Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Related Quotes

László Kardos

Every man is an island. Each person radiates feelings to others, but ultimately we are alone. For me, the essence of life is how we handle our loneliness. There are moments when we manage to resolve this loneliness through personal relationships, especially through love. But there are also certain situations in which you feel truly alone, when even words and affection cannot ease your fears.

Character | Feelings | Life | Life | Loneliness | Love | Man | Words |

Joseph Conrad, born Teodor Josef Konrad Korzeniowski

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.

Illusion | Loneliness | Memory | Terror | Wisdom |

Brendan Francis Behan

At the innermost core of all loneliness is a deep and powerful yearning for union with one's lost self.

Loneliness | Self | Wisdom |

Bernard M. Martin, D.D

To most people loneliness is a doom. Yet loneliness is the very thing which god has chosen to be one of the schools of training for His very own. It is the fire that sheds the dross and reveals the gold.

God | Gold | Loneliness | People | Training | Wisdom | God |

Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann

One ought to love society, if he wishes to enjoy solitude. It is a social nature that solitude works upon with the most various power. If one is misanthropic, and betakes himself to loneliness that he may get away from hateful things, solitude is a silent emptiness to him.

Loneliness | Love | Nature | Power | Society | Solitude | Wisdom | Wishes |

Walter Farrell

Loneliness is a game of pretense, for the essential loneliness is an escape from an inescapable God.

God | Loneliness |

D. W. Harding, fully Denys Clement Wyatt Harding

A necessary quality for the attainment of individuality is the ability to tolerate some degree of loneliness in the sense of independent adherence to values that those around you will not support.

Ability | Attainment | Individuality | Loneliness | Sense | Will |

Amy Lee Grant

The secret to overcoming a feeling of loneliness is not gong outside to meet people. That will only keep you from being alone. The secret is going inside yourself, to realize your true kinship with God and with all the human beings that he created.

God | Loneliness | People | Will | God |

Sidney Greenberg

The most isolating form of loneliness is not to be apart from people; it is to be apathetic to them, to be indifferent to them, to feel unrelated to them.

Loneliness | People |

Bede Jarrett

Its effects on the soul is to be measured neither by the guilt nor by the temporal punishment inexorably fixed, but by that deep sense of loneliness it brings with it.

Guilt | Loneliness | Punishment | Sense | Soul |

Jim Lovell, fully James "Jim" Arthur Lovell

The vast loneliness is awe-inspiring - the earth from here is a vast ovation to the big vastness of space.

Awe | Earth | Loneliness | Space |

Thomas Merton

When one has too many answers, and when on ejoins a chorus of others chanting the same slogans, there is, it seems to me, a danger that one is trying to evade the loneliness of a conscience that realizes itself to be in an inescapably evil situation. We are under judgment.

Conscience | Danger | Evil | Judgment | Loneliness | Danger |

Amelia Earhart, fully Amelia Mary Earhart

Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace. The soul that knows it not, knows no release from little things; knows not the livid loneliness of fear, nor mountain heights where bitter joy can hear the sound of wings.

Courage | Fear | Joy | Life | Life | Little | Loneliness | Peace | Price | Soul | Sound |

Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell

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.

Desire | Loneliness | Love | Means | Men |

Carl Sandburg

A book can give greater riches than any; other form of recreation but it cannot provide the last answers. They must be found in the loneliness of a man's own mind. Books can help a man be ready for those moments. But neither books nor teachers can provide the answers.

Books | Loneliness | Man | Mind | Recreation | Riches | Riches |