Alone And Not Lonely Quotes & Sayings

And so, finding that, for once, I was not sorry to be alone, I said to myself: I am happy. Perfectly happy, I repeated, as my eyes roamed wide over the brilliant desolate sea and the empty contours of the land. Were they, after all, searching for something that was lacking? I hardly knew. A tiny obstinate figure by the dwarf obelisk under an enormous sky, I declared for the third time: I am absolutely happy, absolutely content. And, increasingly overcome by a profound melancholy which I interpreted simply as an appetite for supper I began to walk downhill, towards my sitting room, my holiday task and my lonely bed. — Christopher Isherwood

My main goal is to stay alive. To keep fooling myself into hanging around. To keep getting up every day. Right now I live without inspiration. I go day to day and do the work because it's all I know. I know that if I keep moving I stand a chance. I must keep myself going until I find a reason to live. I need one so bad. On the other hand maybe I don't. Maybe it's all bullshit. Nothing I knew from my old life can help me here. Most of the things that I believed turned out to be useless. Appendages from someone else's life.
Everything I have I would give to not know what I know. To not feel emptiness as my constant companion. To not look into this room and be reminded why I'm in it. I'm not getting enough air. The room feels so small all of a sudden. It's pathetic to be this lonely and know it. To keep breathing. To be silent and alone. And to know. — Henry Rollins

Tears flood in you
your eyes burning
your heart scars with my name scratched deep
My face is gone
my heart betrayed by your lullabies
I'm a shadow of a girl inside
Hands are touching you
nothing takes the place of you
Heart wrench, weeps goodbye
Lullabies, beautiful and trusting
Barely breathing as they break into dust
Lonely corners me
Sweeps me off my feet
Shows me it was better for me
Fingertips holding close
your grip not as soft
Follows me to an empty bed
I can't stop the weakening of my soul
my body is dying
your tune is holding my mind
Let me go
see what I do
No control
No you
You whisper your sweet goodbye
If it is small it won't interrupt my sleep
But my heart you keep
You say it's for me
But who would be happy?
Alone left out in the cold — Mercy Cortez

When you love, you are not lonely. The sense of loneliness arises only when you are frightened of being alone and of not knowing what to do. When you are controlled by ideas, isolated by beliefs, then fear is inevitable; and when you are afraid, you are completely blind. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

I feel strangely free at such times. To behave properly is to be always courteous, always clever, and subtle and elegant. But now, when I am so alone, I do not have to be any of these things.
For this moment, I am wholly myself, unshaped by the needs of others, by their dreams or expectations or sensibilities.
But I am also lonely. With no one to shape me, who stands here, watching the moon, or the stars, or the clouds? — Kij Johnson

You become a house where the wind blows straight through, because no one bothers the crack in the window or lock on the door, and you're the house where people come and go as they please, because you're simply too unimpressed to care. You let people in who you really shouldn't let in, and you let them walk around for a while, use your bed and use your books, and await the day when they simply get bored and leave. You're still not bothered, though you knew they shouldn't have been let in in the first place, but still you just sit there, apathetic like a beggar in the desert. — Charlotte Eriksson

The cruise was the conduit for what would become my third book. While I was traveling and writing for ctnow, women across the United States and from the Caribbean emailed not to ask about my geographic journey but my existential one. "How do you find the courage to travel on your own?" they wondered. "How do you keep from getting lonely? Don't you feel self-conscious eating out alone?" After the first 30 emails like these I thought, There's a book here. It would be eight years before I published Postcards and Pearls: Life Lessons from Solo Moments on the Road. But the inspiration for publication came during the cruise. — Gina Greenlee

Never forget that you are a [child] of God. He loves you. Live by your standards. Stand up for what you believe in. Sometimes it is not easy, and you may be standing alone for a while. Look for friends with integrity and character, then go to them and express appreciation for their examples. You might even find someone who has been feeling as lonely as you. Pray for guidance and protection from the Lord. He will sustain you. He will become a trusted friend, and you will discover that your example will attract many friends who will take courage from your strength of character. — W. Craig Zwick

