Lonely Man Quotes

I remember a man, a very lonely man, coming up to me at the end of a reading and looking into my face and saying, 'I feel as if I have looked down a corridor and seen into your soul.' And I looked at him and said, 'You haven't.' You know, Here's the good news and the bad news: you haven't! I made something, and you and I could look at it together, but it's not me; you don't live with me; you're not intimate with me. You're not the man I live with or my friend. You will never know me in that way. I'm making something, like Joseph Cornell makes his boxes and everyone looks into them, but it's the box you look into; it's not the man or the woman. It's alchemy of language and memory and imagination and time and music and sounds that gets made, and that's different from 'Here is what happened to me when I was ten. ~ Marie Howe

There is none more lonely than the man who loves only himself. ~ Abraham Ibn Ezra

A lonely man on a rainy night who cannot read. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Good Mistake"

Blood on your hands
And your hands still roam
But your secret is safe with the garden gnome
Those marks on your neck never seem to fade
Bring a marching band
For the masquerade
Oh lonely man
You know you can
A pocket knife
Will serve you well
Remember what you're good for
There's much more to life

Under the sun
It's not what they can see
Until it's done
Your secret's safe with me

Blow out the candles on your cake
It's another year due with the same mistakes
Blind like a bat
When you hit that wall
Now who's gonna come
Who you gonna call
Oh lonely man
You know you can
A pocket knife
Will serve you well
Remember what you're good for
There's much more to life

Under the sun
It's not what they can see
Until it's done
Your secret's safe with me

I can see you run
I can see you're undone
Shadow to the sun
Shadow to the sun
See a rule to break
See another rule to make
It's a good mistake
Shadow next to none

Broken bones in a walking man
It's a trick to the eye
It's a rubber band
Don't let it go
Let it fall a part
It's a heavy load
For a tender heart ~ Mr. Little Jeans

Hey, Hank, I notice all the women around your place lately ... good looking stuff; you're doing all right."
"Sam," I say, "that's not true; I am one of God's most lonely men. ~ Charles Bukowski

....Dear friends, I am often a lonely man,

Even in a room full of people who love me. Dear friends, my brain--
Unpredictable as it was--is even more unpredictable now.
But thank God for all of the ways in which we compensate.
For our deficiencies. ~ Sherman Alexie

But a lonely man is an unnatural man, and soon comes to perplexity. From perplexity to fantasy. From fantasy to madness. ~ Daphne Du Maurier

I am a lonely man," he said again that evening. "And is it not possible that you are also a lonely person? But I am an older man, and I can live with my loneliness, quietly. You are young, and it must be difficult to accept your loneliness. You must sometimes want to fight it."
"But I am not at all lonely."
"Youth is the loneliest time of all. Otherwise, why should you come so often to my house?"
Sensei continued: "But surely, when you are with me, you cannot rid yourself of your loneliness. I have not it in me to help you forget it. You will have to look elsewhere for the consolation you seek. And soon, you will find that you no longer want to visit me."
As he said this, Sensei smiled sadly. ~ Natsume Sōseki

The more you stay in this kind of job, the more you realize that a public figure, a major public figure, is a lonely man. ~ Richard M. Nixon

Knowledge of processes in the background early shaped my relationship to the world. Basically, that relationship was the same in my childhood as it is to this day.

As a child I felt myself to be alone, and I am still, because I know things and must hint at things which others apparently know nothing of, and for the most part do not want to know.

Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible. The loneliness began with the experiences of my early dreams, and reached its climax at the time I was working on the unconscious.

If a man knows more than others, he becomes lonely.

But loneliness is not necessarily inimical to companionship, for no one is more sensitive to companionship than the lonely man, and companionship thrives only when each individual remembers his individuality and does not identify himself with others." – (Memories Dreams and Reflections, Page 356) ~ C.G. Jung

There are people, moreover, for whom even the absence of God is absent, who are shaken not by the privation of providence but by the privation of the privation, who live in a completely ungoverned and unconsoling world. To use the terms of another religious existentialist of Judaism against him: there is a man who is lonelier than the lonely man of faith, and he is the lonely man of no faith. ~ Zvi Kolitz

