Embracing Solitude: 50 Inspirational Quotes on Loneliness

"Loneliness is the human condition. No one is ever going to fill that space."

- Janet Fitch

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

- Mother Teresa

"We have all known the long loneliness, and we have found that the answer is community."

- Dorothy Day

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

- Oprah Winfrey

"I restore myself when I'm alone."

- Marilyn Monroe

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

- Wayne Dyer

"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

"Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty."

- Mother Teresa

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

- May Sarton

"I believe that dialogue is the key to breaking through our tendency to separate and isolate. Dialogue changes isolation and loneliness into connection and interdependence. This, I believe, is the essence of Buddhism."

- Vinessa Shaw

"The worst loneliness is not to be comfortable with yourself."

- Mark Twain

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

- May Sarton

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

- Mother Teresa

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

- Albert Camus

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

- Michel de Montaigne

"It's easy to stand with the crowd; it takes courage to stand alone."

- Mahatma Gandhi

"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

"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 used to think that 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 who make you feel alone."

- Robin Williams

"The biggest disease known to mankind is loneliness."

- Mother Teresa

"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 who make you feel alone."

- Robin Williams

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

- Janet Fitch

"If you are alone you belong entirely to yourself. If you are accompanied by even one companion you belong only half to yourself."

- Leonardo da Vinci

"Being alone has a power that very few people can handle."

- Steven Aitchison

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

- Mandy Hale

"Sometimes, you find peace not by rearranging the circumstances of your life, but by realizing who you are at the deepest level."

- Eckhart Tolle

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

- John Green

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

- Gail Honeyman

"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

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

- Soraya

"Loneliness expresses the pain of being alone and solitude expresses the glory of being alone."

- Paul Tillich

"You may not enjoy loneliness, because loneliness is sad. But solitude is something else; solitude is what you look forward to when you want to be alone, when you want to be with yourself."

- Ruskin Bond

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

- Henry Rollins

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

- Wayne Dyer

"Loneliness is never more cruel than when it is felt in close propinquity with someone who has ceased to communicate."

- Germaine Greer

"The strongest man is he who stands most alone."

- Henrik Ibsen

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

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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

- Marilyn Monroe

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

- Norman Cousins

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

- Laurence Sterne

"I never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude."

- Henry David Thoreau

"Solitude is where I place my chaos to rest and awaken my inner peace."

- Nikki Rowe

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

- Marilyn Monroe

"Being alone is a power that very few can handle."

- Steven Aitchison

"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

"Loneliness is not lack of company, loneliness is lack of purpose."

- Guillermo Maldonado

"To be alone is to be different, to be different is to be alone."

- Suzanne Gordon

"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 the ultimate poverty."

- Pauline Phillips

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

- Marilyn Monroe

"Loneliness is a part of your life. It teaches us that we are not complete in ourselves."

- David Runcorn

"I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity."

- Albert Einstein

"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."

- Tom Wolfe

"Solitude is independence."

- Hermann Hesse

"Social acceptance, 'being liked,' has so much power because it holds the feelings of loneliness at bay."

- Rollo May

"Walking alone, I am listening to a deeper way. Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. Be still, they say. Watch and listen. You are the result of the love of thousands."

- Linda Hogan

"In solitude, we are least alone."

- Lord Byron

"The journey of life is amazingly beautiful if you take it as a fearless adventure."

- Debasish Mridha

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

- Andy Rooney

"The worst kind of loneliness in the world is the isolation that comes from being misunderstood. It can make people lose their grasp on reality."

- Shyza Chaudhry

"All great and precious things are lonely."

- John Steinbeck

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

- Norman Cousins

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

- Sienna Miller

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

- Justin Timberlake

"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

"The principal contributor to loneliness in this country is television. What happens is that the family 'gets together' alone."

- Ashley Montagu

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

- Wayne Dyer

"We are all so much together, but we are all dying of loneliness."

- Albert Schweitzer

"What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?"

- George Eliot

"It is better to walk alone, than with a crowd going in the wrong direction."

- Herman Siu

"There is a loneliness in this world so great that you can see it in the slow movement of the hands of a clock."

- Charles Bukowski

"If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together."

- African Proverb

"Man's loneliness is but his fear of life."

- Eugene O'Neill

"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."

- Hilaire Belloc

"There's a special quality to the loneliness of dusk, a melancholy more brooding even than the night's."

- Ed Gorman

"Sometimes you have to disconnect to stay connected."

- Regina Brett

"If you are afraid of being lonely, don't try to be right."

