Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.

From my novel Seaside Daisies:

Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted
is the most terrible poverty

We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.

The worst loneliness is to not be comfortable with yourself.

Believe me, I know what it’s like to feel all alone … the worst kind of loneliness in the world is the isolation that comes from being misunderstood. It can make people lose their grasp on reality.

Poverty is the worst form of violence.

The worst kind of loneliness gripped him. The kind you feel alongside another person.

I still think that the greatest suffering is being lonely, feeling unloved, just having no one... That is the worst disease that any human being can ever experience.

Loneliness is the leprosy of the modern world.

The greatest poverty is not to live
In a physical world, to feel that one’s desire
Is too difficult to tell from despair.

There must be different kinds of loneliness, or at least different degrees of loneliness, but the most terrifying loneliness is not experienced by everyone and can be understood by only a few. I compare the panic in this kind of loneliness to the dog we see running frantically down the road pursuing the family car. He is not really being left behind, for the family knows it is to return, but for that moment in his limited understanding, he is being left alone forever, and he has to run and run to survive. It is no wonder that we make terrible choices in our lives to avoid loneliness.

Idleness is worst, Idleness alone is without hope: work earnestly at anything, you will by degrees learn to work at almost all things. There is endless hope in work, were it even work at making money.

Loneliness is never more cruel than when it is felt in close propinquity with someone who has ceased to communicate. Many a housewife staring at the back of her husband's newspaper, or listening to his breathing in bed is lonelier than any spinster in a rented room.

Human beings can withstand a week without water, two weeks without food, many years of homelessness, but not loneliness. It is the worst of all tortures, the worst of all sufferings.