So if you're trying to play games with me, I should let you know up front that it's not going to work.
"What?" I frown "what are you talking abou-"
"You can't play hard to get, kid." He raises his eyebrow. "I can't even touch you. Takes 'hard to get' to a whole new level, if you know what I mean." "Oh my god," I mouth, eyes closed, shaking my head. "You are insane." He falls to his knees. "Insane for your sweet, sweet love!" "Kenji" I can't lift my eyes because I'm afraid to look around, but I'm desperate for him to stop talking. To put an entire room between us at all times. I know he's joking, but I might be the only one. "What?" he says, his voice booming around the room. "Does my love embarass you?" "Please-please get up-and lower your voice-"
"Hell no."
"Why not?" I'm pleading now.
"Because if I lower my voice, I won't be able to hear myself speak. And that," He says, "Is my faviorite part."
I can't even look at him.
"Don't deny my Juliette I'm a lonely man."
What is wrong with you?"
"You're breaking my heart." His voice is even louder now, ~ Tahereh Mafi

I am a lonely man,' Sensei said. 'And so I am glad that you come to see me. But I am also a melancholy man, and so I asked you why you should wish to visit me so often. ~ Natsume Sōseki

In solitude the lonely man is eaten up by himself, among crowds by the many. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

If sometimes our poor people have had to die of starvation, it is not that God didn't care for them, but because you and I didn't give, were not an instrument of love in the hands of God, to give them that bread, to give them that clothing; because we did not recognize him, when once more Christ came in distressing disguise, in the hungry man, in the lonely man, in the homeless child, and seeking for shelter. ~ Mother Teresa

Men who have a tempestuous inner life and do not seek to give vent to it by talking or writing are simply men who have no tempestuous inner life. Give company to a lonely man and he will talk more than anyone. ~ Cesare Pavese

In Solitude, the lonely man is eaten by himself.
Among crowds, by the Many.
Choose which you Prefer. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Lord Beaverbrook was fundamentally a lonely man, with a low sense of his own self-worth, who was incapable of forming a stable, loving relationship with anyone. He could charm or he could bully; he could give or he could take; he was glad to see his guests arrive and pleased to see them go. Although many people genuinely loved him, he was incapable of believing that this was either possible or true. No wonder he was so restless, so impatient, so vindictive, so quick to lose his temper, so eager to stir things up. ~ David Cannadine

There's a certain kind of lonely man who rejects love, because he believes that anyone who offers it wouldn't be a lover worth having. ~ Gene Wolfe

Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor - by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world.
"He will take no man's money dishonestly and no man's insolence without a due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him.
"The story is this man's adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. If there were enough like him, the world would be a very safe place to live in, without becoming too dull to be worth living in. ~ Raymond Chandler

I fear you may become a lonely man, even in the company of others. ~ Christopher Moore

It is virtually not assimilable to our reason that a small lonely man felled a giant in the midst of his limousines, his legions, his throng and his security. If such a nonentity destroyed the leader of the most powerful nation on earth, then a world of disproportion engulfs us, and we live in a universe that is absurd. ~ Norman Mailer

The modern age, with its growing world-alienation, has led to a situation where man, wherever he goes, encounters only himself. All the processes of the earth and the universe have revealed themselves either as man-made or as potentially man-made. These processes, after having devoured, as it were, the solid objectivity of the given, ended by rendering meaningless the one over-all process which originally was conceived in order to give meaning to them, and to act, so to speak, as the eternal time-space into which they could all flow and thus be rid of their mutual conflicts and exclusiveness. This is what happened to our concept of history, as it happened to our concept of nature. In the situation of the radical world-alienation, neither history nor nature is at all conceivable. This twofold loss of the world - the loss of nature and the loss of human artifice in the widest sense, which would include all history, has left behind it a society of men who, without a common world which would at once relate and separate them, either live in desperate lonely separation or are pressed together into a mass. For a mass-society is nothing more than that kind of organized living which automatically establishes itself among human beings who are still related to one another but have lost the world once common to all of them. ~ Hannah Arendt

Thaniel listened for a while longer, because the silence was so deep and clear that he could hear ghosts of the thirty-six of thirty-seven possible worlds in which Grace had not won at the roulette, and not stepped backward into him. He wished then that he could go back and that the ball had landed on another number. He would be none the wiser and he would be staying at Filigree Street, probably for years, still happy, and he wouldn't have stolen those years from a lonely man who was too decent to mention that they were missing. ~ Natasha Pulley

...Chief without soldiers is just a very lonely man in a big bloody field ~ Joe Abercrombie

A lonely man with the truths is more crowded than the crowds without the truths! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Nothing is more mysterious than watching a lonely man who is taking for a night walk in a foggy street! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