I once had to say this on a show many years ago, and I truly believe it: Loneliness is a choice. I like to be alone; I'm more comfortable alone. But I do recognize that I take it too far sometimes and so I try to force myself to keep up with being sociable. I just am a bit of a lone ranger; I always have been. But I don't believe that necessarily has to translate to being lonely. You can be lonely in a crowd of a thousand people. I can be in a hotel room on my own and not feel lonely. It all comes down to how comfortable you are with who you are in the silence. — Gillian Anderson

The people you think are the happiest are usually the saddest; that's because they see more and feel deeper than others do. They are the sensitive and they see beyond the veil of what's tangible and what's not. They wear no masks and can see through the masks of others. The sensitive to life are few in number, which is why they feel so alone ... because they are all alone. — Donna Lynn Hope

You know that I love you quite a lot --
But sometimes... not. Sometimes not.
I don't know why.
I guess I
Just hate you sometimes,
Because sometimes I even hate myself,
And she loves you. — Margo T. Rose

The world in books seemed so much more alive to me than anything outside. I could see things I'd never seen before. Books and music were my best friends. I had a couple of good friends at school, but never met anyone I could really speak my heart to. We'd just make small talk, play soccer together. When something bothered me, I didn't talk with anyone about it. I thought it over all by myself, came to a conclusion, and took action alone. Not that I really felt lonely. I thought that's just the way things are. Human beings, in the final analysis, have to survive on their own. — Haruki Murakami

I've learned that being alone and being lonely are not the same thing. Once I was surrounded by people and lonely for it, but now I'm alone and I've never been so content. — Melinda Salisbury

At night, there was the feeling that we had come home, feeling no longer alone, waking in the night to find the other one there, and not gone away; all other things were unreal. We slept when we were tired and if we woke the other one woke too so one was not alone. Often a man wishes to be alone and a woman wishes to be alone too and if they love each other they are jealous of that in each other, but I can truly say we never felt that. We could feel alone when we were together, alone against the others. We were never lonely and never afraid when we were together. — Ernest Hemingway,

I do want someone, need someone. You're right. And, when I'm with you, I feel like I'm a better person. I feel happier. Less alone, less lonely. But it's not as simple as that, is it? Being with someone? — Naomi Campbell

The passion of Jesus is lonely only as all our deaths are lonely. He is with us in the loneliness of death, too. And so, he and we are not alone even there. The same blow that strikes him dead, strikes us all dead, and it strikes us in the same way. — Craig Keen

The church grew very lonely about him, and he began to feel like a child whose mother has forsaken it. Only he knew that to be left alone is not always to be forsaken. — George MacDonald

The 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 Merton

I wandered into the kitchen with my beer cup still in hand. There was nothing worse than being alone at a party. Well, not true. Being alone and sober.

"Hey."

I turned and was actually happy to see Noah. At least I wouldn't be the lonely loser. "Hi."

He glanced at my still mostly full beer.

"I really hardly ever drink. My friend assumes if he puts a beer in my hand I'll drink it; if I don't, he does. I'm more or less his cupholder. — Renita Pizzitola

Rain makes me feel less alone. All rain is, is a cloud- falling apart, and pouring its shattered pieces down on top of you. It makes me feel good to know I'm not the only thing that falls apart . It makes me feel better to know other things in nature can shatter. — Lone Alaskan Gypsy

When I walked into the Christian section of a bookstore, the message was clear: Faith is something you do alone. Rick does not have much tolerance for people living alone. He's like Bill Clinton in that he feels everyone's pain. If Rick thinks somebody is lonely, he can't sleep at night. He wants us all to live with each other and play nice so he can get some rest. Tortured soul. — Donald Miller

If the boundaries of the self are defined by what we feel, then those who cannot feel even for themselves shrink within their own boundaries, while those who feel for others are enlarged, and those who feel compassion for all beings must be boundless. They are not separate, not alone, not lonely, not vulnerable in the same way as those of us stranded in the islands of ourselves, but they are vulnerable in other ways. Still, that sense of the dangers in feeling for others is so compelling that many withdraw, and develop elaborate stories to justify withdrawal, and then forget that they have shrunk. Most of us do, in one way or another. — Rebecca Solnit

