Category: LONELINESS & SOLITUDE

  • “As far as I am concerned, I resign from humanity. I no longer want to be, nor can still be, a man. What should I do? Work for a social and political system, make a girl miserable? Hunt for weaknesses in philosophical systems, fight for moral and esthetic ideals? It’s all too little. I renounce my humanity even though I may find myself alone. But am I not already alone in this world from which I no longer expect anything?”

    ― Emil Cioran, On the Heights of Despair

  • Just when all those around me were assuring me they loved me, cared for me, appreciated me, yes, even admired me, I experienced myself as a useless, unloved, and despicable person. Just when people were putting their arms around me, I saw the endless depth of my human misery and felt that there was nothing worth living for. Just when I had found a home, I felt absolutely homeless. Just when I was being praised for my spiritual insights, I felt devoid of faith. Just when people were thanking me for bringing them closer to God, I felt that God had abandoned me. It was as if the house I had finally had no floors. The anguish completely paralyzed me. I could no longer sleep. I cried uncontrollably for hours. I could not be reached by consoling words or arguments. I no longer had any interest in other people’s problems. I lost all appetite for food and could not appreciate the beauty of music, art, or even nature. All had become darkness. Within me there was one long scream coming from a place I didn’t know existed, a place full of demons.

    —Henri Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom

  • Mizinova wanted marriage, but eventually realised that, for Chekhov, lasting mutual happiness was either something he didn’t believe in or saw as too great a threat to his freedom.

    Anton Chekhov: a lifetime of lovers

  • “There are some people utterly heartless and devoid of feeling, yet they can’t leave others alone in their misery, but interfere because they’re afraid of those others being able to get on without them. Nothing is sacred to them, they’re so self-important.”

    —Anton Chekhov

  • I felt that my whole life was bound to go on in the same solitude and helpless dreariness, from which I myself had no strength and even no wish to escape.

    —Leo Tolstoy, Family Happiness

  • ​​We have become so used to this state of anesthesia that we panic when there is nothing or nobody left to distract us. When we have no project to finish, no friend to visit, no book to read, no television to watch, or no record to play, and when we are left all alone by ourselves, we are brought so close to the revelation of our basic human aloneness and are so afraid of experiencing an all-pervasive sense of loneliness that we will do anything to get busy again and continue the game that makes us believe that everything is fine after all.

    —Henri Nouwen

  • The former fact also explains the restlessness of those who have nothing to do, and their aimless travelling. What drives them from country to country is the same boredom which at home drives them together into such crowds and heaps it is funny to see.

    —Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms (Classics)

  • I was going to die fast, unhappy and alone. And did I really want to die fast, unhappy and alone? In the end, only kind of.

    Submission: A Novel
    Michel Houellebecq

  • Aymeric had married within his circle, that’s what happens most often in the end, and it’s what gives the best results in principle, well, that’s what I’d heard anyway, but my problem is that I had no circle, no precise circle.

    Serotonin: A Novel
    Michel Houellebecq

  • For my part, without loved ones, it seemed to me that I was accepting the idea of death more and more easily; of course I would have liked to be happy, to be part of a happy community–all humans want that–but, well, it was really out of the question at this stage.

    Serotonin: A Novel
    Michel Houellebecq