain't the same as having your own folks care about you," Johnny said simply. "it just ain't the same.
— S.E. Hinton, The Outsiders
My aunt must have been perfectly well aware that she would not see Swann again, that she would never leave her own house any more, but this ultimate seclusion seemed to be accepted by her with all the more readiness for the very reason which, to our minds, ought to have made it more unbearable; namely, that such a seclusion was forced upon her by the gradual and steady diminution in her strength which she was able to measure daily, which, by making every action, every movement 'tiring' to her if not actually painful, gave to inaction, isolation and silence the blessed, strengthening and refreshing charm of repose.
— Marcel Proust, Swann's Way
There's not a lot to do when you don't want to do anything.
— Noelle Blanche, The Omitted Place
These solitary ones who are free in spirit know thatin one thing or another they must constantly put on an appearance that is different from the way they think; although they want nothing but truth and honesty, they are entangled in a web of misunderstandings. And despite their keen desire, they cannot prevent a fog of false opinions, of accommodation, of halfway concessions, of indulgent silence, of erroneous interpretation from settling on everything they do. And so a cloud of melancholy gathers around their brow, for such natures hate the necessity of appearances more than death, and their persistent bitterness about this makes them volatile and menacing. From time to time they take revenge for their violent selfconcealment, for their coerced constraint. They emerge from their caves with horrible expressions on their faces; at such times their words and deeds are explosions, and it is even possible for them to destroy themselves.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations
Lonely and Alone: There's a difference.
— Jerhia
I know where I came from—but where did all you zombies come from?I felt a headache coming on, but a headache powder is one thing I do not take. I did once—and you all went away.So I crawled into bed and whistled out the light.You aren’t really there at all. There isn’t anybody but me—Jane—here alone in the dark.I miss you dreadfully!
— Robert A. Heinlein
So be lonely, Liz. Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience.
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
Your never alone , look around you there are so many objects , they don't live but are there in your presence , your never truly alone
— Kenrick Fernandes
In other words, Shozaburo Takitani was now alone in the world. This was no great shock to him, however, nor did it make him feel particularly sad or miserable. He did, of course, experience some sense of absence, but he felt that, eventually, life had to turn out more or less like this. Everyone ended up alone sooner or later.
— Haruki Murakami
She walked in somber seclusion, unable to connect with women despite her heart's desire to do so while being shadowed by men who hungered for the indefinable; and while she yearned for friendship, they yearned for something more and what she had been in search of remained removed from her, and the more she erected barriers, the more they crossed them and each time they did, she turned from them and hid.
— Donna Lynn Hope
The Girl does not dream. The Girl has never dreamed.
— Emma Rose Kraus, A Blue One
What's a rainy daywithout some deliciouscoffee-flavoured loneliness?
— Sanober  Khan, Turquoise Silence
Dr August, there is no greater isolation a man may experience than to be lonely in a crowd. He may nod, and smile, and say the right thing, but even by this pretence his soul is pushed further away from the kinship of men.
— Claire North, The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August
I love your loneliness. It is brave. It makes the universe want to protect you.
— Ben Okri, Astonishing the Gods
I hadn't talked to myself in a while, but then again, I was all alone. I was my only true supporter. And loneliness is a bitch.
— Stevie J. Cole, Jag
People need me. I fill them. If they can't see me for a while they get desperate, they get sick. But if I see them too often I get sick. It's hard to feed without getting fed.
— Charles Bukowski
If you're constantly making yourself available to people's whims, your time will become less valuable. Keep your backbone in any relationship - make sure you're not so dedicated to it, and it shall stay sweet forever.
— Auliq Ice
Like most cities, London could be a lonely place...
— Kassandra Cross, Sex with the CEO: A Billionaire Romance
I know! WHY! – Am I so catty? – Cause I’m consumed with envy an’ eaten up with longing? –
— Tennessee Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Don't say I'm alone, this makes us depressed. loneliness are the moments when we can know more about ourselves. loneliness are the moments when we are only in God's company. Just feel it and enjoy these moments.
— Kusum Manjeshri, Lovers Journey: Only For Passionate Lovers.
She never wished for the thing what she is experiencing. It is her inner voice that became her enemy.
— Durgesh Satpathy
Dad? Dad, no. No. I can't. I can't. Why are you saying these things?""Because I can't stand watching all that loneliness that lives inside you.
— Benjamin Alire Sáenz
The mainland can stretch until it breaks at the weakest points, and those weaknesses are called faults. Each island represented a victory and a defeat: it had either pulled itself free or pulled too hard and found itself alone. Later, as these islands grew older, they turned their misfortune into virtue, learned to accept their cragginess, their misshapen coasts, ragged where they'd been torn. They acquired grace.
— Anne Michaels
We see, surrounding the narrow raft illuminated by the flickering light of human comradeship, the dark ocean on whose rolling waves we toss for a brief hour; all the loneliness of humanity amid hostile forces is concentrated on the individual soul, which must struggle alone, with what of courage it can command, against the whole weight of a universe that cares nothing for its hopes and fears. Victory, in this struggle with the powers of darkness, is the true baptism into the glorious company of heroes, the true initiation into the overmastering beauty of human existence.
— Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects
But he wanted to leap up, to say to her, I have been sick and I found out then, only then, how lonely I am. Is it too late? My heart puts up a struggle inside me, and you may have heard it, protesting against emptiness...It should be full, he would rush on to tell her, thinking of his heart now as a deep lake, it should be holding love like other hearts. It should be flooded with love. There would be a warm spring day...Come and stand in my heart, whoever you are, and a whole river would cover your feet and rise higher and take your knees in whirlpools, and draw you down to itself, your whole body, your heart too.("Death of a Traveling Salesman")
— Eudora Welty
I don't know. I got nothing. No house, no people, no place. Maybe that's troubles. Don't I say?
— Alex La Guma, A Walk in the Night and Other Stories
He stared at the corner of the yellowed ceiling, at the spider web and its solitary occupant. “Why here?” he asked the spider. “You could choose anywhere instead of this house. I know I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have to be.” The spider said nothing. Come to think of it, Callum was sure the spider hadn’t moved even an inch in the last week. Maybe it was dead. Dead and crisp like the untouched wasp carcass on his window sill.
— Scott Kaelen, Bleak '93
He prayed for the recovery of that inward privacy which the purpose of his vigil demanded that he seek: a clean parchment of the spirit whereon the words of a summons might be written in his solitude——if that other Immensurable Loneliness which was God stretched forth Its hand to touch his own tiny human loneliness and to mark his vocation there.
— Walter M. Miller Jr.
I know that the night is not the same as the day: that all things are different, that the things of the night cannot be explained in the day, because they do not then exist, and the night can be a dreadful time for lonely people once their loneliness has started.
— Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
If you've ever had that feeling of loneliness, of being an outsider, it never quite leaves you. You can be happy or successful or whatever, but that thing still stays with you.
— Tim Burton
Maybe we’re all a how are you away from not feeling so alone in all of this today.
— Hannah Brencher, If You Find This Letter: My Journey to Find Purpose Through Hundreds of Letters to Strangers
The life is cruel death to me without you.
— Veronica Franco
We are all alone in this world
—  even in a crowd.
This sometimes happened: from time to time, Dantès, driven out of solitude into the world, felt an imperative need for solitude. And what solitude is more vast and more poetic than that of a ship sailing alone on the sea, in the darkness of night and the silence of infinity, under the eye of the Lord?
— Alexandre Dumas
I am not forsaken! I'm no longer alone in the darkness! Before my eyes I see a thousand little devils lighting black candles along the path which leads toward the edge...the blindingly beautiful edge.
— Susan  Kay, Phantom
In a taxi speeding uptown on the West Side Highway, I let my thoughts drift below the surface of the Hudson until it finally occurs to me that feelings fill the gaps created by the indirectness of experience. Though the experience is social, thoughts carry it into a singular space and it is this that causes the feelings of loneliness; or it is this that collides the feeling with the experience so that what is left is the solitude called loneliness.
— Claudia Rankine, Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric
Despite his attempts to maintain a vigorous structure of errands, golf games, visits, and meetings, there were sometimes days like this one, filled with rain and touched with a gnawing sense of parts missing from life. When the slick mud ran in the flower beds and the clouds smothered the light, he missed his wife.
— Helen Simonson, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand
True, he had chosen to live alone, but not unbearably alone. The worst of being unbearably alone was that you had to bear it - either that or you were sunk. You had to work hard to prevent your mind from sabotaging you by its looking hungrily back at the superabundant past.
— Philip Roth, Everyman
But I look into her eyes and she looks into my eyes and we recognize it—the excitement of being here, the excitement of being now. And maybe I’m realizing what a part of it she is and maybe she’s realizing what a part of it I am, because suddenly we’re not crashing as much as we’re combining. The chords swirling around us are becoming a tornado, and we are at the center of each other. My wrist touches hers right at the point of our pulses, and I swear I can feel it. That thrum. We are moving to the music and at the same time we are a stillness. I am not losing myself in the barrage. I am finding her. And she is—yes, she is finding me. The crowd is pressing in on us and the bassline is revealing everything and we are two people who are part of a lot more people, and at the same time we’re our own part. There isn’t loneliness, only this intense twoliness.
— David Levithan
Lonely' is a troubling word and not one to be tossed around lightly. It makes people uncomfortable, summoning up as it does all kinds of harsher adjectives, like 'sad' or 'strange'. I have always been well liked, I think, always well regarded and respected, but having few enemies is not the same as having many friends, and there was no denying that I was, if not 'lonely', more solitary than I'd hoped to be at that time.
— David Nicholls
But it seems that I can tackle the most esoteric of recipes, the most elusive puff pastry, as long as I do not have to count the empty layers of loneliness building up inside.
— Kim Sunée
Alone man enters the world; alone he must launch forth upon eternity; and between the two periods there is many a moment when, despite himself, man is compelled to feel what it is to be utterly alone.
— Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna, Helen Fleetwood
You’re not discontent for wanting to be in a relationship, you’re just human.
— Cole Ryan, Dating: I Think We've Missed The Point
Loneliness is a hell of a drug.
— Jeremy Robert Johnson, Skullcrack City
I learned much too late that what you called love was nothing but a desperate and irrational fear of a life lived alone.
— Beau Taplin
When we look within ourselves with psilocybin, we discover that we do not have to look outward toward the futile promise of life that circles distant stars in order to still our cosmic loneliness. We should look within; the paths of the heart lead to nearby universes full of life and affection for humanity.
— Terence McKenna, True Hallucinations
It's indifference that breaks hearts, not love.
— Marty Rubin
I was lonely, and a lonely heart has hungers that can overpower both common sense and dignity.
— Robin Hobb, Fool's Assassin
But then there's loneliness. However you might philosophise about it, loneliness is a terrible thing, my dear fellow… Although in reality, of course, it's absolutely of no importance!
— Anton Chekhov, The Three Sisters
Perhaps her requirements were too great,Or her indulgence for human weakness too small,For her attempts to form a friendship had alwaysEnded in disappointment.
— A.L.O.E., Claudia
To be insular is to be independent. But it is also to be alone.
— Peter Ackroyd, Venice: Pure City
You will forever be a stranger in a world that cannot really understand you...
— Dinesh Kumar Biran
God desires that man should be. God does not wish to be alone. The meaning of existence is the conquest of loneliness, the acquisition of kinship and nearness.
— Nikolai A. Berdyaev
She closes my door behind her and all the petty stresses of life reappear, eager to make up for lost time. I've developed a phobia of that door closing for the last time, of losing her in any way or of being lost.
— Thomm Quackenbush, Pagan Standard Times: Essays on the Craft
It's hard to imagine, seeing all of us breathing yet one day each of us shall be gone, leaving memories.
— Auliq Ice
When we are young we fear we are not alone in the dark, When we grow up we fear we are
— nomad
A city full of eight million people. It was all rather lonely sometimes.
— Kelly Moran, All of Me
It is better to be alone than to become a person that loses his soul to the fear of loneliness.
— Shannon L. Alder
Loneliness, I've read, is like being in a long line, waiting to reach the front where it's promised something good will happen. Only the line never moves, and other people are always coming in ahead of you, and the front, the place where you want to be, is always farther and farther away until you no longer believe it has anything to offer you.
— Richard Ford, Canada
Alone"Lying, thinkingLast nightHow to find my soul a homeWhere water is not thirstyAnd bread loaf is not stoneI came up with one thingAnd I don’t believe I’m wrongThat nobody,But nobodyCan make it out here alone.Alone, all aloneNobody, but nobodyCan make it out here alone.There are some millionairesWith money they can’t useTheir wives run round like bansheesTheir children sing the bluesThey’ve got expensive doctorsTo cure their hearts of stone.But nobodyNo, nobodyCan make it out here alone.Alone, all aloneNobody, but nobodyCan make it out here alone.Now if you listen closelyI’ll tell you what I knowStorm clouds are gatheringThe wind is gonna blowThe race of man is sufferingAnd I can hear the moan,‘Cause nobody,But nobodyCan make it out here alone.Alone, all aloneNobody, but nobodyCan make it out here alone.
— Maya Angelou
I've started to feel very odd within my own life. It's most peculiar to feel lonely inside your own life.
— Jackie Kay, Wish I Was Here
Let not the jolly be alone in the world, for they shall talk about the future and snag to do the exercises.
— Auliq Ice
I can hear your angered silence,Taste your bitterness.Now I smell your vengeance,Yet see your lonely emptiness.I am your broken heart.
— Anonymous
All human beings are alone. No other person will completely feel like we do, think like we do, act like we do. Each of us is unique, and our aloneness is the other side of our uniqueness. The question is whether we let our aloneness become loneliness or whether we allow it to lead us into solitude. Loneliness is painful; solitude is peaceful. Loneliness makes us cling to others in desperation; solitude allows us to respect others in their uniqueness and create community.Letting our aloneness grow into solitude and not into loneliness is a lifelong struggle. It requires conscious choices about whom to be with, what to study, how to pray, and when we ask for counsel. But wise choices will help us to find the solitude where our hearts can grow in love.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen, Bread for the Journey: A Daybook of Wisdom and Faith
It is a sound like loneliness—enough to let you know you’re there, but not enough to fill you with life.
— David Levithan, How They Met, and Other Stories
The GeraniumWhen I put her out, once, by the garbage pail,She looked so limp and bedraggled,So foolish and trusting, like a sick poodle,Or a wizened aster in late September,I brought her back in againFor a new routine -Vitamins, water, and whateverSustenance seemed sensibleAt the time: she'd livedSo long on gin, bobbie pins, half-smoked cigars, dead beer,Her shriveled petals fallingOn the faded carpet, the staleSteak grease stuck to her fuzzy leaves.(Dried-out, she creaked like a tulip.)The things she endured!-The dumb dames shrieking half the nightOr the two of us, alone, both seedy,Me breathing booze at her,She leaning out of her pot toward the window.Near the end, she seemed almost to hear me-And that was scary-So when that snuffling cretin of a maidThrew her, pot and all, into the trash-can,I said nothing.But I sacked the presumptuous hag the next week,I was that lonely.
