Quotes About Longing

The absence of the loved person is so absolute.

He had lived throughout upon magic, upon romantic love in its fullest sense, and this magic, now that she was gone, seemed sometimes likely to kill him.

Although he longed to see Louise, and to see Aleph, he increasingly lacked the will to go.

I've got to see you, I've got to talk about her, I shall go mad.

Terrible sadness, dread, an agonizing desire for happiness swelled in his heart.

Louise was a jewel locked away; and after the first 'if only' period had passed and Clement had got used to 'Mrs Anderson', he felt that his love for her had not faded, but had suffered a sea change into something special and unique, causing a special and unique and much valued, pain.

Yes of course I was in love with my own youth. Aunt Estelle? Not really. Who is one's first love?

Was it that he had lived too long in his mind and was tired of the scenery?

My first love, and also my only love. All the best, even Clement, have been shadows by comparison. The necessity of this seems, in my own case, so great that I find it hard to imagine that it is not so with everyone.

This then was love, to look and look until one exists no more, this was the love which was the same as death.

I run, I run, I am gathered to your heart. But no, she thought, it's not like that. I am alone. I cannot reach anybody.

But with her I would have been faithful, with her my whole life would have been different, less rootless, less empty.

As he rose to go and held Louise's hand and gazed at her he felt for a moment his old love for her taking possession of his whole being. They looked at each other. I feed upon this looking, thought Clement, but does she? I don't know, and I cannot ask. I am terrified of saying something which would wound our whole precious relationship. We are well as we are. I love her, that's all, that is my drama.

Every manjack craving for love, and how rarely it all worked out.

ye always want what ye cannae have and the things that ye dinnae really gie a toss aboot get handed tae ye oan a plate.

It's a bad one, man. Ah sit thaire jist likes, stunned; feeling aw raw n hollowed oot fae the inside. It's like whin you've been knocked back by a bird ye fancy, no thit that's happened tae me for a long time bein wi Ali likes but, like ye've been intae a lassie for ages, n ye sort go, eh, awright, what aboot, likesay, you n me, likes, eh … n she goes: naw. No way. Fuck off.

Es más fácil querer a alguna gente a distancia.

I prefer Tender Is the Night, though', and as I spoke, I got a raw jolt in my chest that could only br described as tender, as an image of Fiona, on the Bosphorus ferry, under a lambent soak of light, sweeping her hair out of her face, flickered in my brain. Even wasted she looked so poised and dignified. I loved her I loved her I loved her I wanted to melt into her bones. Her absence now felt like I'd been eaten from the inside.

Thir must be less tae life than this.

There's nothing in his eyes but need.

How far would I travel To be where you are? How far is the journey From here to a star?

It was only a remote portion of his mind that heard and answered the girl. The rest of him was soaking up her beauty with the passionate thirst of a man who has drunk too long at a celibate well.

On Earth, we are unmanned by our longing for a pastoral past that never really existed; and that, if it had existed, could never exist again...on the Moon, there is no past to long for or dream about. There is no direction but forward.

There is a longing for a supposedly simple and virtuous past that is almost universal among the people of a complex and vicious society.