201 Loneliness Quotes Lonely Quotes For When You Feel Alone

We’ve curated a comforting list of loneliness quotes to help heal those sad and painful emotions. Feeling this way isn’t abnormal. Humans have an innate need to connect with others on a deep level. This means that while you may be surrounded by people throughout the day, you can still experience a deep and prevalent sense of loneliness. Reading quotes about being alone can help inspire you to reach out to new people or re-engage with those you may have lost touch with. Fortunately, a lot of great writers, intellectuals, and philosophers have offered some impactful and inspiring words about this all-too-common feeling of being alone.

201 Loneliness Quotes:

Deep Loneliness Quotes

1. Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light. –Helen Keller
2. When we truly realize that we are all alone is when we need others the most. –Ronald Anthony Cross
3. If you are afraid of being lonely don’t try to be right. –Jules Renard
4. 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
5. Loneliness is never more cruel than when it is felt in close propinquity with someone who has ceased to communicate. –Germaine Greer
6. Until you get comfortable with being alone you’ll never know if you’re choosing someone out of love or loneliness. –Mandy Hale
7. Pray that your loneliness may spur you into finding something to live for great enough to die for. –Dag Hammarskjold
8. 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
9. Remember: the time you feel lonely is the time you most need to be by yourself. Life’s cruelest irony. –Douglas Coupland
10. Life is full of misery loneliness and suffering—and it’s all over much too soon. –Woody Allen
11. The most terrible poverty is loneliness and the feeling of being unloved. –Mother Theresa
12. Loneliness is about the scariest thing out there. –Joss Whedon
13. If you’re lonely when you’re alone you’re in bad company. –Jean-Paul Sartre
14. Loneliness is and always has been the central and inevitable experience of every man. –Thomas Wolfe 16. Yes there is joy fulfillment and companionship—but the loneliness of the soul in its appalling self-consciousness is horrible and overpowering. –Sylvia Plath
15. All I ever wanted was to reach out and touch another human being not just with my hands but with my heart. –Tahereh Mafi
16. Maybe ever’body in the whole damn world is scared of each other. –John Steinbeck
17. We live as we dream–alone…. –Joseph Conrad
18. 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
19. If one’s different one’s bound to be lonely. –Aldous Huxley
20. 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
21. It would be too easy to say that I feel invisible. Instead I feel painfully visible and entirely ignored. –David Levithan
22. I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes and felt it in others–young clerks in the dusk wasting the most poignant moments of night and life. –F. Scott Fitzgerald
23. I’m not much but I’m all I have. –Philip K. Dick
24. I realize for the first time how very lonely I’ve been in the arena. How comforting the presence of another human being can be. –Suzanne Collins
25. Some nights are made for torture or reflection or the savoring of loneliness. –Poppy Z. Brite
26. If a man cannot understand the beauty of life it is probably because life never understood the beauty in him. –Criss Jami 31. Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is richness of self. –May Sarton
27. My imagination makes me human and makes me a fool; it gives me all the world and exiles me from it. –Ursula K. Le Guin
28. The pain of being alone is completely out of this world isn’t it? I don’t know why but I understand your feelings so much it actually hurts. –Masashi Kishimoto
29. Depression on my left Loneliness on my right. They don’t need to show me their badges. I know these guys very well. –Elizabeth Gilbert
30. My loneliness was born when men praised my talkative faults and blamed my silent virtues. –Kahlil Gibran
31. Like crying wolf, if you keep looking for sympathy as a justification for your actions you will someday be left standing alone when you really need help. –Criss Jami
32. I think there is a price to being alone and there is a price to being in a relationship. It all depends on which price you want to pay – but none of them are free. –Lonny Price
33. Loneliness becomes an acid that eats away at you. –Haruki Murakami
34. Deep down the young are lonelier than the old. –Anne Frank
35. What loneliness is more lonely than distrust? –George Eliot
36. Over time loneliness gets inside you and doesn’t go away. –Carlos Ruiz Zafón
37. Lonely was much better than alone. –Toni Morrison
38. To forget a friend is sad. Not everyone has had a friend. –Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
39. Loneliness in a crowd of people was the worst kind of loneliness but she couldn’t help it. –Lauren Kate
40. I believe in whatever gets you through the night. Night is the hardest time to be alive. For me anyway. It lasts so long and four a.m. knows all my secrets. –Poppy Z. Brite
41. Eternity is a long time to spend alone without others of your kind. –Cassandra Clare

