Quotes About Longing

I don't believe in God, but I miss him.

There is a German word, Sehnsucht , which has no English equivalent; it means 'the longing for something'. It has Romantic and mystical connotations; C.S. Lewis defined it as the 'inconsolable longing' in the human heart for 'we know not what'. It seems rather German to be able to specify the unspecifiable. The longing for something - or, in our case, for someone.

Pride makes us long for a solution to things – a solution, a purpose, a final cause; but the better telescopes become, the more stars appear.

You lose the world for a glance? Of course you do. That is what the world is for: to lose under the right circunstances.

I loved her; we were happy; I miss her. She didn't love me; we were unhappy; I miss her.

Isn't the most reliable form of pleasure, Flaubert implies, the pleasure of anticipation? Who needs to burst into fulfilment's desolate attic?

We knew from our reading of great literature that Love involved Suffering, and would happily have got in some practice at Suffering if there was an implicit, perhaps even logical, promise that Love might be on its way.

One feeling at least grows stronger in me with each year that passes—a longing to see the cranes. At this time of year I stand on a hill and watch the sky. Today they did not come. There were only wild geese. Geese would be beautiful if cranes did not exist.

Old love is a row of beach huts in November.

And this is how I would remember it all, if I could. But I can't.

But if nostalgia means the powerful recollection of strong emotions—and a regret that such feelings are no longer present in our lives—then I plead guilty.

There is the question of loneliness. But again, this is not how you imagined it (if you had ever tried to imagine it). There are two essential kinds of loneliness: that of not having found someone to love, and that of having been deprived of the one you did love. The first kind is worse.

Nós sabíamos por nossas leituras dos grandes livros que Amor envolvia Sofrimento, e teríamos de bom grado praticado o Sofrimento se houvesse uma promessa implícita, talvez até lógica, de que o Amor poderia estar a caminho.

He had discovered love; but he had also begun to discover that love, far from making him 'what he was', far from spreading deep content all over him like carnation oil, would make him self-conscious and indecisive. He loved Tanya most clearly when he was away from her. When they were together, there were expectations on both sides which he was either unable to identify or couldn't respond to.

Perhaps Goethe never found the right woman.

The other half wanted to say, I love you, come away with me, sit on my knee, I'll always remember you. You so full of your past, me so full of my future.

specific fund, you see. It's a sort of general fund. Because at some point everyone wants to run away from their life. It's about the only thing human beings have in common.

First love fixes a life for ever: this much I have discovered over the years.

Está la cuestión de la soledad. Pero no es como te la imaginas (si alguna vez has intentado imaginarla). Hay dos tipos de soledad esenciales: la de quienes no han encontrado a nadie a quien amar, y la de quienes se han visto privados del ser amado. El primero es el peor. Nada es comparable a la soledad del alma en la adolescencia

The bitch, I thought. If there was one woman in the entire world a man could fall in love with and still think life worth refusing, it was Veronica.

When you're young—when I was young—you want your emotions to be like the ones you read about in books. You want them to overturn your life, create and define a new reality.

Ich glaube nicht, dass ich sie je wiedersehen werde. Ich werde sie nie wieder sehen, hören, berühren, in den Armen halten, ihr zuhören, mit ihr lachen; nie wieder auf ihre Schritte horchen, lächeln, wenn eine Tür aufgeht; nie wieder ihren Körper an meinen, meinen an ihren drücken. Ich glaube auch nicht, dass wir uns in entmaterialisierter Form wiedertreffen. Ich glaube, tot ist tot.

Cu toata c? majoritatea oamenilor s-au simÈ›it cît se poate de nefericiÈ›i in perioada cît au fost îndr?gostiÈ›i, aceasta este starea dup? care fiinÈ›a uman? tînjeÈ™te mai presus de toate.

How many of us, having cried bitter, rancid tears over a failed love, are actually disappointed when we discover, seeing the adored one again, that all trace of their power over us is gone? How often one has resisted the freedom-giving knowledge that they have actually begun to irritate us as that seems like the worst kind of disloyalty to our own dreams. No, while most people have been at their unhappiest when in love, it is nevertheless the state the human being yearns for above all.