Crowd Alone Quotes & Sayings

In a city, you can be alone in a crowd, and in fact what makes the city a city is that it lets you hide the strangeness in your mind inside its teeming multitudes. — Orhan Pamuk

I know your story.
Got one of my own.
Yeah, I know lonely and alone.
Happen in a crowd, happen in a kiss.
But I know how to change all this. — Courtney C. Stevens

John Knightley only was in mute astonishment. - That a man who might have spent his evening quietly at home after a day of business in London, should set off again, and walk half a mile to another man's house, for the sake of being in mixed company till bed-time, of finishing his day in the efforts of civility and the noise of numbers, was a circumstance to strike him deeply. A man who had been in motion since eight o'clock in the morning, and might now have been still, who had been long talking, and might have been silent, who had been in more than one crowd, and might have been alone! - Such a man, to quit the tranquillity and independence of his own fireside, and on the evening of a cold sleety April day rush out again into the world! — Jane Austen

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

In my opinion, it is not the writer's job to solve such problems as the existence of God, pessimism, etc. The job of the artist is only to record who under which circumstances said or thought what about God or pessimism. The artist must not judge his characters or their words; he must only be an impartial witness ... It is high time for writers - and especially for true artists - to admit that it is impossible to explain anything ... if an artist whom the crowd trusts admits that he understands nothing of what he sees, this fact alone will make a great contribution to the realm of thought and will mark a great step forward. — Anton Chekhov

You can be alone in a crowd of people — Karen White

When thou ascendest to thy Heaven I descend to my Hell - even then thou callest to me across the unbridgeable gulf, "My companion, my comrade," and I call back to thee, "My comrade, my companion" - for I would not have thee see my Hell. The flame would burn thy eyesight and the smoke would crowd thy nostrils. And I love my Hell too well to have thee visit it. I would be in Hell alone. — Kahlil Gibran

How can they know
Truth flourishes where the student's lamp has shone,
And there alone, that have no solitude?
So the crowd come they care not what may come.
They have loud music, hope every day renewed
And heartier loves; that lamp is from the tomb. — William Butler Yeats

The man who is unable to people his solitude is equally unable to be alone in a bustling crowd. The poet enjoys the incomparable privilege of being able to be himself or some one else, as he chooses. [ ... ] The solitary and thoughtful stroller finds a singular intoxication in this universal communion. [ ... ] What men call love is a very small, restricted, feeble thing compared with this ineffable orgy, this divine prostitution of the soul giving itself entire ... to the unexpected as it comes along, the stranger as he passes. — Charles Baudelaire

You lied to me."
"I never lied. I just didn't tell you the whole truth."
"You said you were alone."
"I am alone."
"There's hundreds of you. Maybe thousands. You and your 'family' are everywhere."
"Just because you're standing in a crowd doesn't mean you belong there." -Yukiko and Kin — Jay Kristoff

It didn't help matters that I was shy and wore glasses. I was never one to stand out in the crowd. I liked to stay in corners. And I was happiest when I was alone reading. That and the good grades I got in school had doomed any chance of being popular with my peers. So it was a foregone conclusion that boys like Hardy were never going to take notice of me. — Lisa Kleypas

This, books can do-nor this alone; they give New views to life, and teach us how to live; They soothe the grieved, the stubborn they chastise; Fools they admonish, and confirm the wise. Their aid they yield to all: they never shun The man of sorrow, nor the wretch undone; Unlike the hard, the selfish, and the proud, They fly not sullen from the suppliant crowd; Nor tell to various people various things, But show to subjects, what they show to kings. — George Crabbe

If you look at yourself and life through the lens of your ego, you'll feel isolated, ganged up on, alone, dfferent, and not part of the crowd. If you look through the lens of Spirit, knowing we're all one, you'll always feel safe, secure, ad loved. — Sonia Choquette

What can be quieter than standing alone in a crowd of strangers? — Keri Arthur

Because sometimes it's being in a crowd that makes you feel lonelier than when you're alone. — Winna Efendi