— Theodore Roethke
We don't have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I could say that's what I want in life. What I'm grateful and thankful to have found at Yale, and what I'm scared of losing when we wake up tomorrow after Commencement and leave this place. “It's not quite love and it's not quite community; it's just this feeling that there are people, an abundance of people, who are in this together. Who are on your team. When the check is paid and you stay at the table. When it's four A.M. and no one goes to bed. That night with the guitar. That night we can't remember. That time we did, we went , we saw, we laughed, we felt. The hats.
— Marina Keegan
I was lonely, deadly lonely. And I was to find out then, as I found out so many times, over and over again, that women especially are social beings, who are not content with just husband and family, but must have a community, a group, an exchange with others. Young and old, even in the busiest years of our lives, we women especially are victims of the long loneliness.It was years before I woke up without that longing for a face pressed against my breast, an arm about my shoulder. The sense of loss was there.I never was so unhappy, never felt so great the sense of loneliness. No matter how many times I gave up mother, father, husband, brother, daughter, for His sake, I had to do it over again.Tamar is partly responsible for the title of this book in that when I was beginning it she was writing me about how alone a mother of young children always is. I had also just heard from an old woman who lived a long and full life, and she too spoke of her loneliness
— Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness: The Autobiography of the Legendary Catholic Social Activist
In the sinking sand,where we’ve come to rest,have I had a hand in your loneliness?
— Joanna Newsom
There's something I want to say in this space, but it's an emptiness where there's usually a hug. — Colin Morton to Mary Lee Bragg, 1972
— David Eso, Where the Nights Are Twice as Long: Love Letters of Canadian Poets
She might get lonely at times. But that was to be expected. The only way to stop those feelings was to live a life devoted to others. That was her true purpose in life. She was a mere background character in other people's lives.
— Lily George, Healing the Soldier's Heart
Everyone take his revenge on the world. My revenge consists in bearing my distress and anguish enclosed deeply within me while my laughter entertains everyone. If I see someone suffer I give him my sympathy, console him as best I can, and listen to him calmly when he assures me that I am fortunate. If only I can keep this up until the day I die I shall have had my revenge
— Søren Kierkegaard
When we feel lonely we keep looking for a person or persons who can take our loneliness away. Our lonely hearts cry out, 'Please hold me, touch me, speak to me, pay attention to me.' But soon we discover that the person we expect to take our loneliness away cannot give us what we ask for. Often that person feels oppressed by our demands and runs away, leaving us in despair. As long as we approach another person from our loneliness, no mature human relationship can develop. Clinging to one another in loneliness is suffocating and eventually becomes destructive. For love to be possible we need the courage to create space between us and to trust that this space allows us to dance together.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen, Bread for the Journey: A Daybook of Wisdom and Faith
Who, if I cried, would hear me among the angelic orders? And even if one of them suddenly pressed me against his heart, I should fade in the strength of his stronger existence. For beauty's nothing but the beginning of terror we're still just able to bear.
— Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies
I sense the joy of young and old,I hear wondrous tales told,Beauty surrounds me as I gaze above,But I am alone for I live without love.
— Anonymous
Quinn wanted to make her see that people didn't live like this
—  but what was the use. No one was going to get her away from Bird Man out there.
In the silence of night, great minds either unite or die
— Katja Michael
The Idea of Ghost, like the Idea of North. A mere looped whisper, in darkness or in light. And no matter what this person may have been like before he or she died, no matter what they--specifically--might have wanted, ghosts only really want one thing: you, with them.Not to be alone. Not to be trapped. Not to be where they are. Not to be.
— Gemma Files, We Will All Go Down Together
One of my biggest weaknesses, one that has always shamed me, is that I have always been lonely. I've struggled to make friends because I can be socially awkward, because I'm weird, because I live in my head. When I was young, we moved around a lot, so there was rarely any time to get to know a new place, let alone new people. Loneliness was the one familiar thing, making me this bottomless pit of need, open and gaping and desperate for anything to fill me up.
— Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist
In other people's company I felt I was dull, gloomy, unwelcome, at once bored and boring...
— André Gide
You will never feel alone, if you run down the stairs of loneliness; as every solitary step becomes your companion.
— Munia Khan
Maybe loneliness is an acquired taste, or maybe it's like plunging your hand in ice water--it hurts like hell in the beginning, and then you go numb.
