We all feel lonely from time to time—it is inevitable.
The problem with loneliness is the other negative feelings it brings. It can make us wonder why we are alone, doubt our self-worth, and lead us into unhealthy coping mechanisms to deal with it, such as compulsive or regular substance use, hanging around with the wrong people, or neglecting our health and well-being.
Loneliness is and always has been the central and inevitable experience of every man.
Thomas Wolfe
Read the collection of feeling alone quotes in this article and bear solitude—it may be loneliness within your relationship or with the people you go engage with.
How do you cope with loneliness
How do you cope with loneliness? Do you have hobbies that help you overcome them? Do you reach out to a few sincere friends and family members through phone and video calls? Do you go and strike up a conversation with strangers?
There are many ways to tackle being alone, and all can lead to incredible opportunities to create new connections and strengthen old ones.
The way you choose to cope with loneliness matters. Some of us feel overwhelmed by it and may feel the need to go out to bars every night or always hang out with friends to avoid it.
But remember that quote, “Bad company corrupts good character.” If the only companion you have can lead to your destruction, it may be better to spend time alone.
Others learn how to sit with it and hear the message it is trying to teach. The latter group usually finds out that it is completely natural to be alone and enjoy a quiet life and realize that it is not something to be feared.
The importance of accepting loneliness
Even though it is wise to have healthy coping techniques for when loneliness feels too heavy, it is also essential to learn how to sit with it.
Loneliness is a natural feeling, and just like all feelings, it needs to be acknowledged and accepted. It is simply part of being human and is something we all face at one point or another.
When you cultivate solitude, understanding yourself becomes a lovely surprise.
Gen Z is the loneliest generation
According to research, rates of loneliness vary among demographics. A 2019 study showed that Gen Z, who are currently under the age of 24, report the highest rates of loneliness. Millennials closely follow them.
What is so interesting about the study results is that Gen Z and millennials are the most globally connected generations than any generation before them.
Advancements in communication technology and immediate access to social media worldwide keep young people in touch cross-culturally. However, more people report feeling lonely than ever before on an individual level.
Loneliness is a shared human experience
Sitting with and accepting loneliness is much easier said than done. It is a powerful feeling that can drive us mad if it gets out of hand.
Loneliness can perpetuate the feeling that we are really on our own in this life. However, many people find solace in the fact that loneliness is a shared experience among humans.
Everyone knows what it is like to some degree, even when your loneliness feels unique to you.
Feeling alone quotes
To help you find some connection with the rest of humanity, we have included a list of over 50 quotes about feeling alone below. Some are sad, some are hopeful, and some explore the positive side of being alone.
Read on, and remember that we all feel alone sometimes.
Feeling alone in a relationship quotes
“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
“For fear you will be alone, you do so many things that aren’t you at all.” — Richard Brautigan
“Yes, there is joy, fulfillment, and companionship, but the loneliness of the soul in its appalling self-consciousness is horrible and overpowering.” — Sylvia Plath
“Keep in mind that to avoid loneliness, many people need both a social circle and an intimate attachment. Having just one of two may still leave you feeling lonely.” — Gretchen Rubin
“Loneliness isn’t about being by yourself. That’s fine, right and good, desirable in many ways. Loneliness is about finding a landing-place, or not, and knowing that, whatever you do, you can go back there. The opposite of loneliness isn’t company, it is return. A place to return.” — Jeanette Winterson
Feeling alone around people quotes
“People think being alone makes you lonely, but I don’t think that’s true. Being surrounded by the wrong people is the loneliest thing in the world.” ― Kim Culbertson
“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
“Where are the people?” resumed the little prince at last. “It’s a little lonely in the desert…” “It is lonely when you’re among people, too,” said the snake.” — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
“Our uniqueness makes us special, makes perception valuable – but it can also make us lonely. This loneliness is different from being ‘alone’: You can be lonely even surrounded by people. The feeling I’m talking about stems from the sense that we can never fully share the truth of who we are. I experienced this acutely at an early age.” — Amy Tan
“We’re all islands shouting lies to each other across seas of misunderstanding.” — Rudyard Kipling
“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
“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
Quotes to help you feel better about feeling alone
“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
“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
“Alone time is when I distance myself from the voices of the world so I can hear my own.” — Oprah Winfrey
“There is something immaculate about loneliness which only lonely people can understand.” — Munia Khan
“Loneliness adds beauty to life. It puts a special burn on sunsets and makes night air smell better.” — Henry Rollins