When old companions, old lusts, and sins crowd in upon you, and when you feel that you are ready to sink, what can save you, sinking sinner ? This alone - I have a high priest in heaven, and he can support in the hour of affliction. This alone can give you peace-I have a high priest in heaven. When you are dying - when friends can do you no good - when sins rise up like spectres around your bed - what can give you peace ? This - "I have a high priest in heaven" — Robert Murray M'Cheyne

The person who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. The person who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever seen before. — Albert Einstein

With her Florentino Ariza learned what he had already experienced many times without realizing it: that one can be in love with several people at the same time, feel the same sorrow with each, and not betray any of them. Alone in the midst of the crowd on the pier, he said to himself in a flash of anger: 'My heart has more rooms than a whorehouse. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I couldn't imagine what it would be like to be one of so many, to have not just parents and siblings but cousins and aunts and uncles, an entire tribe to claim as your own. Maybe you would feel lost in the crowd. Or sheltered by it. Whatever the case, one things was for sure: like it or not, you'd never be alone. — Sarah Dessen

And that boys," yelled Mr. Weasley over the tumult of the crowd below,"is why you should never go for looks alone! — J.K. Rowling

It's easy to stand in the crowd but it takes courage to stand alone — Mahatma Gandhi

I am alone even when I'm in the middle of a crowd.
I am sad even when I'm laughing hysterically.
I am dead even when I'm alive. And isn't that the worst kind? — Amelia Mysko

Tommy had felt alone in a crowd before, even inferior to everyone in a crowd, but now he felt, well, different. It wasn't just the clothes and the make up, it was the humanity. He wasn't part of it. Heightened senses or not, he felt like he had his nose pressed against the window, looking in. The problem was, it was the window of a donut shop. — Christopher Moore

God has spoken very boldly about his desire to be a presence in our lives. If I want to heal the ache and loneliness in my own life, one of the things I need to do is get away, alone with God ... In the silence God will speak to you most powerfully. Too often his words to us get muffled, lost, or covered by the crowd of many noises both inside and outside of us. We must have a quiet heart in order to hear God's distinctive message to us. — Tim Hansel

If you follow the crowd, you will likely get no further than the crowd. If you walk alone, you're likely to end up in places no one has ever been before. Being an achiever is not
without its difficulties, for peculiarity breeds contempt. The unfortunate thing about being ahead of your time is that when people finally realize you were right, they'll simply say it was obvious to everyone all along. You have two choices in life. You can dissolve into the main stream, or you can choose to become an achiever and be distinct. To be distinct, you must be different. To be different, you must strive to be what no else but you can be. — Alan Ashley-Pitt

Oh! To live alone, always alone, in the midst of the crowd that surrounds me, without a word of love ever coming to gladden my soul, without a friendly hand reaching out to me! — Herculine Barbin

I am not sad, nor I am satisfied and made my peace with circumstances, never, I don't compromise.
The major challenge of walking alone without guidance you get late. You reach, because you didn't quit walking but when you reach there, you see a crowd whining at you. — Himmilicious

You don't need a team! Often, we do not do certain things because we feel that to take up something new, we need a team or at least one more person who thinks as we do. If you are smart enough you may not need any one else! — Abhishek Ratna

I thought I would stand myself a little dinner. I hadn't quite enough sense to know that what I really wanted was human companions. There aren't such things. Every man is eternally alone. But when you get mixed up with a fairly decent crowd, you forget that appalling fact for long enough to give your brain time to recover from the acute symptoms of its disease - that of thinking. — Aleister Crowley

I feel lonely, it never goes away;
the crowd makes me feel lonely — Anth

Aren't we all alone?" I asked with a rueful smile.
"Yes. I think in the end, we all are, no matter what the songs and happy stories say. I guess it's just a matter of who we choose to be alone with."
"That's why I come here, you know. To be alone with other people. There's isolation in a crowd. You're hidden. Safe. — Richelle Mead

