108 Loneliness Quotes That’ll Help When You Feel Sad & Alone

Humans are social beings, but some circumstances and situations often make us feel lonely. It is important that, during those trying times, we don’t keep to ourselves and wallow in our misery. Many great writers, philosophers, and thinkers have felt that way and put down their feelings in ‘loneliness’ quotes. Reading these quotes will push you to reach out and get some help.

When we feel lonely, we tend to think that no one wants to be with us. We also push people away. But the truth is that you have your friends and family who are ready to support and help you. Reading these quotes will make you understand that just because you feel lonely doesn’t mean you are alone. There is always someone to help you, if only you can ask for it!

The UK government conducted a comprehensive survey which sampled 2,034 individuals to assess their quality of life. The findings revealed that 26% of adults reported experiencing feelings of loneliness often, always, or some of the time. Other than that, 6% reported frequent loneliness, while 20% acknowledged experiencing occasional loneliness.

108 Loneliness Quotes

1. “To be alone is to be different, to be different is to be alone.” – Suzanne Gordon
2. “Loneliness is and always has been the central and inevitable experience of every man.” – Thomas Wolfe
3. “Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light.”–Helen Keller
4. “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
5. “This world that I live in is empty and cold. The loneliness cuts me and tortures my soul.” –Waylon Jennings
6. “Remember: the time you feel lonely is the time you most need to be by yourself. Life’s cruelest irony.”–Douglas Coupland
7. “Until you get comfortable with being alone, you’ll never know if you’re choosing someone out of love or loneliness.”–Mandy Hale
8. “Life is full of misery loneliness and suffering – and it’s all over much too soon.”–Woody Allen
9. “The most terrible poverty is loneliness and the feeling of being unloved.”–Mother Theresa
10. “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

11. “Loneliness is my least favorite thing about life. The thing that I’m most worried about is just being alone without anybody to care for or someone who will care for me.”–Anne Hathaway
12. “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
13. “It’s weird to feel like you miss someone you’re not even sure you know.”–David Foster Wallace

Quick Tip

You can overcome loneliness by having small conversations with people you meet in daily life, like the cashier in your nearby store or neighbor. You can also take part in group activities to spend time at the library and make new friends.

14. “If a man cannot understand the beauty of life it is probably because life never understood the beauty in him.”–Criss Jami
15. “Some nights are made for torture or reflection or the savoring of loneliness.”–Poppy Z. Brite
16. “They flank me – depression on my left,loneliness on my right. They don’t need to show me their badges. I know these guys very well.”–Elizabeth Gilbert
17. “My loneliness was born when men praised my talkative faults and blamed my silent virtues.”–Kahlil Gibran
18. “What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?”–George Eliot
19. “Loneliness becomes an acid that eats away at you.”–Haruki Murakami
20. “Eternity is a long time to spend alone without others of your kind.”–Cassandra Clare
21. “Lonely was much better than alone.”–Toni Morrison
22. “If you are afraid of being lonely, don’t try to be right.”–Jules Renard

23. “Pray that your loneliness may spur you into finding something to live for great enough to die for.”–Dag Hammarskjold
24. “Loneliness is about the scariest thing out there.” –Joss Whedon
25. “A season of loneliness and isolation is when the caterpillar gets its wings. Remember that next time you feel alone.”–Mandy Hale

26. “People think being alone makes you lonely, but I don’t think that’s true. Being surrounded by the wrong people is the loneliest thing in the world.”–Kim Culbertson
27. “Sometimes you need to be alone. Not to be lonely, but to enjoy your free time being yourself.” – Anonymous
28. “I used to think the worst thing in life was to end up all alone. It’s not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people that make you feel all alone.” – Robin Williams
29. “Loneliness adds beauty to life. It puts a special burn on sunsets and makes night air smell better.” – Henry Rollins
30. “Sometimes you need to take a break from everyone and spend time alone to experience, appreciate, and love yourself.” – Robert Tew
31. “Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
32. “It is better to be lonely than allow people who are not going anywhere keep you from your destiny.” – Joel Osteen
33. “Loneliness is not lack of company, loneliness is lack of purpose.” – Guillermo Maldonado
34. “When we cannot bear to be alone, it means we do not properly value the only companion we will have from birth to death – ourselves.” – Eda J. LeShan
35. “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
36. “It takes a strong person to remain single in a world that is accustomed to settling with anything just to say they have something.” –Anonymous
37. “The best part about being alone is that you really don’t have to answer to anybody. You do what you want.”– Justin Timberlake
38. “Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.”– Maya Angelou
39. “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
40. “If you smile when you are alone then you really mean it.” –Andy Rooney
41. “I’m not much but I’m all I have.”– Philip K. Dick
42. “Find company within yourself and you’ll never spend a day alone. Find love within yourself and you’ll never have a lonely day.” –Connor Chalfant

