Quotes About Longing

I never showed up in her dreams, I am certain, as people we keep in our memories rarely have a place for us in theirs.

Wishing only wounds the heart.

The decaying that had dragged on for too long had only turned tragedy into nuisance; death, when it strikes, better completes its annihilating act on the first try.

but like all mothers whose children are growing up and drifting away from them, she felt an urge to stay in his shack as long as she could, to cling to anything that she could use, when he vanished from her life, to reconstruct a son from memory.

I never showed up in her dreams, I am certain, as people we kep in our memories rarely have a place for us in theirs.

How do I measure Fabienne's presence in my life—by the years we were together, or by the years we have been apart, her shadow elongating as time goes by, always touching me?

The bitter winds in February were sometimes called the First East Winds, but the longing for spring somehow made them seem more piercing.

The flesh and blood and passions clouded her eyes with sadness and fear. She had started to run away, but after twenty paces, her love caught and held her.

Excellent creature! How my soul pants for thee!

My emotional state then was cramped and confined, like a room with tightly sealed windows and doors: although love's footsteps could be heard outside the room, I felt they were steps heading somewhere else--until one day when the steps came to a halt and the bell rang.

Himi... Even if I have to keep taking in the pain and the wounds, it'll be alright... No matter how much I bleed or how ruthless I become...as long as you come back, I'll be fine with it... As long as you come back, I can willingly give up my life for you... So please let Himi come back to me... Let my Himi come back...

My days restricted... my fate decided. And in that, the one and only freedom allowed to me... was to love...

For a long time I had not approached the forbidden fruit called happiness, but it was now tempting me with a melancholy persistence. I felt as though Sonoko were an abyss above which I stood poised.

Human life is limited but I would like to live forever.

Possibly a man who hates the land should dwell on shore forever. Alienation and the long voyages at sea will compel him once again to dream of it, torment him with the absurdity of longing for something that he loathes.

Just now I had a dream. I'll see you again. I know it. Beneath the falls.

For me, beauty is always retreating from one's grasp: the only thing I consider important is what existed once, or ought to have existed.

Her desire was close to that of the person who drowns himself; he does not necessarily covet death so much as what comes after the drowning—something different from what he had before, at least a different world.

Longing at eighteen for an early demise, I felt myself unfitted for it. I lacked, in short, the muscles suitable for a dramatic death. And it deeply offended my romantic pride that it should be this unsuitability that had permitted me to survive the war.

He found himself in the strange predicament all sailors share: essentially he belonged neither to the land nor to the sea. Possibly a man who hates the land should dwell on shore forever. Alienation and the long voyages at sea will compel him once again to dream of it, torment him with the absurdity of longing for something that he loathes.

I think it's a wonderful song," she said. But she was only shielding his pride, he knew. Obviously this was the first time she had ever heard the song, though she pretended to know it well. She can't penetrate to the feelings deep down in a song like this; or see through the murk of my manhood to the longing that sometimes makes me weep; fair enough: then as far as I'm concerned, she's just another body.

I longed for the great sense of relief that death would surely bring if only, like a wrestler, I could wrench the heavy weight of life from my shoulders.

to love is both to seek and to be sought

As I have remarked several times, the future was a heavy burden for me. From the very beginning, life had oppressed me with a heavy sense of duty. Even though I was clearly incapable of performing this duty, life still nagged at me for my dereliction. Thus I longed for the great sense of relief that death would surely bring if only, like a wrestler, I could wrench the heavy weight of life from my shoulders.