Thomas A. Edison was once reluctantly persuaded by his wife to attend one of the big social functions of the season in New York. At last the inventor managed to escape the crowd of people vying for his attention, and sat alone unnoticed in a corner. Edison kept looking at his watch with a resigned expression on his face. A friend edged near to him unnoticed and heard the inventor mutter to himself with a sigh, "If there were only a dog here!" — Edmund Fuller

Get your product into users' hands as quickly as possible and incorporate the crowd's feedback to iterate. Your customers will provide the data you need to chart the best course for your company and bury any competitor that goes it alone. — Jay Samit

When you're surrounded by all these people, it can be lonelier than when you're by yourself. You can be in a huge crowd, but if you don't feel like you can trust anyone or talk to anybody, you feel like you're really alone. — Fiona Apple

You need courage to be creative. You need the courage to see things differently, courage to go against the crowd, courage to take a different approach, courage to stand alone, if you have to, courage to choose activity over inactivity. — Jim Rohn

You may live in a crowd but you meet God and face eternity alone — Rees Howells

The old man," I said at length, "is the type and the genius of deep crime. He refuses to be alone. He is the man of the crowd. It will be in vain to follow, for I shall learn no more of him, nor of his deeds. — Edgar Allan Poe

Loneliness is a state of feeling that can be changed.
People may still feel lonely even among the crowd. — Toba Beta

Proximity to the crowd, to the majority view, spells the death of creativity. For a soul can create only when alone, and some are chosen for the flowering that takes place in the dark avenues of night. — Abraham Joshua Heschel

Days pass when I forget the mystery. Problems insoluble and problems offering their own ignored solutions jostle for my attention, they crowd its antechamber along with a host of diversions, my courtiers, wearing their colored clothes; caps and bells. And then once more the quiet mystery is present to me, the throng's clamor recedes: the mystery that there is anything, anything at all, let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything, rather than void: and that, 0 Lord, Creator, Hallowed one, You still, hour by hour sustain it. — Denise Levertov

The soul that has been enriched by communion with God will not be dismayed by isolation but will welcome solitude. He will seek not the crowd but the closet, and emerging will never walk alone, for he has unseen companionship. — Frances J Roberts

It makes me feel shitty and alone. I don't want to be alone." He sagged. "But I think maybe I have to be. Even in a crowd of people, my heart will always ache." The statement resonated in the furthest hollows of Baz's soul. "Then we'll be lonely hearts together. — Heidi Cullinan

Nature is shy and noncommittal in a crowd. To learn her secrets, visit her alone or with a single friend, at most. Everything evades you, everything hides, even your thoughts escape you, when you walk in a crowd. — Edwin Way Teale

In a way, writing is an incredible act of individualism, producing your language, and yet to use it from the heart of a crowd as opposed to as an individual performance is a conflicting thing. I do stand alone, and yet it's not about being an individual or being ambitious. — Arundhati Roy

He knew well the singularly strange sensation of loving one's family to distraction, and yet not feeling quite able to share one's deepest and most intractable fears. It brought on an uncanny sense of isolation, of being remarkably alone in a loud and loving crowd.

-Anthony's thoughts — Julia Quinn

I like to be alone. Also, I drift, perhaps. When in a crowd, nothing seems to be worth while, and one is an ant in a hurrying mass. Alone, thoughts come with force. They strike one as bluntly as seen things impress themselves. — Charles J. Finger

Now it was just the two of us, Max and me. And about a thousand other people around us. — Kimberly Derting

Ellis and I had debated: Should we show the bad as well, or only the good? I said only the good. Why should Skylar's suffering linger on? Why not let her rest, celebrate her life? But Ellis said showing the suffering was important because somewhere in that crowd tonight, someone else suffered, too. Someone would see those photos of her pain and feel a resonance. The point of art, of any communion between human beings, wasn't to make people feel good - it was to make them feel less alone. — Leah Raeder

People bear loneliness every day. They think they won't be able to, that they won't survive, but somehow one second slips into another, becomes an hour, a day, a week, and they are still living. They are still alone, even in the middle of a crowd of people. Even with a partner, a child. — Laura Barnett

