Leonard Cohen Quotes

Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.

Every man passes his life in the search after friendship.

The man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world... The reason is obvious. In a large community we can choose our companions. In a small community our companions are chosen for us.

It's easier to fight one's enemies than to get on with one's friends.

Not only is there no question of solitude, but in the long run we may not choose our company.

Think back to the most important experiences of your life, the highest highs, the greatest victories, the most daunting obstacles overcome. How many happened to you alone? I bet there are very few. When you understand that being connected to others is one of life's greatest joys, you realize that life's best comes when you initiate and invest in solid relationships.

I always knew one thing, that life is made bearable and possible and liveable by the relations of one human being to another, the individual love and gentleness between persons, or in any case, the unbreakable bond that grows and fastens lives together in all sorts of mysterious ways.

Kindness is the connection that links us all together and strengthens the bonds within our communities, neighborhoods, and families.

I went through a period in my life when I had no friends, when the phone never rang, when I thought I would die from loneliness. I know that the real blessing here isn't that I have a book published, but that I have so many people to thank.

More and more do I feel, as I advance in life, how little we really know of each other. Friendship seems to me like the touch of musical-glasses--it is only contact; but the glasses themselves, and their contents, remain quite distinct and unmingled.

The problem isn't to learn to love humanity, but to learn to love those members of it who happen to be at hand.

How many people ask you to come share their life?

A person is a person through other persons. None of us comes into the world fully formed. We would not know how to think, or walk, or speak, or behave as human beings unless we learned it from other human beings. We need other human beings in order to be human. I am because other people are. A person is entitled to a stable community life, and the first of these communities is the family.

Society would be a charming affair if we were only interested in one another.

No community dictates to any individual how to live their lives. You can criticize and you can push but people freely choose.

When people are friends, they have no need of justice, but when they are just, they need friendship in addition.

No degree of knowledge attainable by man is able to set him above the want of hourly assistance, or to extinguish the desire of fond endearments and tender officiousness; and, therefore, no one should think it unnecessary to learn those arts by which friendship may be gained.

All people want on this earth is to connect with others. Other than eating and sleeping. Human beings need to connect with other human beings. Otherwise, they lose their mind.

It is important for everyone to keep in close contact and preferably be in physical proximity with their loved ones.

She only felt that the candle would burn better, the packing go easier, the world be happier, if she could give and receive some human love.

There are these people who keep taking you in and feeding you and loving you and making the world a tiny bit safer than it feels. People have community and family, but existentially we are deeply isolated.

No one can be happy in eternal solitude.

This is the part of us that makes our brief, improbable little lives worth living: the ability to reach through our own isolation and find strength, and comfort, and warmth for and in each other. This is what human beings do. This is what we live for, the way horses live to run.

I realize, for the first time, how very lonely I've been in the arena. How comforting the presence of another human being can be.

God created us to thrive on encouragement from others