It doesn't mean anything;
It doesn't change anything,
Except the way I see myself,
And it's not supposed to do that.
I shouldn't feel this way;
I should cry this way,
But I kind of do.
Yeah, I kind of do. — Margo T. Rose

The very places that we presume God not to be are the very places that are filled with His footprints and littered with His fingerprints. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

The sensation of "I" as a lonely and isolated center of being is so powerful and commonsensical, and so fundamental to our modes of speech and thought, to our laws and social institutions, that we cannot experience selfhood except as something superficial in the scheme of the universe. I seem to be a brief light that flashes but once in all the aeons of time - a rare, complicated, and all-too-delicate organism on the fringe of biological evolution, where the wave of life bursts into individual, sparkling, and multicolored drops that gleam for a moment only to vanish forever. Under such conditioning it seems impossible and even absurd to realize that myself does not reside in the drop alone, but in the whole surge of energy which ranges from the galaxies to the nuclear fields in my body. — Alan W. Watts

To love is not to possess,
To own or imprison,
Nor to lose one's self in another.
Love is to join and separate,
To walk alone and together,
To find a laughing freedom
That lonely isolation does not permit.
It is finally to be able
To be who we really are
No longer clinging in childish dependency
Nor docilely living separate lives in silence,
It is to be perfectly one's self
And perfectly joined in permanent commitment
To another--and to one's inner self.
Love only endures when it moves like waves,
Receding and returning gently or passionately,
Or moving lovingly like the tide
In the moon's own predictable harmony,
Because finally, despite a child's scars
Or an adult's deepest wounds,
They are openly free to be
Who they really are--and always secretly were,
In the very core of their being
Where true and lasting love can alone abide. — James Kavanaugh

Being alone," I snapped, without meaning to be intentionally rude. I was simply being truthful. "Being alone," she said, nodding. I could see that she was not put off by my bristling reply. "There's a lot to be said for being alone. But you and I know, don't we, Flavia, that being alone and being lonely are not at all the same thing?" I brightened a bit. Here was someone who seemed at least to have thought through some of the same things I had. — Alan Bradley

He nodded. A curt movement of his head, and she was, for no reason at all, convinced that the man before her was not in dislike of her but simply a man who did not have words come easily to him because he'd grown up alone.
She thought of him as a boy. Lonely here, with no father and no mother to hold him, only the servants for company, and Killhope as an unceasing reminder of the centuries of duty and responsibility that were his. Her heart twisted up. — Carolyn Jewel

Consciously or not, we feel and internalize what the space tells us about how to work. When you walk into most offices, the space tells you that it's meant for a group of people to work alone. Closed-off desks sprout off of lonely hallways, and in a few obligatory conference rooms a huge table ensures that people are safely separated from one another. — David Kelley

There is no doubt that solitude is a challenge and to maintain balance within it a precarious business. But I must not forget that, for me, being with people or even with one beloved person for any length of time without solitude is even worse. I lose my center. I feel dispersed, scattered, in pieces. I must have time alone in which to mull over my encounter, and to extract its juice, its essence, to understand what has really happened to me as a consequence of it. — May Sarton

If only my mother had a book to hold, she wouldn't have looked so lonely. And maybe this was another reason why people read: not so they would feel less lonely, but so that other people would think they looked less lonely with a book in their hands and therefore not pity them and leave them alone. — Brock Clarke

He wanted to know her. Intimate secrets: Why poetry? Why so sad? Why that grayness in her eyes? Why so alone? Not lonely, just alone - riding her bike across campus or sitting off by herself in the cafeteria - even dancing, she danced alone - and it was the aloneness that filled him with love — Tim O'Brien

... he wanted to sleep inside her lungs and breathe her blood and be smothered. He wanted her to be a virgin and not a virgin all at once. He wanted to know her. Intimate secrets: Why poetry? Why so sad? Why that grayness in her eyes? Why so alone? Not lonely, just alone - riding her bike across campus or sitting off by herself in the cafeteria - even dancing, she danced alone - and it was the aloneness that filled him with love. He remembered telling her that one evening. How she nodded and looked away. And how, later, when he kissed her, she received the kiss without returning it, her eyes wide open, not afraid, not a virgin's eyes, just flat and uninvolved. — Tim O'Brien

