Loneliness Quotes - Page 19

• Sometimes I dread loneliness more than bores. Other times, the reverse.

  Mason Cooley

  Boredom, Sometimes, Dread

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• Loneliness is more likely to lead to fussy housekeeping than to grand views of the Universe.

  Mason Cooley

  Views, Housekeeping, Fussy

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• Curiosity makes loneliness.

  Mason Cooley

  Curiosity

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• Lonely people console themselves with self-absorption or curiosity.

  Mason Cooley

  Lonely, Self, People

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• The impulse to perfection cannot exist where the definition of perfection is the arbitrary decision of authority. That which is born in loneliness and from the heart cannot be defended against the judgment of a committee of sycophants. The volatile essences which make literature cannot survive the clichés of a long series of story conferences.

  Raymond Chandler

  Heart, Essence, Perfection

  Raymond Chandler, Dorothy Gardiner, Kathrine Sorley Walker (1977). “Raymond Chandler Speaking”, p.120, Univ of California Press

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• Fitzgerald describes the social disillusionments and ballroom romanticism of the young people of the upper classes and the loneliness of Gatsby, who gives large parties and has an extensive social life; yet he is lonely, and his guests scarcely know him.... Hemingway's characters live in a tourist world, and one of their major problems is that of consuming time itself. It is interesting to observe that his works are written from the stand point of the spectator. His characters are usually people who are looking--looking at bullfights, scenery, and at one another across cafe tables.

  James T. Farrell

  Lonely, Party, Character

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• Tragedy is always a mistake; and the loneliness of the deepest thinker, the widest lover, ceases to be pathetic to us so soon as the sun is high enough above the mountains.

  Margaret Fuller

  Mistake, Mountain, Tragedy

  Margaret Fuller, Arthur Buckminster Fuller (1874). “Memoirs, [ed.] by R.W. Emerson, W.H. Channing, and J.F. Clarke”, p.173

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• Until the day when, your endurance gone, in this world for you without arms, you catch up in yours the first mangy cur you meet, carry it for the time needed for it to love it and you it, then throw it away.

  Samuel Beckett

  Love, Despair, Endurance

  Samuel Beckett (2009). “Three Novels: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable”, p.8, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• Abode where lost bodies roam each searching for its lost one.

  Samuel Beckett

  Lost Ones, Body, Isolation

  Samuel Beckett (1995). “The Complete Short Prose, 1929-1989”, p.202, Grove Press

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• I think it must be lonely to be God.
  Nobody loves a master. No.

  Gwendolyn Brooks

  God, Lonely, Thinking

  Gwendolyn Brooks (2005). “The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks”, p.30, Library of America

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• Goodbye,
  you who are, for me, the postmarks again
  of shattered towns--Xenia, Burnt Cabins,
  Hornell--
  their loneliness
  given away in poems, only their solitude kept.

  Galway Kinnell

  Goodbye, War, Poetry

  Galway Kinnell, “The Correspondence School Instructor Says Goodbye To His Poetry Students”

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• The abhorrence of loneliness is as natural as wanting to live at all.

  Beryl Markham

  Natural, Deck Of Cards, Abhorrence

  Beryl Markham (1994). “The Illustrated West with the Night”, Stewart, Tabori, & Chang

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• It is hard going to the door
  cut so small in the wall where
  the vision which echoes loneliness
  brings a scent of wild flowers in the wood.

  Robert Creeley

  Wall, Flower, Cutting

  Robert Creeley (1982). “The Collected Poems of Robert Creeley, 1945-1975”, p.199, Univ of California Press

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• Plato calls complacency the companion of loneliness.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Plato, Complacency, Companion

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• Those whom the gods chose as their property must not consort with mortals.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Excellence, Property, Mortals

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• Remember that although the distinction can be difficult to draw, loneliness and solitude are different.

  Gretchen Rubin

  Solitude, Different, Remember

  "Balanced Life — 6 Tips for Battling Loneliness" by Gretchen Rubin, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 18, 2011.

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• Shall I let in the stranger,
  Shall I welcome the sailor,
  Or stay till the day I die?
  Hands of the stranger and holds of the ships,
  Hold you poison or grapes?

  Dylan Thomas

  Hands, Ships, Sailor

  Dylan Thomas (2010). “The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas: The Original Edition”, p.61, New Directions Publishing

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• Saturday night is the loneliest night in the week.

  Sammy Cahn

  Night, Week, Saturday

  Sammy Cahn (2002). “Sammy Cahn's Rhyming Dictionary”, p.39, Hal Leonard Corporation

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• I felt more than ever the necessity of my mission. But I went home out of spirits, I hardly know why. I must work by myself all life long.

  Elizabeth Blackwell

  Home, Long, Physicians

  Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell (2016). “Pioneer Work in Opening the Medical Profession to Women: Autobiographical Sketches”, p.61, Library of Alexandria

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• The poem is lonely. It is lonely and en route. Its author stays with it. Does this very fact not place the poem already here, at its inception, in the encounter, in the mystery of encounter?

  Paul Celan

  Lonely, Poetry, Doe

  Paul Celan (2005). “Paul Celan: Selections”, p.164, Univ of California Press

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• The twentieth-century artist who uses symbols is alienated because the system of symbols is a private one. After you have dealt with the symbols you are still private, you are still lonely, because you are not sure anyone will understand it except yourself. The ransom of privacy is that you are alone.

  Louise Bourgeois

  Lonely, Artist, Symbolism

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• The economic dependence of woman and her apparently indestructible illusion that marriage will release her from loneliness and work and worry are potent factors in immunizing her from common sense in dealing with men at work.

  Mary Barnett Gilson

  Marriage, Work, Men

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• Terrified of being alone, yet afraid of intimacy, we experience widespread feelings of emptiness, of disconnection, of the unreality of self. And here the computer, a companion without emotional demands, offers a compromise. You can be a loner, but never alone. You can interact, but need never feel vulnerable to another person.

  Sherry Turkle

  Emotional, Self, Feelings

  Sherry Turkle (1985). “The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit”, Touchstone Books

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• Fiction is one of the few experiences where loneliness can be both confronted and relieved.

  David Foster Wallace

  Fiction, Relieved

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• Loneliness has been following me my whole life.

  Robert De Niro

  Whole Life, Following, Has Beens

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