This collection of 150 quotes on being alone and lonely gives more insight on both the spectrum. The quotes include various aspects such as imagination, connection, solitude, writing, rich people, freedom and so on.

Alone and lonely quotes

1. Writing is a lonely business. – Sherman Alexie

2. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. – Carson McCullers

3. Be good and you will be lonely. – Mark Twain

4. There’s nothing wrong with being fired. – Ted Turner

5. Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. – Ernest Hemingway

6. The surest cure for vanity is loneliness. – Tom Wolfe

7. All great and precious things are lonely. – John Steinbeck

8. It’s a dismally lonely business, writing. – Toni Cade Bambara

9. Man’s loneliness is but his fear of life. – Eugene O’Neill

10. If I am a legend, then why am I so lonely? – Judy Garland

11. One aged man – one man – can’t fill a house. – Robert Frost

12. To live alone is the fate of all great souls. – Arthur Schopenhauer

13. It is better to be alone than in bad company. – George Washington

14. What loneliness is more lonely than distrust? – George Eliot

15. The lonely become either thoughtful or empty. – Mason Cooley

16. If one’s different, one’s bound to be lonely. – Aldous Huxley

17. Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong. – Winston Churchill

18. All the lonely people, where do they all come from? – Paul McCartney

19. Loneliness is the universal problem of rich people. – Joan Collins

20. I don’t go out of my way to make friends, that’s all. – Haruki Murakami

21. Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much. – Helen Keller

22. No one ever discovers the depths of his own loneliness. – Georges Bernanos

23. Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness? – Haruki Murakami

24. If you are afraid of being lonely, don’t try to be right. – Jules Renard

25. It’s better to be unhappy alone than unhappy with someone. – Marilyn Monroe

26. I believe a lot of disease comes from anxiety, loneliness. – Tom Cochrane

27. Your actions, and your action alone, determines your worth. – Evelyn Waugh

28. you’ll never be lonely if you learn to be friend your self. – David Archuleta

29. If you are lonely when you’re alone, you are in bad company. – Jean-Paul Sartre

30. The worst loneliness is not to be comfortable with yourself. – Mark Twain

31. Loneliness is the first thing which God‘s eye named not good. – John Milton

32. A person’s heart withers if it does not answer another heart. – Pearl S. Buck

33. The only real progress lies in learning to be wrong all alone. – Albert Camus

34. There is none more lonely than the man who loves only himself. – Abraham ibn Ezra

35. They are never alone that are accompanied with noble thoughts. – Philip Sidney

36. Nothing makes us more vulnerable than loneliness except greed. – Thomas Harris

37. Alone, all alone Nobody, but nobody Can make it out here alone. – Maya Angelou

38. I never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude. – Henry David Thoreau

39. I may climb perhaps to no great heights, but I will climb alone. – Cyrano de Bergerac

40. We are all so much together, but we are all dying of loneliness. – Albert Schweitzer

41. It is strange to be known so universally and yet to be so lonely. – Albert Einstein

42. No price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. – Friedrich Nietzsche

43. In solitude the mind gains strength and learns to lean upon itself. – Laurence Sterne

44. Being prime minister is a lonely job you cannot lead from the crowd. – Margaret Thatcher

45. When thinking about companions gone, we feel ourselves doubly alone. – Walter Scott

46. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will. – George Bernard Shaw

47. Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is the richness of self. – May Sarton

48. The time you feel lonely is the time you most need to be by yourself. – Douglas Coupland

49. Dreams have only one owner at a time. That’s why dreamers are lonely. – Erma Bombeck

50. Lonely people, in talking to each other can make each other lonelier. – Lillian Hellman

51. Loneliness is proof that your innate search for connection is intact. – Martha Beck

52. The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up. – Mark Twain

53. You and I share the same DNA. Is there anything more lonely than that? – Charlie Kaufman

54. My major regret in life is that my childhood was unnecessarily lonely. – Truman Capote

55. There is no greater sorrow than to recall happiness in times of misery. – Dante Alighieri

56. Solitude is fine, but you need someone to tell you that solitude is fine. – Honore de Balzac

57. All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone. – Blaise Pascal

58. What a lovely surprise to finally discover how unlonely being alone can be. – Ellen Burstyn

59. We are all sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life. – Tennessee Williams

60. When we truly realize that we are all alone is when we need others the most. – Ronald Anthony Cross

61. The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside. – Anne Frank

62. The eternal quest of the individual human being is to shatter his loneliness. – Norman Cousins

63. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, but it sure makes the rest of you lonely. – Charles M. Schulz