Let not the jolly be alone in the world, for they shall talk about the future and snag to do the exercises. — Auliq Ice

Loneliness is treated like the ultimate taboo; at the same time, it's regarded as a trifle. That to be a thirty-seven-year-old who has spent a decade without someone to hold her hand at the doctor's office is akin to being a thirteen-year-old sighing over a boy band.

Again, I know - 'single' is not a synonym for 'lonely.' I know there are many lonely married people, as well as lots of single people who have a rich network of deep social connections - friends, sisters, daughters, nephews, etc. - whose lives are as far from Heller's unhappy narrator as can be.

But for many of us, living alone in a society that is so rigorously constructed around couples and nuclear families is hard on the soul. — Sara Eckel

Sad truth is. . . we all end up alone on some death bed. Yeah? No way to take anybody else's place and no way we can be lying on the same one."

I was at the edge of the white-wed cloth. My shoes filled with concrete, as did my head, looking at the empty shell of what was once a woman full of wonder.

"Any way to make someone feel not so alone?" she asked.

"The only thing anyone can ever do is help someone feel a little less lonely before they get there."

"How does someone do that?"

"Memories. Help create memories. Better ones. Ones to replace the old. — S.D. Lawendowski

Do you know that pain of leaving when you look back expecting to see a face waving goodbye at you but all you see is a dark abandoned corner?
There won't be any reason to return then.
All you can do is look ahead and not to stumble and fall on the pit ahead waiting for you. — Sanhita Baruah

Many a young person tells me he wants to be a writer. I always encourage such people, but I also explain that there's a big difference between being a writer and writing. In most cases these individuals are dreaming of wealth and fame, not the long hours alone at the typewriter. You've got to want to write, I say to them, not want to be a writer. The reality is that writing is a lonely, private and poor-paying affair. For every writer kissed by fortune, there are thousands more whose longing is never requited. Even those who succeed often know long periods of neglect and poverty. I did. — Alex Haley

It is a lonely programme. The very virtues you cultivate become walls that inevitably separate you from your kind ... A new danger comes to your soul, and intolerance and impatience with those who are as you have been all but destroy that which you have taken such pains to build up. Not alone are there spiritual barriers between you and the friends that you have, but your business training has made your mind incisive. In the swift rush of business you have no time for small debates and petty dilemmas. — Alice Foote MacDougall

I went up on the hill and walked about until twilight had deepened into an autumn night with a benediction of starry quietude over it. I was alone but not lonely. I was a queen in halls of fancy. — L.M. Montgomery

Each of us knew that the journey to exaltation would be long, strenuous, and sometimes lonely, but we also knew that we would not travel alone. Heavenly Father provides all who fulfill the prerequisites of faith, repentance, and baptism with a companion and guide, the Holy Ghost. — Keith K. Hilbig

As we learn to share and give and care, love increases. A person who knows how to love does not seem to feel lonely or alone. In this sense, the power of love can become a true weapon against harm. — John Templeton

I used to be fine in my loneliness
but something
or someone
snapped me out of it
and 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 air
by myself in the snow
and I was not okay. — Charlotte Eriksson

I am alone, as though I stood On the highest peak of the tired gray world,About me only swirling snow, Above me, endless space unfurled;With earth hidden and heaven hidden, And only my own spirit's prideTo keep me from the peace of those Who are not lonely, having died. — Sara Teasdale

But out of the desert, from the dry places and the dreadful suns, come the cruel children of the lonely God; the real Unitarians who with scimitar in hand have laid waste the world. For it is not well for God to be alone. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

I'm perpetually single. Being alone is not the same as being lonely. I like to do things that glorify being alone. I buy a candle that smells pretty, turn down the lights, and make a playlist of low-key songs. If you don't act like you've been hit by the plague when you're alone on a Friday night, and just see it as a chance to have fun by yourself, it's not a bad day. — Taylor Swift

