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Longing Quotes

Browse 2444 quotes about Longing.

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Longing Quotes

“For with my intuition I knew that this man was repeating a pattern over and over again: courting a woman with his intelligence and sympathy, claiming her emotionally; then, when she began to claim in return, running away. And the better a woman was, the sooner he would begin to run. I knew this with my intuition, and yet I sat there in my dark room, looking at the hazed wet brilliance of the purple London night sky, longing with my whole being.”

MenWholeRunningNightDarkRoomsSkyReturnClaimsLongingPatternsIntuitionLondonSatRunning AwayWetPurpleBrillianceNight SkyDark Room
Author:Doris Lessing
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“I shook so that it was some time before I realized that he was shaking too, and for the same reason. I don't know how long we sat there on the dusty floor, crying in each others arms with the longing of twenty years spilling down our faces.”

KnowsYearsLongReasonFacesKnow HowCryArmsTwentiesLongingI RealizedSatShakingSpilling
Book:The Outlander Series 8-Book Bundle: Outlander, Dragonfly in Amber, Voyager, Drums of Autumn, The Fiery Cross, A Breath of Snow and Ashes, An Echo in the Bone, Written in My Own Heart's Blood
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“There are times when personal experience keeps us from reaching the mountain top and so we let it go because the weight of it is too heavy. And sometimes the mountain top is difficult to reach with all our resources, factual and confessional, so we are just there, collectively grasping, feeling the limitations of knowledge, longing together, yearning for a way to reach that highest point. Even this yearning is a way to know.”

KnowsWaySometimesFeelingsTogetherDifficultMountainHighestResourcesWeightLongingHeavyLimitationReachingYearningLet It GoPersonal ExperiencesGraspingFactualMountain Top
Author:Bell Hooks
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“The sight of a child…will arouse certain longings in adult, civilized persons — longings which relate to the unfulfilled desires and needs of those parts of the personality which have been blotted out of the total picture in favor of the adapted persona.”

NeedsChildrenPersonsHas BeensDesireCertainPersonalityAdultsSightLongingFavorsRelateCivilizedPersonaAdaptedMemories Dreams ReflectionsUnfulfilled Desires
Book:Memories, dreams, reflections
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“The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, - this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost... He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American.”

MenSelfLostWishConsciousLongingAfrican AmericanManhoodStrifeSelf ConsciousMergingDubois
Book:The Souls of Black Folk: The Oxford W. E. B. Du Bois
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“How sweet is the assurance, how comforting is the peace that come from the knowledge that if we marry right and live right, our relationship will continue, notwithstanding the certainty of death and the passage of time. Men may write love songs and sing them. They may yearn and hope and dream. But all of this will be only a romantic longing unless there is an exercise of authority that transcends the powers of time and death.”

IfsMenWritingMayDreamSongSweetExerciseAuthorityLongingCertaintyPassagesOur RelationshipAssuranceComfortingHopes And DreamsPassage Of TimeLdsCertainty Of Death
Author:Gordon B. Hinckley
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“It is a happy thing that time quells the longings of vengeance and hushes the promptings of rage and aversion. I had left this woman in bitterness and hate, and I came back to her now with no other emotion than a sort of ruth for her great sufferings, and strong yearning to forget and forgive all injuries - to be reconciled and clasp hands in amity.”

HandsSufferingHateLeftStrongForgetEmotionForgivenessForgivingLongingRageInjuryBitternessYearningVengeanceAversionRuthForgive And ForgetAmityHappy Things
Book:The Bronte Sisters: Three Novels: Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights; and Agnes Grey (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
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“. . .There are certain people who come into your life, and leave a mark. . . Their place in your heart is tender; a bruise of longing, a pulse of unfinished business. Just hearing their names pushes and pulls at you in a hundred ways, and when you try to define those hundred ways, describe them even to yourself, words are useless.”

PeopleWayLifeTryingHeartCertainNamesHundredMarkLongingHearingUselessPulseUnfinishedBruisesUnfinished Business
Author:Sara Zarr
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“They say when you are missing someone that they are probably feeling the same, but I don't think it's possible for you to miss me as much as I'm missing you right now”

ThinkingLoveFeelingsSadnessMissingRight NowSadLongingLost LoveRomantic LoveValentine's DayMissing SomeoneDon't Give UpMissing YouI Miss YouBeing SadFeeling SadMissed YouSad LifeSadness Of LifeI Missed YouMiss MeSadness And LoveMissing You LoveSad FeelingSad Break Up LoveReally Sad Break UpMissing A Person
Author:Edna St. Vincent Millay
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“Something went klunk. Like a nickel dropping in a soda machine. One of those small insights that explains everything. This was puberty for these boys. Adolescence. The first date, the first kiss, the first chance to hold hands with someone special. Delayed, postponed, a decade's worth of longing--while everybody around you celebrates life, you pretend, suppress, inhibit, deprive yourself of you own joy--but finally ultimately, eventually, you find a place where you can have a taste of everything denied.”

