100 Inspirational Alone Quotes to Empower Your Solitude

"The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself."

- Michel de Montaigne

"I am stronger than depression and I am braver than loneliness and nothing will ever exhaust me."

- Elizabeth Gilbert

"Being solitary is being alone well: being alone luxuriously immersed in doings of your own choice."

- Alice Koller

"You cannot be lonely if you like the person you're alone with."

- Wayne Dyer

"Pray that your loneliness may spur you into finding something to live for, great enough to die for."

- Dag Hammarskjold

"Still and all, why bother? Here's my answer. Many people need desperately to receive this message: I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone."

- Kurt Vonnegut

"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

"Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is the richness of self."

- May Sarton

"If you make friends with yourself you will never be alone."

- Maxwell Maltz

"What a lovely surprise to finally discover how unlonely being alone can be."

- Ellen Burstyn

"There's 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 'cause I'm too content being by myself."

- Drew Barrymore

"In the middle of winter I at last discovered that there was in me an invincible summer."

- Albert Camus

"There is hope, even when your brain tells you there isn’t."

- John Green

"Loneliness is the human condition. Cultivate it. The way it tunnels into you allows your soul room to grow."

- Janet Fitch

"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

"I think it’s very healthy to spend time alone. You need to know how to be alone and not be defined by another person."

- Oscar Wilde

"Be alone, that is the secret of invention; Be alone—that is when ideas are born."

- Nikola Tesla

"Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness."

- Maya Angelou

"If you are never alone, you cannot know yourself."

- Paulo Coelho

"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

"There is nothing outside of yourself. Look within. Everything you want is there. You are that."

- Rumi

"What a lovely surprise to discover how un-lonely being alone can be."

- Ellen Burstyn

"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

"Loneliness is the poverty of self. Solitude is the richness of self."

- May Sarton

"A season of loneliness and isolation is when the caterpillar gets its wings. Remember that next time you feel alone."

- Mandy Hale

"You cannot be lonely if you like the person you are alone with."

- Wayne Dyer

"It 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

"Being alone is not the same as being lonely. I like to do things that glorify being alone. I buy a candle that smells pretty, turn down the lights and make a playlist of low-key songs. If you don’t act like you’ve been hit by the plague when you’re alone on a Friday night, and just see it as a chance to have fun by yourself, it’s not a bad day."

- Taylor Swift

"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 man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself."

- Charlotte Brontë

"Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape."

- Bell Hooks

"Solitude is a silent storm that breaks down all our dead branches; Yet it sends our living roots deeper into the living heart of the living earth."

- Kahlil Gibran

"Solitude is not the absence of Love, but its complement."

- Paulo Coelho

"I’m not alone! I’m with myself. And myself is fabulous."

- Eva Longoria

"Solitude is the soul’s holiday, an opportunity to stop doing for others and to surprise and delight ourselves instead."

- Katrina Kenison

"Live alone in your mind — that is happiness. To have nobody to care for and never minding who cares for one is the way to be free."

- Swami Vivekananda

"There is no support so strong as the strength that enables one to stand alone."

- Ellen Glasgow

"You need courage to see things differently, courage to go against the crowd, courage to take a different approach, courage to stand alone if you have to, courage to choose activity over inactivity."

- Jim Rohn

"I think alone time is good to know how to be alone with your own thoughts. I think it just helps you kind of be a better, more grounded person."

- Carrie Brownstein

"The greatest thing in the world is for a man to know that he is his own."

- Michel de Montaigne

"Alone time is when I distance myself from the voices of the world so I can hear my own."

- Oprah Winfrey

"In solitude, the mind gains strength and learns to lean upon itself."

- Laurence Sterne

"You cannot be lonely if you like the person you’re alone with."

- Wayne Dyer

"Do not rely on others for your happiness and self-worth. Only you can be responsible for that."

- Stacey Charter

"Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will."

- Mahatma Gandhi

"Alone is a fact, a condition where no one else is around. Lonely is how you feel about that."

- Jeannette Winterson

"Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much."

- Helen Keller

"I think it’s good for a person to spend time alone. It gives them an opportunity to discover who they are."

- Amy Sedaris

"Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering, and it’s all over much too soon."

- Woody Allen

"The most terrible poverty is loneliness and the feeling of being unloved."

- Mother Teresa

"I don’t see how you can respect yourself if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness."

- Hunter S. Thompson

"For fear you will be alone, you do so many things that aren’t you at all."

- Richard Brautigan

"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

"When you’re surrounded by all these people, it can be lonelier than when you’re by yourself. You can be in a huge crowd, but if you don't feel like you can trust anyone or talk to anybody, you feel like you’re really alone."

- Fiona Apple

"Sometimes you need to take a break from everyone and spend time alone to experience, appreciate, and love yourself."

- Robert Tew

"Loneliness is the human condition. Cultivate it. The way it tunnels into you allows your soul room to grow. Never expect to outgrow loneliness."

