“Isolation offered its own form of companionship.”
“Isolation is a self-defeating dream.” —Carlos Salinas de Gortari
“Tears do not burn except in solitude.” —Emil Cioran
“No man is an island, entire of itself.” —John Donne
“Without great solitude no serious work is possible.” —Pablo Picasso
“I was never less alone than when by myself.” —Edward Gibbon
“Solitude, isolation, are painful things and beyond human endurance.” —Jules Verne
“Isolation is the sum total of wretchedness to a man.” —Thomas Carlyle
“Loneliness doesn’t have much to do with where you are.” —Hugh Hefner
“There was nothing lonelier than a man with a million friends.” —William Shatner
“Loneliness is the first thing which God’s eye named not good.” —John Milton
“Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is richness of self.” —May Sarton
“You cannot be lonely if you like the person you’re alone with.” —Wayne Dyer
“We’re all islands shouting lies to each other across seas of misunderstanding.” —Rudyard Kipling
“The strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone.” —Henrik Ibsen
“Lonely people, in talking to each other can make each other lonelier.” —Lillian Hellman
“What a lovely surprise to finally discover how unlonely being alone can be.” —Ellen Burstyn
“People need loving the most when they appear to deserve it the least.” —John Harrigan
“Children love to be alone because alone is where they know themselves, and where they dream.”
“Loneliness is and always has been the central and inevitable experience of every man.” —Thomas Wolfe
“We’re all of us sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life!” —Tennessee Williams
“Be able to be alone. Lose not the advantage of solitude, and the society of thyself.”
“But there are other words for privacy and independence. They are isolation and loneliness.” —Megan Whalen Turner
“Solitude is fine but you need someone to tell you that solitude is fine.” —Honoré de Balzac
“It is strange how the presence of additional people can make you feel more alone.” —James Alan Gardner
“No one can live entirely on their own, nor can any country or society exist in isolation.” —Daisaku Ikeda
“The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.” —Aldous Huxley
“Solitude is a chosen separation for refining your soul. Isolation is what you crave when you neglect the first.”
“When so many are lonely as seem to be lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone.” —Tennessee Williams
“I would get a lot of writing done if I lived in isolation in a cave under a swamp.” —Claire Cameron
“Love can isolate us from everything around us. But in its absence, we can be filled with the fear that something comparable exists.” —Carlos Fuentes
“Too much self-centered attitude, you see, brings, you see, isolation. Result: loneliness, fear, anger. The extreme self-centered attitude is the source of suffering.” —Dalai Lama
“I am in no way different from anyone else, that my predicament, my sense of aloneness or isolation may be precisely what unites me with everyone.”
“Even the technology that promises to unite us, divides us. Each of us is now electronically connected to the globe, and yet we feel utterly alone.” —Dan Brown
“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
“A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably.” —Ludwig Wittgenstein
“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
“You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.” —Dale Carnegie
“There is no such thing as a good or bad ad in isolation. What is good at one moment is bad at another. Research can trap you into the past.” —William Bernbach
“I am greatly pleased with the public, authentic isolation in which we two, you and I, now find ourselves. It is wholly in accord with our attitude and our principles.” —Karl Marx
“I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers.” —Henry David Thoreau
“The whole value of solitude depends upon one’s self; it may be a sanctuary or a prison, a haven of repose or a place of punishment, a heaven or a hell, as we ourselves make it.”
“Living alone, though it may not be the state you ultimately desire for yourself, affords an unparalleled opportunity to know yourself, to be yourself, and to develop yourself as a unique and interesting individual.” —Phyllis Hobe
“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
“Isolation is aloneness that feels forced upon you, like a punishment. Solitude is aloneness you choose and embrace. I think great things can come out of solitude, out of going to a place where all is quiet except the beating of your heart.” —Jeanne Marie Laskas
“I have such a fear of finding another like myself, and such a desire to find one! I am so utterly lonely, but I also have such a fear that my isolation be broken through, and I no longer be the head and ruler of my universe.” —Anaïs Nin