A Quote by Sydney J. Harris

Real loneliness consists not in being alone, but in being with the wrong person, in the suffocating darkness of a room in which no deep communication is possible.

Sydney J. Harris

Quote Topics

Alone Being Being Alone Communication Consists Darkness Deep Loneliness Person Possible Real Room Suffocating Which Wrong Wrong Person

Quote Author

Sydney J. Harris
American - Journalist
September 14, 1917 - December 8, 1986

I don't know if anyone has noticed but I only ever write about one thing: being alone. The fear of being alone, the desire to not be alone, the attempts we make to find our person, to keep our person, to convince our person to not leave us alone, the joy of being with our person and thus no longer alone, the devastation of being left alone. The need to hear the words: You are not alone.

Shonda Rhimes

Modern loneliness is an extraverted loneliness, in which the person is surrounded by many people and partakes of much communication but feels unrecognized and more alone and, although connected technically, isolated and even estranged emotionally.

Edward Hallowell

My EP, 'Room 93,' was all about isolation - it was based on the idea of being in a hotel room and being totally alone with yourself or that other person.

Halsey

There is no final solution to loneliness until you recognize that you need the resources which are in yourself to enpy, within limits, being alone being the kind of person that you like to be with, and reaching out to others, not in a grasping way, but in an attempt to be meaningful and loving and of service in their lives.

Truman G. Madsen

Our language has wisely sensed the two sides of being alone. It has created the word loneliness to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word solitude to express the glory of being alone.

Paul Tillich

Being alone is almost always preferable to being with the wrong person.

Amy Dickinson

In the country, I stopped being a person who, in the words of Sylvia Boorstein, startles easily. I grew calmer, but beneath that calm was a deep well of loneliness I hadn't known was there. ... Anxiety was my fuel. When I stopped, it was all waiting for me: fear, anger, grief, despair, and that terrible, terrible loneliness. What was it about? I was hardly alone. I loved my husband and son. I had great friends, colleagues, students. In the quiet, in the extra hours, I was forced to ask the question, and to listen carefully to the answer: I was lonely for myself. [p. 123]

Dani Shapiro

What I see is trying to make sure that everybody thinks you have more than what you actually have. What’s the point if you actually don’t have it? If you don’t have it, then you don’t have it. Have what you have. Enjoy that . . . The craft is everything. Don’t be afraid of not being the wealthiest person in the room. Be the smartest person in the room. Be the slickest person in the room. Be the most creative person in the room. Be the most entertaining person in the room. Just be in the room.

Jill Scott

Real love is not an escape from loneliness, real love is an overflowing aloneness. One is so happy in being alone that one wud like to share.

Rajneesh

...being alone with him was like being in a room which someone had just violently left

John Banville

Being alone is best. I mean, it's true, isn't it? In the end you'll be absolutely alone; therefore, being alone is natural. If you accept that, nothing bad can happen. That's why I shut myself away in my six-mat one-room apartment.

Tatsuhiko Takimoto

of all the deprivations which afflict humankind, none is more dreadful than loneliness. A corrosive, it eats the heart out. People were meant to live by twos, with someone close with whom to share good and bad, to hear breathing in the dark room at night. Being alone is the one unnatural act.

Zelda Popkin

Right awareness is awareness of one's own being in its totality: all that is good and all that is bad. But as you become aware, the bad starts disappearing - just as when you bring light into the room, the darkness disappears. When light is in the room, darkness cannot exist there. Sin is darkness, forgetfulness, unconsciousness.

Rajneesh

I've decided that the worst part of loneliness isn't being alone. It's being forgotten.

Tawni O'Dell

Allah is in Himself the non-being and the being, the inexistent and the existent. He is at the same time that which we designate by absolute non-being and by absolute being; or by relative non-being and relative being. . . . All these designation come back to God alone, for there is nothing which we can perceive, know, write or say which is not Him.