It is said of a lonely man that he does not appreciate the life of society. This is like saying he hates hiking because he dislikes walking in thick forest on a dark night. ~ Nicolas Chamfort

Crowds most envy the lonely man who walks confidently as if he is walking with the great crowds! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Sleep is often the only occasion in which man cannot silence his conscience; we forget what we knew in our dream. ~ Erich Fromm

Women were different. They no longer were satisfied having a man care for them. He has no idea to do with a modern women. Contemplating his demise seemed much wiser than trying to understand the reasoning of a present-day woman. ~ Christine Feehan

How does a boy without a father grow up to be a man? How does he learn to make the hard decisions he's going to have to make in life? The ones only a man can teach? ~ Sylar, Heroes

Every man looks at his wood-pile with a kind of affection. ~ Henry David Thoreau

It is with trifles, and when he is off guard, that a man best reveals his character. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

The consideration of human suffering is not one which enters into the calculations of primitive man. ~ James G. Frazer

If man would help some of us a little more, God would forgive us all the sooner perhaps.' But ~ Charles Dickens

He's a very funny and very nice man. When you read the script, you want to stick with it. But when you're with Eddie Murphy you've got to improvise. He's always making jokes and making me crack up when the camera's on. ~ Raven-Symone

It is in his knowledge that man has found his greatness and his happiness, the high superiority which he holds over the other animals who inhabit the earth with him, and consequently no ignorance is probably without loss to him, no error without evil. ~ James Smithson

There have been so many times
i have seen a man wanting to weep
but
instead
beat his heart until it was unconscious. ~ Nayyirah Waheed

Although I have suggested that American culture tends to favor the side of independence over the side of inclusion (and I would extend that to Western culture in general), it is not a generalization that seems to apply uniformly to men and women in our culture. Indeed, although I have no idea why it may be, it seems to me that men tend to have more difficulty acknowledging their need for inclusion, tend to me more oriented toward differentiation, and that women tend to have more difficulty acknowledging their need for distinctness, tend to be more oriented toward inclusion. Whether this is a function of social experience throughout the lifespan, the effects of parenting anatomical (even genital) density, or some combination, I do not know. Whatever the source of this distinction between men and women, I believe it is also the case that this very distinction is to be found within any one person as well. Whatever the source of this distinction between men and women, I believe it is also the case that this very distinction is to be found within any one person as well. In this respect constructive-developmental theory revives the Jungian notion that there is a man in every woman and a woman in every man; saying so is both a consequence of considering that all of life is animated by a fundamental evolutionary ambivalence, and that 'maleness'/'femaleness' is but one of its expressions. Similarly, I believe that while Western and Eastern cultures reflect one side or the other of thi ~ Robert Kegan

Little did the old man know how much God liked to talk to His children, how He longed to listen to them. ~ Debbie Macomber

Man was sent into the world to be a growing and exhaustless force. The world was spread out around him to be seized and conquered. Realms of infinite truth burst open above him, inviting him to tread those shining coasts along which Newton dropped his plummet, and Herschel sailed,
a Columbus of the skies. ~ Edwin Hubbel Chapin

A wise man once told me family don't end in blood, but it doesn't start there either. Family cares about you, not what you can do for them. Family's there through the good, bad, all of it. They got your back even when it hurts. That's family ~ Eric Kripke

...I say to you, without pleasure, that this son of ours will be a great man, because -- well -- because he is not very intelligent. He can see only one desire at a time. I said he tested his dreams; he will murder every dream with the implacable arrows of his will. This boy will win to every goal of his aiming; for he can realize no thought, no reason, but his own. And I am sorry for his coming greatness... ~ John Steinbeck

If there is a place in heaven for Labrador Retrievers (and I trust there is or I won't go) it'll have to have a brook right smack in the middle - a brook with little thin shoals for wading and splashing; a brook with deep, still pools where they can throw themselves headlong from the bank; a brook with lots of small sticks floating that can be retrieved back to shore where they belong; a brook with muskrats and muskrat holes; a brook with green herons and wood ducks; a brook that is never twice the same with surprises that run and swim and fly; a brook that is cold enough to make the man with the dog run like the devil away from his shaking; a brook with a fine spot to get muddy and a sunny spot or two to get dry. ~ Gene Hill

As a human being, I'm concerned about the world that I live in. So, I'm concerned about peace. I'm concerned about - about man's inhumanity to man. I'm concerned about the environment. ~ Herbie Hancock