Solitude, what a sad and beautiful thing it is! How beautiful when we choose it! How sad when it is forced upon us year after year! Some strong men are not lonely when they are alone, but I, who am weak, am lonely when I have no friends. — Emmanuel Bove

Not to mention the loneliness. And at the same time, the crowdedness. The never being really alone, just to think, to rest or to do something private - anything private. You can't even got to toilet in private. And if you want company, real company, not just people hanging about making a noise, that's when you realize how lonely you are. — Meg Rosoff

You know you're my best friend, right?' he said.
I shrugged. I guessed it was true. Now that I wasn't going to be at the parade, they would all hate me. Everything had been carefully choreographed, and me not being there would throw them all off. I realized that kids like Theo and me weren't supposed to have real friends. We were supposed to be all alone and confused. By being each other's friend, we were defying our laws of gravity. — Heather O'Neill

There's not one good thought in that place. There's nothing but waste and want. I can feel his selfish cravings and an abyss of secrets I hope to never know. — Steve V. Cypert

This was not a loss that could be shared. Grief was a place every person had to go alone, a lonely country populated by mistakes and a futile desire to turn back time for an impossible do-over. — Vicki Pettersson

We live and breathe words ... It was books that made me feel that perhaps I was not completely alone. They could be honest with me, and I with them. Reading your words, what you wrote, how you were lonely sometimes and afraid, but always brave; the way you saw the world, its colors and textures and sounds, I felt
I felt the way you thought, hoped, felt, dreamt. I felt I was dreaming and thinking and feeling with you. I dreamed what you dreamed, wanted what you wanted
and then I realized that truly I just wanted you. — Cassandra Clare

People sometimes ask me if I do not feel lonely on holidays. How can I feel lonely when I live in the constant awareness of God's presence? I love and I enjoy being with people, but when I am alone I enjoy being alone with God. — Peace Pilgrim

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

It's hard in L.A. not to go out, it gets lonely. Being an actress is lonely, and I never want to be alone. I hate sleeping alone. — Lindsay Lohan

Friends are a strange, volatile, contradictory, yet sticky phenomenon. They are made, crafted, shaped, molded, created by focused effort and intent. And yet, true friendship, once recognized, in its essence is effortless.
Best friends are formed by time.
Everyone is someone's friend, even when they think they are all alone.
If the friendship is not working, your heart will know. It's when you start being less than perfectly honest and perfectly earnest in your dealings. And it's when the things you do together no longer feel right.
However, sometimes it takes more effort to make it work after all.
Stick around long enough to become someone's best friend. — Vera Nazarian

Part of me wanted him to be awake, but the other part of me liked this quiet feeling of being both alone and not lonely. — Maggie Stiefvater

im not sure what is a dream and what is real. or if real is a real word and if words even exist outside of our imagination. i still can't say for certain if falling asleep is opening your eyes in the morning or closing them at night. and im lonely. but not sadly. everybody is alone. i want love like love wants love. and im not scared to be alive. these days more people are. money is an illusion. the world has been gaining some sort of momentum over "time" and every day it's spinning faster. we are growing up too quickly. someday i'll start too. — Jason Reeves

Solitude is addictive. Being alone, but not lonely, is peaceful and inspiring. It gives you the strength to go back and deal with all the nonsense. — Karen Gibbs

And I knew too well the loneliness that clamps around one's heart when loved ones have passed on before. To have that companionship, the comfort of someone being at home for you for years, and then suddenly not to have it anymore - well, every day can seem darker after that, and the vise clutches tighter in your chest every night you spend in a lonely bed. Unless you find someone to spend some time with (and that time is sunlight, golden minutes when you forget you're alone), that vise will eventually crush your heart. — Kevin Hearne

There is something magical to me about literature and fiction and I think it can do things not only that pop culture cannot do but that are urgent now: one is that by creating a character in a work of fiction you can allow a reader to leap over the wall of self and to allow him to imagine himself not only somewhere else but someone else in a way that television and movies, in a way that no other form can do. I think people are essentially lonely and alone and frightened of being alone. — David Foster Wallace

