Woody Allen - George Santayana - Ingmar Bergman - Charlton Heston - Vincent: The Untold Story of Our Uncle TV - Mark Rothko - Tim Marlow TV - Tracey Emin - Alfred Lord Tennyson - Outside the Wall 1950 - Red Dwarf TV - Ford Madox Ford - Richard Nixon - Gerald Early - Mark Twain - Anton Chekhov - Jonathan Miller & Colin McGinn TV - Kurt Vonnegut - Sylvia Plath - Bjork - Raymond Williams - Anne Hathaway - Jean-Paul Sartre - Amish: Out of Order TV - Roy Orbison & Joe Melsom - Alan Sillitoe - John Lennon & Paul McCartney - Taxi Driver 1976 - Menander - John Paul Getty - Martin Luther King - Zoe Heller - Charlotte Bronte - F Scott Fitzgerald - Poor Cow 1967 - Brad Mehldau -
2,145. Life is full of misery, loneliness and suffering – it’s all over much too soon. (Life’s Like That & Misery & Lonely & Suffering) Woody Allen
73,748. The loneliest woman in the world is a woman without a close woman friend. (Friend & Lonely & Woman) George Santayana
6,222. Today the individual has become the highest form, and the greatest bane, of artistic creation. The smallest wound or pain of the ego is examined under a microscope as if it were of eternal importance. The artist considers his isolation, his subjectivity, his individualism almost holy. Thus we finally gather in one large pen, where we stand and bleat about our loneliness without listening to each other and without realizing that we are smothering each other to death. The individualists stare into each other’s eyes and yet deny each other’s existence. We walk in circles, so limited by our own anxieties that we can no longer distinguish between true and false, between the gangster’s whim and the purest ideal. (Individual & Art & Ego & Lonely & Anxiety) Ingmar Bergman
7,679. The Internet is for lonely people. People should live. (Internet & Lonely) Charlton Heston
10,394. The constant loneliness which had plagued Vincent all his life. (Artists: Van Gogh & Lonely) Vincent – The Untold Story of Our Uncle II, caption
10,778. When I was a younger man, art was a lonely thing. No galleries, no collectors, no critics, no money. Yet, it was a golden age, for we all had nothing to lose and a vision to gain. Today it is not quite the same. It is a time of tons of verbiage, activity, consumption. Which condition is better for the world at large I shall not venture to discuss. But I do know, that many of those who are driven to this life are desperately searching for those pockets of silence where we can root and grow. We must all hope we find them. (Artists: Rothko & Lonely) Mark Rothko
11,171. The scene that Seurat depicts is a view across the Seine ... It’s a painting that subtly but I think emphatically wrestles with the idea of modern life ... The loneliness of the human condition. (Artists: Seurat & Lonely) Tim Marlow at the Courtauld 3/3, 2010
11,293. Isolation would become a central characteristic in his art. (Artists: Munch & Lonely & Isolation) Tim Marlow on ... Edvard Munch: The Modern Eye
11,298. Weeping Nude 1905: a series that’s masterful in the way that it wrestles with the fundamental loneliness of the human condition. (Artist: Munch & Lonely) ibid.
11,550. My loneliness is more intense. (Artists: Emin & Lonely) Tracey Emin
11,854. All that bowery loneliness,
The brooks of Eden mazily murmuring. (Garden of Eden & Lonely) Alfred Lord Tennyson, ‘Milton: Alcaics’, 1863
21,495. You look so lonesome; so am I. (GBH Films & Lonely & Film Noir) Outside the Wall 1950 starring Richard Basehart & Marilyn Maxwell & Signe Hasso & Dorothy Hart & Joseph Pevney & Lloyd Gough & Harry Morgan & John Hoyt et al, director Crane Wilbur, nurse
23,802. Loneliness weighs heavy on us all. Personally, the only thing that keeps me going is the thought that we are over sixty billion miles away from the nearest Berni Inn. (Science Fiction & Lonely) Red Dwarf s2e2: Better Than Life s2e2, computer intro, BBC 1988
23,812. Our greatest enemy is going space-crazy through loneliness. The only thing that helps me maintain my slender grip on reality is the friendship I share with my collection of singing potatoes. (Science Fiction & Lonely) Red Dwarf II: Queeg s2e5, Holly
26,191. We are all so afraid, we are all so alone, we all so need from the outside the assurance of our own worthiness to exist. So, for a time, if such a passion come to fruition, the man will get what he wants. He will get the moral support, the encouragement, the relief from the sense of loneliness, the assurance of his own worth. But these things pass away; inevitably they pass away as the shadows pass across sundials. It is sad, but it is so. The pages of the book will become familiar; the beautiful corner of the road will have been turned too many times. Well, this is the saddest story. (War & Fear & Lonely & Life’s Like That & Afraid) Ford Madox Ford
29,720. 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. (Nixon & President & Lonely) Richard Nixon