The clash of discord between mood and matter here was forced painfully home to the heart; and, as in laughter there are more dreadful phases than in tears, so was there in the steadiness of this agonized man an expression deeper than a cry. ~ Thomas Hardy

Every man needs two women: a quiet home-maker, and a thrilling nymph. ~ Iris Murdoch

We the living, should not think of the dead as lonely because if they could speak to us, they would say: "Do not weep for me, earth was not my true country, I was an alien there: I am at Home where everyone comes." ~ Helen Keller

Nobody who looks as though he enjoyed life is ever called distinguished, though he is a man in a million. ~ Robertson Davies

During the night, angels stared down through the stars into Jacob's world. They watched him sleep. They commented on the way his body folded on the bed. They liked this man. They drew their wings over him and stood guard by his soul. ~ Noah Benshea

There was quiet, and then Ronan said, "I better go feed the bird."
But he looked down at the gearshift instead, eyes unfocused. He said, "I keep thinking about what would've happened if Whelk had shot Gansey today."
Adam hadn't let himself dwell on that possibility. Every time his thoughts came close to touching on the near miss, it opened up something dark and sharp edged inside him. It was hard to remember what life at Aglionby had been like before Gansey. The distant memories seemed difficult, lonely, more populated with late nights where Adam sat on the steps of the doublewide, blinking tears tears out of his eyes and wondering why he bothered. He'd been younger then, only a little more than a year ago. "But he didn't. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

Modern man is alienated from himself, from his fellow men, and from nature. He has been transformed into a commodity, experiences his life forces as an investment which must bring him the maximum profit obtainable under existing market conditions. ~ Erich Fromm

Those who sought her never found her, yet she was known to come to the aid of those in greatest need. And, then again, sometimes she didn't. She was like that. She didn't like the clicking of rosaries, but was attracted to the sound of dice. No man knew what She looked like, although there were many times when a man who was gambling his life on the turn of the cards would pick up the hand he had been dealt and stare Her full in the face. Of course, sometimes he didn't. Among all the gods she was at one and the same time the most courted and the most cursed. ~ Terry Pratchett

Over the first three rounds you're playing the course. In the final round, if you're in contention, you're playing the man. ~ Jack Nicklaus

Sometimes he wonders whether this very idea of lonliness is something he would feel at all had he not been awakened to the fact that he should be feeling lonely, that there is something strange and unnacceptable about the life he has. ~ Hanya Yanagihara

If the bees disappear, man would have only four years of life left. ~ Albert Einstein

He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face. ~ W.E.B. Du Bois

When you grow up Indian, you quickly learn that the so-called American Dream isn't for you. For you that dream's a nightmare. Ask any Indian kid: you're out just walking across the street of some little off-reservation town and there's this white cop suddenly comes up to you, grabs you by your long hair, pushes you up against a car, frisks you, gives you a couple good jabs in the ribs with his nightstick, then sends you off with a warning sneer: "Watch yourself, Tonto!" He doesn't do that to white kids, just Indians. You can hear him chuckling with delight as you limp off, clutching your bruised ribs. If you talk smart when they hassle you, off to the slammer you go. Keep these Injuns in their place, you know.

Truth is, they actually need us. Who else would they fill up their jails and prisons with in places like the Dakotas and New Mexico if they didn't have Indians? Think of all the cops and judges and guards and lawyers who'd be out of work if they didn't have Indians to oppress! We keep the system going. We help give the American system of injustice the criminals it needs. At least being prison fodder is some kind of reason for being. Prison's the only university, the only finishing school many young Indian brothers ever see. Same for blacks and Latinos. So-called Latinos, of course, are what white man calls Indians who live south of the Rio Grande. White man's books will tell you there are only 2.5 million or so of us Indians here in America. But there are mor ~ Leonard Peltier

I thought you weren't afraid." "I never am
but I won't throw my life away just to show one man I'm not. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

Ignorance strips a man of his rights and privileges, and reduces him to a 'nobody'. ~ Abdulazeez Henry Musa

I guess you could say I'm the redemption of the fat man. A guy will be watching me on TV and see that I don't look in any better shape than he is. 'Hey, Maude,' he'll holler. 'Get a load of this guy. And he's a 20-game winner.' ~ Mickey Lolich

Every man is a priest, even involuntarily; his conduct is an unspoken sermon, which is forever preaching to others. ~ Henri Frederic Amiel