- Jules Renard

"As I fear its prologues: loneliness, decrepitude, pain, debilitation, depression, senility. After a few years of those, I imagine death presents like a holiday at the beach."

- Mary Roach

"Being alone has a power very few people can handle."

- Steven Aitchison

"Some journeys can only be traveled alone."

- Ken Poirot

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

- Kung Fu Panda

"You can love someone so much, but you can never love people as much as you can miss them."

- John Green

"Being alone never felt right. Sometimes it felt good, but it never felt right."

- Charles Bukowski

"The strongest souls have emerged out of suffering; the most massive characters are seared with scars."

- Kahlil Gibran

"It's sad not to love, but it is much sadder not to be able to love."

- Miguel de Unamuno

"Music was invented to confirm human loneliness."

- Lawrence Durrell

"The surest sign of age is loneliness."

- Annie Dillard

"Year after year, politicians have drafted huge piles of legislation on the assumption that most people are not good. And we know the consequences of that policy: inequality, loneliness and mistrust."

- Rutger Bregman

"If you are afraid of loneliness, do not marry."

- Anton Chekhov

"Nothing makes us more vulnerable than loneliness, except greed."

- Thomas Harris

"The dominant feeling of the battlefield is loneliness."

- William Slim

"The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again."

- Charles Dickens

"The concept of loneliness and exile and self-sufficiency continually bucks me up."

- Christopher Hitchens

"Some walks you have to take alone."

- Suzanne Collins

"Love is something far more than desire for sexual intercourse; it is the principal means of escape from the loneliness which afflicts most men and women throughout the greater part of their lives."

- Bertrand Russell

"I've never thought about songwriting as a weapon. I've only thought about it as a way to help me get through love and loss and sadness and loneliness and growing up."

- Taylor Swift

"An artist is always alone - if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness."

- Henry Miller

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

- Lilo and Stitch

"Cinema can fill in the empty spaces of your life and your loneliness."

- Pedro Almodovar

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

- Brendan Behan

"Suffering, failure, loneliness, sorrow, discouragement, and death will be part of your journey, but the Kingdom of God will conquer all these horrors. No evil can resist grace forever."

- Brennan Manning

"The only way to discover new paths is to walk alone."

- Unknown

"It's so hard to forget someone who gave you so much to remember, yet doesn't seem to remember you at all."

- Unknown

"Solitude is the strength of being alone. It's where we become our best company."

- Unknown

"In a world full of people, I still feel alone, as if my existence is a shadow that no one cares to notice."

- Unknown

"The painful irony of life is craving to be understood by someone in a world where everyone seems indifferent."

- Unknown

"Sometimes the feeling of being unnoticed is so loud."

- Unknown

"It's a lonely feeling when someone you care about becomes a stranger."

- Unknown

"You come into this world alone, and you leave it alone, but it's what you do in between that counts."

"Feeling like no one cares is a heavy burden to carry, but remember, your value does not decrease based on someone's inability to see your worth."

- Unknown

"The hardest walk is walking alone, but it's also the walk that makes you the strongest."

"Being alone does not mean you are lonely, and being lonely does not mean you are alone."

- Unknown

"Loneliness is not being alone, it's the feeling that no one cares."

- Unknown

"Sometimes you have to walk alone just to prove that you can."

- Unknown

"The only way to walk into the unknown is to step away from all that is known."

- Unknown

"Walking alone doesn't mean I am lost. It means I am brave enough to find my own way."

- Unknown

"You never walk alone. Even the darkest moments will pass."

- Unknown

"When the path is lonely, it makes you strong."

- Unknown

"It's better to walk alone in the right direction than to follow the herd in the wrong direction."

- Unknown

"Walking alone doesn't mean I'm lost. It means I'm on a path only I can choose."

- Unknown

"Happiness is being alone with your own thoughts."

- Unknown

"In the end, we all die alone; it's the moments we feel most alive that matter."

- Unknown

"Feeling like no one cares is a deep reflection of isolation, not the reality of your worth."

- Unknown

"Sometimes, it feels like you're invisible, like you're a speck of dust floating in the air, seen by nobody."

- Unknown

"The worst feeling isn't being lonely but being forgotten by those you can't forget."

- Unknown

"In my solitude, I find my sadness."

- Unknown

"There is a certain strength in being alone, but there is a great power in being alone and happy."

"The pain of loneliness is something only the lonely can understand."

- Unknown

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

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

"The only thing worse than being lonely is having someone who makes you feel lonely."

"Sometimes, the person you want most is the person you're best without."

"I enjoy being alone, my soul is at peace in the silence."