Quotes / Alone in a Crowd

Even when I was in a crowd,
I was always alone.

—Ernest Hemingway

Sheridan: I never forget the feeling of helplessness. I never thought there could be anything worse than being all alone in the night.
Delenn: But there is. Being all alone in a crowd.

—Babylon 5, "There All the Honor Lies"

Sometimes it's a relief to get lost in the sea of faces...other times, it feels like I'm drowning.

—Iris Kolrick, Shadownova

For a crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love.

—Francis Bacon

Pvt. Robert Witt: Do you ever feel lonely?
Sgt. Edward Welsh: Only around people.

—The Thin Red Line

I have not loved the world, nor the world me;
I have not flatter'd its rank breath, nor bow'd
To its idolatries a patient knee, —
Nor coin'd my cheek to smiles, — nor cried aloud
In worship of an echo; in the crowd
They could not deem me one of such; I stood
Among them, but not of them; in a shroud
Of thoughts which were not their thoughts, and still could,
Had I not filed my mind, which thus itself subdued.

—Lord Byron, "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage", Canto III, Stanza CXIII

How can I feel abandoned, even when the world surrounds me?
How can I bite the hand that feeds the strangers all around me?
How can I feel so lonely
Never really knowing anyone?

—Dream Theater, "Misunderstood"

Facing twenty thousand of your friends
How can anyone be so lonely?

— ABBA, "Super Trouper"

Freya: Do you know what it is to be alone among many and unable to speak your fears?

EMH: I think I do.

Freya: How do you survive?

EMH: I'm still learning how.

— Star Trek: Voyager, "Heroes and Demons"

"Where are the men?" the little prince at last took up the conversation again. "It is a little lonely in the desert ..."
"It is also lonely among men," the snake said.

— The Little Prince

People say I'm the life of the party
Cause I tell a joke or two
Although I might be laughing loud and hearty
Deep inside I'm blue

So take a good look at my face
You'll see my smile looks out of place
If you look closer it's easy to trace
The tracks of my tears

—Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, "The Tracks of My Tears"

In loneliness, the lonely one eats himself; in a crowd, the many eat him. Now choose.

—Friedrich Nietzsche

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