Johann Kaspar Lavater Quotes

No one ever discovers the depths of his own loneliness.

At the beginning and at the end of love, the two lovers are embarrassed to find themselves alone.

To love is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.

What makes loneliness an anguish is not that I have no one to share my burden, but this: I have only my own burden to bear.

I was separated from my wife at the time. A lot of people think I wrote it about prison.

I don't want to be alone, I want to be left alone.

I've always felt alienated. I realized that I've been terrified my entire life. So I can identify that fear which drives so many of the people that I write about.

Loneliness is and always has been the central and inevitable experience of every man.

My private life's quite sad.

Loneliness is different than isolation and solitude. Loneliness is a subjective feeling where the connections we need are greater than the connections we have. In the gap, we experience loneliness. It's distinct from the objective state of isolation, which is determined by the number of people around you.

Love is a flame neither timid nor tame.

Aloneness is a state of being, whereas loneliness is a state of feeling. It's like the difference between being broke and being poor.

but he only found her in the image that saturated his private and terrible solitude.

I was more alone than if I had been alone.

In solitude the passions feed upon the heart.

But the touch or company of any man whatsoever stirreth up their heat, which in their solitude was hushed and quiet, and lay as cinders raked up in ashes.

Somebody who had read Lila asked me, ‘Why do you write about the problem of loneliness?’ I said: ‘It’s not a problem. It’s a condition. It’s a passion of a kind. It’s not a problem. I think that people make it a problem by interpreting it that way.’

She was not an existence, an experience, a passion, a structure of sensations, to anybody but herself. To all humankind besides Tess was only a passing thought. Even to friends she was no more than a frequently passing thought.

I love that I'm alone all the time. I love sleeping next to no one. I really don't like solitude.

Feeling alone guides the mind.

Columbus discovered no isle or key so lonely as himself.

Solitude is the mother of anxieties.

I remember the horror story that I told myself over and over again. I'm totally alone in my body. I'm totally alone in my head and nobody will ever see through my eyes. I'm just completely alone.

Even with one companion ecstasy is almost banished.

On the outside one is a star. But in reality, one is completely alone, doubting everything. To experience this loneliness of soul is the hardest thing in the world.