Forever Alone Quotes

49. The only time we waste is the time we spend thinking we are alone. –Mitch Albom
50. Loneliness adds beauty to life. It puts a special burn on sunsets and makes night air smell better. –Henry Rollins
51. If you smile when you are alone then you really mean it. –Andy Rooney
52. That’s love: Two lonely persons keep each other safe and touch each other and talk to each other. –Rainer Maria Rilke
53. What a lovely surprise to finally discover how unlonely being alone can be. –Ellen Burstyn
54. Because once alone it is impossible to believe that one could ever have been otherwise. Loneliness is an absolute discovery. Marilynne Robinson
55. Even in the loneliest moments I have been there for myself. –Sanober Khan
56. I barely noticed loneliness anymore; it was my normal condition by necessity if not by nature. –Rachel Hartman
57. I’m all alone but I’m not lonely. –Haruki Murakami
58. If I could always read I should never feel the want of company. –George Gordon Byron
59. I am lonely sometimes but I dare say it’s good for me… Louisa May Alcott
60. I was trained to turn loneliness into laziness. –Bill Callahan
61. I need the pain of loneliness to make my imagination work. –Orhan Pamuk
62. Solitude is where one discovers one is not alone. –Marty Rubin
63. People run away to be alone he said. Some people had to be alone. –William Trevor
64. There’s a special quality to the loneliness of dusk, a melancholy more brooding even than the night’s. –Ed Gorman
65. Yes after all this by now was his customary loneliness: there was little else he desired for the present than the hospitality of the dark. –Walter de la Mare
66. It is better to be alone than in bad company. –George Washington
67. I tell you loneliness is the thing to master. Courage and fear love death are only parts of it and can easily be ruled afterwards. If I make myself master my own loneliness there will be peace or safety: and perhaps these are the same. –Martha Gellhorn
68. Why be crying fearful lonely when you have the whole universe? Be still listen to your heart breathe and know you need nothing. –Jay Woodman
69. I was not unhappy. I wanted to be with someone. But it didn’t trouble me that I was alone. –André Aciman
70. We isolated ourselves because it hurt less. –Jodi Picoult
71. Kill the loneliness by being with yourself all alone. –Vikrmn Corpkshetra
72. If you find yourself in the middle of nowhere allow your mind to go everywhere. –Jenim Dibie
73. It’s better to be unhappy alone than unhappy with someone. –Marilyn Monroe
74. I don’t want to be alone I want to be left alone. –Audrey Hepburn
75. Sometimes it’s better to be alone no one can hurt you that way. –Tinku Razoria
76. Sometimes I think that my own company is more suitable for me than if I were around others. Because of the person that I am. –Kyle Labe
77. 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
78. None of us are really alone as long as we’re lonely. –Maggie Stiefvater
79. He would be lonely all his life. But a man took it for his share and went on. –Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
80. There’s nothing abnormal about loneliness. –Paula Stokes
81. Turn your loneliness into singing and praying and you shall realize that you are never alone at all –Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
82. If I can teach myself the art of loneliness then perhaps the art of writing will come more easily to me. –Nell Stevens
83. No one is ever alone and silence does not equate defeat. –Joan Ambu
84. It is good to be alone for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult should be one more reason to do it. –Rainer Maria Rilke
85. You better go alone than with negative people! –Israelmore Ayivor
86. If you want to miss your crown follow the crowd. If you want to wear the crown go alone and be yourself. –Israelmore Ayivor
87. An overcrowded world is the ideal place in which to be lonely. –Brian W. Aldiss
88. Loneliness teaches and shows you the real and unreal and such things that one can never understand and even imagine living with others. –Ehsan Sehgal
89. I’ll never forget how the depression and loneliness felt good and bad at the same time. Still does. –Henry Rollins
90. We must become so alone so utterly alone that we withdraw into our innermost self. It is a way of bitter suffering. But then our solitude is overcome we are no longer alone for we find that our innermost self is the spirit that it is God the indivisible. And suddenly we find ourselves in the midst of the world yet undisturbed by its multiplicity for our innermost soul we know ourselves to be one with all being. –Hermann Hesse
91. Lonely people tend rather to be lonely because they decline to bear the psychic costs of being around other humans. They are allergic to people. People affect them too strongly. –David Foster Wallace
92. If you learn to really sit with loneliness and embrace it for the gift that it is…an opportunity to get to know YOU to learn how strong you really are to depend on no one but YOU for your happiness…you will realize that a little loneliness goes a LONG way in creating a richer deeper more vibrant and colorful YOU. –Mandy Hale
93. I am alone I thought and they are everybody. –Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Love and Loneliness Quotes

