Sometimes even though we surround ourselves with people, we still feel alone. Loneliness is the human condition. It usually happens when we feel isolated and misunderstood. Although loneliness holds a negative connotation, and is often associated with depression, it’s not entirely bad. Below are 15 quotes to help you celebrate and embrace your loneliness.

---

1.

“Loneliness is the human condition. Cultivate it. The way it tunnels into you allows your soul room to grow. Never expect to outgrow loneliness. Never hope to find people who will understand you, someone to fill that space. An intelligent, sensitive person is the exception, the very great exception. If you expect to find people who will understand you, you will grow murderous with disappointment. The best you’ll ever do is to understand yourself, know what it is that you want, and not let the cattle stand in your way.”

—Janet Fitch

---

2.

“Deep in my heart I know I am a loner. I have tried to blend in with the world and be sociable, but the more people I meet the more disappointed I am. So, I’ve learned to enjoy myself.”

—Steven Aitchison

---

3.

“Loneliness adds beauty to life. It puts a special burn on sunsets and makes night air smell better.”

—Henry Rollins

---

4.

“Perhaps only people who are capable of real togetherness have that look of being alone in the universe. The others have a certain stickiness, they stick to the mass.”

—D.H. Lawrence

---

5.

“Remember: the time you feel lonely is the time you most need to be by yourself. Life’s cruelest irony.”

—Douglas Coupland

---

6.

“Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.”

—Maya Angelou

---

7.

“When I get lonely these days, I think: So BE lonely, Liz. Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience. But never again use another person’s body or emotions as a scratching post for your own unfulfilled yearnings.”

—Elizabeth Gilbert

---

8.

“We must become so alone, so utterly alone, that we withdraw into our innermost self. It is a way of bitter suffering. But then our solitude is overcome, we are no longer alone, for we find that our innermost self is the spirit, that it is God, the indivisible. And suddenly we find ourselves in the midst of the world, yet undisturbed by its multiplicity, for our innermost soul we know ourselves to be one with all being.”

—Hermann Hesse

---

9.

“When you’re surrounded by all these people, it can be lonelier than when you’re by yourself. You can be in a huge crowd, but if you don’t feel like you can trust anyone or talk to anybody, you feel like you’re really alone.”

—Fiona Apple

---

10.

“There is a pleasure in the pathless woods. There is a rapture on the lonely shore. There is society where none intrudes, By the deep Sea, and music in its roar: I love not Man the less, but Nature more”

—Lord Byron

---

11.

“Some nights are made for torture, or reflection, or the savoring of loneliness.”

—Poppy Z. Brite

---

12.

“If you are alone you belong entirely to yourself. If you are accompanied by even one companion you belong only half to yourself or even less in proportion to the thoughtlessness of his conduct and if you have more than one companion you will fall more deeply into the same plight.”

—Leonardo da Vinci

---

13.

“When we are most alone is when we embrace another’s loneliness.”

—Mitch Albom

---

14.

“She had become accustomed to being lonely. She was used to walking alone and to being considered ‘different.’ She did not suffer too much.”

—Betty Smith

---

15.

“There are some places in life where you can only go alone. Embrace the beauty of your solo journey.”

—Mandy Hale