Writing is not 'lonely work' but "alone work'; authors are known to be reclusive and like spending time with themselves. — Brie Edison

It had filled my time - given me quiet, steadfast company with those characters, who did not exist and never would, but somehow made me feel less ... alone. — Sarah J. Maas

Left alone, Miss Verney felt so old, lonely and helpless that she began to cry. No builder would tackle that shed, not for any price she could afford. But crying relieved her and she soon felt quite cheerful again. It was ridiculous to brood, she told herself. — Jean Rhys

It seems important to me that beginning writers ponder this - that since 1964, I have never had a book, story or poem rejected that was not later published. If you know what you are doing, eventually you will run into an editor who knows what he/she is doing. It may take years, but never give up. Writing is a lonely business not just because you have to sit alone in a room with your machinery for hours and hours every day, month after month, year after year, but because after all the blood, sweat, toil and tears you still have to find somebody who respects what you have written enough to leave it alone and print it. And, believe me, this remains true, whether the book is your first novel or your thirty-first. — Joseph Hansen

Carmen: I want you to leave me alone, but not ignore me. I want you to miss me when I go away to college, but not be sad. I want you to stay exactly the same, but not be lonely or alone. I want to do the leaving, and not have you ever leave me. — Ann Brashares

DRACO: My father thought he was protecting me. Most of the time. I think you have to make a choice - at a certain point - of the man you want to be. And I tell you that at a time you need a parent or a friend. And if you've learnt to hate your parent by then and you have no friends . . . then you're all alone. And being alone - that's so hard. I was alone. And it sent me to a truly dark place. For a long time. Tom Riddle was also a lonely child. You may not understand that, Harry, but I do - and I think Ginny does too. — Jack Thorne

Can I pretend to be as cold as Augustus? I now know why he did not flinch in hanging my wife. And I am beginning to understand why Golds rule. They can do what I cannot.
Though I am alone, I know I will soon find others. They want me to soak in the guilt for now. They want me lonely, mournful, so that when I meet the others, the winners, I will be relieved. The murders will bind us, and I'll find the company of the winners a salve to my guilt. I do not love my fellow students, but I will think I do. I will want their comfort, their reassurances that I am not evil. And they will want the same. This is meant to make us a family - one with cruel secrets.
I am right. — Pierce Brown

Each one of us is alone in the world. He is shut in a tower of brass, and can communicate with his fellows only by signs, and the signs have no common value, so that their sense is vague and uncertain. We seek pitifully to convey to others the treasures of our heart, but they have not the power to accept them, and so we go lonely, side by side but not together, unable to know our fellows and unknown by them. We are like people living in a country whose language they know so little that, with all manner of beautiful and profound things to say, they are condemned to the banalities of the conversation manual. Their brain is seething with ideas, and they can only tell you that the umbrella of the gardener's aunt is in the house. — W. Somerset Maugham

If you want to be happy, learn to be alone without being lonely. Learn that being alone does not mean being unhappy. The world is full of plenty of interesting and enjoyable things to do and people who can enrich your life. — Michael Josephson

In very rare cases, people will be self-satisfied and content within themselves. More often than not the very same people who choose to live alone are simply in denial after a painful experience or the failure in an intimate relationship. — Nityananda Das

Alone doesn't mean lonely. It just means alone. It just means that for now, you're on your own, and that's not a terrible thing. — Hemal Jhaveri

She had not had a question like that in her mind before. It had made her feel lonely. She wanted to be alone, but not lonely. That was very different; that was something that ached and hurt dreadfully right inside one. It was what one dreaded most. It was what made one go to so many parties; and lately even the parties had seemed once or twice not to be a perfectly certain protection. Was it possible that loneliness had nothing to do with circumstances, but only with the way one met them? Perhaps, she had thought, she had better go to bed. She couldn't be very well. She — Elizabeth Von Arnim

If you do not follow somebody you feel very lonely. Be lonely then. Why are you frightened of being alone? Because you are faced with yourself as you are and you find that you are empty, dull, stupid, ugly, guilty and anxious - a petty, shoddy, secondhand entity. Face the fact; look at it, do not run away from it. The moment you run away fear begins. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

