Quotes About Longing

There is one kind of prison where the man is behind bars, and everything he desires is outside; and there is another kind where the things are behind the bars, and the man is outside.

Though it was a comfort on occasion to play with the idea that outside this place a whole life waited for me, all the relationships that bind a man to the earth and give him a feeling of having a place.

for did it not mean I was losing my darling, just when I had secretly made her mine?

He had lived without her before. He could get over it! In a year or so he'd be able to walk straight past her without his heart so much as missing a beat. He needed her as much as a drunk needs a cork! But he understood all too quickly how vain these thoughts were. How can you tear something out of your heart? Your heart isn't made out of paper and your life isn't written down in ink. You can't erase the imprint of years.

Instead of valour or gallantry, you could hear the sadness of a soul parting with everything that it loved, calling on its nearest and dearest to wake up, to lift their heads from their pillows and hear for the last time the voice of a father, a husband, a son or a brother . . .

Several times a day Viktor passed his hand over his chest, over the jacket pocket where he kept it. Once, when the pain seemed unbearable, he thought, "If I hide it away somewhere, I might slowly start to calm down. As things are, this letter's like an open grave." But he knew that he would sooner destroy himself than part with this letter that had, by some miracle, managed to find its way to him.

My darling, my dying, my light, my sight, my night my whole day long.

The life is cruel death to me without you.

The longing for a man, as you know, is a grand escape. It can arch your mental process to extremes so that, like a gymnast or a ballerina, you're contorted to such outrageous limits – I'm speaking of passion – that nothing else matters. I wanted this. I desired diversion.

Thucydides's ancient warning that "it is a habit of mankind to entrust to careless hope what they long for, and to use sovereign reason to thrust aside what they do not desire."16

I wanted to see you again, touch you, know who you were, see if I would find you identical with the ideal image of you which had remained with me and perhaps shatter my dream with the aid of reality. -Claude Frollo

Marius and Cosette were in the dark in regard to each other. They did not speak, they did not bow, they were not acquainted; they saw each other; and, like the stars in the sky separated by millions of leagues, they lived by gazing upon each other.

If he had had all Peru in his pocket, he would certainly have given it to this dancer; but Gringoire had not Peru in his pocket; and besides, America was not yet discovered. (p. 66)

Oh! Everything I loved!

Oh! would that we were lying side by side in the same grave, hand in hand, and from time to time, in the darkness, gently caressing a finger -- that would suffice for my eternity!

He was at his own request and through his own complicity driven out of all his happinesses one after the other; and he had this sorrow, that after having lost Cosette wholly in one day, he was afterwards obliged to lose her again in detail.

L'istinto di Cosette cercava un padre, come quello di Valjean cercava un figlio, e incontrarsi, per essi, significò trovarsi; nel momento misterioso in cui le loro mani s'incontrarono, si saldarono. Quando quelle due anime si scorsero, riconobbero di essere ciascuna quel che abbisognava all'altra e s'abbracciarono strettamente.

Why was I not made of stone like thee? --Quasimodo[to a gargoyle on the ramparts of Notre Dame as Esmeralda rides off with Gringoire].

I wanted to see you again, touch you, know who you were, see if I would find you identical with the ideal image of you which had remained with me and perhaps shatter my dream with the aid of reality.

A vacancy in the heart does not accomodate itself to a stop-gap.

La dicha que habría podido encontrar en la tierra si ella no hubiera sido gitana ni él sacerdote; si Febo no hubiera existido y si ella lo hubiera amado.

Marius y Cosette no se hablaban, no se saludaban, no se conocían: se veían y, como los astros en el cielo que están separados por millones de leguas, vivían de mirarse.

He had never known a kind woman friend in his native parts. He had not had the time to fall in love.

ViaÈ›a este pierderea neîntrerupt? a tot ce iubim.