43. Loneliness

Whither shall I go from thy spirit ? or whither shall I flee from thy presence ?
If I ascend up into heaven , thou art there: if I make my bed in hell , behold, thou art there.
 If I take the wings of the morning , and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea ;
Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. Psalms 139:7-10

The soul hardly ever realises it, but whether he is a believer or not, his loneliness is really a homesickness for God. > Hubert Van Zeller.

Loneliness is the first thing which God’s eye nam’d not good. > John Milton.

Solitude is essential to man. All men come into this world alone and leave it alone. > Thomas de Quincey.

The surest cure for vanity is loneliness. > Thomas Wolfe.

Art thou lonely, O my brother?

Share thy little with another?

Stretch a hand to one unfriended,

And thy loneliness has ended. > John Oxenham.

It may be true that he travels farthest who travels alone, but the goal thus reached is not worth reaching. > Theodore Roosevelt.

The deepest need of a man is the need to overcome his separateness, to leave the prison of his aloneness. > Erich Fromm.

The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, peculiar to myself and to a few other solitary men, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence. > Thomas Wolfe.

If you think it’s hard to meet new people, try picking up the wrong golf ball. > Jack Lemmon.

It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinions; it is easy in solitude to live after your own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. > Ralph Waldo Emerson.

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

See also Joshua 1:5-9; Psalm 25:16-18.