Quotes About Absence

Yesterday, upon the stair, I met a man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today, I wish, I wish he'd go away . . . —

there was only the kind of silence that comes when someone takes away a clock to be repaired and after a time you become aware of its absence because its gentle, reassuring tick is gone and you miss it so.

but loss is absence, and will always defy expression.

I'd ask you in for a nightcap, but I have no booze. Oh, and I don't want to. There's that too." "I won't take it personally." "I really wish that you would," she said, and then she was gone.

Yesterday, upon the stair, I met a man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today, I wish, I wish he'd go away . . . William Hughes Mearns, "Antigonish

Two evils, monstrous either one apart,Possessed me, and were long and loath at going:A cry of Absence, Absence, in the heart,And in the wood the furious winter blowing.

A streak of presence surrounded by a dim glow of absence.

Non, elles savent ce qu'est la mort, elles se lamentent, mais, pour elles, les défunts ne sont plus là ; ils ne sont nulle part — dans une oubliette du cÅ"ur, dans la mémoire voire dans une histoire, mais ce ne sont plus des présences auxquelles on peut parler, auxquelles apporter ou demander du réconfort. Ce ne sont pas des morts à aimer ou à craindre.

Dull sublunary lovers' love(Whose soul is sense) cannot admitAbsence, because it doth removeThose things which elemented it.

For I am every dead thing,In whom love wrought new alchemy.For his art did expressA quintessence even from nothingness,From dull privations, and lean emptinessHe ruin'd me, and I am re-begotOf absence, darkness, death; things which are not.

Love reckons hours for months, and days for years; and every little absence is an age.

[On her mother, who died when Hutton was 4:] I hardly remember her, but I have missed her all my life.

One day you will disappear on a funeral pyre - just into nothingness, as smoke.

It is the absence of hope, which equals the despair that is the punishment.

I missed you, Angel. Not one day went by that I didn't feel you missing from my life.

I feel like I'm away for much of my own life.

When someone who's always been in your life is gone, it's a stunning adjustment of your own identity.

I think that there are few people in one's life that you never really feel that they're gone. I have to remind myself that she isn't around.

I don't like the dislocation of being away for months at a time. It's not conducive to having a life.

It is his absence that is part of me and has been for years. This is who I am, perhaps who we all are, keepers of the absent and the dead. It is the blessing and burden of being alive.

All my life, since I came to the Institute, you were the mirror of my soul. I saw the good in me in you. In your eyes alone I found grace. When you are gone from me, who will see me like that?

He could never stand still but now Something that had once been my son Lay there restless spirit Who left the house one rainy night And never returned Lost boy Who will never be found again Anywhere but eternity

As for the absence of recovery, as for death, there are machines that are not meant for the road.

The simple lack of her is more to me than others' presence.