64. Unless we love and are loved, each of us is alone, each of us is deeply lonely. – Mortimer Adler

65. The dread of loneliness is greater than the fear of bondage, so we get married. – Cyril Connolly

66. We are born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Everything in-between is a gift. – Yul Brynner

67. At last my love has come along. My lonely days are over and life is like a song. – Etta James

68. The worst thing about loneliness is that it brings one face to face with oneself. – Mary Balogh

69. There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore. – James F. Cooper

70. The individual has always to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. – Friedrich Nietzsche

71. Sometimes life is too hard to be alone, and sometimes life is too good to be alone. – Elizabeth Gilbert

72. Fame always brings loneliness. Success is as ice cold and lonely as the North Pole. – Vicki Baum

73. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination. – Mary Oliver

74. Stormy or sunny days, glorious or lonely nights, I maintain an attitude of gratitude. – Maya Angelou

75. The loneliness you feel with another person, the wrong person, is the loneliest of all. – Deb Caletti

76. An artist is always alone – if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness. – Henry Miller

77. This world that I live in is empty and cold/the loneliness cuts me and tortures my soul. – Waylon Jennings

78. Don’t try to hog loneliness and keep it all to yourself. Share it with a special someone. – Jarod Kintz

79. The more we care for the happiness of others, the greater is our own sense of well-being. – Dalai Lama

80. From that moment on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again. – Betty Smith

81. No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path. – Buddha

82. I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity. – Albert Einstein

83. He who believes is strong; he who doubts is weak. Strong convictions precede great actions. – Louisa May Alcott

84. I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion. – Henry David Thoreau

85. The capacity for not feeling lonely can carry a very real price, that of feeling nothing at all. – Douglas Coupland

86. At the beginning and at the end of love, the two lovers are embarrassed to find themselves alone. – Jean de la Bruyere

87. When so many are lonely as seem to be lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone. – Tennessee Williams

88. Being the boss anywhere is lonely. Being a female boss in a world of mostly men is especially so. – Robert Frost

89. A tramp, a gentleman, a poet, a dreamer, a lonely fellow, always hopeful of romance and adventure. – Charlie Chaplin

90. Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness. – Maya Angelou

91. In cities no one is quiet but many are lonely; in the country, people are quiet but few are lonely. – Geoffrey Fisher

92. Loneliness adds beauty to life. It puts a special burn on sunsets and makes night air smell better. – Henry Rollins

93. Pray that your loneliness may spur you into finding something to live for, great enough to die for. – Dag Hammarskjold

94. No one would choose a friendless existence on condition of having all the other things in the world. – Aristotle

95. Please, don’t go. It’s lonely. There’s a hole in my head as big as the world and it’s so very lonely. – Alan Moore

96. My only relief is to sleep. When I’m sleeping, I’m not sad, I’m not angry, I’m not lonely, I’m nothing. – Jillian Medoff

97. Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying. – Arthur C. Clarke

98. You can be lonely even when you are loved by many people, since you are still not anybody’s one and only. – Anne Frank

99. People who lead a lonely existence always have something on their minds that they are eager to talk about. – Anton Chekhov

100. The thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, is inevitably that which must also make you lonely. – Lorraine Hansberry

101. The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It’s the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared. – Lois Lowry

102. Let us pray that the Church be holier and more humble, loving God by serving the poor, the lonely and the sick. – Pope Francis

103. People drain me, even the closest of friends, and I find loneliness to be the best state in the union to live in. – Margaret Cho

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

105. To live as true children of God means to love our neighbour and to be close to those who are lonely and in difficulty. – Pope Francis

106. 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

107. 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

108. arouse in the other person an eager want. He who can do this has the whole world with him. He who cannot walks a lonely way. – Dale Carnegie