— Tiffany Schmidt, Bright Before Sunrise
We all say we hate being misunderstood and how we desperately want to find people who understand us. But it is not lack of compatible people that keeps us lonely. There is no shortage of people on your journey. The real, secret obstacle that we have against finding authentic, genuine relationships with people is our subconscious fear of growth. If we stick around in the bin of broken toys playing the queen or the king, at least we get to feel some sense of accomplishment at being the most evolved person we know. To find our tribe means finding people we can learn from, people who are better at some things than we are, people who have something to teach. We say we want it, but how many of us fear being a beginner more than loneliness and much more than being in the wrong crowd? There is a strange comfort, a sense of safety, to suffering and loneliness. To be happy, to find our family, we must be willing to let that go.
— Vironika Tugaleva
To an optimist loneliness is freedom, to all others it is prison.
— Amit Kalantri
One thing that is clearer to me every day is how much we all have in common, and one of those commonalities is that we all think we are alone.
— Liat Segal
And lonely as it is that lonelinessWill be more lonely ere it will be less--A blanker whiteness of benighted snowWith no expression, nothing to express.They cannot scare me with their empty spacesBetween stars--on stars where no human race is.I have it in me so much nearer homeTo scare myself with my own desert places.
— Robert Frost
The more we speak of solitude, the clearer it becomes that at the bottom it is not something one can choose to take or leave. We are lonely. One can deceive oneself about it and act as if it were not so. That is all. But it is so much better to see that we are so, indeed even to presuppose it. It will make us dizzy, of course; because all the focal points on which our eyes were used to resting are taken away from us, there is nothing near us anymore, and everything distant is infinitely distant.
— Rainer Maria Rilke
the idea of being invisibly alone in a crowd of strangers is so tempting for a number of introverts...or maybe for loneliness?
— Jennifer William
If solitude feels painful, it's only because we don't know how to be alone.
— Michael  Harris
and the boy's eyes are searching hers with something like loneliness, like the very last thing he wants is to be left behind right now.
— Jennifer E. Smith, The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight
I don't think there's a lonelier feeling than being with someone who has stopped caring.
— Alexis Harrington, Allie's Moon
There are those that wonder which is worse: Not being able to reach out or not having anyone to reach for. There are some that ponder which is the greater ache: Not being able to tell or not having anyone that cares enough to ask. Perhaps it’s not one person that is to blame, but both.
— Donna Lynn Hope
Suffering does not only insulate. It drops its victim in an ocean desert where he sees men as distant ships passing. I not only feel alone, but very far away from you all.
— W.N.P. Barbellion
Loneliness is a poison, but aloneness is a catalyst.
— Sam Killermann
Instantly a thick blackness seemed to enfold her and silence as of a dead world settled down upon her. Drowsy as she was she could not close her eyes nor refrain from listening. Darkness and silence were tangible things. She felt them. And they seemed suddenly potent with magic charm to still the tumult of her, to sooth and rest, to create thought she had never thought before. Rest was more than selfish indulgence. Loneliness was necessary to gain conciseness of the soul.
— Zane Grey, The Call of the Canyon
I gaze out of the window at the lanes of red taillights streaming towards the hills, the city laid out in anonymous grids and quadrants, the view confirming that I was much more alone than I thought, and all those red lights inspired nothing more than a sense that I, too, should be fleeing somewhere.
— Chloe Thurlow, Being a Girl
... but she was also bewilderingly lonely... Abra had lost her gift for being alone.
— John Steinbeck
I cannot help but wonder how many of us walk through our lives, day after day, feeling slightly broken and alone, surrounded all the time by others who feel exactly the same way.
— Patrick Rothfuss, The Slow Regard of Silent Things
For fear you will be aloneyou do so many thingsthat aren’t you at all.
— Richard Brautigan
Walking alone is not difficult but when we have walked a mile worth a thousand years with someone then coming back alone is what is difficult.
— Faraaz Kazi, Truly, Madly, Deeply
I have always been well liked, I think, always well regarded and respected, but having few enemies is not the same as having many friends, and there was no denying that I was, if not "lonely", more solitary than I'd hoped to be at that time.
— David Nicholls, Us
I inhale loneliness like it is the sweet smell of virgin earth conquered by fiery rain drops. Within me, I'm a thousand others.
— Faraaz Kazi, Truly, Madly, Deeply
Everything you do makes my body scream with loneliness. When I see you, the room swallows me. I find myself at the bottom of the pool.
— Henry Rollins
Every time a man (myself) gives way to vanity, every time he thinks and lives in order to show off, this is a betrayal. Every time, it has always been the great misfortune of wanting to show off which has lessened me in the presence of the truth. We do not need to reveal ourselves to others, but only to those we love. For then we are no longer revealing ourselves in order to seem but in order to give. There is much more strength in a man who reveals himself only when it is necessary. I have suffered from being alone, but because I have been able to keep my secret I have overcome the suffering of loneliness. To go right to the end implies knowing how to keep one’s secret. And, today, there is no greater joy than to live alone and unknown.
— Albert Camus, Notebooks 1935-1942
You know how it is. You feel a little different because other people have two parents, even if they’re divorced. It’s like you grow up knowing that you’re missing something important that everyone else has, but you don’t know exactly what it is. I remember hearing my friends talking about how their fathers wouldn't let them stay out late or didn't like their boyfriends. It used to make me so angry because they didn't even realize what they had. Do you know what I mean?
