57 Loneliness Quotes To Reflect

Loneliness is a universal experience that touches everyone at some point in their lives. Whether it's the quiet moments of solitude or the pangs of isolation, the feeling can be both daunting and deeply reflective. In this collection, we've gathered 57 of the most poignant quotes about loneliness to offer solace and insight. These quotes, from thinkers, writers, and philosophers, invite you to explore the depths of solitude and find comfort in knowing that you are not alone in your feelings. Dive in and let these wise words provide companionship and understanding in times of loneliness.

1. “If you're lonely when you're alone, you're in bad company.” - Jean-Paul Sartre

2. “The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, peculiar to myself and to a few other solitary men, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence.” - Thomas Wolfe

3. “
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

4. “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

5. “There never can be a man so lost as one who is lost in the vast and intricate corridors of his own lonely mind, where none may reach and none may save.” - Isaac Asimov

6. “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

7. “Хүмүүс бий болсон үеэсээ эхлэн үүрд ганцаардан хоригдсон хоригдол болсон зүрх сэтгэл цохилон байдаг бүрхэвчийг нэвтлэн урахыг хий дэмий цөхрөлтгүй оролдон, гар хөл, уруул ам, харц, тачаадан дагжсан нүцгэн биеэрээ, янаглалд сульдсан хайр сэтгэлээрээ дараа нь бас л хаягдан ганцаардах өөр нэгэнд амьдралыг өгөх гэж хий дэмий хүч тавьдaг.” - Guy de Maupassant

8. “Even the company of the mad was better than the company of the dead.” - Stephen King

9. “Are you upset little friend? Have you been lying awake worrying? Well, don't worry...I'm here. The flood waters will recede, the famine will end, the sun will shine tomorrow, and I will always be here to take care of you.” - Charles M. Schulz

10. “در تنهايی بود كه پی برديمچقدر تنهاو بی‌كس و كاريمنه جگرگوشه‌اینه دوستینه همدمینه خويشاوندی كه كوتاه كندجمعه‌های طاقت فرسايمان را” - عباس صفاری

11. “Pale winter sun Is beatin' the ground Why'm I throwin' away The best thing that I've found My young heart's in tatters and I'm sureThat it will be a long time healing It's so hard to see what I'm doing this forWhen loneliness is all that I'm feeling” - David Gray

12. “Loneliness in a crowd of people was the worst kind of loneliness, but she couldn't help it.” - Lauren Kate

13. “What was wrong with me? I had a decent life. I was healthy. I wasn't starving or maimed by a land mine or orphaned. Yet somehow, it wasn't enough. I had a hole in me, and everything I took for granted slipped through it like sand.I felt like I had swallowed yeast, like whatever evil was festering inside me had doubled in size.” - Jodi Picoult

14. “Sometimes I get real lonely sleeping with you.” - Haruki Murakami

15. “. . . clumsiness is often mated with a love of solitude.” - Virginia Woolf

16. “She's never really wanted to be the only person, she's never been such a fan of being alone.” - Alison Pace

17. “I lay there with my mind running amuck, on the brink of madness. And somehow, gradually, early Sunday morning, I became calm. I can't think of any other word for it. I was thinking about the beach poem again, and I started to feel that I was being looked after, that everything was OK. It was strange: if there was ever a time in my life when I had the right to feel alone this was it. But I lost that sense of loneliness. I felt like there was a force in the room with me, not a person, but I had a sense that there was another world, another dimension, and it would be looking after me. It was like, "This isn't the only world, this is just one aspect of the whole thing, don't imagine this is all there is.” - John Marsden

18. “Are the dead as lonesome as the living?” - Truman Capote

19. “It was not right, thought Han Fei-tzu, for his wife to die before him: her ancestor-of-the-heart had outlived her husband. Besides, wives should live longer than husbands. Women were more complete inside themselves. They were also better at living in their children. They were never as solitary as a man alone.” - Orson Scott Card

20. “Now Doon seemed to care for his new friends more than he did for her. Every time she thought about him she felt a thud of pain, like a bruised place inside her.” - Jeanne DuPrau

21. “The worst thing about loneliness is that it brings one face to face with oneself.” - Mary Balogh

22. “Only on the Internet can a person be lonely and popular at the same time.” - Allison Burnett

23. “She had become accustomed to being lonely. She was used to walking alone and to being considered 'different.' She did not suffer too much.” - Betty Smith

24. “I'm the one who steps from the shadows, all trenchcoat and cigarette and arrogance, ready to deal with the madness. Oh, I've got it all sewn up. I can save you. If it takes the last drop of your blood, I'll drive your demons away. I'll kick them in the bollocks and spit on them when they're down and then I'll be gone back into darkness, leaving only a nod and a wink and a wisecrack. I walk my path alone... who would walk with me?” - Garth Ennis

25. “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

26. “She learned the intricacy of loneliness: the horror of color, the roar of soundlessness and the menace of familiar objects lying still.” - Toni Morrison

27. “Red's world, you see, is a closed circle. Not that it matters. I know that I'm a closed circle, too, and it's all I can do to find some starting point from myself, while at the same time trying to find my own terminus. There's no way I'm ever going to find my beginning or end in somebody else's circle. Two people together never add up to anything more than one person added to another. That we continue to add ourselves up in this way is the reason human beings will always be lonely.” - Xiaolu Guo

28. “On those nights, the words were for me alone. They came up unbidden from my heart. They spilled over my tongue and spilled out my mouth. And because of them, I, who was nothing and nobody, was a prince of Denmark, a maid of Verona, a queen of Egypt. I was a sour misanthrope, a beetling hypocrite, a conjurer's daughter, a mad and murderous king.” - Jennifer Donnelly

29. “I am lonely, sometimes, but I dare say it's good for me…” - Louisa May Alcott

30. “A poet should be so crafty with words that he is envied even for his pains.” - Criss Jami

31. “Man was born for society. However little He may be attached to the World, He never can wholly forget it, or bear to be wholly forgotten by it. Disgusted at the guilt or absurdity of Mankind, the Misanthrope flies from it: He resolves to become an Hermit, and buries himself in the Cavern of some gloomy Rock. While Hate inflames his bosom, possibly He may feel contented with his situation: But when his passions begin to cool; when Time has mellowed his sorrows, and healed those wounds which He bore with him to his solitude, think you that Content becomes his Companion? Ah! no, Rosario. No longer sustained by the violence of his passions, He feels all the monotony of his way of living, and his heart becomes the prey of Ennui and weariness. He looks round, and finds himself alone in the Universe: The love of society revives in his bosom, and He pants to return to that world which He has abandoned. Nature loses all her charms in his eyes: No one is near him to point out her beauties, or share in his admiration of her excellence and variety. Propped upon the fragment of some Rock, He gazes upon the tumbling waterfall with a vacant eye, He views without emotion the glory of the setting Sun. Slowly He returns to his Cell at Evening, for no one there is anxious for his arrival; He has no comfort in his solitary unsavoury meal: He throws himself upon his couch of Moss despondent and dissatisfied, and wakes only to pass a day as joyless, as monotonous as the former.” - Matthew Gregory Lewis

32. “He looked very old. He looked, James thought, getting his head now against the Lighthouse, now against the waste of waters running away into the open, like some old stone lying on the sand; he looked as if he had become physically what was always at the back of both of their minds—that loneliness which was for both of them the truth about things.” - Virginia Woolf

33. “And I knew in my bones that Emily Dickinson wouldn't have written even one poem if she'd had two howling babies, a husband bent on jamming another one into her, a house to run, a garden to tend, three cows to milk, twenty chickens to feed, and four hired hands to cook for. I knew then why they didn't marry. Emily and Jane and Louisa. I knew and it scared me. I also knew what being lonely was and I didn't want to be lonely my whole life. I didn't want to give up on my words. I didn't want to choose one over the other. Mark Twain didn't have to. Charles Dickens didn't.” - Jennifer Donnelly

34. “Twilight whippoorwill...Whistle on, sweet deepenerOf dark loneliness” - Basho

35. “Though I knew in my mind that others had felt such loss, this loss was mine, and I felt that no one would ever understand it, and to try to explain the lonliness and pain I felt would be futile.” - Linda Hawley

36. “It all comes down to this: when you recognise your loneliness in another person, when you see desperation so familiar to yours written across someone else, you can’t just let them leave.” - Chloe Rattray

37. “No I am not Prince Hamlet nor was meant to be Am an attendant lord one that will do To swell a progress start a scene or two Advise the prince no doubt an easy tool Deferential glad to be of use Politic cautious and meticulous Full of high sentence but a bit obtuse At times indeed almost ridiculous— Almost at times the Fool. I grow old … I grow old … I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. Shall I part my hair behind Do I dare to eat a peach I shall wear white flannel trousers and walk upon the beach. I have heard the mermaids singing each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me. I have seen them riding seaward on the waves Combing the white hair of the waves blown back When the wind blows the water white and black. We have lingered in the chambers of the sea By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown Till human voices wake us and we drown.” - T. S. Eliot

38. “In all our searching, the only thing we've found that makes the emptiness bearable is each other.” - Carl Sagan

39. “I was always holding onto people, and they were always leaving.” - Lili St. Crow

40. “Don't you understand? Listen carefully to what I'm saying. If you do, you'll get it. you can grasp this easily. In short...in short, I shut myself in because I'm lonely. Because I don't want to face any more loneliness, I shut myself away.” - Tatsuhiko Takimoto

41. “In the country, I stopped being a person who, in the words of Sylvia Boorstein, startles easily. I grew calmer, but beneath that calm was a deep well of loneliness I hadn't known was there. ... Anxiety was my fuel. When I stopped, it was all waiting for me: fear, anger, grief, despair, and that terrible, terrible loneliness. What was it about? I was hardly alone. I loved my husband and son. I had great friends, colleagues, students. In the quiet, in the extra hours, I was forced to ask the question, and to listen carefully to the answer: I was lonely for myself. [p. 123]” - Dani Shapiro

42. “The more books you read, the less topics you have in common with most of the people, that´s the price you pay for reading.” - Martina Tutková

43. “But if as you read this book you're saying to yourself: "I'd rather be miserably married than be alone." Well young lady, take out your clown shoes and buckle your seat belt - it's going to be a very bumpy one-woman circus.” - Osayi Osar-Emokpae

44. “Weight Watchers holds as a descriptive axiom the transparently true fact that for each of us the universe is deeply and sharply and completely divided into for example in my case, me, on one side, and everything else, on the other. This for each of us exhaustively defines the whole universe... And then they hold by a prescriptive axiom the undoubtedly equally true and inarguable fact that we each ought to desire our own universe to be as full as possible, that the Great Horror consists in an empty, rattling personal universe, one where one finds oneself with Self, on one hand, and vastly empty lonely spaces before Others begin to enter the picture at all, on the other. A non-full universe... The emptier one’s universe is, the worse it is... Weight Watchers perceives the problem as one involving the need to have as much Other around as possible, so that the relation is one of minimum Self to maximum Other... We each need a full universe. Weight Watchers and their allies would have us systematically decrease the Self-component of the universe, so that the great Other-set will be physically attracted to the now more physically attractive Self, and rush in to fill the void caused by that diminution of Self. Certainly not incorrect, but just as certainly only half of the range of valid solutions to the full-universe problem... Is my drift getting palpable? Just as in genetic engineering... There is always more than one solution... An autonomously full universe... Rather than diminishing Self to entice Other to fill our universe, we may also of course obviously choose to fill the universe with Self... Yes. I plan to grow to infinite size... There will of course eventually cease to be room for anyone else in the universe at all.” - David Foster Wallace

45. “If you like, you can all think of it as my gift to you. I never had much else to give. You can get on and play your own lives as you like, while I just keep moving. This story of it all can be another gift. I’ve made an arrangement with Adam. When I’ve finished, which is almost now, I’m going to put the bundle of papers in the garden of the Old Fort, before I move on. Adam’s going to get them and take them to his father. And if you read it and don’t believe it’s real, so much the better. It will make another safeguard against Them.But you wouldn’t believe how lonely you get.” - Diana Wynne Jones

46. “It was sadness, lostness, and the worst thing about it was the way it seemed like a default—like it was there all the time, and all her other expressions were just an array of masks she used to cover it up.” - Laini Taylor

47. “I now understood that real secrets were lonely. They planted themselves inside of you and expanded, until you felt like that was all you were-a lonely little secret, isolated in your experiences.” - Yvonne Woon

48. “I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all extraneous delights should be withheld, or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give.” - Charlotte Brontë

49. “Loneliness is a crowded room” - Bryan Ferry

50. “I know what it feels like, and it sucks, it really does, when you are up in the middle of the night thinking about the things that you've suddenly became aware of. The things you're missing out on right now, and all the people who are not close to you anymore, and all of the good times that will never happen again, and all the people who have meant the world to you who have forgotten about you forever, and you get this awful feeling that's kind of like a mix between loneliness and nostalgia.” - abraham m. alghanem

51. “I've never had any summer lovin'. And I've never had any school year lovin', either. I've never had a boyfriend. I've never hooked up with a guy. And this morning, on my Internet browser, an article popped up about women marrying themselves. Even my wireless connection knows I'm alone.” - Flynn Meaney

52. “It's not the job of this town to make me feel happy. It's not this town´s fault that I don't feel I fit in. It doesn't matter where you are in the world, because it's about where you are in your head. It's about the other world I inhabit. The world of dreams, hope, imagination, and memories. I'm happy up here, and because of that I'm happy up there too” - Cecelia Ahern

53. “Didn't people call New Year's the loneliest night on the calender? She took comfort in knowing somewhere on the planet, someone might be as miserable as she was.” - Mitch Albom

54. “Let this little book be thy friend, if, owing to fortune or through thine own fault, thou canst not find a dearer companion.” - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

55. “A radio was playing quietly. Nobody was listening. It was there to drown out the silence.” - Rachel Abbott

56. “I'm thinking that it will be autumn soon," she said, lifting her gaze to his. "Autumn is my absolute favorite season. Spring is overrated. It's soggy and the trees are still bare from winter. Winter drags on and on, and summer is nice, but it's all the same. Autumn is different. I mean, is there any perfume in the world that can compare with the smell of burning leaves?" she asked with an engaging smile. Matt thought she smelled a hell of a lot better than burning leaves, but he let her continue. "Autumn —is thexincgitsinagrechanging. It's like dusk." "Dusk?""Dusk is my favorite time of day, for the same reason. When I was young, I used to walk down our driveway at dusk in the summer and stand at the fence, watching all the cars going by with their headlights on. Everyone had a place to go, something to do. The night was just beginning ..." She trailed off in embarrassment. "That must sound incredibly silly.""It sounds incredibly lonely.” - Judith McNaught

57. “Sometimes the sound of silence is the most deafening sound of all.” - K.L. Toth