109. Freedom is a lonely battle, but if the United States doesn’t lead it – sometimes imperfectly, but mostly with honor – who will? – Cal Thomas

110. 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

111. 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

112. Its beautiful to be alone. To be alone does not mean to be lonely. it means the mind is not influenced and contaminated by society. – Jiddu Krishnamurti

113. 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

114. Living the past is a dull and lonely business; looking back strains the neck muscles, causing you to bump into people not going your way. – Edna Ferber

115. She had become accustomed to being lonely. She was used to walking alone and to being considered ‘different.’ She did not suffer too much. – Betty Smith

116. 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

117. 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

118. Writing is something you do alone. Its a profession for introverts who want to tell you a story but don’t want to make eye contact while doing it. – John Green

119. With some people solitariness is an escape not from others but from themselves. For they see in the eyes of others only a reflection of themselves. – Eric Hoffer

120. 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

121. No matter how lonely you get or how many birth announcements you receive, the trick is not to get frightened. There’s nothing wrong with being alone. – Wendy Wasserstein

122. I think it’s good for a person to spend time alone. It gives them an opportunity to discover who they are and to figure out why they are always alone. – Amy Sedaris

123. Most performers don’t admit this, because it sounds negative and performers are not supposed to be negative, but when I was on the road, I was lonely. – Tom Glazer

124. 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 all alone. – Robin Williams

125. 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

126. We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive alone, alone in patches, alone in groups, alone in races, even alone in genders. – Maya Angelou

127. Booksellers are the most valuable destination for the lonely, given the numbers of books that were written because authors couldn’t find anyone to talk to. – Alain de Botton

128. If you have a sick or lonely person at home, be there. Maybe just to hold a hand, maybe just to give a smile, that is the greatest, the most beautiful work. – Mother Teresa

129. 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

130. It would do the world good if every man would compel himself occasionally to be absolutely alone. Most of the world s progress has come out of such loneliness. – Bruce Barton

131. I sit between my brother the mountain and my sister the sea. We three are one in loneliness, and the love that binds us together is deep and strong and strange. – Khalil Gibran

132. I also wanted to express the strength of cinema to hide reality, while being entertaining. Cinema can fill in the empty spaces of your life and your loneliness. – Pedro Almodovar

133. To dare to live alone is the rarest courage; since there are many who had rather meet their bitterest enemy in the field, than their own hearts in their closet. – Charles Caleb Colton

134. Snuggle in God’s arms. When you are hurting, when you feel lonely, left out. let Him cradle you, comfort you, reassure you of His all-sufficient power and love. – Kay Arthur

135. That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you’re not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong. – F. Scott Fitzgerald

136. The life I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place my touch will be felt. – Frederick Buechner

137. A man can be himself only so long as he is alone, and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom, for it is only when he is alone that he is really free. – Arthur Schopenhauer

138. But she wasn’t around, and that’s the thing when your parents die, you feel like instead of going in to every fight with backup, you are going into every fight alone. – Mitch Albom

139. 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

140. Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect. – Chief Seattle

141. 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

142. 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

143. Who knows what true loneliness is – not the conventional word but the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion. – Joseph Conrad

144. A lonely man is a lonesome thing, a stone, a bone, a stick, a receptacle for Gilbey’s gin, a stooped figure sitting at the edge of a hotel bed, heaving copious sighs like the autumn wind. – John Cheever

145. What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured. – Kurt Vonnegut

146. It’s getting to the point where I am no fun anymore, I am sorry. Sometimes it hurts so badly I must cry out loud, ‘ I am lonely.’ I am yours, you are mine, you are what you are, you make it hard. – Stephen Stills

147. 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

148. Only in a house where one has learnt to be lonely does one have this solicitude for things. One’s relation to them, the daily seeing or touching, begins to become love, and to lay one open to pain. – Elizabeth Bowen

149. I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o’er vales and hills When all at once I saw a crowd A host of golden daffodils Beside the lake beneath the trees Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. – William Wordsworth

150. The only thing that makes one an artist is making art. And that requires the precise opposite of hanging out; a deeply lonely and unglamorous task of tolerating oneself long enough to push something out. – David Rakoff