Last Updated: March 3, 2023 by Quote.cc Team
Loneliness is an unpleasant emotional response to perceived isolation. It is something that we all experience in our lives. Loneliness sucks. It tends to hang over you like a little black rain cloud. For the most part, feeling lonely is seen as a negative experience. There is much pain in feeling disconnected from the world around you. If you’re like some people and you’re chronically lonely, that can indicate a more severe condition, like depression.
Loneliness overlaps and yet is distinct from solitude. Solitude is simply the state of being apart from others; not everyone who experiences solitude feels lonely. As a subjective emotion, loneliness can be felt even when surrounded by other people; one who feels lonely is lonely.
Nobody wants to be alone. Being humans, we are wired to be social. When you’re lonely, you feel isolated and empty or dissatisfied with your friendships or relationships. All of us are familiar with this feeling — plenty of us feel lonely after breakups — but if you’re the rare person who’s never experienced it, then you should consider yourself pretty dang lucky.
To help you realize that you’re not alone, we rounded up some inspiring and heart-warming loneliness quotes that perfectly describe the experience of feeling misunderstood or isolated. These Loneliness quotes will help you cope with the feeling of loneliness and isolation.
200 Loneliness Quotes
Top 10 Lonely Quotes
“I was lonely. I felt it deeply and permanently that this state of being on my own might never disappear. But I welcomed the loneliness, which had everything to do with being anonymous. It’s never loneliness that nibbles away at a person’s insides, but not having room inside themselves to be comfortably alone.” – Rachel Sontag
“Let me tell you this: if you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it’s not because they enjoy solitude’s because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them.” – Jodi Picoult
“Don’t feel lonely, the entire universe is inside you.” – Rumi
“Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.” – Mother Teresa
“A lonely day is God’s way of saying that he wants to spend some quality time with you.” – Criss Jami
“There is pleasure in the pathless woods, there is rapture in the lonely shore, there is society where none intrudes, by the deep sea, and music in its roar; I love not Man the less, but Nature more.” – Lord Byron
“Every crag and gnarled tree and lonely valley has its own strange and graceful legend attached to it.” – Douglas Hyde
“You cannot be lonely if you like the person you’re alone with.” – Wayne Dyer
“Our uniqueness makes us special, makes perception valuable – but it can also make us lonely. This loneliness is different from being ‘alone’: You can be lonely even surrounded by people. The feeling I’m talking about stems from the sense that we can never fully share the truth of who we are. I experienced this acutely at an early age.” – Amy Tan
“I have the best roommates in the world! It creates a fun sense of family… and that’s really important to me. Things can get so lonely without it.” – Kristen Bell
What Is Loneliness?
“Loneliness is a sign you are in desperate need of yourself.” – Rupi Kaur
“Loneliness is cured by contact with yourself.” – Sven Schnieders
“Loneliness is a tax we have to pay to atone for a certain complexity of mind.” – Alain de Botton
“Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is the richness of self.” – Mary Sarton
“Loneliness is the longing for connection.”
“Loneliness is not lack of company, loneliness is lack of purpose.” – Guillermo Maldonado
“Loneliness is one thing, solitude another.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
“Lonely is not being alone, it’s the feeling that no one cares.”
“A high degree of loneliness is an inexorable part of being a sensitive and intelligent human. It’s a built-in feature of a complex existence.” – Alain de Botton
“The price of being a sheep is boredom. The price of being a wolf is loneliness. Choose one or the other with great care.” – Hugh MacLeod
“If you are lonely when you’re alone, you are in bad company.” – Jean-Paul Sartre
“Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is the richness of self.” – May Sarton
“The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.” – Michel de Montaigne
“Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.” – Mother Teresa
“The worst loneliness is to not be comfortable with yourself.” – Mark Twain
“Language… has created the word ‘loneliness’ to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word ‘solitude’ to express the glory of being alone.” – Paul Tillich
“The lonely one offers his hand too quickly to whomever he encounters.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
“The trouble is not really in being alone, it’s being lonely. One can be lonely in the midst of a crowd, don’t you think?” – Christine Feehan
“When everything is lonely I can be my best friend.” – Conor Oberst
“The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.” – Michel de Montaigne
Feeling Lonely Quotes
“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.” – Rudyard Kipling
“The time you feel lonely is the time you most need to be by yourself.” – Douglas Coupland
“We feel guilt when we no longer want to associate with old friends and colleagues who haven’t changed. The price, and marker, of growth.” – Naval Ravikant
“Although I am a typical loner in my daily life, my awareness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice has prevented me from feelings of isolation.” – Albert Einstein
“I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape – the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show.” – Andrew Wyeth
“I am completely a loner. In my head I want to feel I can be anywhere. There is a sort of recklessness that being a loner allows me.” – Arundhati Roy
“It’s ok to feel lonely sometimes. We are human and to feel is to live. Loneliness is a feeling just like any other; happiness, joy etc. If we don’t feel lonely sometimes, how would we feel when we are happy and joyous?”
