Loneliness Quotes

“He was unheeded, happy, and near to the wild heart of life. He was alone and young and wilful and wildhearted, alone amid a waste of wild air and brackish waters and the seaharvest of shells and tangle and veiled grey sunlight.”

“Will. For a moment her heart hesitated. She remembered when Will had died, her agony, the long nights alone, reaching across the bed every morning when she woke up, for years expecting to find him there, and only slowly growing accustomed to the fact that side of the bed would always be empty. The moments when she had found something funny and turned to share the joke with him, only to be shocked anew that he was not there. The worst moments, when, sitting alone at breakfast, she had realized that she had forgotten the precise blue of his eyes or the depth of his laugh; that, like the sound of Jem's violin music, they had faded into the distance where memories are silent.”

“The hollowness in his chest, the tense yearning, the loneliness he braces against, every morning until he can immerse himself in work and forget. Not love. Something else, something with a power that endures. Not love, but a memory of love.”

“Our lack of community is intensely painful. A TV talk show is not community. A couple of hours in a church pew each Sabbath is not community. A multinational corporation is neither a human nor a community, and in the sweatshops, defiled agribusiness fields, genetic mutation labs, ecological dead zones, the inhumanity is showing. Without genuine spiritual community, life becomes a struggle so lonely and grim that even Hillary Clinton has admitted "it takes a village".”

“It’s sad that most of our real life problems that affect us daily, don't make it as breaking news on facebook. They are not trending on twitter or not glamorous enough for instagram and those problems are the ones that take away our happiness. The problems that other people don't know about. The ones we fight alone everyday and every night.”

“There is no such thing as a special biblical hermeneutics. But we have to learn that hermeneutics which is alone and generally valid by means of the Bible as the witness of revelation. We therefore arrive at the suggested rule, not from a general anthropology, but from the Bible, and obviously, as the rule which is alone and generally valid, we must apply it first to the Bible.The fact that we have to understand and expound the Bible as a human word can now be explained rather more exactly in this way: that we have to listen to what it says to us as a human word. We have to understand it as a human word in the light of what it says.Under the caption of a truly "historical" understanding of the Bible we cannot allow ourselves to commend an understanding which does not correspond to the rule suggested: a hearing in which attention is paid to the biblical expressions but not to what the words signify, in which what is said is not heard or overheard; an understanding of the biblical words from their immanent linguistic and factual context, instead of from what they say and what we hear them say in this context; an exposition of the biblical words which in the last resort consists only in an exposition of the biblical men in their historical reality. To this we must say that it is not an honest and unreserved understanding of the biblical word as a human word, and it is not therefore an historical understanding of the Bible. In an understanding of this kind the Bible cannot be witness. In this type of understanding, in which it is taken so little seriously, indeed not at all, as a human word, the possibility of its being witness is taken away from the very outset. The philosophy which lies behind this kind of understanding and would force us to accept it as the only true historical understanding is not of course a very profound or respectable one. But even if we value it more highly, or highest of all, and are therefore disposed to place great confidence in its dictates, knowing what is involved in the understanding of the Bible, we can only describe this kind of understanding of the reality of a human word as one which cannot possibly do justice to its object. Necessarily, therefore, we have to reject most decisively the intention of even the most profound and respectable philosophy to subject any human word and especially the biblical word to this understanding. The Bible cannot be read unbiblically. And in this case that means that it cannot be read with such a disregard for its character even as a human word. It cannot be read so unhistorically.§19.1, pp. 466-467)”

“If there's ever an example that military power alone cannot be successful in Afghanistan, I think it was the Soviet experience.”

“Man, alone, has the power to transform his thoughts into physical reality; man, alone, can dream and make his dreams come true.”

“I am not afraid to walk alone.”

“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.”

“The world is supposed to be full of possibilities, but they narrow down to pretty few in most personal experience. There's lots of good fish in the sea... maybe... but the vast masses seem to be mackerel or herring, and if you're not mackerel or herring yourself, you are likely to find very few good fish in the sea.”

“There are lots of different ways grown-ups disappear. It's lonely being the one left behind.”

“I like a lot of James Harden, isolation-wise. Chris Paul in the pick-and-roll. Kevin Durant in transition.”

“Slavery has been outlawed in most arab countries for years now but there are villages in jordan made up entirely of descendants of runaway Saudi slaves. Abdulrahman knows he might be free, but hes still an arab. No one ever wants to be the arab - its too old and too tragic, too mysterious and too exasperating, and too lonely for anyone but an actual arab to put up with for very long. Essentially, its an image problem. Ask anyone, Persian, Turks, even Lebanese and Egyptians - none of them want to be the arab. They say things like, well, really we're indo-russian-asian european- chaldeans, so in the end the only one who gets to be the arab is the same little old bedouin with his goats and his sheep and his poetry about his goats and his sheep, because he doesnt know that he's the arab, and what he doesnt know wont hurt him.”

“They had not been long there before Lord Dumbello did group himself. 'Fine day,' he said, coming up and occupying the vacant position by Miss Grantly's elbow.'We were driving to-day and we thought it rather cold,' said Griselda.'Deuced cold,' said Lord Dumbello, and then he adjusted his white cravat and touched up his whiskers. Having got so far, he did not proceed to any other immediate conversational efforts; nor did Griselda. But he grouped himself again as became a marquis, and gave very intense satisfaction to Mrs. Proudie.'This is so kind of you, Lord Dumbello,' said that lady, coming up to him and shaking his hand warmly; 'so very kind of you to come to my poor little tea-party.''Uncommonly pleasant, I call it,' said his lordship. 'I like this sort of thing--no trouble, you know.''No; that is the charm of it: isn't it? no trouble or fuss, or parade. That's what I always say. According to my ideas, society consists in giving people facility for an interchange of thoughts--what we call conversation.''Aw, yes, exactly.''Not in eating and drinking together--eh, Lord Dumbello? And yet the practice of our lives would seem to show that the indulgence of those animal propensities can alone suffice to bring people together. The world in this has surely made a great mistake.''I like a good dinner all the same,' said Lord Dumbello.'Oh, yes, of course--of course. I am by no means one of those who would pretend to preach that our tastes have not been given to us for our enjoyment. Why should things be nice if we are not to like them?''A man who can really give a good dinner has learned a great deal,' said Lord Dumbello, with unusual animation.'An immense deal. It is quite an art in itself; and one which I, at any rate, by no means despise. But we cannot always be eating -- can we?''No,' said Lord Dumbello, 'not always.' And he looked as though he lamented that his powers should be so circumscribed.”

“There's something to be said in favor of working in isolation in the real world.”

“...and you drink a little too much and try a little too hard. And you go home to a cold bed and think, 'That was fine'. And your life is a long line of fine.”

“I remembered my mother's speech at my wedding. "In sickness and in sickness. That is what I wish for you. Don't seek or expect miracles. There are no miracles. Not anymore. And there are no cures for the hurt that hurts most. There is only the medicine of believing each other's pain, and being present for it." Who will believe my pain? Who will be present for it?”

“...accustomed like the white blackbird to the loneliness of eccentricity yet never quite reconciled to it, they found in each other's oddness a most comforting compatibility.”

“Acquire the habit of speaking to God as if you were alone with Him, familiarly and with confidence and love, as to the dearest and most loving of friends.”