- Janet Fitch

"Solitude is the place of purification."

- Martin Buber

"The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone."

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Loneliness is my least favorite thing about life. That 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

"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

"I have to be alone very often. I’d be quite happy if I spent from Saturday night until Monday morning alone in my apartment. That’s how I refuel."

- Audrey Hepburn

"The time you feel lonely is the time you most need to be by yourself. Life’s cruelest irony."

- Douglas Coupland

"Yes, there is joy, fulfillment, and companionship, but the loneliness of the soul in its appalling self-consciousness is horrible and overpowering."

- Sylvia Plath

"Sometimes being surrounded by everyone is the loneliest, because you’ll realize you have no one to turn to."

- Soraya

"I am no more lonely than the loon in the pond that laughs so loud, or than Walden Pond itself. What company has that lonely lake, I pray? And yet it has not the blue devils, but the blue angels in it, in the azure tint of its waters."

- Henry David Thoreau

"The secret of a good old age is simply an honorable pact with solitude."

- Gabriel García Márquez

"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

"Seek to be alone much to commune with Nature and be thus inspired by her mighty whisperings within your consciousness. Nature is a most jealous god, for she will not whisper her inspiring revelations to you unless you are absolutely alone with her."

- Walter Russell

"Man is, at one and the same time, a solitary being and a social being. As a solitary being, he attempts to protect his own existence and that of those who are closest to him, to satisfy his personal desires and to develop his innate abilities. As a social being, he seeks to gain the recognition and affection of his fellow human beings, to share in their pleasures, to comfort them in their sorrows and to improve their conditions of life."

- Albert Einstein

"The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It's the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared."

- Lois Lowry

"I’m actually really interested in living more of a life of solitude. It’s really nice to just have time to be alone, and be expansive and know that you’re enough. I wish I could tell my younger self that."

- Lady Gaga

"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

"Loneliness adds beauty to life. It puts a special burn on sunsets and makes night air smell better."

- Henry Rollins

"The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom."

- William P. Douglas

"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

"Knowing how to belong to yourself is an art in a world where everyone is finding their home in others."

- Renuka Gavrani

"Closed in a room, my imagination becomes the universe, and the rest of the world is missing out."

- Criss Jami

"All great and precious things are lonely."

- John Steinbeck

"There is a magic in walking alone, in thinking alone: If there is no one to contact you around, the universe starts contacting you!"

- Mehmet Murat ildan

"The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others."

- Mahatma Gandhi

"I used to think that the worst thing in life was to end up alone. It’s not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people who make you feel all alone."

- Bobcat Goldthwait

"Why does no one tell us how important it is to enjoy being single and being by yourself? That time is defining and amazing and nothing to ‘sure’. It is being alone that will actually set you up the best for being with someone else."

- Drew Barrymore

"Remember: the time you feel lonely is the time you most need to be by yourself. Life’s cruelest irony."

- Douglas Coupland

"I restore myself when I'm alone."

- Marilyn Monroe

"If you smile when you are alone, then you really mean it."

- Andy Rooney

"If you are lonely when you're alone, you are in bad company."

- Jean-Paul Sartre

"I have a good life, I remind myself. There are plenty of people who love me. They’re just not around at the moment."

- Cynthia Hand

"The strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone."

- Henrik Ibsen

"We can all fight against loneliness by engaging in random acts of kindness."

- Gail Honeyman

"I've also seen that great men are often lonely. This is understandable, because they have built such high standards for themselves that they often feel alone. But that same loneliness is part of their ability to create."

- Yousuf Karsh

"We live in a very tense society. We are pulled apart…and we all need to learn how to pull ourselves together. I think that at least part of the answer lies in solitude."

- Helen Hayes

"I may climb perhaps to no great heights, but I will climb alone."

- Cyrano de Bergerac

"If isolation tempers the strong, it is the stumbling-block of the uncertain."

- Paul Cezanne

"I was never less alone than when by myself."

- Edward Gibbon

"I'm very happy alone."

- Octavia E. Butler

"Cultivate solitude and quiet and a few sincere friends, rather than mob merriment, noise, and thousands of nodding acquaintances."

- William Powell

"Alone let him constantly meditate in solitude on that which is salutary for his soul, for he who meditates in solitude attains supreme bliss."

- Guru Nanak

"Be able to be alone. Lose not the advantage of solitude, and the society of thyself."

- Thomas Browne

"Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying."

- Arthur C. Clarke

"The eternal quest of the individual human being is to shatter his loneliness."

- Norman Cousins

"Loneliness is and always has been the central and inevitable experience of every man."

- Thomas Wolfe

"You only grow when you are alone."

- Paul Newman

"From that time on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again, never miss the lack of intimate friends. Books became her friends and there was one for every mood. There was poetry for quiet companionship. There was adventure when she tired of quiet hours. There would be love stories when she came into adolescence and when she wanted to feel a closeness to someone she could read a biography. On that day when she first knew she could read, she made a vow to read one book a day as long as she lived."