“Yes, I guess you could say I am a loner, but I feel more lonely in a crowded room with boring people that I feel on my own.” – Henry Rollins
“The irony of loneliness is we all feel it at the same time — together.” – Rupi Kaur
“I am a real lone wolf who has never wholeheartedly belonged to the State, to my country, my circle of friends and not even to my family but who, despite all these bonds, has constantly experienced a feeling of strangeness and the need for solitude.” – Albert Einstein
“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
“To feel lonely is to join the rest of humanity in acknowledging the painful reality that we are somehow fundamentally separated from each other, never to be fully understood.”
“Reality is neutral. Our reactions reflect back and create our world. Judge, and feel separate and lonely. Anger, and lose peace of mind. Cling, and live in anxiety. Fantasize, and miss the present. Desire, and suffer until you have it. Heaven and hell are right here, right now.” – Naval Ravikant
“You evolved to hunt and fight and create and connect. Not sit at home and watch TV and cram pizza into your intestines all the damn time. No wonder you feel sad, lonely, and depressed – in fact, it would be surprising if you didn’t.”
“I don’t hate people just feel better when they’re not around.”
“I’m lonely. And I’m lonely in some profound way, and for a flash of an instant, I can see just how lonely and how deep this feeling runs. And it scares the shit out of me to be this lonely because it seems catastrophic.” – Augusten Burroughs
“I feel sorry for anyone who is in a place where he feels strange and stupid.” – Lois Lowry
“Loneliness is a good feeling when it is created by ourselves. But..it is the worst feeling when others gift it.”
“That feeling when you don’t even know what the fuck you’re feeling.”
“I want to sleep until I feel better.”
“The person who tries to keep everyone happy often ends up feeling the loneliest.”
“That feeling when you’re not necessarily sad, but you just feel lonely.”
“Our perpetually networked selves cling to constant communication in an effort to avoid the deep-seated sense of loneliness we so dread.” – Maria Popova
“Have you ever visited a place so magical that you tell yourself, I can live here by myself forever.”
“I like to pretend that everything’s alright because when everybody else thinks you’re fine, sometimes you forget for a while that you’re not.”
“Sometimes, you need to sit lonely on the floor in a quiet room to hear your voice and not let it drown in the noise of others.” – Charlotte Eriksson
“People fear the places the undistracted mind might wander too. Much of what people describe as boredom is in fact a fear of stillness. Distraction lets us fill our minds with other voices so we don’t have to listen to the inner voice that whispers truths we fear to confront.”
“No one has ever properly understood me, I have never fully understood anyone; and no one understands anyone else.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“We’re all islands shouting lies to each other across seas of misunderstanding.” – Rudyard Kipling
“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
“Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.” – Maya Angelou
“The crowds poison, too much time and you end up like them. Retreat to yourself. The only safe place.” – Crypto Seneca
“The thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, is inevitably that which makes you lonely.” – Lorraine Hansberry
Sad Lonely Quotes
“But I never forget. I’m living like there’s no tomorrow because there isn’t one.”
“You’re not dead, but not alive either. You’re just a ghost with a beating heart.”
“Sometimes, you just need someone to tell you you’re not as terrible as you think you are.”
“The room is full, but nobody wants to talk to me, then I realized I was in the wrong place.”
“Everyone gets tired of me at some point. Then eventually they’ll leave. They all do.”
“Have you ever just randomly started crying because you’ve been holding in all of these emotions and pretending to be happy for way too long?
“She was drowning, but nobody saw her struggle.”
“I’m so scared of dying without ever being really seen. Can you understand?” – David Foster Wallace
“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
“The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It’s the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared.” – Lois Lowry
“Loneliness adds beauty to life. It puts a special burn on sunsets and makes night air smell better.” – Henry Rollins
“Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.”
“I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being.” – Hafiz of Persia
Lonely Love Quotes
“What a lovely surprise to discover how unlonely being alone can be.” – Ellen Burstyn
“Love and compassion open our own inner life, reducing stress, distrust and loneliness.” – 14th Dalai Lama
“I can’t take away your pain, but I can offer you two miracles: the love that comes from turning toward other human beings, and the connection we have to everyone on Earth.” – Leo Babauta
“Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.” – Eric Fromm
“Single does not mean you are lonely. It means you are just resting your heart till you find true love.”
“I’m falling apart right in front of your eyes, but you don’t even see me.”
“You never really stop loving someone. You just learn to try to live without them.”
