Quotes About Longing

Only the wise know just where predestination ends and free will begins. Meanwhile, you must keep on doing your best, according to your own clearest understanding. you must long for freedom as the drowning man longs for air. Without sincere longing, you will never find God.

I kind of roll my eyes when people say they make music for themselves or they make art just for themselves, because, maybe in their head, what that means is that they're making it for someone who they don't think is real. Their audience isn't real. But it's still a communicative act. It's still an outward manifestation of longing.

My theory is that many of the things that move us are things we long for but find hard to do.

As much as heartbreak music might be therapeutic, we all want love and long for that feeling. So if a song can give you that feeling, even without being in love, that's amazing.

Often when He comes, He finds the soul occupied. Other guests are there, and He has to turn away. He cannot gain entry, for we love and desire other things; therefore, His gifts, which He is offering to everyone unceasingly, must remain outside.

I still remember my first Giacometti exhibition, and going back to the museum every day, whenever I could, to look again and again at these long, thin stick figures, so beautiful, so graceful. That, I think, was the moment I became really obsessed by art.

The oddest things happen to me. It goes in seasons. Nothing will happen for a long time, and I miss it, and I remember how these strange coincidences used to happen to me and how amazing it was, how it made me want to believe in something. A year will go by, and then a slew of them will come along, like buses, one after another.

In my third novel there is an actual black hole that swallows everything you love.

You should not see the desert simply as some faraway place of little rain. There are many forms of thirst.

I thoroughly object to getting old. If you could let me be 16 again, I'd give you everything I've got and everything I'll ever have.

It's always great to see old friends, especially those I have not been able to see in 15 months.

Our desires always disappoint us; for though we meet with something that gives us satisfaction, yet it never thoroughly answers our expectation.

I've wanted to be an actor for such a long time that I haven't had anything else in my thoughts. I think my family would have quite liked me to be a lawyer.

These things were happening in my life where I was like, 'Man, I wish my pops was here to see this.' I never had those thoughts before fame, when my life was just a regular life. I wasn't saying, 'I wish my dad could be around and see me working at Applebee's.'

It was impossible to explain. The new moon, the snow, the dusky smell of burning logs -- the whole evening had throbbed with some sweet haunting anguish of the soul. The word came to her. Nostalgia--for something that was hers and seemed already passed.

Sex," decided Claudia, as she brushed her teeth that night, "is at the bottom of everything. If I don't hurry up and get some pretty quick I'm going to be definitely out of luck.

A person doesn't know true hurt and suffering until they've felt the pain of falling in love with someone whose affections lie elsewhere.

Longing for Heaven won't help you to make the most of this lifetime, the one you have now. Especially if you're interested in Spiritual Enlightenment, don't treat this precious human life like some pathetic kind of consolation prize.

Never a ship sails out of the bay But carries my heart as a stowaway.

But why on earth not? What has got into you?" "Rowena—dear God, do you take me for a man of steel? Or not as a man at all? Don't you realize what it means to see you every day, to be constantly with you, knowing that you are promised to my uncle and that I can never possess you?" "I'm sorry, Mark. I hadn't thought—that is, I thought you had forgotten all about your infatuation for me.

In her private life, however, Svetlana continued to feel isolated. A friend at the time, Olga Kulikowsky, described her as "one of the loneliest women I have ever known."37 Another friend, Tatiana Tess, said, "Her search for happiness was boundless."38 A die-hard romantic, she longed to meet someone who wouldn't think of her as Stalin's daughter.

When we fall in love at a glance, the question we should ask ourselves (and this would apply to both men and women) is, What is it that we long for? Or perhaps, What are we lacking so that we can turn life in the direction we want? Creativity? Confidence? Authority? Recklessness? Irresponsibility? Or even darkness? Perhaps the lover is the outlaw in ourselves we don't quite have the nerve to claim. (p. 34)

But sex as a physical act is merely athletics, a momentary relief. What it needs to be powerful is desire, and the strongest element of desire is longing. It's in the work. Desider-, sidus: from the stars. The longing that reaches beyond space and time.

would there not be another hunger on him all his life? For other scents and sights and sounds; pale and changeful northern skies and the green plover calling?