46,561. It was kind of a piercing kind of a sound. It was piercing and mellow at the same time. And I think that’s what really struck me about just the loneliness of the human condition. And for some reason I rather thought that black people actually captured that rather very well in music was this kind of loneliness in the human condition, that no matter how much you yearn for communion, yearn for community, in the end there is this loneliness and there’s no way you can escape it. (Jazz & Lonely & Life’s Like That) Gerald Early
47,747. Be good and you will be lonesome. (Good & Lonely) Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
53,240. People who lead a lonely existence always have something on their minds that they are eager to talk about. (Existence & Lonely) Anton Chekhov
59,115. Somehow lonely is our essence. (Atheism & God & Lonely) Jonathan Miller, The Atheism Tapes, Colin McGinn
61,623. What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured. (Community & Young & Lonely) Kurt Vonnegut
10,544. God, but life is loneliness, despite all the opiates, despite the shrill tinsel gaiety of ‘parties’ with no purpose, despite the false grinning faces we all wear. And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter – they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long. Yes, there is joy, fulfillment and companionship – but the loneliness of the soul in its appalling self-consciousness is horrible and overpowering. Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
51,541. I never really understood the word ‘loneliness’. As far as I was concerned, I was in an orgy with the sky and the ocean, and with nature. (Nature & Lonely) Björk
61,657. From the late eighteenth century onwards, it is no longer from the practice of community but from being a wanderer that the instinct of fellow-feeling is derived. Thus an essential isolation and silence and loneliness become the carriers of nature and community against the rigours, the cold abstinence, the selfish ease of ordinary society. (Culture & Community & Society & Lonely) Raymond Williams, The Country and the City
63,098. Loneliness is my least favourite thing about life. The thing that I’m most worried about is just being alone without anybody to care for or someone who will care for me. (Alone & Lonely) Anne Hathaway
63,104. If you are lonely when you’re alone, you are in bad company. (Alone & Lonely & Company) Jean-Paul Sartre
63,259. There’s nothing more lonely than leaving the Amish. (Amish & Lonely) Amish: Out of Order IV: Mending Fences, Mose
10,545. Only the Lonely. Roy Orbison & Joe Melsom, title of song 1960
10,546. The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. (Lonely & Running) Alan Sillitoe, title of novel 1959
10,547. Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been,
Lives in a dream.
Waits at the window, wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door,
Who is it for?
All the lonely people, where do they all come from? John Lennon & Paul McCartney 1966
10,548. Loneliness has followed me my whole life, everywhere. In bars, in cars, sidewalks, stores, everywhere. There’s no escape. I’m God’s lonely man. Taxi Driver 1976 starring Robert de Niro & Jodie Foster & Harvey Keitel & Cybill Shepherd & Albert Brooks & Leonard Harris & Peter Boyle & Harry Northup et al, director Martin Scorsese
10,549. We live, not as we wish to, but as we can. Menander 342-c.292 B.C.
79,891. I’ve been too busy to be lonely. John Paul Getty, interview BBC 1963
79,892. I always felt a sense of cosmic companionship so that the loneliness and the fear have faded away because of a greater feeling of security because of commitment to a moral idea. (Lonely & Fear & Morality) Dr Martin Luther King junior, interview BBC 1961
79,893. People like Sheba think they know what it is to be lonely. But of the drip, drip of the long-haul no-end-in-sight solitude. They know nothing. What it’s like to construct an entire weekend around a visit to the launderette. Or to be so chronically untouched that the accidental brush of a bus conductor’s hand sends a jilt of longing straight to your groin. (Loneliness & Solitude) Zoe Heller, Notes on a Scandal, 2003; viz also film
79,895. The trouble is not that I am single and likely to stay single, but that I am lonely and likely to stay lonely. (Lonely & Single) Charlotte Brontë
79,896. I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others – young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life. F Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
98,641. Oh God, I’ve never felt so lonely in all my life. We’ve two chairs. And our little coffee table. (GBH Films & Lonely) Poor Cow 1967 starring Carol White & Terence Stamp & John Bindon & Queenie Watts & Kate Williams & Laurie Asprey & James Beckett & Ray Barron & Hilda Barry & Kenneth Campbell & Ron Clarke et al, director Ken Loach
63,093. The very fine line between loneliness and solitude, reflection; being alone always appealed to me when I was a kid. (Alone & Solitude & Loneliness) Brad Mehldau