Being Alone quotes
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Loneliness is the ultimate poverty.
-- Abigail Van Buren -
There is none more lonely than the man who loves only himself.
-- Abraham ibn Ezra -
Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books that were written because authors couldn't find anyone to talk to.
-- Alain de Botton -
The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.
-- Albert Einstein -
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Feeling and longing are the motive forces behind all human endeavor and human creations.
-- Albert Einstein -
The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.
-- Aldous Huxley -
When everyone leaves you it's loneliness you feel, when you leave everyone else it's solitude.
-- Alfred Polgar -
Any decent society must generate a feeling of community. Community offsets loneliness. It gives people a vitally necessary sense of belonging. Yet today the institutions on which community depends are crumbling in all the techno-societies. The result is a spreading plague of loneliness.
-- Alvin Toffler -
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Solitude is such a potential thing. We hear voices in solitude, we never hear in the hurry and turmoil of life; we receive counsels and comforts, we get under no other condition...
-- Amelia Barr -
The secret to overcoming a feeling of loneliness is not going outside to meet people. That will only keep you from being alone. The secret is going inside yourself, to realize your true kinship with God and with all the human beings that he created.
-- Amy Grant -
How wrong it is for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to create it herself.
-- Anais Nin -
Loners, if you catch them, are well worth the trouble. Not dulled by excess human contact, nor blasé or focused on your crotch while jabbering about themselves, loners are curious, vigilant, full of surprises. They do not cling. Separate wherever they go, awake or asleep, they shimmer with the iridescence of hidden things seldom seen.
-- Anneli Rufus -
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A man can be himself only so long as he is alone; and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.
-- Arthur Schopenhauer -
I don't want to be alone, I want to be left alone.
-- Audrey Hepburn -
Women need real moments of solitude and self reflection to balance out how much of ourselves we give away.
-- Barbara De Angelis -
Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer.
-- Barbara Kingsolver -
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I realized... that the artist is always alone. Early in life I had thought I needed other people to confirm or approve what I was doing...
-- Beverly Pepper -
All of our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling.
-- Blaise Pascal -
It would do the world good if every man would compel himself occasionally to be absolutely alone. Most of the world s progress has come out of such loneliness.
-- Bruce Barton -
My life is spent in perpetual alternation between two rhythms, the rhythm of attracting people for fear I may be lonely and the rhythm of trying to get rid of them because I know that I am bored.
-- C. E. M. Joad -
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Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.
-- Carl Jung -
Solitude is for me a fount of healing which makes my life worth living.
-- Carl Jung -
A man is born alone and dies alone; and he experiences the good and bad consequences of his karma alone; and he goes alone to hell or the Supreme abode.
-- Chanakya -
Separate we come, and separate we go, And this be it known, is all that we know.
-- Conrad Aiken -
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What makes loneliness an anguish is not that I have no one to share my burden, but this: I have only my own burden to bear.
-- Dag Hammarskjold -
Friendship needs no words - it is solitude delivered from the anguish of loneliness.
-- Dag Hammarskjold -
Spend some time alone every day.
-- Dalai Lama -
you'll never be lonely if you learn to be friend your self
-- David Archuleta -
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We're all lonely for something we don't know we're lonely for. How else to explain the curious feeling that goes around feeling like missing somebody we've never even met?
-- David Foster Wallace -
The loneliness you feel with another person, the wrong person, is the loneliest of all.
-- Deb Caletti -
If love is universal, no one can be left out.
-- Deepak Chopra -
I don't like to be labeled as lonely just because I am alone.
-- Delta Burke -
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I really enjoy being single again. I spent a lot of time in a relationship and the nearer we came to the end, the more difficult it got. You don't see things clearly as long as you're still involved.
-- Dido Armstrong -
When the sparrow sings its final refrain, the hush is felt nowhere more deeply than in the heart of man.
-- Don Williams -
We have all known the long loneliness, and we have found that the answer is community.
-- Dorothy Day -
Art starts alone - and convinces society later.
-- Douglas Davis -
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All alone! Whether you like it or not, alone is something you'll be quite a lot!
-- Dr. Seuss -
I was never less alone than when by myself.
-- Edward Gibbon -
It is never good dwelling on good-byes ... it is not the being together that it prolongs, it is the parting.
-- Elizabeth Bibesco -
Laugh, and the world laughs with you: Weep, and you weep alone. For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth, But has trouble enough of its own...
-- Ella Wheeler Wilcox -
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What a lovely surprise to finally discover how unlonely being alone can be.
-- Ellen Burstyn -
When you close your doors, and make darkness within, remember never to say that you are alone, for you are not alone; nay, God is within, and your genius is within. And what need have they of light to see what you are doing?
-- Epictetus -
I love being single. I can come and go as I please and stay out as late as I want to.
-- Eric Dickerson -
There is no loneliness greater than the loneliness of a failure. The failure is a stranger in his own house.
-- Eric Hoffer -
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Because she favours solitude and indwelling, an artist can live a significantly more claustrophobic life that she had ever intended.
-- Eric Maisel -
The things one experiences alone with oneself are very much stronger and purer.
-- Eugene Delacroix -
Lord, grant that I might not so much seek to be loved as to love.
-- Francis of Assisi -
Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself.
-- Franz Kafka -
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When they are alone they want to be with others, and when they are with others they want to be alone. After all, human beings are like that.
-- Gertrude Stein -
I know that I have lived because I have felt, and, feeling giving me the knowledge of my existence.
-- Giacomo Casanova -
We need time to dream, time to remember, and time to reach the infinite. Time to be.
-- Gladys Taber -
Friends share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand.
