Popular quotes about Loneliness! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 3
Solitude is a condition of peace that stands in direct opposition to loneliness. Loneliness is like sitting in an empty room and being aware of the space around you. It is a condition of separateness. Solitude is becoming one with the space around you. It is a condition of union. loneliness is small, solitude is large. loneliness closes in around you; solitude expands toward the infinite. loneliness has its roots in words, in an internal conversation that nodbody answers; solitude has it's roots in the great silence of eternity.
Kent NerburnI have been trying, for some time now, to find dignity in my loneliness. I have been finding this hard to do. It is easier, of course, to find dignity in one's solitude. Loneliness is solitude with a problem.
Maggie NelsonTo live a spiritual life we must first find the courage to enter into the desert of our loneliness and to change it by gentle and persistent efforts into a garden of solitude. The movement from loneliness to solitude, however, is the beginning of any spiritual life because it it is the movement from the restless senses to the restful spirit,l from the outward-reaching cravings to the inward-reaching search, from the fearful clinging to the fearless play.
Henri NouwenPlease make me empty, if I'm empty then I can receive, if I can receive it means it comes from somewhere outside of me, if it comes from outside of me I'm not alone! I cannot bear this loneliness. Above all it is loneliness.
Leonard CohenWriting is a solitary occupation, and one of its hazards is loneliness. But an advantage of loneliness is privacy, autonomy and freedom.
Joyce Carol OatesCinema is a wonderful art form for talking about loneliness. We can experience films together with other people. It can be a collective experience of loneliness. We're alone in the dark of the theater, but with other people.
Joachim TrierGod, but life is loneliness, despite all the opiates, despite the shrill tinsel gaiety of "parties" with no purpose, despite the false grinning faces we all wear. And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter - they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long. Yes, there is joy, fulfillment and companionship - but the loneliness of the soul in its appalling self-consciousness is horrible and overpowering.
Sylvia PlathLoneliness, she thought, was craving for other people's company. But she did not know that loneliness can be an unnoticed cramping of the spirit for lack of companionship.
Doris LessingSuffering should not define you as a woman! And just because youโre a man it doesnโt mean that it doesnโt affect you! HELP HER to remove the taboos and the loneliness surrounding this disease; be understanding, show empathy, and donโt accuse her of being sensitive, delicate, or overly dramatic โ this is a big opportunity for you guys to show that you care and to be a real man!
Susan SarandonThe man who fears to be alone will never be anything but lonely, no matter how much he may surround himself with people. But the man who learns, in solitude and recollection, to be at peace with his own loneliness, and to prefer its reality to the illusion of merely natural companionship, comes to know the invisible companionship of God. Such a one is alone with God in all places, and he alone truly enjoys the companionship of other men, because he loves them in God in Whom their presence is not tiresome, and because of Whom his own love for them can never know satiety.
Thomas MertonI'll never forget how the depression and loneliness felt good and bad at the same time. Still does.
Henry RollinsTo live, we must daily break the body and shed the blood of Creation. When we do this knowingly, lovingly, skillfully, reverently, it is a sacrament. When we do it ignorantly, greedily, clumsily, destructively, it is a desecration. In such desecration we condemn ourselves to spiritual and moral loneliness, and others to want.
Wendell BerryWhenever I'm around people it causes me to feel nostalgic for the loneliness that drove me into their presence in the first place.
Dov DavidoffYes, I want money more than anything else in the world.โ โThen youโve made the only choice. But thereโs a penalty attached, as there is to most things you want. Itโs loneliness.
Margaret MitchellEvery wise workman takes his tools away from the work from time to time that they may be ground and sharpened; so does the only-wise Jehovah take his ministers oftentimes away into darkness and loneliness and trouble, that he may sharpen and prepare them for harder work in his service.
Robert Murray M'CheyneEverybody has something that chews them up and, for me, that thing was always loneliness. The cinema has the power to make you not feel lonely, even when you are.
Tom HanksWe long to connect, all of us. We long to be noticed, to be cared for, to matter. Generosity is the invisible salve on our wound of loneliness, one that benefits both sides, over and over again.
Seth GodinThe principal contributor to loneliness in this country is television. What happens is that the family 'gets together' alone.
Ashley MontaguMy peers, lately, have found companionship through means of intoxication - it makes them sociable. I, however, cannot force myself to use drugs to cheat on my loneliness - it is all that I have - and when the drugs and alcohol dissipate, will be all that my peers have as well.
Franz KafkaI look at pictures of you because I am afraid that you would notice me staring in real life. I looked at your picture today for countless minutes. It is closer than Iโll ever get to you for real. I felt like I was looking at a captured animal at a safe distance. If you knew I was doing this, you would feel sickened and frightened. Thatโs why youโll never know. Years will go by and youโll never know. I will never say the things that I want to say to you. I know the damage it would do. I love you more than I hate my loneliness and pain.
