This is a collection of my favorite loneliness quotes. I hope you find solace and comfort in them as much as I do.
Feeling lonely can often be one of the most nagging and empty feelings I’ve ever experienced in my life. Back when I was not equipped with the knowledge I have today, I would find myself drifting away from a lot of people despite not wanting too.
Loneliness is obviously isolating, but it can often have an effect on a person’s confidence, mental wellness, and overall quality of life. With that being said, despite you feeling lonely, you’re not alone in that feeling.
At some point or another, we’ve all been there and know exactly how you’re feeling. Check out this article on how to be single and happy.
There is hope at the end of the tunnel.
For now, though, here’s a list of 50 loneliness quotes that will resonate with your soul.
Loneliness Quotes
1. “Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.” ― Arthur C. Clarke
2. “Remember: the time you feel lonely is the time you most need to be by yourself. Life’s cruelest irony.” ― Douglas Coupland
3. “Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.” ― Maya Angelou
4. “If you’re lonely when you’re alone, you’re in bad company.” ― Jean-Paul Sartre
5. “All great and precious things are lonely.” ― John Steinbeck
6. “When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies but the pack survives.” ― George R.R. Martin
7. v“I realize, for the first time, how very lonely I’ve been in the arena. How comforting the presence of another human being can be.” ― Suzanne Collins
8. “The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved.” ― Mother Teresa
9. “Why do people have to be this lonely? What’s the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?” ― Haruki Murakami
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10. “The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.” ― F. Scott Fitzgerald
11. “I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom.” ― Edgar Allan Poe
12. “being alone never felt right. sometimes it felt good, but it never felt right.” ― Charles Bukowski
13. “If one’s different, one’s bound to be lonely.” ― Aldous Huxley
14. “The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It’s the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared.” ― Lois Lowry
15. “I’ve never been lonely. I’ve been in a room — I’ve felt suicidal. I’ve been depressed. I’ve felt awful — awful beyond all — but I never felt that one other person could enter that room and cure what was bothering me…or that any number of people could enter that room. In other words, loneliness is something I’ve never been bothered with because I’ve always had this terrible itch for solitude. It’s being at a party, or at a stadium full of people cheering for something, that I might feel loneliness. I’ll quote Ibsen, “The strongest men are the most alone.” I’ve never thought, “Well, some beautiful blonde will come in here and give me a fuck-job, rub my balls, and I’ll feel good.” No, that won’t help. You know the typical crowd, “Wow, it’s Friday night, what are you going to do? Just sit there?” Well, yeah. Because there’s nothing out there. It’s stupidity. Stupid people mingling with stupid people. Let them stupidify themselves. I’ve never been bothered with the need to rush out into the night. I hid in bars, because I didn’t want to hide in factories. That’s all. Sorry for all the millions, but I’ve never been lonely. I like myself. I’m the best form of entertainment I have. Let’s drink more wine!” ― Charles Bukowski
16. “But even so, every now and then I would feel a violent stab of loneliness. The very water I drink, the very air I breathe, would feel like long, sharp needles. The pages of a book in my hands would take on the threatening metallic gleam of razor blades. I could hear the roots of loneliness creeping through me when the world was hushed at four o’clock in the morning.” ― Haruki Murakami
17. “It’s weird to feel like you miss someone you’re not even sure you know.” ― David Foster Wallace
18. “How we need another soul to cling to.” ― Sylvia Plath
19. “When I get lonely these days, I think: So BE lonely, Liz. Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience. But never again use another person’s body or emotions as a scratching post for your own unfulfilled yearnings.” ― Elizabeth Gilbert
20. “Let me tell you this: if you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it’s not because they enjoy solitude. It’s because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them.” ― Jodi Picoult
21. “sex is the consolation you have when you can’t have love” ― Gabriel García Márquez
22. “there is a loneliness in this world so great that you can see it in the slow movement of the hands of a clock” ― Charles Bukowski
23. “I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone.” ― Rainer Maria Rilke
24. “A great fire burns within me, but no one stops to warm themselves at it, and passers-by only see a wisp of smoke” ― Vincent Van Gogh
25. “God, 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 Plath
26. “We live as we dream–alone….” ― Joseph Conrad
27. “It would be too easy to say that I feel invisible. Instead, I feel painfully visible, and entirely ignored.” ― David Levithan
28. “I don’t know what’s worse: to not know what you are and be happy, or to become what you’ve always wanted to be, and feel alone.” ― Daniel Keyes
29. “I’m here. I love you. I don’t care if you need to stay up crying all night long, I will stay with you. If you need the medication again, go ahead and take it—I will love you through that, as well. If you don’t need the medication, I will love you, too. There’s nothing you can ever do to lose my love. I will protect you until you die, and after your death I will still protect you. I am stronger than Depression and I am braver than Loneliness and nothing will ever exhaust me.” ― Elizabeth Gilbert
30. “When you have nobody you can make a cup of tea for, when nobody needs you, that’s when I think life is over.” ― Audrey Hepburn
31. “The trouble is not that I am single and likely to stay single, but that I am lonely and likely to stay lonely.” ― Charlotte Brontë
32. “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.” ― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
33. “I’ll never forget how the depression and loneliness felt good and bad at the same time. Still does.” ― Henry Rollins
34. Separation Your absence has gone through me Like thread through a needle. Everything I do is stitched with its color.” ― W.S. Merwin
35. “Nobody likes being alone that much. I don’t go out of my way to make friends, that’s all. It just leads to disappointment. ” ― Haruki Murakami
36. “I 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 unselfish… 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 Beauvoir
37. “Some people are just not meant to be in this world. It’s just too much for them.” ― Phoebe Stone
38. “I’m lonely. And I’m lonely in some horribly deep way and for a flash of an instant, I can see just how lonely, and how deep this feeling runs. And it scares the shit out of me to be this lonely because it seems catastrophic.” ― Augusten Burroughs
39. “Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.” ― Edna St. Vincent Millay
40. “All I ever wanted was to reach out and touch another human being not just with my hands but with my heart.” ― Tahereh Mafi
41. “Maybe ever’body in the whole damn world is scared of each other.” ― John Steinbeck
42. “Sometimes I feel so- I don’t know – lonely. The kind of helpless feeling when everything you’re used to has been ripped away. Like there’s no more gravity, and I’m left to drift in outer space with no idea where I’m going’ Like a little lost Sputnik?’ I guess so.” ― Haruki Murakami
43. “The only time we waste is the time we spend thinking we are alone.” ― Mitch Albom
44. “We must become so alone, so utterly alone, that we withdraw into our innermost self. It is a way of bitter suffering. But then our solitude is overcome, we are no longer alone, for we find that our innermost self is the spirit, that it is God, the indivisible. And suddenly we find ourselves in the midst of the world, yet undisturbed by its multiplicity, for our innermost soul we know ourselves to be one with all being.” ― Hermann Hesse
45. “I feel too much. That’s what’s going on.’ ‘Do you think one can feel too much? Or just feel in the wrong ways?’ ‘My insides don’t match up with my outsides.’ ‘Do anyone’s insides and outsides match up?’ ‘I don’t know. I’m only me.’ ‘Maybe that’s what a person’s personality is: the difference between the inside and outside.’ ‘But it’s worse for me.’ ‘I wonder if everyone thinks it’s worse for him.’ ‘Probably. But it really is worse for me.” ― Jonathan Safran Foer
46. “I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others–young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life.” ― F. Scott Fitzgerald
47. “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
48. “Solitude is fine but you need someone to tell that solitude is fine.” ― Honoré de Balzac
49. “They cannot scare me with their empty spaces Between stars—on stars where no human race is. I have it in me so much nearer home To scare myself with my own desert places.” ― Robert Frost
50. “Loneliness is the human condition. Cultivate it. The way it tunnels into you allows your soul room to grow. Never expect to outgrow loneliness. Never hope to find people who will understand you, someone to fill that space. An intelligent, sensitive person is the exception, the very great exception. If you expect to find people who will understand you, you will grow murderous with disappointment. The best you’ll ever do is to understand yourself, know what it is that you want, and not let the cattle stand in your way.” ― Janet Fitch