“What a lovely surprise to finally discover how un-lonely being alone can be.” — Ellen Burstyn
“It’s the rest in a piece of music that gives it resonance and shape.” — Pico Iyer
“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
“There’s nothing abnormal about loneliness.” — Paula Stokes
“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
“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
“Loneliness is proof that your innate search for connection is intact.” — Martha Beck
“Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
“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
“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
“A season of loneliness and isolation is when the caterpillar gets its wings. Remember that next time you feel alone.” — Mandy Hale
“Sometimes you need to take a break from everyone and spend time alone to experience, appreciate, and love yourself.” — Robert Tew
“Remember: the time you feel lonely is the time you most need to be by yourself. Life’s cruelest irony.” ― Douglas Coupland
“If you want to be happy, learn to be alone without being lonely. Learn that being alone does not mean being unhappy. The world is full of plenty of interesting and enjoyable things to do and people who can enrich your life.” — Michael Josephson
“Learn to be alone and to like it. There is nothing more empowering or freeing than learning to like your own company.” — Mandy Hale
“Ordinary men hate solitude. But the Master makes use of it, embracing his aloneness, realizing he is one with the whole universe.” – Lao Tzu
Additional quotes about feeling alone
“All men’s misfortunes spring from their hatred of being alone.” — Jean de La Bruyère
“Lonely is a funny thing. It’s almost like another person. After a while it will keep you company if you let it.” — Ann Packer
“If one’s different one’s bound to be lonely.” — Aldous Huxley
“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
“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
“At the innermost core of all loneliness is a deep and powerful yearning for union with one’s lost self.” — Brendan Behan
“Loneliness is different than isolation and solitude. Loneliness is a subjective feeling where the connections we need are greater than the connections we have. In the gap, we experience loneliness. It’s distinct from the objective state of isolation, which is determined by the number of people around you.” — Vivek Murthy
“The thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, is inevitably that which makes you lonely.” — Lorraine Hansberry
“Being alone & actually sitting with our own thoughts can lead to such growth and realizations that are rare in our everyday busy lives.” — Kourtney Kardashian
“A lonely, quiet person has observations and experiences that are at once both more indistinct and more penetrating than those of one more gregarious; his thoughts are weightier, stranger, and never without a tinge of sadness. Loneliness fosters that which is original, daringly, and bewilderingly beautiful, poetic. But loneliness also fosters that which is perverse, incongruous, absurd, forbidden .” — Thomas Mann
“For the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself—so like a brother, really—I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate .” — Albert Camus
“All great and precious things are lonely.” — John Steinbeck
“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
“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
“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
“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
“I had already found that it was not good to be alone, and so made companionship with what there was around me, sometimes with the universe and sometimes with my own insignificant self; but my books were always my friends, let fail all else.” — Joshua Slocum
“The eternal quest of the individual human being is to shatter his loneliness.” — Norman Cousins
“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
“Loneliness is not lack of company, loneliness is lack of purpose.” — Guillermo Maldonado
When to seek help
Even though we all feel alone from time to time, that does not always make it easier to deal with. The nature of feelings is that we feel disconnected from others, even when we know they are going through the same thing.
If you have been feeling alone lately, and having a hard time dealing with it, reach out for support.
Loneliness is natural, but it can also be dangerous. Though spending quiet time may be one way to be in tune with oneself, constant isolation has been proven to significantly increase people’s tendency to foster negative emotions, elevates risk of mental health issues, self-harm, and suicide. So the sooner you reach out, the better you can handle it.
It is good to talk
Of course, by reaching out, it is not as though you will never feel alone again. As mentioned, we all feel alone at times. The best way to get through it is to understand that it is a feeling, and like all feelings, it eventually passes.
So, if you are struggling, reach out to trusted friends or family members to talk to you through it.
Try therapy
If you do not feel like you have anyone supportive or trustworthy to talk to, reach out to a therapist or counselor, join a support group, or join a local group that has nothing to do with loneliness. It is great to talk about your feelings, and it is also important to take positive action and meet new people.
Conclusion
Loneliness is part of the human condition. Without the occasional bout of loneliness, we will not appreciate the joy of others when we eventually connect. Hopefully, if you feel sad today, the quotes above have offered comfort or solace. Before you go, remember that this feeling of loneliness will pass like all other feelings.