— Nicholas Sparks, The Rescue
She was sewing together the little proofs of his devotion out of which to make a garment for her tattered love and faith. He cut into the faith with negligent scissors, and she mended and sewed and rewove and patched. He wasted, and threw away, and could not evaluate or preserve, or contain, or keep his treasures. Like his ever torn pockets, everything slipped through and was lost, as he lost gifts, mementos--all the objects from the past. She sewed his pockets that he might keep some of their days together, hold together the key to the house, to their room, to their bed. She sewed the sleeve so he could reach out his arm and hold her, when loneliness dissolved her. She sewed the lining so that the warmth would not seep out of their days together, the soft inner skin of their relationship.
— Anaïs Nin, Ladders to Fire
There was a story etched in each wrinkle on his forehead-the stories any long life can amass but that only a lonely life locks forever.
— Ashay Abbhi, Chronicles of Urban Nomads
I can push everything into the dark.But it leaves me empty.And the dark always ends up finding me in my sleep
— Rebecca Donovan, Barely Breathing
It wasn't easy to understand how the love between two other people could diminish you. If those two people were still accessible to you, if they called you all the time, if they asked you to come into the city for the weekend as you'd always done, then why should you feel, suddenly, intensely lonely?
— Meg Wolitzer, The Interestings
Dark hair on a white pillow, an ache inside, his face a reflection in her eye.
— Donna Lynn Hope
There comes a point where you become tired of the loneliness and need a human touch, a caress to make you realize you still exist as a person.
— Felice Stevens, Rescued
This change did not bring me into the community of the others, did not make me closer to anyone, but actually made me even lonelier. My reformation seemed to point in the direction ofDemian, but even this was a distant fate. I did not know myself, for I was too deeply involved. It had begunwith Beatrice, but for some time I had been living in such an unreal world with my paintings and my thoughtsof Demian that I'd forgotten all about her, too. I could not have uttered a single word about my dreams andexpectations, my inner change, to anyone, not even if I had wanted to. But how could I have wanted to?
— Hermann Hesse, Demian. Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend
It's lonely up in the top
— Kermit the Frog
The only person I really wanted to talk about Augustus Waters was Augustus Waters.
— John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
he writer has a grudge against society, which he documents with accounts of unsatisfying sex, unrealized ambition, unmitigated lo neliness, and a sense of local and global distress. The square, overpopulation, the bourgeois, the bomb and the cocktail party are variously identified as sources of the grudge. There follows a little obscenity here, a dash of philosophy there, considerable whining overall, and a modern satirical novel is born.
— Renata Adler, Toward a Radical Middle: Fourteen Pieces of Reporting and Criticism
I peeked in the bag. Do you know what was in there? I'll tell you what was in there: a collapsible tray table. Is there any sadder purchase in this fucking world? Maybe a CD of C+C Music Factory's Greatest Hits, but that's about it.
— Caroline Kepnes, You
We are alone by birth, but we conceal the truth from ourselves till death.
— Junaid Raza
She doesn't give directions but there is a pot of gold at the end of her rainbow...Find it. If you can.
— Donna Lynn Hope
You are right... I am lonely. But unlike the rest of this world I am not lonely for anybody.
— Dimitri Zaik, Ink Bleeder
The only person I really wanted to talk to about Augustus Waters' death was Augustus Waters.
— John Green
There is a predictable interlude when the rivals suddenly come together and speak for a second of their common loneliness, thus tritely demonstrating that we really are all the same, though I can't think of any really first-rate film, play, or book that isn't unconsciously dedicated to the fact that we are all inconsolably different.
— Penelope Gilliat
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 his map. Is this what it means to be free?
— Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
Be faithful to the unknown, plan for it by expecting it rather than waiting for it to knock you down. I believe your husband will take care of you, for he is a hardworking sensible man, but Jane, I had no one to look out for me when I was growing up, or when I had you all to myself, it did not make me rudderless, cynical or pacifist, but it did make me feel extremely alone. It blinded me, I did not know what to make of it. No person in life can fill up that feeling, no matter how many workers we have or friends to call on, or women fluttering about, you are in this alone, you have to be all you can be in this life, and no one can make it happen for you, it is necessary to be lonely every once in a while, it is even good, but there is a difference in being alone and being helpless. If you let yourself be helpless, if you find yourself in such a predicament where you feel there is no way out, then you will be crushed whether you are a flower or a mountain. And you must not allow yourself to be crushed." - Mr. Adams to daughter Jane
— Noorilhuda, The Governess
There were not words enough in the English language, nor in any language, to make his attitude and conduct intelligible to them.
— Jack London, Martin Eden
For the first time in my life, I actually wished that everyone was the same. And I despised myself for my "differentness" or "uniqueness" as an individual. In the world there are lots of social groups people can fit into, and I've spent time roaming in and out of a few and being kicked out of many. Now I stand on the outside and look in. Wondering where is my place. Coming to a conclusion, I have no place.
