50 Inspirational Quotes on Loneliness: Embrace Solitude and Find Strength

"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

"God, but life is loneliness, despite all the opiates, despite the shrill tinsel gaiety of "parties" with no purpose, despite the false grinning faces we all wear. And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter - they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long. Yes, there is joy, fulfillment and companionship - but the loneliness of the soul in its appalling self-consciousness is horrible and overpowering."

- Sylvia Plath

"I’m here. I love you. I don’t care if you need to stay up crying all night long, I will stay with you. If you need the medication again, go ahead and take it—I will love you through that, as well. If you don’t need the medication, I will love you, too. There’s nothing you can ever do to lose my love. I will protect you until you die, and after your death I will still protect you. I am stronger than Depression and I am braver than Loneliness and nothing will ever exhaust me."

- Elizabeth Gilbert

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

- Mother Teresa

"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

"When I get lonely these days, I think: So BE lonely, Liz. Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience. But never again use another person's body or emotions as a scratching post for your own unfulfilled yearnings."

- Elizabeth Gilbert

"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

"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

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

- Paul Tillich

"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

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

- Thomas Wolfe

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

- Rumi

"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

"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

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

- Elizabeth Gilbert

"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

"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

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

- May Sarton

"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

"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

"I've never been lonely. I've been in a room -- I've felt suicidal. I've been depressed. I've felt awful -- awful beyond all -- but I never felt that one other person could enter that room and cure what was bothering me...or that any number of people could enter that room. In other words, loneliness is something I've never been bothered with because I've always had this terrible itch for solitude. It's being at a party, or at a stadium full of people cheering for something, that I might feel loneliness. I'll quote Ibsen, "The strongest men are the most alone." I've never thought, "Well, some beautiful blonde will come in here and give me a fuck-job, rub my balls, and I'll feel good." No, that won't help. You know the typical crowd, "Wow, it's Friday night, what are you going to do? Just sit there?" Well, yeah. Because there's nothing out there. It's stupidity. Stupid people mingling with stupid people. Let them stupidify themselves. I've never been bothered with the need to rush out into the night. I hid in bars, because I didn't want to hide in factories. That's all. Sorry for all the millions, but I've never been lonely. I like myself. I'm the best form of entertainment I have. Let's drink more wine!"

- Charles Bukowski

"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

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

- John Green

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

- Douglas Coupland

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

- Michel de Montaigne

"Nobody likes being alone that much. I don't go out of my way to make friends, that's all. It just leads to disappointment."

- Haruki Murakami

"All I ever wanted was to reach out and touch another human being not just with my hands but with my heart."

- Tahereh Mafi

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

- Jean-Paul Sartre

"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

"Maybe ever’body in the whole damn world is scared of each other."

- John Steinbeck

"All great and precious things are lonely."

- John Steinbeck

"I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom."

- Edgar Allan Poe

"being alone never felt right. sometimes it felt good, but it never felt right."

- Charles Bukowski

"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

"The trouble is not that I am single and likely to stay single, but that I am lonely and likely to stay lonely."

- Charlotte Brontë

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

- Janet Fitch

"Ordinary men hate solitude. But the master makes use of it, embracing his aloneness, realizing he is one with the whole universe."

- Lao Tzu

"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

"We live as we dream--alone...."

- Joseph Conrad

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

- Sylvia Plath

"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

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

- Brendan Behan

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

- Andy Rooney

"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

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

- William Powell

"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

"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

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

- Ellen Burstyn

"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

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

- Arthur C. Clarke

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

- Lois Lowry

"Solitude is fine but you need someone to tell that solitude is fine."

- Honoré de Balzac

"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."

- Edna St. Vincent Millay

"When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies but the pack survives."

- George R.R. Martin

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

- Dag Hammarskjold

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

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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

- Robert Tew

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

- The Queen’s Gambit

"By all means use sometimes to be alone, Salute thyself; see what the soul doth wear."

- George Herbert

"A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy dare live."

- Bertrand Russell

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

- Henry Rollins

"Great men are like eagles, and build their nest on some lofty solitude."

- Arthur Schopenhauer

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

- House of Cards

"I am awfully greedy; I want everything from life. I want to be a woman and to be a man, to have many friends and to have loneliness, to work much and write good books, to travel and enjoy myself, to be selfish and to be unselfish… You see, it is difficult to get all which I want. And then when I do not succeed I get mad with anger."

- Simone de Beauvoir

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

- Gail Honeyman

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

- A Simple Favor

"All the lonely people, where do they all come from?"

- The Beatles

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

- Kung Fu Panda

"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

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

- Lilo and Stitch

"Ah, look at all the lonely people."

- The Beatles

"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

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

- Grey’s Anatomy

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

- Shrek

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

- Robyn

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

- Simple Plan

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

- Taylor Swift

"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

"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

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

- Elvis Presley

"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."