Henry RollinsOne of the things reading does, it makes your loneliness manageable if you are an essentially lonely person.
Jamaica KincaidWhy were we so far apart, even when we were together? It was a nice loneliness, like the sensation of washing your face in cold water.
Banana YoshimotoThere is a terrible hunger for love. We all experience that in our lives--the pain, the loneliness. We must have the courage to recognize it. The poor you may have right in your own family. Find them. Love them. ---Before you speak, it is necessary for you to listen, for God speaks in the silence of the heart. Speak tenderly to them. Let there be kindness in your face, in your eyes, in your smile, in the warmth of your greeting. Always have a cheerful smile. Don't only give your care, but give your heart as well.
Mother TeresaThere is no final solution to loneliness until you recognize that you need the resources which are in yourself to enpy, within limits, being alone being the kind of person that you like to be with, and reaching out to others, not in a grasping way, but in an attempt to be meaningful and loving and of service in their lives.
Truman G. MadsenThe larger loneliness of our lives evolves from our unwillingness to spend ourselves, stir ourselves. We are always damping down our inner weather, permitting ourselves the comforts of postponement, of rehearsals
Carol ShieldsIt is not good that man should be alone. ... Hitherto all things that have been named, were approved of God to be very good: loneliness is the first thing which God's eye named not good: whether it be a thing, or the want of something, I labour not.
John MiltonAs far as loneliness, I feel Los Angeles and its layout, having to drive everywhere - it is a lonely place. It's an isolated city in that respect because you're driving to places alone listening to the radio.
Jason SchwartzmanMany times I wondered whether my achievement was worth the loneliness I experienced, but now I realize the price was small.
Gordon ParksThe American appetite for loneliness impressed me, and there was something about this solitude that freed conversation. One night at a bar, I met a man, and within five minutes he explained that he had just been released from prison. Another drinker told me that his wife had passed away, and he had recently suffered a heart attack, and now he hoped that he would die within the year. I learned that there's no reliable small talk in America; at any moment a conversation can become personal.
Peter HesslerWhat do you care? You always liked loneliness better than you liked people. No offence liking yourself's the beginning of all love.
Fritz LeiberFly-fishing is a magic way to recapture the rapture of solitude without the pangs of loneliness.
John D. VoelkerI've also seen that great men are often lonely. This is understandable, because they have built such high standards for themselves that they often feel alone. But that same loneliness is part of their ability to create.
Yousuf KarshYour incredible brain can take you from rags to riches, from loneliness to popularity, and from depression to happiness and joy - if you use it properly.
Brian TracyI am awfully greedy; I want everything from life. I want to be a woman and to be a man, to have many friends and to have loneliness, to work much and write good books, to travel and enjoy myself, to be selfish and to be unselfishโฆ You see, it is difficult to get all which I want. And then when I do not succeed I get mad with anger.
Simone de BeauvoirHe spoke of human solitude, about the intrinsic loneliness of a sophisticated mind, one that is capable of reason and poetry but which grasps at straws when it comes to understanding another, a mind aware of the impossibility of absolute understanding. The difficulty of having a mind that understands that it will always be misunderstood.
Nicole KraussRunning and meditation are very personal activities. Therefore they are lonely. This loneliness is one of their best qualities because it strengthens our incentive to motivate ourselves.
Sakyong MiphamAn artist is always alone - if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness.
Henry MillerFor too many women pregnancy is just the start of loneliness and abuse. It is a cruel reality.
Fay RipleyFear is the process of the mind in the struggle of becoming. In becoming good there is the fear of evil; in becoming complete, there is the fear of loneliness.
Jiddu KrishnamurtiIt was a lot to carry out of a childhood--all those textured layers of thwarted dreams rumbling under the fifties patina--but a lot of us did it. In those manicured lives and choreographed marriages there was an often-pronounced loneliness, an emptiness that we would try to fill with our own accomplishments. And our role, the one we would have so much trouble trying to shed later, was simply to be the best little girls in the world, the high- achieving, make-no-waves, properly behaved little kittens.
Anne Taylor FlemingThere's a weird loneliness that comes with being a comedian, especially standup. Even with improvisers, I think there are certain moments of truth where you feel really, really connected to audiences, and that's when you're on stage. I think there's definitely something inside the personality of a person who wants to be a comedian that's looking to connect at all times. That's where the adrenaline rushes in their lives come from.
Chris GethardIs it possible really to love other people? If Iโm lonely and in pain, everyone outside me is potential reliefโI need them. But can you really love what you need so badly? Isnโt a big part of love caring more about what the other person needs? How am I supposed to subordinate my own overwhelming need to somebody elseโs needs that I canโt even feel directly? And yet if I canโt do this, Iโm damned to loneliness, which I definitely donโt want โฆ so Iโm back at trying to overcome my selfishness for self-interested reasons.
David Foster Wallace