“Every single human being who is alive has felt this kind of pain, hopelessness, and loneliness at one time or another. We are all connected through this shared pain and struggle.” – Leo Babauta
“Isn’t it funny that at Christmas something in you gets so lonely for – I don’t know what exactly, but it’s something that you don’t mind so much not having at other times.” – Kate L. Bosher
“Christmas is a holiday that persecutes the lonely, the frayed, and the rejected.” – Jimmy Cannon
“Actually, my mother and Alfie came for three weeks’ Christmas vacation and stayed for 21 years. I guess my mother never went back because she was lonely.” – Frank McCourt
“Orphans, dead parents, lonely children at Christmas, morose spoken word recordings, everything you love about the holidays. Move the turkey over so you can fit your head in the oven.” – April Winchell
“In my adolescence, I think I felt very outcast; I felt lonely. I felt great loneliness, and sometimes I wouldn’t partake in Christmas, and I would go off and wander in the streets of Melbourne.” – Michael Leunig
“One strain could call up the quivering expectancy of Christmas Eve, childhood, joy and sadness, the lonely wonder of a star.” – Maud Hart Lovelace
“Actually, my mother and Alfie came for three weeks Christmas vacation and stayed for 21 years. I guess my mother never went back because she was lonely.” – Frank McCourt
Lonely Life Quotes
“Loneliness, when accepted, is a gift that will lead us to find a purpose in life.” – Paulo Coelho
“What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great person is one who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The ultimate power in life is to be completely self-reliant, completely yourself.” – Robert Greene
“If you want to live a miserable life, then blame everyone for your problems and never take responsibility for anything.” – Thibaut
“If a man cannot understand the beauty of life, it is probably because life never understood the beauty in him.” – Criss Jami
“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
“If you can only learn from people that you 100% agree with on everything, it’s going to be a dark and lonely life.” – Naval Ravikant
“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. When we examine the moments, acts, and statements of all kinds of people — not only the grief and ecstasy of the greatest poets, but also the huge unhappiness of the average soul…we find, I think, that they are all suffering from the same thing. The final cause of their complaint is loneliness.” – Thomas Wolfe
“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.” – Scott Fitzgerald
“You will be happy, said life, but first, I must make you strong.”
“One day, you will be able to tell yourself, you made it! You never needed him! You’re going to live your life the way you want it to be.”
“It is only when we silent the blaring sounds of our daily existence that we can finally hear the whispers of truth that life reveals to us, as it stands to knock on the doorsteps of our hearts.” – K.T. Jong
“Writing, at its best, is a lonely life.” – Ernest Hemingway
“Be a loner. That gives you time to wonder, to search for the truth. Have holy curiosity. Make your life worth living.” – Albert Einstein
“No one saves us but ourselves. No one can, and no one may. We must walk the path.” – Gautama Buddha
“Most people keep eating not because they’re hungry, but because they’re bored.”
“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.” – Henry David Thoreau
“Our great depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars, but we won’t. We’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.”
“I will never change myself to be easier for someone to deal with.”
“When everything is lonely I can be my best friend.” – Conor Oberst
“Sometimes, I just want to disappear and see if anyone would miss me.”
“To find yourself, think for yourself.” – Socrates
“No one is really going to help you or give you direction.” – Robert Greene
“It is not up to others to protect or help you. You are on your own.” – Robert Greene
“All great and precious things are lonely.” – John Steinbeck
“Because he accepts himself, the whole world accepts him.” – Lao Tzu
“If one’s different, one’s bound to be lonely.” – Aldous Huxley
“What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?” – George Eliot
“The worst loneliness is to not be comfortable with yourself.” – Mark Twain
“Sometimes it is necessary to be lonely in order to prove that you are right.” – Vladimir Putin
“It is strange to be known so universally and yet to be so lonely.” – Albert Einstein
“If you are afraid of being lonely, don’t try to be right.” – Jules Renard
“Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Sometimes it is necessary to be lonely in order to prove that you are right.” – Vladimir Putin
Alone Lonely Quotes
“There is a tremendous difference between alone and lonely. You could be lonely in a group of people. I like being alone. I like eating by myself. I go home at night and just watch a movie or hang out with my dog. I have to exert myself and really say, oh God, I’ve got to see my friends because I’m too content by myself.” – Drew Barrymore
“I used to think the worst thing in life was to end up alone. It’s not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people that make you feel alone.” – Robin Williams
“Know that even if you feel alone, you are not alone. I, for one, am connected to you because I’m thinking of you, all of you. I’m connected to you because I too have suffered in similar ways. We have shared pain, shared hopelessness, shared loneliness.” – Leo Babauta
“The trouble is not really in being alone; it’s lonely; one can be lonely in the midst of a crowd, don’t you think.” – Christine Feehan
“Sometimes, you have to separate yourself from everyone and just focus on doing you.”
