Loren Eiseley Quotes

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

One ought to sink to the bottom of the sea, probably, and live alone with one's words.

--then on the shore Of the wide world I stand alone, and think Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

Late, by myself, in the boat of myself, no light and no land anywhere, cloudcover thick. I try to stay just above the surface, yet I'm already under and living within the ocean.

I crawled back into myself all alone, just delighted to observe that I was even more miserable than before, because I had brought a new kind of distress and something that resembled true feeling into my solitude.

I am entirely alone. I and my shadow fill the universe.

I think I should be here alone to rethink the world - I do. I want these lesser humans gone.

Sometimes I think we're alone. Sometimes I think we're not. In either case, the thought is staggering.

I looked below and saw my people there, and all were well and happy except one, and he was lying like the dead - and that one was myself.

All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.

The night is the hardest time to be alive and 4am knows all my secrets.

In solitude, where we are least alone.

He walked on in silence, the solitary sound of his footsteps echoing in his head, as in a deserted street, at dawn. His solitude was so complete, beneath a lovely sky as mellow and serene as a good conscience, amid that busy throng, that he was amazed at his own existence; he must be somebody else's nightmare, and whoever it was would certainly awaken soon.

Somewhere in the depths of solitude, beyond wilderness and freedom, lay the trap of madness.

The old grey donkey, Eeyore stood by himself in a thistly corner of the Forest, his front feet well apart, his head on one side, and thought about things. Sometimes he thought sadly to himself, "Why?" and sometimes he thought, "Wherefore?" and sometimes he thought, "Inasmuch as which?" and sometimes he didn't quite know what he was thinking about.

I have been loved, Edward told the stars. So? said the stars. What difference does that make when you are all alone now?

She was waiting, but she didn't know for what. She was aware only of her solitude, and of the penetrating cold, and of a greater weight in the region of her heart.

When you stare into an abyss for a long time, the abyss also stares into you.

To be alone is the fate of all great minds—a fate deplored at times, but still always chosen as the less grievous of two evils.

Every man is grave alone.

There she is, lying in front of me, smoking a cigarette, thinking of something or someone else. And that’s how she is stuck in my mind forever. We are two explorers in the dark. Mapless and hopeless. Alone together.

I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself, with only the music of my heart for company.

And then when all around grows dark, when we feel utterly alone, when all men right and left pass us by and know us not, a forgotten feeling rises in the breast.

If you travel too often, you actually come face-to-face with what you're trying to escape. I feel like when I travel alone, sometimes it's like being locked in a hotel room with my own worst enemy.