43. “My inspirations are the woman, friendship, and loneliness.”–Enrique Iglesias
44. “The strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone.” –Henrik Ibsen
45. Lonely hours is the best time of life, because it’s the only time I share my deepest secrets with the most trusted person in the world, MYSELF.” – Anonymous
46. “If you go deeper and deeper into your own heart, you’ll be living in a world with less fear, isolation, and loneliness.” – Sharon Salzberg
47. “The only time we waste is the time we spend thinking we are alone.”– Mitch Albom
48. “Loneliness is proof that your innate search for connection is intact.” – Martha Beck
49. “In solitude the mind gains strength and learns to lean upon itself.” – Laurence Sterne
50. “Dreams have only one owner at a time. That’s why dreamers are lonely.” – Erma Bombeck
51. “The worst thing about loneliness is that it brings one face to face with oneself.” –Mary Balogh
52. “I’ve noticed that loneliness gets stronger when we try to face it down, but gets weaker when we simply ignore it.”– Paulo Coelho
53. “You do not have to be alone. The world never inflicts loneliness upon us. That is something we choose or reject by ourselves.”– Darren Shan
54. “Solitude is where one discovers one is not alone.”– Marty Rubin
55. “She understood how a world jammed with phones, email, and faxes could still leave you feeling utterly alone.”– Jodi Picoult
56. “You are never alone. You are eternally connected with everyone.” – Amit Ray
57. “A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy can live.”– Bertrand Russell
58. “We need quiet time to examine our lives openly and honestly – spending quiet time alone gives your mind an opportunity to renew itself and create order.”– Susan L. Taylor
59. “No one is ever alone and silence does not equate defeat.” – Joan Ambu
60. “Sometimes you need to sit lonely on the floor in a quiet room in order to hear your own voice and not let it drown in the noise of others.” – Charlotte Eriksson
61. “Make the time to be alone. Your best ideas live within solitude.” – Robin Sharma
62. “Sometimes it’s better to be alone no one can hurt you that way.” – Tinku Razoria

63. “Yes, there is joy fulfillment and companionship—but the loneliness of the soul in its appalling self-consciousness is horrible and overpowering.” –Sylvia Plath
64. “We are all so much together, but we are all dying of loneliness.” –Albert Schweitzer
65. “It’s far better to be unhappy alone than unhappy with someone—so far.”– Marilyn Monroe
66. “There is a certain strength in being alone.” – Heather Duffy Stone
67. “What a lovely surprise to finally discover how unlonely being alone can be.” –Ellen Burstyn
68. “Tore up my heart and shut it down. Nothing to do, nowhere to be. A simple little kind of free. Nothing to do, no one but me, and that’s all I need. I’m perfectly lonely.” – John Mayer
69. “Negative emotions like loneliness, envy, and guilt have an important role to play in a happy life; they’re big, flashing signs that something needs to change.” – Gretchen Rubin
70. “The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.” –Michel de Montaigne
71. “The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.” – Johann Wolfgange Von Goethe
72. “If one’s different, one’s bound to be lonely.”–Aldous Huxley
73. “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
74. “We’re all islands shouting lies to each other across seas of misunderstanding.”– Rudyard Kipling
75. “The real loneliness is living among all these kind people who only ask one to pretend!”– Edith Wharton
76. “Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is richness of self.”– May Sarton
77. “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
78. “Man’s loneliness is but his fear of life.” – Eugene O’Neill
79. “We are all born alone and die alone. The loneliness is definitely part of the journey of life.” – Jenova Chen
80. “We can all fight against loneliness by engaging in random acts of kindness.” – Gail Honeyman
81. “For fear you will be alone you do so many things that aren’t you at all.”– Richard Brautigan
82. “But I also think all of the great stories in literature deal with loneliness. Sometimes it’s by way of heartbreak, sometimes it’s by way of injustice, sometimes it’s by way of fate. There’s an infinite number of ways to examine it.” – Tom Hanks