I liked to tinker with things, like Father. Make things with my hands. I liked to be alone, but not to be lonely. You were my only friend. You and Dutch. — Sharon Lynn Fisher

He was resentful against all those in authority over him, and this, combined with a lazy indifference toward his work, exasperated every master in school. He grew discouraged and imagined himself a pariah; took to sulking in corners and reading after lights. With a dread of being alone he attached a few friends, but since they were not among the elite of the school, he used them simply as mirrors of himself, audiences before which he might do that posing absolutely essential to him. He was unbearably lonely, desperately unhappy. — F Scott Fitzgerald

He seemed lonely too, not just alone, but lonely in his soul. That made Chloe sad. She knew full well what it was like to feel lonely. Chloe didn't like school very much. Mother had insisted on sending her to a posh all-girls secondary school, and she hadn't made any friends there. Chloe didn't like being at home much either. Wherever she was she had the feeling that she didn't quite fit in. — David Walliams

Just imagine, life to be a dance with different kind of rhythms depending on what music is playing in the background. Sometimes we may dance alone and that's OK, as some songs are simply meant to be danced like that. Practice! Don't stop! It's your dance! — Nico J. Genes

But when a faithful Muslim is alone by himself, he is not lonely. As a matter of fact being alone is prized by faithful Muslims. There is a Hadith from Imam Sajjad (A.S.) in which the Imam is quoted as saying: 'If all between the East and West were to die, I would not feel lonely as long as the Qur'an was with me. — Mohammad Ali Shomali

You've a very important, early decision to make in your life: are you going to be alone, or are you going to be with somebody else? Are you going to be sane, or not lonely? A couple is a strange thing; it's an organism that's half as intelligent as the most intelligent member. And you both know who it is. — Dylan Moran

It is not they who have closed but I. I've cut myself away. I'm alone, and lonely. What frightens me is that I've not become lonely now, but have looked inside and seen that I was, already. How long has that been going on? — China Mieville

We are all misfits, poseurs, and clowns. We are heartbroken and lonely, failures in life, criminals and frauds. Most of our successes are pleasant illusions. Through the books on the shelves, the library becomes a support group and lets us know that we are not alone. Once we realize we are not alone, we can relax, set our burdens down, and move on. — Don Borchert

If you are leading others and you're lonely, then you're not doing it right. Think about it. If you're all alone, that means nobody is following you. And if nobody is following you, you're not really leading! — John C. Maxwell

I like working alone. I feel freer, less constrained. I know what I have to do and I try to do it. There are no superficial hangups. — Oliver

These women lived their lives happily. They had been taught, probably by loving parents, not to exceed the boundaries of their happiness regardless of what they were doing. But therefore they could never know real joy. Which is better? Who can say? Everyone lives the way she knows best. What I mean by 'their happiness' is living a life untouched as much as possible by the knowledge that we are really, all of us, alone. That's not a bad thing. Dressed in their aprons, their smiling faces like flowers, leaning to cook, absorbed in their little troubles and perplexities, they fall in love and marry. I think that's great. I wouldn't mind that kind of life. Me, when I'm utterly exhausted by it all, my skin breaks out, on those lonely evenings when I call my friends again and again and nobody's home, then I despise my own life - my birth, my upbringing, everything. I feel only regret for the whole thing. — Banana Yoshimoto

There must be different kinds of loneliness, or at least different degrees of loneliness, but the most terrifying loneliness is not experienced by everyone and can be understood by only a few. I compare the panic in this kind of loneliness to the dog we see running frantically down the road pursuing the family car. He is not really being left behind, for the family knows it is to return, but for that moment in his limited understanding, he is being left alone forever, and he has to run and run to survive. It is no wonder that we make terrible choices in our lives to avoid loneliness. — Charles M. Schulz

Miss Abigail, I want to be an author because writers know when a person is lonely. I mean, when Molly read me some books, those writers reached out and said, Look Gideon, we know about your loneliness and we know you're feeling downtrodden. And they said ... I'll stand up for you. You're not lone anymore. — Leon Uris