“What is needed is this, and this alone: solitude, great inner loneliness. Going into oneself and not meeting anyone for hours – that is what one must arrive at.” – Rainer Maria Rilke
“When you’re alone, watch your thoughts. When you’re successful, watch your ego. When you’ve got problems, watch your emotions. When you’re with the crowds, watch what you say.” – Crypto Seneca
“Boredom is a defense mechanism to avoid having to sit alone with our unaddressed thoughts.” – Naval Ravikant
“Either give me more wine or leave me alone.” – Rumi
“You cannot be lonely if you like the person you’re alone with.” – Wayne Dyer
“If you want to go somewhere you like, but no one else wants to go, go by yourself, you’ll meet people with similar interests as you.”
“The only way to survive is to admit you are on your own, learn to make your own decisions, and trust your judgement.” – Robert Greene
“We must all die alone, which really means, that our pain is for us alone to endure. Others can throw us words of encouragement, but in every life, we are out on the ocean drowning in the swell and others, even the nice ones, are standing on the shore, waving cheerily.” – Alain de Botton
“The reality is life is a single-player game. You’re born alone. You’re going to die alone. All of your interpretations are alone. All your memories are alone. You’re gone in three generations and nobody cares. Before you showed up, nobody cared. It’s all single-player.” – Naval Ravikant
Alone But Not Lonely Quotes
“I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.” – Henry David Thoreau
“We feel alone, and in this we are connected.” – Leo Babauta
“It’s easy to stand in the crowd but it takes courage to stand alone.” – Mahatma Gandhi
“The woman who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. The woman who walks alone is likely to find herself in places no one has ever been before.” – Albert Einstein
“Time spent undistracted and alone, in self-examination, journaling, meditation, resolves the unresolved and takes us from mentally fat to fit.” – Naval Ravikant
“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
“If you are never alone, you cannot know yourself.” – Paulo Coelho
“By all means use sometimes to be alone. Salute thyself; see what thy soul doth wear.” – George Herbert
“Remember never to say that you are alone, for you are not alone; nay, God is within, and your genius is within.” – Epictetus
“Inside myself is a place where I live all alone, and that’s where I renew my springs that never dry up.” – Pearl Buck
“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” – Blaise Pascal
“I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone.” – Rainer Maria Rilke
“I restore myself when I’m alone.” – Marilyn Monroe
“I don’t want to be alone. I want to be left alone.” – Audrey Hepburn
“Only the self-sufficient stand alone – most people follow the crowd and imitate.” – Bruce Lee
“A man thinking or working is always alone.” – Henry David Thoreau
“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” – Shane Parrish
“Being alone never felt right. Sometimes it felt good, but it never felt right.” – Charles Bukowski
“Don’t live in a manner that makes you despise being alone with yourself.”
“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
“The person who tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being. His heart withers if it does not answer another heart. His mind shrinks away if he hears only the echoes of his own thoughts and finds no other inspiration.” – Pearl S. Buck
“Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.” – Patrick OShaughnessy
“Laugh and the world laughs with you, snore and you sleep alone.” – Anthony Burgess
“There is a guy in the coffee shop sitting alone and drinking coffee like a crazy person. No phone. No laptop. No smart watch. No book. Just coffee. Alone with his thoughts.” – Shane Parrish
“You are never alone. You are eternally connected with everyone.” – Amit Ray
“It is not easy to be a person of high standards; you have to pay for it. It does, however, make you stand out from the crowd, which alone makes it worth more than its price.
“I owe everything that I have done to the fact that I am very much at ease being alone.” – Marilynne Robinson
“If you can’t live alone, you were born a slave.” – Fernando Pessoa
“I like to be alone, but I hate being lonely.”
“Where will you find the virtuous man? Alone.”
“I might be alone, but I’m never lonely.” – Megan Hart
“I came alone in this world, I have walked alone in the valley of the shadow of death, and I shall quit alone when the time comes.” – Mahatma Gandhi
“Be strong enough to stand alone, smart enough to know when you need help, and brave enough to ask for it.” – Tim Fargo
“I don’t mind being alone. I just don’t want to be part of the crowd.” – Naval Ravikant
Final Thoughts
As human-being, we are social animals. Our minds are wired to connect and bond with others. We surround ourselves with friends, family, and companionship gives us a sense of belonging. That’s probably why we are so terrified of being alone. But being alone is something we all experience, but it doesn’t have to be painful.
The fact is that you can’t always be around people. There are times when you need to sit all by yourself and reflect on your life or enjoy your alone time. Being alone does not necessarily mean that you should be lonely. Being alone gives you the chance to discover yourself. It creates a perfect atmosphere to tune it with our thoughts and ideas. We can all use some me-time self-reflect and self-exploratory when life is moving at a crazy fast pace.
Hopefully, the above quotes will help you get the inspiration you need when you feel like you are all alone and that no one gets you. Did you enjoy this Loneliness quotes collection? Which of the quotes was your favourite? Let us know in the comment section below.