LONELINESS QUOTES III
quotations about loneliness
Self is the only prison that can ever bind the soul.
HENRY VAN DYKE
"The Prison and the Angel"
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
My loneliness is like the tarmacs where planes never rest;
they touch and then take flight.
Let it be the launching pad for dreams,
brief respite for crafts that sweep the stars.
JAMIE ZWIEBEL
"The Lonely Season", Poems Written While Not Studying at Harvard
It's paradoxical that where people are the most closely crowded, in the big coastal cities in the East and West, the loneliness is the greatest.
ROBERT M. PIRSIG
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
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
I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others--young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
The Great Gatsby
Why do people have to be this lonely? What's the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?
HARUKI MURAKAMI
Sputnik Sweetheart
He felt the cold silence between worlds, the thrust of rocketships, the harsh, glamorous loneliness.
RAYMOND Z. GALLUN
"Prodigal's Aura"
Even to loneliness there is an end, for those who are lonely enough, long enough.
THEODORE STURGEON
"Saucer of Loneliness"
The Loneliness One dare not sound --
And would as soon surmise
AS in its Grave go plumbing
To ascertain the size --
The Loneliness whose worst alarm
Is lest itself should see --
And perish from before itself
For just a scrutiny --
The Horror not to be surveyed --
But skirted in the Dark --
With Consciousness suspended --
And Being under Lock --
I fear me this -- is Loneliness --
The Maker of the soul
Its Caverns and its Corridors
Illuminate -- or seal --
EMILY DICKINSON
"The Loneliness One Dare Not Sound", Poems
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
Physical distance between people has nothing to do with loneliness. It's psychic distance.
ROBERT M. PIRSIG
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
The survival of the fittest is going to make some man very lonesome some day.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
Loneliness
Got a mind of its own
The more people around
The more you feel alone
BOB DYLAN
"Marchin' to the City", The Bootleg Series
What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?
GEORGE ELIOT
Middlemarch
There was nothing lonelier than a man with a million friends.
WILLIAM SHATNER
The Ashes of Eden
No one ever discovers the depths of his own loneliness.
GEORGES BERNANOS
The Diary of a Country Priest
Each way means loneliness -- and communion.
T. S. ELIOT
The Cocktail Party
Loneliness will sit over our roofs with brooding wings.
BRAM STOKER
Dracula
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