98. 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
99. 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
100. How we need another soul to cling to. –Sylvia Plath
101. I thought the love I’d had for him belonged to the past to the foolish lonely girl I never wanted to be again. I’d tried to bury that girl and the love she’d felt just as I’d tried to bury my power. But I wouldn’t make that mistake again. –Leigh Bardugo
102. He says he’s lonely horribly lonely because of this love he feels for her. She says she’s lonely too. She doesn’t say why. –Marguerite Duras
103. To me you were more than just a person. You were a place where I finally felt at home. –Denice Envall
104. I’m just an insomniac struggling for a night where I don’t dream of you anymore. –Lone Alaskan Gypsy
105. Ever been so happy for someone and so aware of how lonely their happiness makes you feel at the same time? –Carey Heywood
106. He was in love with every pretty woman he saw now their forms at a distance their shadows on the walls. –F. Scott Fitzgerald
107. I think one of the most poignant things is unrequited love and loneliness. Wilbur Smith
108. If I want to believe that life is lonely and that nobody loves me then that is what I will find in my world. –Louise L. Hay
109. Feelings such as loneliness longing or love are sometimes hard to put into words; maybe that’s why we all love music because it resonates with something we can’t share. –Agnes Obel
110. 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
111. I had to learn compassion. Had to learn what it felt like to hate and to forgive and to love and be loved. And to lose people close to me. Had to feel deep loneliness and sorrow. And then I could write. –Louise Penny
112. 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
113. Maybe true love isn’t out there for me but I can sublimate my loneliness with the notion that true love is out there for someone. –Roxane Gay
114. I secretly enjoy being alone – hiking alone skiing alone walking along the beach alone going to movies alone. Do not get me wrong I like sharing my life with other people but sometimes really enjoy being as alone as possible. –Josh Zuckerman
115. We’re born alone we live alone we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we’re not alone. –Orson Welles
116. Until you get comfortable with being alone you’ll never know if you’re choosing someone out of love or loneliness. –Mandy Hale
117. I’m fascinated with myself and love hearing the sound of my own voice. I’d like to hear what I have to say. A lot of people don’t like being alone because they truly don’t like themselves but I love me. –Gene Simmons
118. Some people can’t stand being alone. I love solitude and silence. But when I come out of it I’m a regular talking machine. It’s all or nothing for me. –Celine Dion
119. You cannot be lonely if you like the person you’re alone with. — Wayne Dyer
120. And sometimes I just need to be alone so I can cry without being judged so I can think without being interrupted so I don’t bring anyone else down with me. — Unknown
121. Leadership is the other side of the coin of loneliness and he who is a leader must always act alone. And acting alone accept everything alone. –Ferdinand Marcos
122. Nothing makes us more vulnerable than loneliness except greed. –Thomas Harris
123. It’s clear to me that anyone anywhere can experience loneliness isolation solitude and estrangement, and most people probably do encounter these things at some point in their lives. –Brendan Myers

