See Also: ABANDONMENT

1. Alone as a nomad —Richard Ford
2. Alone as a scarecrow —Truman Capote
3. Alone as a wanderer in the desert —Anon
4. Alone … like a lost bit of driftwood —Harvey Swados
5. Alone, like a planet —Richard Lourie
6. Alone … like bobbing corks —Jean Anouilh

   Playwright Anouilh’s simile from Thieves’ Carnival describes two characters who thus bob about because their adventures are over.

7. Alone like some deserted world —Bayard Taylor
8. Like the moon am I, that cannot shine alone —Michelangelo
9. [Building] as isolated as an offshore lighthouse —Nicholas Proffitt
10. By himself he felt cold and lifeless, like a match unlighted in a box —Stefan Zweig

    The simile, from a short story entitled The Burning Secret, describes a man content only in the company of others.

11. Feel lonely as a comet —Anton Chekhov, letter to his wife
12. Felt like an island —Derek Lambert
13. In your absence it is like rising every day to a sunless sky —Benjamin Disraeli
14. Isolated as if it were a fort in the sea or a log-hut in the forest —Israel Zangwill
15. Isolated like a tomb —Ian Kennedy Martin
16. Left him standing like a stump —Willa Cather
17. Loneliness became as visible as breath that turned to vapor —Tennessee Williams
18. Loneliness fell over me and covered my face like a sheet —Susan Fromberg Schaeffer
19. Loneliness overcame him like a suffocating guilt —Irving Stone
20. Loneliness … rises like an exhalation from the American landscape —Van Wyck Brooks
21. Loneliness surrounded Katherine like a high black fence —Tess Slesinger
22. (I wandered) lonely as a cloud —William Wordsworth

    One of the poet’s most famous lines.

23. Lonely as a Hopper landscape —Brian Moore
24. Lonely as a lighthouse —Raymond Chandler
25. Lonely as a wave of the sea —Katherine Anne Porter
26. Lonely as priests —Anon
27. Lonely as Sunday —Mark Twain
28. The lonely, like the lame, are often drawn to one another —Harvey Swados
29. Lonesome as a walnut rolling in a barrel —Edna Ferber
30. Lonesome..like the A sharp way down at the left-hand end of the keyboard —O. Henry
31. Lone women, like empty houses, perish —Christopher Marlowe
32. (And I) sit by myself like a cobweb on a shelf —Oscar Hammerstein II, from lyric for Oklahoma

    See Also: SITTING

33. Solitary as a lonely eel —Richard Ford
34. Solitary as a tomb —Victor Hugo
35. Solitary as an explorer —Donald Hall
36. Solitary as an oyster —Charles Dickens
37. A solitary figure, like the king on a playing card —Marcel Proust
38. Solitary … like a swallow left behind at the migrating season of his tribe —Joseph Conrad
39. Solitude affects some people like wine; they must not take too much of it, for it flies to the head —Mary Coleridge
40. Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character —James Russell Lowell
41. Solitude … is like Spanish moss which finally suffocates the tree it hangs on —Anaîs Nin
42. Solitude swells the inner space like a balloon —May Sarton
43. Solitude wrapped him like a cloak —Francine du Plessix Gray
44. Stand … alone, like a small figure in a barren landscape in an old book —John D. MacDonald
45. Stand alone on an empty page like a period put down in a snowfall —William H. Gass
46. Survive like a lonely dinosaur —Mary McCarthy
47. (Celibate and) unattached, like a pathetic old aunt —Alice McDermott
48. Undisturbed as some old tomb —Edgar Allen Poe
49. Walk alone like one that had the pestilence —William Shakespeare

    In common usage, most generally “Like one who has the plague,” or whatever contagious disease might be afoot.

50. We whirl along like leaves, and nobody knows, nobody cares where we fall —Katherine Mansfield
51. When I am alone, I feel like a day-old glass of water —Diane Wakoski