-- Henri Nouwen -
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I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at least - and it is commonly more than that - sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly engagements.
-- Henry David Thoreau -
When friendship disappears then there is a space left open to that awful loneliness of the outside world which is like the cold space between the planets. It is an air in which men perish utterly.
-- Hilaire Belloc -
Solitude is fine, but you need someone to tell you that solitude is fine.
-- Honore de Balzac -
Yoga is a way to freedom. By its constant practice, we can free ourselves from fear, anguish and loneliness.
-- Indra Devi -
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No man should go through life without once experiencing healthy, even bored solitude in the wilderness, finding himself depending solely on himself and thereby learning his true and hidden strength
-- Jack Kerouac -
Being an actor is the loneliest thing in the world. You are all alone with your concentration and imagination, and that's all you have.
-- James Dean -
Now I'm feeling how I should. Never knew single could feel this good.
-- Jason Derulo -
I like being alone and I think this movie, as much as it is an investigation of connection and people bonding, I also think it's just as much about loneliness.
-- Jason Schwartzman -
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All of our unhappiness comes from our inability to be alone.
-- Jean de la Bruyere -
To be adult is to be alone.
-- Jean Rostand -
If you are lonely when you're alone, you are in bad company.
-- Jean-Paul Sartre -
Isolation is aloneness that feels forced upon you, like a punishment. Solitude is aloneness you choose and embrace. I think great things can come out of solitude, out of going to a place where all is quiet except the beating of your heart.
-- Jeanne Marie Laskas -
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All we ask is to be let alone.
-- Jefferson Davis -
On their best days, writers all over the world are winning Pulitzers, all alone in their studios, with no one watching.
-- Jeffrey Eugenides -
Gatherings and, simultaneously, loneliness are the conditions of a writer's life.
-- Jerzy Kosinski -
Writing is a solitary occupation. Family, friends, and society are the natural enemies of the writer. He must be alone, uninterrupted, and slightly savage if he is to sustain and complete an undertaking.
-- Jessamyn West -
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There's nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment, perpetually wearing their "discomfort" like a favorite shirt.
-- Jhonen Vasquez -
I remember my grandfather telling me how each of us must live with a full measure of loneliness that is inescapable, and we must not destroy ourselves with our passion to escape the aloneness.
-- Jim Harrison -
One can be instructed in society, one is inspired only in solitude.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe -
A lonely man is a lonesome thing, a stone, a bone, a stick, a receptacle for Gilbey's gin, a stooped figure sitting at the edge of a hotel bed, heaving copious sighs like the autumn wind.
-- John Cheever -
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To be creative you must create a space for yourself where you can be undisturbed... separate from everyday concerns.
-- John Cleese -
Breaking with old friends is one of the most painful of the changes in all that piling up of a multitude of small distasteful changes that constitutes growing older.
-- John Dos Passos -
All great and precious things are lonely.
-- John Steinbeck -
Loneliness is about the scariest thing out there.
-- Joss Whedon -
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If I am a legend, then why am I so lonely?
-- Judy Garland -
Too many women throw themselves into romance because they're afraid of being single, then start making compromises and losing their identity. I won't do that.
-- Julie Delpy -
Solitude is the soul's holiday, an opportunity to stop doing for others and to surprise and delight ourselves instead.
-- Katrina Kenison -
Solitude is a condition of peace that stands in direct opposition to loneliness. Loneliness is like sitting in an empty room and being aware of the space around you. It is a condition of separateness. Solitude is becoming one with the space around you. It is a condition of union. loneliness is small, solitude is large. loneliness closes in around you; solitude expands toward the infinite. loneliness has its roots in words, in an internal conversation that nodbody answers; solitude has it's roots in the great silence of eternity.
-- Kent Nerburn -
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Love that does not renew itself every day becomes a habit and in turn a slavery.
-- Khalil Gibran -
What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.
-- Kurt Vonnegut -
I had become, with the approach of night, once more aware of loneliness and time - those two companions without whom no journey can yield us anything.
-- Lawrence Durrell -
If you are alone you belong entirely to yourself. If you are accompanied by even one companion you belong only half to yourself or even less in proportion to the thoughtlessness of his conduct and if you have more than one companion you will fall more deeply into the same plight.
-- Leonardo da Vinci -
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Lonely people, in talking to each other can make each other lonelier.
-- Lillian Hellman -
Remember we're all in this alone.
-- Lily Tomlin -
Hollywood is loneliness beside the swimming pool.
-- Liv Ullmann -
A woman who is willing to be herself and pursue her own potential runs not so much the risk of loneliness, as the challenge of exposure to more interesting men - and people in general.
-- Lorraine Hansberry -
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Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul.
-- Marcus Aurelius -
People drain me, even the closest of friends, and I find loneliness to be the best state in the union to live in.
-- Margaret Cho -
It is only alone, truly alone that one bursts apart, springs forth.
-- Maria Isabel Barreno -
It's better to be unhappy alone than unhappy with someone - so far.
-- Marilyn Monroe -
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A career is born in public - talent in privacy.
-- Marilyn Monroe -
The worst loneliness is not to be comfortable with yourself.
-- Mark Twain -
Be good and you will be lonely.
-- Mark Twain -
Loneliness is proof that your innate search for connection is intact.
-- Martha Beck -
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The great omission in American life is solitude; not loneliness, for this is an alienation that thrives most in the midst of crowds, but that zone of time and space, free from the outside pressures, which is the incubator of the spirit.
-- Marya Mannes -
Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is the richness of self.
-- May Sarton -
Alone, all alone Nobody, but nobody Can make it out here alone.
-- Maya Angelou -
The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.
-- Michel de Montaigne -