— Laura Hanna
Being lonely and loving your own company are two very different things. Don't ever get them mixed up.
— Zaeema J. Hussain, The Sky Is Purple
Loneliness wasn't just a state of mind, was it? It was tactile. She could feel it. It was a sixth sense, not in some fanciful play of words, but physically. It hurt... it hurt like phagocytes devouring the white matter of her brain. It was merely that she had no friends. She didn't even have a sanctuary in which she could simply be alone.
— Tom Wolfe, I am Charlotte Simmons
The high is what you crave, what you would kill for... and believe me, you will lie to yourself until it's to late to stop.
— H. Alazhar, City of Paradise
At some point, loneliness becomes less a condition than a habit.
— Jonathan Tropper, One Last Thing Before I Go
But to think there was meaning, a scheme to things, well, that was quite beyond her philosophical reach. She feared as she always had, that all that was ever meant was loneliness, hard work, striving to make a difference when no difference could possibly be made. It was like dipping a stick into the ocean and trying to write something – all the little people of the world spinning out little patterns that lasted no more than a few years, and meant nothing at all.
— Anne Rice, The Witching Hour
Graff had isolated Ender to make him struggle. To make him prove, not that he was competent, but that he was far better than everyone else. That was the only way he could win respect and friendship. It made him a better soldier then he would ever have been otherwise. It also made him lonely, afraid, angry, untrusting. And maybe those traits, too, made him a better soldier.
— Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game
Too many thousands of opened books yawned between them and him. He had exiled himself.
— Jack London
What was it - this implacable remoteness, this inability to surrender herself to the warmth and comradely feelings of others? Could being an academic star, being applauded over and over again as a prodigy, take the place of all that? She shuddered with a feeling she couldn't have put a name to. It was the congenital human fear of isolation.
— Tom Wolfe, I am Charlotte Simmons
Loneliness wasn't just a state of mind, was it? It was tactile. She could feel it. It was a sixth sense, not in some fanciful play of words, but physically. It hurt... it hurt like phagocytes devouring the white matter of her brain. It wasn't merely that she had no friends. She didn't even have a sanctuary in which she could simply be alone.
— Tom Wolfe, I am Charlotte Simmons
What could he be thinking of? He seemed to be trying to remember something, perhaps an engagement, perhaps an excuse to leave her. For eventually, they all made some excuse.
— Brian Moore, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne
From his earliest years Cincinnatus, by some strange and happy chance comprehending his danger, carefully managed to conceal a certain peculiarity. He was impervious to the rays of others, and therefore produced when off his guard a bizarre impression, as of a lone dark obstacle in the world of souls transparent to one other; he learned however to feign translucence, employing a complex system of optical illusions, as it were--but he had only to forget himself, to allow a momentary lapse in self control, in the manipulation of cunningly illuminated facets and angles at which he turned his soul, and immediately there was alarm. In the midst of the excitement of a game his coevals would suddenly forsake him, as if they had sensed that his lucid gaze and the azure of his temples were but a crafty deception and that actually Cincinnatus was opaque. Sometimes, in the midst of sudden silence, the teacher, in a chagrined perplexity, would gather up all the reserves of skin around his eyes, gaze at him for a long while and finally say: "What is wrong with you, Cincinnatus?" Then Cincinnatus would take hold of himself, and, clutching his own self to his breast, would remove that self to a safe place.
— Vladimir Nabokov, Invitation to a Beheading
I cry everyday but for a limited time
— Yash Gupta
It was an intensely lonely moment, like all of eighth grade condensed into one claustrophobic second.
— Lisa Rowe Fraustino, Dirty Laundry: Stories About Family Secrets
And the bell jangled, the driver started. The bus whirled off, to the last stop, the lonely room, the lonely night.
— Brian Moore, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne
To ease the loneliness of the bridges, visit them sometimes! The forgotten ones must be remembered! Create some memories with them so that they will feel themselves less lonely! Memories are the enemies of solitude.
— Mehmet Murat ildan
You told me you would never leave me, but the only thing I feel is loneliness...
— Mickeal Bonneau
Loneliness ia a human condition
— Janet Fitch, White Oleander
Fighting makes us feel alive, until it kills us. If it doesn’t kill us, the pain of sitting alone with ourselves, quietly, under constant assault by our own thoughts and memories of war can easily be enough to make us wish we’d died in battle instead.
— Agnostic Zetetic
Jason knew his life would never be the same again. British intelligence now had an ace up their sleeve, and Jason had to overcome his fears and deal with the secret world he was now a part of. He would have to grow a tough shell around himself. Despite his many friends, his grandparents and love of his father, he was painfully aware he was very much alone in this world. When it came down to it, there was only one person he could really rely on in the world,and he was called Jason Steed.
— Mark A. Cooper, Revenge
I used to be fine in my lonelinessbut somethingor someonesnapped me out of itand showed me company. What it’s like to feel at home,and so the going on by myself part wasn’t as easy anymore.Seasons happened and things got colder and harder and suddenly I found myself smoking circles in the airby myself in the snowand I was not okay.