But sometimes, when she'd be all by herself, walking home late in the evening on a crowded street she'd be afraid of her own shadow following her ... — Sanhita Baruah

I had nothing to contribute. I played no part. I was on the edge.
Different.
Alone.
Everything around me, grey.
It was the same old feeling, back again.
I was in the middle of the group but I might as well have been a million miles away from these people. — Tim Relf

After days of feasting, fast.
After days of sleeping, stay awake one night.
After these times of bitter storytelling, joking,
and serious considerations, we should give ourselves
two days between layers of baklava in the quiet seclusion
where soul sweetens and thrives more than with language.

I hear nothing in my ear but your voice.
Heart has plundered mind of its eloquence.

Love writes a transparent calligraphy, so on
the empty page my soul can read and recollect.

Which is worth more, a crowd of thousands,
or your own genuine solitude?
Freedom, or power over an entire nation?

A little while alone in your room
will prove more valuable than anything else
that could ever be given you.

Rumi, Two days of silence — Jalaluddin Rumi

Even among familiar faces, people often feel invisible and desolate, like an island in cold waters or a shadow apart from the crowd. Be the reason another never feels alone. — Richelle E. Goodrich

And that knowledge, bred in the bone, is what lies behind mob rule. Because to step outside the group, let alone to stand against it, was for uncounted thousands of years death to the creature who dared it. To stand against a crowd would take something more than ordinary courage; something that went beyond human instinct. And I feared I did not have it, and fearing, was ashamed. It — Diana Gabaldon

There is a Day
There's always a day
when I can't believe what was there.
There's always that day
when I didn't understand how to bear.
There's never a day
where I stood in the crowd.
There's never that day
where I knew He was Proud.
There is a day
where I can be alone.
There is that day
where I shall make it known. — Isabel Aanya Leigh

There is no loneliness more lonely than to be alone in a crowd. No awkwardness more unsettling than the inside joke you do not comprehend. — Claire North

Standing alone scares alot of people it means they have to be themselves and more often than not they haven't the slightest clue who they've been all this time & that's why people stay the same because it's a frightening choice to step away from the crowd. — Nikki Rowe

You have more strength than anyone should. All those years that you were alone? That you isolated yourself? You didn't have friends, you didn't have anyone to be close with, to talk with, or ... or play with. You were alone. That must have been painful, and yet you rallied anyway and kept going. It takes strength to stay apart from the crowd. You are brave, Celeste. — Jessica Park

The crowd had stared at him and given up angrily, finding no satisfaction. He did not look crushed and he did not look defiant. He looked impersonal and calm. He was not like a public figure in a public place; he was like a man alone in his own room, listening to the radio. — Ayn Rand

In ancient times there was no public education, except that of the forum, the theater, and the street, and the general degree of illiteracy was very high ... the early men of science were left very much to themselves and such a phrase as "the scientific culture of Alexandria in the third century B.C." does not cover any reality. In a sense, this is still true today; the real pioneers are so far ahead of the crowd (even a very literate crowd) that they remain almost alone ... — George Sarton

I'm so fucking tired of being alone. I was scared that he'd tell me to fucking leave. Because that means going back to a life I can't see for myself anymore. — Krista Ritchie

The lonely people have taught me, that I am not alone. — Anthony Liccione

Very few people can write in a crowd. This is a very solitary occupation. I have known people more talented than me who never made it. And the primary reason was always that they couldn't stand to be alone for several hours a day. Any writer worth anything has mastered the art. The art of solitude. — Tom Robbins

Don't follow the crowd; you may be missing among them. Go solo. Sometimes, it is better to go alone. — Israelmore Ayivor

I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate. — Albert Camus

The trouble is not really in being alone, it's being lonely. One can be lonely in the midst of a crowd, don't you think? — Christine Feehan

