Quotes about loneliness

"Nothing.... Alone a man is nothing.....I wish I had some way to give the meaning of my life to others.... To make a bridge from man to man.... We must find some way of being good to ourselves.... Man is all we've got."

I did not act in this fashion deliberately; I did not prefer this kind of relationship with people. I wanted a life in which there was a constant oneness of feeling with others, in which the basic emotions of life were shared, in which common memory formed a common past, in which collective hope reflected a national future.

All my life I have done nothing but feel and cultivate my feelings; all their lives they had done nothing but strive for petty goals, the trivial material prizes of American life. We shared a common tongue, but my language was a different language from theirs.

The secret of a good old age is simply an honorable pact with solitude.

"Where are the people?" resumed the little prince at last. "It's a little lonely in the desert..."

"It is lonely when you're among people, too," said the snake.

Lastly, you are not alone because when you walk you soon become two. Especially after walking for a long time. What I mean is that even when I am alone, there is always this dialogue between the body and the soul.

So it’s best to walk alone, except that one is never entirely alone. As Henry David Thoreau wrote: ‘I have a great deal of company in the house, especially in the morning when nobody calls.’ To be buried in Nature is perpetually distracting. Everything talks to you, greets you, demands your attention: trees, flowers, the colour of the roads. The sigh of the wind, the buzzing of insects, the babble of streams, the impact of your feet on the ground: a whole rustling murmur that responds to your presence. Rain, too. A light and gentle rain is a steady accompaniment, a murmur you listen to, with its intonations, outbursts, pauses: the distinct plopping of drops splashing on stone, the long melodious weave of sheets of rain falling steadily. It’s impossible to be alone when walking, with so many things under our gaze which are given to us through the inalienable grasp of contemplation.

But we may go further, and affirm most truly, that it is a mere and miserable solitude to want true friends; without which the world is but a wilderness; and even in this sense also of solitude, whosoever in the frame of his nature and affections, is unfit for friendship, he taketh it of the beast, and not from humanity.

A crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love.

I had only my thoughts to occupy me, and they were not good company.

He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.

When alone, I have never known what it is to feel weary, even when I am entirely unemployed; my imagination fills up every void, and is alone sufficient to occupy me. It is only the idle gossip of a room, when people sit opposite each other, moving nothing but their tongues, that I have never been able to endure. When walking or moving, I can put up with it; the feet and eyes are at least employed; but, to remain with folded arms, talking about the weather and the flies buzzing round, or, what is worse, exchanging compliments, that is to me unendurable torture.