Famous Quotes on Loneliness

128. Loneliness adds beauty to life. It puts a special burn on sunsets and makes night air smell better. –Henry Rollins
129. Loneliness expresses the pain of being alone and solitude expresses the glory of being alone. –Paul Tillich
130. I think one of the most poignant things is unrequited love and loneliness. –Wilbur Smith
131. But the West of the old times, with its strong characters, it’s stern battles and its tremendous stretches of loneliness, can never be blotted from my mind. –Buffalo Bill
132. In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable. –John Steinbeck
133. There comes a real loneliness in celebrity where you’re constantly told you’re part of an outgroup in your own society. –Cole Sprouse
134. My inspirations are the woman, friendship, and loneliness. –Enrique Iglesias
135. There’s a difference between solitude and loneliness. I can understand the concept of being a monk for a while. –Tom Hanks
136. When so many are lonely as seem to be lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone. –Tennessee Williams
137. I never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude. –Henry David Thoreau
138. I am a lover without a lover. I am lovely and lonely and I belong deeply to myself. Warsan ShireThey are never alone that are accompanied with noble thoughts. –Sir Philip Sidney
139. The worst loneliness is not to be comfortable with yourself. –Mark Twain
140. We’re born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we’re not alone. –Orson Welles
141. Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness. –Maya Angelou
142. Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering—and it’s all over much too soon. –Woody Allen
143. 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
144. It is strange to be known so universally and yet to be so lonely. –Albert Einstein
145. A tramp, a gentleman, a poet, a dreamer, a lonely fellow, always hopeful of romance and adventure. –Charlie Chaplin
146. Everybody has something that chews them up and, for me, that thing was always loneliness. The cinema has the power to make you not feel lonely, even when you are. –Tom Hanks
147. One thing that somebody told me is that leadership is a lonely role – some people can do it, and some people can’t. –Kyrie Irving
148. No one really wants to admit they are lonely, and it is never really addressed very much between friends and family. But I have felt lonely many times in my life. –Bill Murray
149. Loneliness is the unloneliest feeling in the world, as everyone has experienced it. Jarod KintzForget sex or politics or religion, loneliness is the subject that clears out a room. –Douglas Coupland
150. The sea is everything. It covers seven tenths of the terrestrial globe. Its breath is pure and healthy. It is an immense desert, where man is never lonely, for he feels life stirring on all sides. –Jules Verne
151. Success is nothing if you don’t have the right people to share it with; you’re just gonna end up lonely. –Selena Gomez
152. Everyone’s alone — or so it seems to me. They make noises, and think they are talking to each other; They make faces, and think they understand each other. And I’m sure they don’t. Is that a delusion? –T.S. Eliot
153. Tore up my heart and shut it down. Nothing to do, nowhere to be. A simple little kind of free. Nothing to do, no one but me, and that’s all I need. I’m perfectly lonely. –John Mayer
154. Columbus discovered no isle or key so lonely as himself. –Ralph Waldo Emerson
155. 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
156. Pray that your loneliness may spur you into finding something to live for, great enough to die for. –Dag Hammarskjold
157. The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be. –Anne Frank
158. As far as I knew white women were never lonely, except in books. White men adored them, Black men desired them and Black women worked for them. –Maya Angelou
159. The most terrible poverty is loneliness and the feeling of being unloved. –Mother Teresa
160. Let us touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the unwanted according to the graces we have received and let us not be ashamed or slow to do the humble work. –Mother Teresa
161. History shows that the majority of people that have done anything great have passed their youth in seclusion. –Thomas Carlyle
162. I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best. — Frida Kahlo
163. The strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone. –Henrik Ibsen 170 The gift of loneliness is sometimes a radical vision of society or one’s people that has not previously been taken into account. –Alice Walker
164. All men’s misfortunes spring from their hatred of being alone. –Jean de La Bruyère
165. It’s a terrible thing to be alone — yes it is — it is — but don’t lower your mask until you have another mask prepared beneath –as terrible as you like –but a mask. –Katherine Mansfield
166. If you are lonely when you are alone, you are in bad company. –Jean-Paul Sartre
167. We are all sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life. — Tennessee Williams
168. You cannot be lonely if you like the person you’re alone with. –Wayne Dyer
169. At the innermost core of all loneliness is a deep and powerful yearning for union with one’s lost self. –Brendan Francis
170. Some nights are made for torture, or reflection, or the savoring of loneliness. –Poppy Z. Brite
171. Lonely people, in talking to each other can make each other lonelier. –Lillian Hellman
172. It is good to be lonely, for being alone is not easy. The fact that something is difficult must be one more reason to do it. — Rilke 181. Pretending to be happy when you’re alone is an example of how strong you are as a person.Take care of your thoughts when you’re alone. And take care of your words when you’re with people. We are all so much together but we are all dying of loneliness. — Albert Schweitzer