- Betty Smith

"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

"As I get older I'm more and more comfortable being alone."

- Sienna Miller

"When everything is lonely I can be my best friend."

- Conor Oberst

"Solitude is independence."

- Hermann Hesse

"Although she continued to knit, and sat upright, it was thus that she felt herself; and this self having shed its attachments was free for the strangest adventures. When life sank down for a moment, the range of experience seemed limitless."

- Virginia Woolf

"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

"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

"At the innermost core of loneliness is a deep and powerful yearning for union with one’s lost self."

- Brendan Behan

"The time you feel lonely is the time you most need to be by yourself."

- Douglas Coupland

"In solitude the mind gains strength and learns to lean upon itself."

- Laurence Sterne

"It's an interesting combination: Having a great fear of being alone, and having a desperate need for solitude and the solitary experience. That's always been a tug of war for me."

- Jodie Foster

"He that can live alone resembles the brute beast in nothing, the sage in much, and God in everything."

- Baltasar Gracian

"Well, it’s down at the end of Lonely Street at the Heartbreak Hotel."

- Elvis Presley

"I walk a lonely road, the only one that I have ever known."

- Green Day

"Don’t wanna be all by myself anymore."

- Celine Dion

"It is far better to be alone, than to be in bad company."

- George Washington

"You’re not alone. I’m awake and I’ve been thinking of you."

- Kygo

"Lonely, I’m so lonely, I have nobody to call my own."

- Akon

"All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone."

- Blaise Pascal

"I’m not the girl you’re taking home. I keep dancing on my own."

- Robyn

"Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one."

- Martin Heidegger

"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

"It is strange to be known so universally and yet to be so lonely."

- Albert Einstein

"To go out with the setting sun on an empty beach is to truly embrace your solitude."

- Jeanne Moreau

"To be adult is to be alone."

- Jean Rostand

"It's better to be unhappy alone than unhappy with someone - so far."

- Marilyn Monroe

"All of our unhappiness comes from our inability to be alone."

- Jean de la Bruyere

"By all means use some time to be alone."

- Edward Young

"Nothing makes us so lonely as our secrets."

- Paul Tournier

"The best part about being alone is that you really don't have to answer to anybody. You do what you want."

- Justin Timberlake

"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

"Then stirs the feeling infinite, so felt In solitude, where we are least alone."

- Lord Byron

"I never said, 'I want to be alone.' I only said, 'I want to be left alone.' There is all the difference."

- Greta Garbo

"Solitude vivifies; isolation kills."

- Joseph Roux

"To live alone is the fate of all great souls."

- Arthur Schopenhauer

"Can anybody hear me or am I talking to myself?"

- Simple Plan

"When the people you love are gone, you're alone."

- Keanu Reeves

"Ah, look at all the lonely people."

- The Beatles

"You come into the world alone and you go out of the world alone yet it seems to me you are more alone while living than even going and coming."

- Emily Carr

"We are all sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life."

- Tennessee Williams

"Remember we're all in this alone."

- Lily Tomlin

"I would rather be a beggar and single than a queen and married."

- Elizabeth I

"A human being is a single being. Unique and unrepeatable."

- Eileen Caddy

"We’re happy, free, confused, and lonely at the same time."

- Taylor Swift

"There are places and moments in which one is so completely alone that one sees the world entire."

- Jules Renard

"If I am a legend, then why am I so lonely?"

- Judy Garland

"Let your mind alone, and see what happens."

- Virgil Thomson

"A man content to go to heaven alone will never go to heaven."

- Boethius

"In Genesis, it says that it is not good for a man to be alone; but sometimes it is a great relief."

- John Barrymore

"Life could be wonderful if people would leave you alone."

- Charlie Chaplin

"Living alone makes it harder to find someone to blame."

- Mason Cooley

"It is very easy to love alone."

- Gertrude Stein

"If it's true that our species is alone in the universe, then I'd have to say the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little."

- George Carlin

"You can leave. I’ll remember you. I remember everyone that leaves."

- Lilo and Stitch

"They judge me before they even know me. That’s why I’m better off alone."

- Shrek

"In the beginning, everyone is there, but then they forget."

- Grey’s Anatomy

"People think I’m odd, so I know how it feels to be different, and I know how lonely that can be."

- Beauty and the Beast

"There is nothing more lonely or terrifying than feeling unheard."

- House of Cards

"Someday you’re gonna be all alone, so you need to figure out how to take care of yourself."

- The Queen’s Gambit

"The journey’s a lonely one. So much more than we know."

- Kung Fu Panda

"I think loneliness probably kills more people than cancer."

- A Simple Favor

"6:30, dinner with me. I can’t cancel that again."

- How the Grinch Stole Christmas

"Sometimes you need to be alone. Not to be lonely, but to enjoy your free time being yourself."

"Sometimes you have to stand alone just to make sure you still can."