Quotes About Longing

I communed with myself, after the manner of prodigals, and said: "How much better that I were down in Denver, even at Mrs. Coney's, digging with a skewer into the corners seeking dirt which might be there, yea, even eating codfish, than that I should perish on this desert—of imagination." So I turned the current of my imagination and fancied that I was at home before the fireplace, and that the backlog was about to roll down.

She twists like a flame. Her back, a sierra of bone, her hips, a sandstone canyon. And I can believe her gaze, born from a thousand years dreaming and as dew-cool as moonlight, is only for me. — Eliot Khalil Wilson, from "New Orleans Odalisque," The Saint of Letting Small Fish Go (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2003)

Why can't we fall in love--true and deep--without it being some huge threat to the working order of things? In another life Will and I might rip each others' clothes off with our teeth and make a whole new world out of entirely different problems. But this is not that life, and I get that.

forgive me If you are not living if you, my beloved, my love if you have died, all the leaves will fall on my breast it will rain upon my soul night and day the snow will burn my heart, I shall walk with cold and fire and death and snow my feet will want to march toward where you sleep, but I shall go on living . . .

I've spent my whole life reading beautiful books and watching beautiful movies, dreaming that there was some real place out there where I would fit and be beautiful, too.

I'm not greedy. I just want one person. The world is so big and there are so many people. But I only want one.

I'm not greedy I just want one person. The world is so big and there are so many people, but I only want one. I want to feel safe and happy with someone. What the heart chooses

I try and picture you reading this -- there is a sense that as I write I try and get nearer to you, connect in my mind with you.

Nostalgia is a narcotic.

I miss thee, my Mother! Thy image is still The deepest impressed on my heart.

Her Design was once more to engage him, to hear him sigh, to see him languish, to feel the strenuous Pressures of his eager Arms, to be compelled, to be sweetly forc'd to what she wished with equal Ardour, was what she wanted, and what she had form'd a Stratagem to obtain, in which she promis'd herself Success. SHE

Backward, turn backward, O Time, in your flight, Make me a child again, just for to-night! Mother, come back from the echoless shore, Take me again to your heart as of yore; Kiss from my forehead the furrows of care, Smooth the few silver threads out of my hair; Over my slumbers your loving watch keep-- Rock me to sleep, mother--rock me to sleep!

Backward, flow backward, O tide of the years! I am so weary of toil and of tears-- Toil without recompense, tears all in vain-- Take them, and give me my childhood again!

Once I longed for Wealth and Place, Happiness and Love's sweet grace-- Now there lives within my breast Only this one wish--for Rest.

To live in memory and in dreams is a cruel comfort.

When our two souls stand up erect and strong, Face to face, silent, drawing nigh and nigher, Until the lengthening wings break into fire At either curvd point, what bitter wrong Can the earth do to us, that we should not long Be here contented?

Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand Henceforward in thy shadow.

Unless you can muse in a crowd all day On the absent face that fixed you; Unless you can love, as the angels may, With the breadth of heaven betwixt you; Unless you can dream that his faith is fast, Through behoving and unbehoving; Unless you can die when the dream is past -- Oh, never call it loving!

I cannot believe of any woman that she can think of fame first. A woman of genius may be absorbed, indeed, in the exercise of an active power, engrossed in the charges of the course and the combat; but this is altogether different to a vain and bitter longing for prizes, and what prizes, oh, gracious heavens! The empty cup of cold metal! so cold, so empty to a woman with a heart.

But the personal feeling is nearer with most of us than the tenderest feeling for another; and my family had been so accustomed to the idea of my living on and on in that room, that while my heart was eating itself, their love for me was consoled, and at last the evil grew scarcely perceptible. It was no want of love in them, and quite natural in itself: we all get used to the thought of a tomb; and I was buried, that was the whole.

You have to tell us too of your dear mother — Robert is so anxious about her always. How deeply and tenderly he loves her and all of you, never could have been more manifest than now when he is away from you and has to talk of you instead of to you.

What you tell me of 'Jane Eyre' makes me long to see the book. I may long, I fancy. It is dismal to have to disappoint my dearest sisters, who hoped for me in England this summer, but our English visit must be for next summer instead;

But the prison doors are shut close, and I could dash myself against them sometimes with a passionate impatience of the need-less captivity. I feel so intimately and from evidence, how, with air and warmth together in any fair proportion, I should be as well and happy as the rest of the world, that it is intolerable —

As they broke apart, the information safely handed over, the memory of the kiss left Dust full of an aching emptiness, everywhere his airborne nanoparticls drifted and spread.