Sad Loneliness Quotes

182. 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 184. Why do people have to be this lonely? What’s the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness? — Haruki Murakami 185. I’m so scared of dying without ever being really seen. Can you understand? — David Foster Wallace 186. I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others — young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life. — F. Scott Fitzgerald 187. I’m lonely. And I’m lonely in some horribly deep 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 188. I am lonely, yet not everybody will do. I don’t know why, some people fill the gaps and others emphasize my loneliness. — Anaïs Nin 189. I see myself forever and ever as the ridiculous man, the lonely soul, the wanderer, the restless frustrated artist, the man in love with love, always in search of the absolute, always seeking the unattainable. — Henry Miller 190. The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It’s the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared. –Lois Lowry 191. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, but it sure makes the rest of you lonely. — Charles M. Schulz 192. You want to ask, am I lonely? Well, of course, lonely as a woman driving across country day after day, leaving behind mile after mile little towns she might have stopped and lived and died in. — Adrienne Rich 193. Being alone never felt right. Sometimes it felt good, but it never felt right. — Charles Bukowski 195. 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 196. 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 197. There is no loneliness like that of a failed marriage. –Alexander Theroux 198. Loneliness is and always has been the central and inevitable experience of every man. — Thomas Wolfe 199. The most terrible poverty is loneliness and the feeling of being unloved. — Mother Teresa 200. 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 201. Loneliness is such an omnipotent and painful threat to many persons that they have little conception of the positive values of solitude and even, at times, are frightened at the prospect of being alone. — Rollo May Wish Your Loved One A Peaceful Sleep With These 71 Inspirational Goodnight Quotes 12 Of The Best Ways To Overcome Fear Of Being Alone 37 Of The Most Romantic Things To Do For Your Wife To Make Her Heart Melt Use these lonely quotes to improve your life. What makes us truly happy and content in life? Some may believe the answer is wealth or success, but studies have often shown that human connections — friends and family– are the main source of happiness. Reading these lonely quotes may gift you a lift, but consider using these quotes to connect with other people.

Share them on social media or with a friend. Call someone you haven’t spoken with in a while and read your favorite quote to him or her. Use one of these quotes to communicate to a loved one how you are feeling. Send a card to another person who feels isolated and include one of these messages.

Your efforts to reach out to others, even when it feels uncomfortable, is the first step toward feeling less lonesome. What are some loneliness quotes that speak to you and help you cope with your feelings? Did you find any value from these quotes about loneliness? I hope you’ll use these loneliness quotes to help you when you’re having a sad day. Which lonely quotes were the more helpful and inspirational for you?