— Charlotte Eriksson
I've never been in love. I've dreamt of it day and night, but my heart is like a fine piano no one can play because the key is lost.
— Anton Chekhov, The Three Sisters
I seek the city because there is nothing sweeter than not being alone in your loneliness.
— Charlotte Eriksson
I wanted to know what had created the chasm in his spirit. Maybe it was a broken heart. Or maybe it had always been there, like mine. Because really, I could blame my existential sadness on a lot of issues, but the truth is, it’s been a part of me since Day One. When I was four years old and my mother would come to my bed to say good night, she’d turn off the light and I remember feeling it even then- the sensation that your heart weighs more than your body- that it might burst out of your chest and splatter all over the wall. I suppose it’s called loneliness.
— Tiffanie DeBartolo, God-Shaped Hole
Loneliness is a crowded room,Full of open hearts turned to stone,All together all alone
— Bryan Ferry
We are accustomed to think of ourselves as a great democratic body, linked by common ties of blood and language, united indissolubly by all the modes of communication which the ingenuity of man can possibly devise; we wear the same clothes, eat the same diet, read the same newspapers, alike in everything but name, weight and number; we are the most collectivized people in the world, barring certain primitive peoples whom we consider backward in their development. And yet— yet despite all the outward evidences of being close-knit, interrelated, neighborly, good−humored, helpful, sympathetic, almost brotherly, we are a lonely people, a morbid, crazed herd thrashing about in zealous frenzy, trying to forget that we are not what we think we are, not really united, not really devoted to one another, not really listening, not really anything, just digits shuffled about by some unseen hand in a calculation which doesn't concern us.
— Henry Miller, Sexus
And it's good-bye, good-bye, good-bye. Good-bye, my friends, I love you; good-bye, I'm sorry I didn't know you better; good-bye, I'm sorry you'll die soon, too; good-bye, maybe there's hope for you; good-bye, good-bye, good-bye.
— Chris Weitz
The void can only be filled with love.
— Marty Rubin
Poverty only tries men's souls. It is loneliness that breaks the heart.
— Sam Rayburn
Have you ever considered another type of loneliness; a good and healthy, happy loneliness?
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
Once you connect with yourself, it is impossible to be lonely or desperate.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
Your arms ache to hold someone -- you move in slow motion from one hug to the nextso you won't jostle the warm feeling off your shouldersbefore the next hug comes your way.Your heart feels hollow -- that emptiness screams like an addiction to be filledeven if it means doing hurtful, selfish thingsto get a fix."I understand,"I tell him. "BecauseI've been lonely, too.
— Sarah Tregay, Love and Leftovers
Loneliness will give you the greatest chance of ever having a beautiful relationship with another person.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
Dreams were frail things, when all was said, and loneliness the only certainty.
— Jan Cox Speas, Bride of the MacHugh
Loneliness is really a wonderful companion that can show us so much about ourselves and others.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
That none discussed their doubts, that they assumed everyone else was just having a grand time of it and felt at ease and enjoying the ride, was perhaps the most toxic element to this particular kind of noisy loneliness.
— Elizabeth Winder, Pain, Parties, Work: Sylvia Plath in New York, Summer 1953
Loneliness and desperation are only possible when we have lost touch with our beauty within.
— Bryant McGill
To love and not be loved
—  is to die and not be dead
Friendship is not a remedy for loneliness. Loneliness is part of our experience, and if we are looking for relief from loneliness in friendship, we are only going to frustrate the friendship. Friendship, camaraderie, intimacy, all those things, and loneliness lived together in the same experience.
— Rich Mullins
I’m not the only kid who grew up this way. Surrounded by people who used to say that rhyme about sticks and stones. As if broken bones hurt more than the names we got called, and we got called them all. So we grew up believing no one would ever fall in love with us. That we’d be lonely forever. That we’d never meet someone to make us feel like the sun was something they built for us in their tool shed. So broken heart strings bled the blues as we tried to empty ourselves so we would feel nothing. Don’t tell me that hurts less than a broken bone.
— Shane L. Koyczan, To This Day: For the Bullied and Beautiful
I watched the moon alone, unable to share his cold beauty with anyone.
— Haruki Murakami, Yesterday
I didn't feel lonely until there was something to yearn for. Loneliness and longing are two sides of the same coin.
— Jostein Gaarder, The Ringmaster's Daughter
When I look back at myself at age twenty, what I remember most is being alone and lonely. I had no girlfriend to warm my body or my soul, no friends I could open up to. No clue what I should do every day, no vision for the future. For the most part, I remained hidden away, deep within myself. Sometimes, I'd go a week without talking to anybody.
— Haruki Murakami, Yesterday
…I’ve come to realize that the only truths that matter to me are the ones I don’t, and can’t, understand. What’s mysterious, ambiguous, inexplicable. What doesn’t fit into a story, what doesn’t have a story. Glint of brightness on a barely-there chain. Patch of sunlight on a yellow wall. The loneliness that separates every living creature from every other living creature. Sorrow inseparable from joy.
— Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch