“DestinySomewhere there waiteth in this world of oursFor one lone soul another lonely soulEach choosing each through all the weary hoursAnd meeting strangely at one sudden goalThe blend they, like green leaves with golden flowersInto one beautiful and perfect whole;And life’s long night is ended, and the wayLies open onward to eternal day”

“And thus ever by day and night, under the sun and under the stars, climbing the dusty hills and toiling along the weary plains, journeying by land and journeying by sea, coming and going so strangely, to meet and to act and react on one another, move all we restless travellers through the pilgrimage of life.”

“Human beings, in point of fact, are lonely by nature, and one should feel sorry for them and love them and mourn with them. It is certain that people would understand one another better and love one another more if they would admit to one another how lonely they were, how sad they were in their tormented, anxious longings and feeble hopes.”

“Stories set in the Culture in which Things Went Wrong tended to start with humans losing or forgetting or deliberately leaving behind their terminal. It was a conventional opening, the equivalent of straying off the path in the wild woods in one age, or a car breaking down at night on a lonely road in another.”

“Suddenly I realize that everyone in the whole world is, at the end of a day, staring at a dusky horizon, owner of a day that no one else will ever know.”

“Art thou lonely, O my brother?Share thy little with another!Stretch a hand to one unfriended,And the loneliness is ended.”