83. “Being alone and actually sitting with our own thoughts can lead to such growth and realizations that are rare in our everyday busy lives.” – Kourtney Kardashian
84. “The loneliness you feel with another person, the wrong person, is the loneliest of all.”– Deb Caletti
85. “Because, once alone, it is impossible to believe that one could ever have been otherwise. Loneliness is an absolute discovery.”–Marilynne Robinson
86. “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
87. “Be a loner. That gives you time to wonder, to search for the truth. Have holy curiosity. Make your life worth living.” – Albert Einstein
88. “Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is the richness of self.”–Mary Sarton
89. “If you make friends with yourself you will never be alone.” – Maxwell Maltz
90. “Loneliness is the human condition. No one is ever going to fill that space. The best you can do is know yourself; know what you want.”–Janet Fitch
91. “Look at the sky. We are not alone. The whole universe is friendly to us and conspires only to give the best to those who dream and work.”– A. P. J. Abdul Kalam
92. “Life could be wonderful if people would leave you alone.”–Charlie Chaplin
93. “Nothing makes us so lonely as our secrets.”– Paul Tournier
94. “Forget sex or politics or religion, loneliness is the subject that clears out a room.”–Douglas Coupland
95. “If you are afraid of being lonely, don’t try to be right.”– Jules Renard
96. “I’ve sold my soul for freedom. It’s lonely but it’s sweet.”– Melissa Etheridge
97. “We think constant connection will make us feel less lonely. The opposite is true.”– Sherry Turkle
98. “You’ll always feel lonely if you always need validation. People don’t like to be around those kinds of people.”– Sherry Turkle
99. “A life without a lonely place, that is, without a quiet center, becomes destructive.”– Henri Nouwen
100. “It takes so much strength to say to your ego, ‘You know what? You’re going to keep me lonely, so I have to ignore you.”– George Michael
101. “There’s no such thing as a crowded battlefield. Battlefields are lonely places.”–Alfred M. Gray
102. “If I want to believe that life is lonely and that nobody loves me, then that is what I will find in my world.”– Louise L. Hay
103. “The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It’s the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared.”–Lois Lowry

We are always greatly influenced by movies and TV shows. We try to relate our situation with the movie characters. Scroll down for quotes from movies and TV shows that imbibe solitude and the depth of human emotions.

Loneliness Quotes From Movies And Television

104. “If you are alone that is the quietest most personal hell. And that is hardest to escape.” – The Falcon and the Winter Soldier
105. “No one ever feels alone in a bookshop.” – The Bookshop
106. “Though we may not be alone in the universe, in our own separate ways, on this planet we are all alone.” – The X Files
107. “In the beginning everyone is there, but then they forget.” – Grey’s Anatomy
108. “The strongest person is the person who isn’t scared to be alone.” – The Queen’s Gambit

A blogger, Nina, reflects on her experience of loneliness during her time in Thanh Hoa, Vietnam in a blog. She describes how, despite being surrounded by people, she felt a deep sense of loneliness that stemmed not from a lack of company but from a lack of profound connections and communication. She mentions, “But then I also discovered the significant difference between solitude and loneliness (i).”

Trivia

Over 33% of people worldwide combat loneliness, with Brazil having the highest percentage. 50% of the people in Brazil have been lonely at some point in life, followed by Turkey, India, and Saudi Arabia (1).

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Ronald HoangRelationship & Family Counselor

 

Ronald Hoang is a clinical counselor/psychotherapist based in Sydney, Australia, with close to a decade of experience. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in psychology from Macquarie University and a postgraduate degree in counseling from the Australian College of Applied Professions. He has received training in Emotionally Focused Therapy, Post-Milan Systemic Family Therapy, Gottman Method, Play Therapy Dimensions, and Child...read full bio

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