Lonely Old Man Quotes & Sayings

That night, she told me the old story again about the woman who had been left behind on a desert island by the man she loved. She waited for him to return for many years, surviving on seaweed and sand, until at last she grew so small she could fit herself inside a bottle and roll into the sea. Who found the bottle, I wondered, but my mother said no one knew what happened to it or where the woman had wanted to go. A fish could have swallowed the bottle, she said, or it could have been dashed against rocks. Other possibilities: sharks, mermaids, lonely sailors at sea. — Jenny Offill

I see a time when the farmer will not need to live in a lonely cabin on a lonely farm. I see the farmers coming together in groups. I see them with time to read, and time to visit with their fellows. I see them enjoying lectures in beautiful halls, erected in every village. I see them gather like the Saxons of old upon the green at evening to sing and dance. I see cities rising near them with schools, and churches, and concert halls, and theaters. I see a day when the farmer will no longer be a drudge and his wife a bond slave, but happy men and women who will go singing to their pleasant tasks upon their fruitful farms. When the boys and girls will not go west nor to the city; when life will be worth living. In that day the moon will be brighter and the stars more glad, and pleasure and poetry and love of life come back to the man who tills the soil. — Hamlin Garland

Life on the farm had fed his soul since he was a child. he was ever grateful to Gott for giving him a chance to work the land and live by the seasons. It was a good life...but a lonely one for a man his age, a man too old to be living with his family. — Rosalind Lauer

All of a sudden there's a song - there in your hotel room playing your guitar - and you write it, and two or three years later it will come true. It keeps you on your toes. — Townes Van Zandt

The difference with football is you're out on the pitch, you feel as though you can do something about it, or score a goal. But when that horse goes down to post as an owner you have no involvement whatsoever. It's a lonely old place in the stand. It's just down to man and beast. — Michael Owen

Not really. I'm tired and I'd like to go to bed."
"At last, we agree on something." He moved toward her.
"Oh, no, you don't. I'm saving myself for my future husband."
"Thank you."
"It won't be you," she told him doggedly. "I'm not crazy enough to think that. You aren't a marrying man, remember? You don't want commitment."
"I don't know what I want anymore," he muttered.
"Well, I do," she said. "I want to go home."
"To a lonely apartment in Chicago?"
"It won't be lonely long," she assured him. "I'm going to start my very own lonely hearts chapter."
"Over my dead body."
"Nobody would want to meet over your old dead body. — Diana Palmer

a lonely old man. — Debra Webb

I'm very happy and lonely single old man - and bitter. — Chris Kirkpatrick

A man is an island, but the water is deep
And the shore on the other side is ragged and steep
To look for perfection is a lonely old ride
It takes a whole lot of courage and a whole lot of pride
When you look for independence and you get what you want
How come you look back, thinking what have I done?
But time and again, it dawns on me
It's the price we pay for liberty
I should have know, we all need a place to call home — Joey Tempest

I wanted to make people think of a totally different way of living from that which we, educated people, live. I would absolutely not want anyone to find it beautiful or good without a thought. — Vincent Van Gogh

The music surged down the stairs like a flashing stream - it gathered in the corridor and burst like a waterfall through the wide entry doors. It splashed over a small, lonely figure crouching on the lowest step, dark and colorless like an un-moving lump of black, a little hillock with mad, unresting eyes. It was the old man who had freed himself with such difficulty from the unrelenting window. He crouched in the corner, lost and done for, with bowed shoulders and knees drawn high, as though he would never rise again - and over him, and away in gay and flashing cascades, the music splashed and danced, strong, pitiless, unceasing as life itself. — Erich Maria Remarque

I kept thinking of an old Robert Mitchum cowboy movie where he goes back to see the farmhouse where he was born and finds the house falling apart and an old man living in it by himself. "Lonely place," Robert Mitchum says. The old man says, "Nothing wrong with a lonely place as long as it's private. That's why I never married. Marriage is lonely, but it ain't private." That was always my most intense fear about getting married: When everything sucked and I was by myself, I thought, Well, at least I don't have another miserable person to worry about. I figured if you gave up your private place and it still turns out to be lonely, you're just screwed. — Rob Sheffield

Fashion is merely the lowest form of ideology. To wear or not to wear blue jeans, to holiday or not to holiday in a particular place can contribute to social acceptance or bring upon us the full opprobrium of the group. Then, a few months or years later, we look back and our obsession, our fears of ridicule, seem a bit silly. By then, we are undoubtedly caught up in new fashions.
(I - The Great Leap Backwards) — John Ralston Saul

PM Modi needs to do something about first cleaning this country of uncivilized, badly brought up kids with no regard, consideration or respect for others. — Nidhi Singh

Hitler may have lost the war on the battlefield, but he ended up winning something too," says Marek Halter, "because man in the twentieth century created the concentration camp and revived torture and taught his fellow men that it is possible to close their eyes to the misfortunes of others." Perhaps he is right: There are abandoned children, massacred civilians, innocent people imprisoned, lonely old people, drunks in the gutter, madmen in power. But perhaps he isn't right at all, for there are also Warriors of the Light. And Warriors of the Light never accept what is unacceptable. — Paulo Coelho

I was sitting in this small coffee shop a couple days ago and I saw this old man sitting at a table across from me. He looked so lonely, so sad. I was too, but it suddenly occurred to me that some people go through their whole lives never being loved or loving as deeply as I love you. There's always going to be the chance that I could lose you in this lifetime. There's nothing any of us can do about the possibility of loss. But in that moment, I decided that I was more interested in focusing on the great privilege I've been given in having you at all. Ch. 32 — Mia Sheridan

Mostly, I just think Mr. P is a lonely old man who used to be a lonely young man. And for some reason I don't understand, lonely white people love to hang around lonelier Indians. — Sherman Alexie

A thousand hills, but no birds in flight,
Ten thousand paths, with no person's tracks.
A lonely boat, a straw-hatted old man,
Fishing alone in the cold river snow. — Liu Zongyuan

The old outcast gape the darkness and said: "The lonely man is a fire without fireplace ... ". — Alexandar Tomov

Time is something that cannot be bought, it cannot be wagered with God, and it is not in endless supply. Time is simply how you live your life. — Craig Sager

Listen, I'll share some of the wisdom I learned over the years. When you near the end of your life ... when you're a lonely old man ... you start realizing what your accomplishments are really worth. The most brilliant clue I ever deciphered, the millions I earned
even the microwavable burrito itself
sometimes I think I'd be willing to trade all of it for a single hug of someone who truly loves me. — Margaret Peterson Haddix

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

You!' said the old man contemptuously. 'What do you know of the time when young men shut themselves up in those lonely rooms, and read and read, hour after hour, and night after night, till their reason wandered beneath their midnight studies; till their mental powers were exhausted; till morning's light brought no freshness or health to them; and they sank beneath the unnatural devotion of their youthful energies to their dry old books? — Charles Dickens

To picture Roosevelt as a man at this time in his life - he felt he was old. He was 53 years old, feeling lonely and irrelevant. And all of a sudden, he takes on this campaign, and it becomes a crusade for popular government. And he ultimately goes on fire in the campaign, but he discovers he's up against all the old machine tactics that he used to use himself, and he has to let the public get involved. And he energizes the public through the most extreme kind of rhetoric, which truly brings him into the streets and onto his side. — Geoffrey Cowan