He who is capable of really reading a writer will have his every question answered by the works themselves. For example, Kafka depicts the dreams & visions of his lonely, difficult life and it is these dreams & visions alone that should preoccupy us & not the interpretations that sharp-witted critics can give these writings. Their interpreting is an intellectual sport, one that is good for clever people who can read & write books on African sculpture or 12-tone music but who never get to the heart of works of art because they stand at the gate fumbling with their 100 keys, blind to the fact that the gate is not really locked. — Hermann Hesse

I started to do a study on how not to do stand-up comedy. Yeah, it's lonely work. You die, you die alone. It's you, the light, and the audience. If you win, you win big. If you lose, you lose big time. — Jim Varney

Clouds heap upon clouds and it darkens. Ah, love, why dost thou let me wait outside at the door all alone?
In the busy moments of the noontide work I am with the crowd, but on this dark lonely day it is only for thee that I hope.
If thou showest me not thy face, if thou leavest me wholly aside, I know not how I am to pass these long, rainy hours.
I keep gazing on the far-away gloom of the sky, and my heart wanders wailing with the restless wind. — Rabindranath Tagore

I want you to know that you will not be alone in your loneliness," he said.
Her tear-filled eyes welled over. "You will be surrounded by your court ... and all the beautiful ladies there."
Rodrigo shook his head. "I've never cared about any of them. I shall be lonely for you. Lonely in the midst of a crowd ... surrounded by a hundred faces, none of them yours." He held Rapunzel's tearful gaze, and tried to swallow the lump in his throat. But he couldn't. "And as everything and everyone is spinning around me, I shall be thinking of you and longing to be here ... " he brushed the backs of his fingers against her wet cheek, " ... here in the tower, with my Rapunzel. — Lisa Valdez

Francie of course became an outsider shunned by all because of her stench. But she had grown accostumed to being lonely. She was used to walking alone and being considered different. She did not suffer to much. — Betty Smith

If we're not able to be alone, we're going to be more lonely. And if we don't teach our children to be alone, they're only going to know how to be lonely. — Sherry Turkle

Suddenly this defeat.
This rain.
The blues gone gray
And the browns gone gray
And yellow
A terrible amber.
In the cold streets
Your warm body.
In whatever room
Your warm body.
Among all the people
Your absence
The people who are always
Not you.


I have been easy with trees
Too long.
Too familiar with mountains.
Joy has been a habit.
Now
Suddenly
This rain. — Jack Gilbert

He was thirty-one now, not too old, but old enough to be lonely. He hadn't dated since he'd been back here, hadn't met anyone who remotely interested him. It was his own fault, he knew. There was something that kept a distance between him and any woman who started to get close, something he wasn't sure he could change even if he tried. And sometimes in the moments right before sleep came, he wondered if he was destined to be alone forever. — Nicholas Sparks

Haven't you ever seen someone standing alone?
I shrug. Just one.
Why don't you talk to that child?
Because it's me and Devon told me I shouldn't talk to myself. Not in public anyway — Kathryn Erskine

And his eyes frighten me, too. They're the eyes of an old man, an old man who's seen so much in life that he no longer cares to go on living. They're not even desperate ... just quiet and expectant, and very, very lonely, as if he were quite alone of his own free choice. — Anne Holm

Their mouths met. The touch of his lips sparked an energy that plunged to the very depths of her. In that moment, she knew that this was the one kiss of her life. It was the touch of him she would remember forever. The kiss she would dream of when she was lonely. It was the kiss she would relive when she was alone. It would transcend the physical, the realms of Shadow and Light. All other kisses that followed, if there ever were any, would not compare. — Liesel Schwarz

Whatever the depth of our darkness, God navigated it eons before it was dark. And whatever the duration of our nights, God was there long before it ever turned to night. Therefore, despite our frequent feelings to the contrary, there is no place we might be where God was not lovingly waiting for us an eternity before we got there. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

and sadness clung to me
because she did not know
how to be alone. — AVA.