And there's no way I'm leaving you alone with Prince Perfect."
"So you don't trust me to resist his charms?"
"I don't even trust myself. I've never seen anyone work a crowd the way he does. I'm pretty sure the rocks and trees are getting ready to swear fealty to him. — Leigh Bardugo

In contemporary society, advertising is everywhere. We cannot walk down the street, shop, watch television, go through our mail, log on to the Internet, read a newspaper or take a train without encountering it. Whether we are alone, with our friends or family, or in a crowd, advertising is always with us, if only on the label of something we are using. — Guy Cook

It's hard to feel alone when you're me, sometimes. Sometimes even the houses crowd me in. I can imagine the people in them, still sleeping, or making breakfast, or dressing for work. It's hard to feel alone when you're me, when you can imagine the throbbing of blood through each of them and you know the way each of them breaks, like dolls lined up on a shelf. — Katherine Ewell

Now everybody's got a crazy notion of their own. Some like to mix up with a crowd, some like to be alone. It's no one elses' business as far as I can see, but every time that I go out the people stare at me, with me little ukulele in me hand. — George Formby

To me spirituality needs an honest individuality. It does not allow any kind of dependence. It creates a freedom for itself, whatever the cost. It is never in the crowd but alone, because the crowd has never found any truth. The truth has been found only in people's aloneness. — Rajneesh

Got you. You're mine now. For the rest of the day, week, month, year, life. Have you guessed who I am? Sometimes I think you have. Sometimes when you're standing in a crowd I feel those sultry, dark eyes of yours stop on me. Are you too afraid to come up to me and let me know how you feel? I want to moan and writhe with you and I want to go up to you and kiss your mouth and pull you to me and say "I love you I love you I love you" while stripping. I want you so bad it stings. I want to kill the ugly girls that you're always with. Do you really like those boring, naive, coy, calculating girls or is it just for sex? The seeds of love have taken hold, and if we won't burn together, I'll burn alone. — Bret Easton Ellis

The group of people in front of her was jovial and paid her no attention. The group behind was much the same. She was alone without being alone. — Andre Alexis

Better, Cilla thought, to be alone on a quiet night than to be alone in a crowd. Much better. — Nora Roberts

We don't like murders here, said a man's voice, low and threatening, from the back of the crowd. Megan glanced at Cassie and her friends. They looked away, as if they didn't see what was happening.
Anger boiled in her chest. Why wouldn't they leave her alone? She hadn't killed anyone. She hadn't killed Harlen Trooper, all those years ago. She knew it and the judge knew it. She hadn't even been charged.
If I wanted to, I could have you all killed, she thought, and was stunned when the thought didn't scare her the way it should. She looked at their faces, stony and stubbled, shiny with alcoholic sweat. The power in her chest hadn't worked against Ktana Leyak, but it could against them, this miserable bunch of humans with their heavy boots and beer guts.
She pictured those guts exploding. She pictured the terror in their eyes when they realized they were messing with the wrong fucking demon, they were -
Demon? — Stacia Kane

People come and people go, moving fast and moving slow, I'm in a crowd and yet I'm all alone ... — Micky Dolenz

It's better to walk alone, than with a crowd going in the wrong direction. — Jennifer Grant

I had rather be a meteor, single, alone.'

Plus Paris itself was noisome. Even with its glittering bridges and orangeries, even if the birthplace of ballet.

'I had rather been a meteor, than a star in a crowd. — Danielle Dutton

Most of the world's great souls have been lonely. Loneliness seems to be one price the saint must pay for his saintliness ... Always remember: you cannot carry a cross in company. Though a man were surrounded by a vast crowd, his cross is his alone and his carrying of it marks him as a man apart. Society has turned against him; otherwise he would have no cross. No one is a friend to the man with a cross. — Aiden Wilson Tozer

Only two possible reactions to the mimetic contagion exist, and they make an enormous difference. Either we surrender and join the persecuting crowd, or we resist and stand alone. The first way is the unanimous self-deception we call mythology. — Rene Girard

