Quotes About Longing

For while an event for which we are longing never happens quite in the way we have been expecting, failing the advantages on which we supposed that we might count, others present themselves for which we never hoped, and make up for our disappointment; and we have been so dreading the worst that in the end we are inclined to feel that, taking one thing with another, chance has, on the whole, been rather kind to us.

Nos curaríamos para siempre de todo sentimentalismo si intentásemos, al pensar en la persona amada, tratar de ser el que seremos cuando hayamos dejado de amarla".

Unutu?, görevini yerine getirmiyor de?ildi, ama ayn? zamanda özlenen görüntünün ülküselle?tirilmesine ve dolay?s?yla, ilk andaki ac?n?n onu peki?tiren benzer ac?larla bütünle?tirilmesine katk?da bulunuyordu.

But if Mme. Sherbatoff did not look at the audience, remained in shadow, it was to try to forget that there existed a living world which she passionately desired and was unable to know

looked longingly at the characteristic features he shared with the Guermantes, a race that retains its individuality in a world by which it is not submerged, and in which it remains isolated in its divinely ornithological glory, for it seems to have sprung, in the age of mythology, from the union of a goddess and a bird.

thus, in a wild desire to hurl myself into her arms, it was only at this instant—more than a year after her funeral, on account of the anachronism which so often prevents the calendar of facts from coinciding with that of our feelings—that I had just learned she was dead.

Mas, ai! — pois, para o beijo, tão mal colocados estão as nossas narinas e os nossos olhos como malfeitos os lábios —, eis que de súbito os meus olhos cessaram de ver, e o meu nariz, por sua vez , esmagando-se, não sentiu mais nenhum odor, e, sem conhecer mais , por isso, o gosto do rosa desejado, eu soube, por esses detestáveis sinais, que estava enfim beijando as faces de Albertine.

There can be no peace of mind in love, since what one has obtained is never anything but a new starting-point for further desires

To a person who loves, is not absence the most certain, the most effective, the most durable, the most indestructible, the most faithful of presences?

Actually, the very notion that it will come within reach—that there is no fulfillment which will be forever denied us, as long as it has ceased to be a fulfillment we desire—is one which, though true, is only partly true. By the time it comes to us, we have become indifferent to it.

We consider it innocent to desire a thing and atrocious that the other person should desire it.

That is how I see her to this day: standing there, her eyes shining under her toque, silhouetted against the backdrop of the sea, and separated from me by the transparent sky-blue stretch of time elapsed since that moment, the first glimpse of her in my memory, a very slight image of a face first desired and pursued, then forgotten, then found again, a face which since then I have often projected into the past, so as to say to myself, of a girl with me in my bedroom, 'That was her!

There can be no peace in mind of love, since what one has obtained is never anything but a new starting-point for further desires.

Let but a single real feature—the little that one distinguishes of a woman seen from afar or from behind—enable us to project the form of beauty before our eyes, we imagine that we have seen her before, our heart beats, we hasten in pursuit, and will always remain half-persuaded that it was she, provided that the woman has vanished: it is only if we manage to overtake her that we realise our mistake.

In vain I called upon it now. In vain I compressed the whole landscape into my field of vision, draining it with an exhaustive gaze which sought to extract from it a female creature.

And if she had appeared, would I have dared to speak to her? I felt that she would have regarded me as mad, for I no longer thought of those desires which came to me on my walks, but were never realized, as being shared by others, or as having any existence apart from myself.

O modo inquisitivo, ansioso, exigente com que olhamos para a pessoa amada, nossa expectativa da palavra que nos vai dar ou tirar a esperança de um encontro para o dia seguinte, e, até que essa palavra seja dita, a nossa imaginação alternada, se não simultânea, da alegria e do desespero, tudo isso torna a nossa atenção em face do ente querido muito trêmula para que se possa obter uma imagem sua devidamente nítida.

For existence is of little interest save on days when the dust of realities is mingled with magic sand, when some trivial incident becomes a springboard for romance. Then a whole promontory of the inaccessible world emerges from the twilight of dream and enters our life, our life in which, like the sleeper awakened, we actually see the people of whom we had dreamed with such ardent longing that we had come to believe that we should never see them except in our dreams

to our paying too much attention to the aspect, the manners of what a person is not but would like to be, in forming our first impression of that person. To the outward appearance affectation, imitation, the longing to be admired, whether by the good or by the wicked, add misleading similarities of speech and gesture.

As for our feelings, we need hardly repeat that love is often only the association between the image of a girl (of whom otherwise we would very quickly have tired) and the increased heart rate inseparable from a long, futile wait when the young lady in question has "stood us up.

Mademoiselle Albertine gitti!

El deseo nos fuerza a amar lo que nos hará sufrir.

Prayers like gravel Flung at the sky's window, hoping to attract the loved one's attention . . . . . . I would have refrained long since but that peering once through my locked fingers I thought that I detected the movement of a curtain.

No sé donde pero le encontraré. Oiré su voz y le conoceré. Yo le serviré y le daré mi corazón y mi vida.