logo

Quotes About Longing

It begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. It is never a thought to begin with. It is at its best when it is a tantalizing vagueness. It finds its thought and succeeds, or doesn't find it and comes to nothing.
~ Robert Frost
Christianity to me is like a hopeless love affair. It is infinitely dear and infinitely unattainable.
~ Malcolm Muggeridge, 1958
There is some chance of my retiring... And yet, though I thought such a proposal when first made was like a Pisgah peep of Paradise, I cannot help being a little afraid of changing the habits of a long life all of a sudden and for ever...
~ Walter Scott, 1830
She could feel the echo of lovemaking in her body in the same way she could feel the rock and shift of waves after a day of swimming, long after she left the water.
~ Abby Geni, The Wildlands, 2018
Lust will curdle like milk if you don't keep using it up.
~ @AnonymousVoyeur, tweet, 2010
Sie ließen sich jetzt die Hände frei, ergriffen sie aber auf der Stelle wieder und beide sagten gleichzeitig: "Und wie geht es dir auch?" Aber statt sich zu antworten, fragten sie das gleiche aufs neue und die Antwort lag nur in den beredten Augen, da sie nach Art der Verliebten die Worte nicht mehr zu lenken wussten und, ohne sich weiter etwas zu sagen, endlich halb selig halb traurig auseinanderhuschten.
~ Gottfried Keller
I loved all the boys with soft sad eyes, and lost souls.
~ Grace Coddington
She had a feeling as she listened that she had been sitting in a dark place all her life, and that during the last three weeks light had slowly begun to break. It seemed that tonight the light was like glory all around her. These people actually lived with God, referred everything to Him, wanted nothing that He did not send. They were in a distinct and startling sense a separated people, and she was beginning to long with all her heart that she might truly be one with them.
~ Grace Livingston Hill
Of course!" he said foolishly. "Then I wish I had come sooner. I wish I had never gone—from you!" "Oh, Father, do you really? How many times I have wished that!" The blue eyes were full of wistful eagerness now. It had meant a great deal to her! Why had it? Was that her mother looking at him through her eyes? Was he going stark-staring crazy? It was Alice's look. Alice was looking through those eyes of her daughter as one might look through a window!
~ Grace Livingston Hill
Those flowers! How wonderful it would have been if they had been hers! If she had been a girl with friends who could send farewell greetings in such a costly style! Why, all these gifts, the wedding that had preceded them, had been but the fulfillment of her childish fairy dreamings—all the things she had most wished for in life—and now they had come, and how empty they were! How one's heart could starve in the midst of plenty!
~ Grace Livingston Hill
Indeed, dear boy, I do want to go with all my heart if I really ought. I have always wanted to see the ocean and I can't imagine any place I'd rather go. ? - Grace Livingston Hill, Aunt Crete's Emancipation.? ?
~ Grace Livingston Hill
Still, it is like a long hopeless homesickness my missing those young days. To me, they're like my own place that I have gone away from forever, and I have lived all the time since among great pleasures but in a foreign town. Well, O.K. Farewell, certain years.
~ Grace Paley
That heartbreaking moment when you finish an amazing book, and you are forced to return to reality.
~ Grace Paley
Edie didn't budge. She leaned her chin on her knees and felt sad. She was a big reader too, but she liked THE BOBBSEY TWINS or HONEY BUNCH AT THE SEASHORE. She loved that nice family life. She tried to live it in the three rooms on the fourth floor. Sometimes she called her father Dad, or even Father, which surprised him. Who? he asked.
~ Grace Paley
I had to touch you with my hands, I had to taste you with my tongue; one can't love and do nothing.
~ Graham Greene
I had to touch you with my hands, I had to taste you with my tongue; one can't love and do nothing.
~ Graham Greene
It's bad enough weeping for the loss of a love you once had. Don't be after weeping for the loss of a love you never had at all.
~ Graham Masterton
What we wish upon the future is very often the image of some lost, imagined past.
~ Graham Swift
Where was the line? Between self-transformation so great as to turn a longing for death into childlike wonder … and death itself, and the handing on of the joys and burdens he could no longer shoulder to someone new?
~ Greg Egan
The things you loved as a boy, you want them around you when you're an old man. The Marvins, Black River, Dreamgarden.
~ Greg Hrbek
Let sorrowful longing dwell in your heart. Never give up, never lose hope. Allah says, "The broken ones are my beloved." Crush your heart. Be broken.
~ Greg Mortenson
She released his hand and sat back. That air of sadness had descended on her once more. His father had carried a similar melancholy after his mother had passed; Poe would see it descend on him like a shadow, settle over his shoulders like a blanket made of warmth and memory and longing and loss. Leia wore something made of the same material, and not for the first time Poe wondered how she had come by it and, perhaps more importantly, who had given it to her.
~ Greg Rucka
And you're outside, right? You don't know this game. You don't give a shit. But you envy them being so goddamned alive, for knowing what they care about and what they want and for trying to get at it. For being in it, man. And you're just sitting there watching.
~ Gregg Andrew Hurwitz
Letter 74 I still have the first letter that you wrote to me. I carry it with me like a garden in my pocket. If you come to me at this moment your minutes will become hours your hours will become days and your days will become a lifetime. I am never sure if I am reading the letter or the letter is reading me.
~ Gregory Colbert