Group Studies - You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet

Loneliness Quotes


“The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved.” Mother Teresa (future saint). Do you agree? Why is loneliness so bad?


“The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, peculiar to myself and to a few other solitary men, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence” Thomas Wolfe (writer). Do you believe everyone is lonely? Why or why not?


“Loneliness is the first thing which God’s eye named, not good.” John Milton (poet from back in the day). Why do you think God thinks loneliness is not good?


"No one would choose a friendless existence on condition of having all the other things in the world." Aristotle (philosper from back in the day). Do you agree? Why are friends the most valuable thing?


"the night can be a dreadful time for lonely people once their loneliness has started." Ernest Hemingway (writer). Why do you think people get lonely at night?


"When Christ said: "I was hungry and you fed me," he didn't mean only the hunger for bread and for food; he also meant the hunger to be loved. Jesus himself experienced this loneliness. He came amongst his own and his own received him not, and it hurt him then and it has kept on hurting him. The same hunger, the same loneliness, the same having no one to be accepted by and to be loved and wanted by. Every human being in that case resembles Christ in his loneliness; and that is the hardest part, that's real hunger." Mother Teresa (future saint). Do you really think that Jesus experienced loneliness? How could this be?


"The body is a house of many windows: there we all sit, showing ourselves and crying on the passers-by to come and love us." Robert Louis Stevenson (writer). Do you think it is possible to be loved enough? Why or why not?


"Fame doesn't end loneliness. " Claire Danes (actress). If you were famous, do you think it would cure your loneliness? Does anything exist in the world that can cure loneliness?


"Loneliness seems to have become the great American disease." John Corry (journalist). How is loneliness like a disease? Do you agree with this statement?



Pigeon Feathers

“Though the experiment frightened him, he lifted his hands high into the darkness above his face and begged Christ to touch them. Not hard or long: the faintest, quickest grip would be final for a lifetime. His hands waited in the air, itself a substance, which seemed to move through his fingers, or was it the pressure of his pulse? He returned his hands to beneath the covers, uncertain if they had been touched or not. For would not Christ’s touch be infinitely gentle?” (Updike, John. “Pigeon Feathers,” The Early Stories 1953-1975. (Ballantine Books, New York, 2003). p20).