Remember the dangers of the New Groupthink. If it's creativity you're after, ask your employees to solve problems alone before sharing their ideas. If you want the wisdom of the crowd, gather it electronically, or in writing, and make sure people can't see each other's ideas until everyone has had a chance to contribute. — Susan Cain

People are gregarious by necessity. Since the days of the first cave dwellers, humans
hairless, weak, and helpless save for cunning
have survived by joining together in groups; knowing, as so many other edible creatures have found, that there is protection in numbers. And that knowledge, bred in the bone, is what lies behind mob rule. Because to step outside the group, let alone to stand against it was for uncounted thousands of years death to the creature who dared it. To stand against a crowd would take something more than ordinary courage; something that went beyond human instinct. And I feared I did not have it, and fearing, was ashamed. — Diana Gabaldon

Even in a crowd, you are alone inside your own head — Anonymous

The fact that everyone is doing something does not mean that's the right things. — Israelmore Ayivor

It takes nothing to join the crowd. It takes everything to stand alone. — Hans Frodi Hansen

Born we are alone , we live in a crowd ----
But actually alone !!!!! — Ibrahim Masoodi

Thy soul shall find itself alone
'Mid dark thoughts of the gray tombstone
Not one, of all the crowd, to pry
Into thine hour of secrecy.
Be silent in that solitude,
Which is not loneliness - for then
The spirits of the dead who stood
In life before thee are again
In death around thee - and their will
Shall overshadow thee: be still. [ ... ] — Edgar Allan Poe

Sometimes it's better to go against the crowd and feel alone,
than to agree and have a false sense of belonging — Steven Aitchison

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

On the Sufi path, first you discover the art of being alone amid the crowd. Next you discover the crowd within your solitude - the voices inside you. — Elif Shafak

Of course my ex didn't walk me home. Instead I wandered, drunk, from Main Street down to the railroad tracks, lay down there and listened to the quiet world. Smoked a cigarette on my back, feeling a part of the ground, one of night's dark and lost creatures.
For as long as I can remember, this has been one of my favorite feelings. To be alone in public, wandering at night, or lying close to the earth, anonymous, invisible, floating. To be "a man of the crowd," or, conversely, alone with Nature or your God. To make your claim on public space even as you feel yourself disappearing into its largesse, into sublimity. To practice for death by feeling completely empty, but somehow still alive.
It's a sensation that people have tried, in various times and places, to keep women from feeling. — Maggie Nelson

A true leader must have enough backbone to stand alone, even when the crowd wants to take the easy road home. A true leader cannot be dependent on companionship for his or her security, but must learn to trust in God alone. Singleness can give us the kind of backbone - courage, confidence, and leadership skills that an effective Christian must learn. — Leslie Ludy

I can imagine myself in her place: trapped by a sordid past, terribly alone, defenseless before a crowd of jeering judges who hold my life in their hands. And then, when hope is lost, the one who truly has the right to condemn me looks at me. In his eyes I read something completely unexpected. Compassion. — Judah Smith

We are always alone. We are never alone. Even in the center of a crowd of friends , we cannot escape our apartness; even in the locked and darkened room, we cannot cut ourselves off from our sense of the life going on outside. — Lester M. Schulman

Suddenly he saw himself as others in the crowd must surely see him; a silent, solitary figure, standing apart from the rest. He looked out at the hoardes of singing, laughing people and felt more alone than he'd ever felt in his life. Was this how it was going to be then? Was this who he was? A man apart from his fellows, making the journey through life alone? — Mary Lawson

Those who are near me do not know that you are nearer to me than they are
Those who speak to me do not know that my heart is full with your unspoken words
Those who crowd in my path do not know that I am walking alone with you
Those who love me do not know that their love brings you to my heart — Rabindranath Tagore

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 would rather stand alone in the light of truth than in the crowd filled with error. — Adrian Rogers

The man who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the crowd. The man who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever been. — Alan Ashley-Pitt

The eye of God! Think of that. Everywhere, in every house, in every field, in every room, in every company, alone or in a crowd, the eye of God is always upon you. — J.C. Ryle