FirstsHandsJoyChanceBoysSpecialTasteKissingMachinesLongingInsightDecadesCelebrateDeniedAdolescenceDroppingFirst KissPubertyDelayedHolding HandsSodaCelebrate LifeNickelsFirst DateSpecial Someone
Author:David Gerrold
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“We treat desire as a problem to be solved, address what desire is for and focus on that something and how to acquire it rather than on the nature and the sensation of desire, though often it is the desire between us and the object of desire that fills the space in between with the blue of longing.”

ProblemDesireSpaceFocusObjectsTreatsBlueLongingAcquireAddressesSensationsObjects Of Desire
Book:A Field Guide to Getting Lost
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“Her future, she thought, was likely to be worse than her past, for after her years of contented renunciation, she had slipped back into desire and longing; she found joyless days of distasteful occupation harder and harder; she found the image of the intense and varied life she yearned for, and despaired of, becoming more and more importunate.”

YearsPastDesireFoundBecomingHarderLongingIntenseOccupationBecoming MoreRenunciationDistastefulImportunate
Book:The Mill on the Floss: Easyread Large Edition
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“To crave and to have are as like as a thing and its shadow. For when does a berry break upon the tongue as sweetly as when one longs to taste it, and when is the taste refracted into so many hues and savors of ripeness and earth, and when do our senses know any thing so utterly as when we lack it? And here again is a foreshadowing - the world will be made whole. For to wish for a hand on one's hair is all but to feel it. So whatever we may lose, very craving gives it back to us again.”

KnowsWorldGivingFeelsMayDoeMadeWholeHandsEarthWishLosesBreakHairTasteShadowLongingTongueSensesCraveCravingBerriesHueForeshadowingRipeness
Author:Marilynne Robinson
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“I felt instantly at home, and wanted only to dismiss Alistair, along with the rest of Justice Hall, that I might have a closer look at the shelves.I had to content myself instead with a strolling perusal, my hands locked behind my back to keep them from reaching out for Le Morte D'Arthur, Caxton 1485 or the delicious little red-and-gilt Bestiary, MS Circa 1250 or.... If I took one down, I should be lost. So I looked, like a hungry child in a sweet shop, and trailed out on my guide's heels with one longing backward glance.”

IfsShouldLooksChildrenLittlesHomeHandsMightWantedLostFeltJusticeBehindsSweetRedLongingGuidesHungryShopsReachingHallsReach OutLockedHeelsShelvesGlancesDeliciousStrollingArthurBehind My Back
Author:Laurie R. King
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“My heart sings of your longing for me, and my thoughts climb down to marvel at your mercy. I do not fear as you gather up my days. Your name is the sweetness of time, and you carry me close into the night, speaking consolations, drawing down lights from the sky, saying, See how the night has no terrors for one who remembers the name.”

HeartLightRememberNightNamesSkyMy HeartMercyLongingTerrorDrawingClimbsSweetnessMy ThoughtsConsolationDo Not Fear
Book:Book of Mercy
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“They all have tired mouths and bright seamless souls. And a longing (as for sin) sometimes haunts their dreams. They are almost all alike; in God's gardens they keep still, like many, many intervals in his might and melody. Only when they spread their wings are they wakers of a wind: as if God with his broad sculptor- hands leafed through the pages in the dark book of the beginning.”

IfsStillsBookSoulSometimesDreamHandsMightDarkSinWindPagesMouthsGardenLongingTiredWingsSpreadMelodyBroadsIntervalsSculptorsSeamless
Book:The Book of Images
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“We all dream dreams of unity, of purity; we all dream that there's an authoritative voice out there that will explain things, including ourselves. If it wasn't for our longing for these things, I doubt the novel or the short story would exist in its current form. I'm not going to say much more on the topic. Just remember: In dictatorships, only one person is really allowed to speak. And when I write a book or a story, I too am the only one speaking, no matter how I hide behind my characters.”

IfsWritingPersonsBookMatterCharacterStoriesDreamRememberFormSpeakVoiceBehindsNovelDoubtLongingUnityIncludingCurrentsPurityShort StoryDictatorshipTopics
Author:Junot Diaz
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“For paradise we long. For perfection we were made...This longing is the source of the hunger and dissatisfaction that mark our lives...This longing makes our loves and friendships possible, and so very unsatisfactory. The hunger is for...nothing less than perfect communion with the...one in whom all the fragments of our scattered existence come together...we must not stifle this longing. It is a holy dissatisfaction. Such dissatisfaction is not a sickness to be healed, but the seed of a promise to be fulfilled...The only death to fear is the death of settling for something less.”

LongMadeTogetherPerfectExistenceOur LivesSourceHolyPromisePerfectionMarkLongingHungerSeedsSettlingParadiseSicknessFulfilledCommunionOur LoveFragmentsHealedDissatisfactionLove And Friendship
Author:Richard John Neuhaus
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“But this was that view of human destiny which she had most passionately hated and rejected: the view that man was ever to be drawn by some vision of the unattainable shining ahead, doomed ever to aspire, but not to achieve. Her life and her values could not bring her to that, she thought; she had never found beauty in longing for the impossible and had never found the possible to be beyond her reach.”

MenHumansValuesFoundViewsVisionDestinyImpossibleAchieveLongingShiningHatedRejectedDoomedAspireUnattainable
Book:Atlas Shrugged
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“Love Jo all your days, if you choose, but don't let it spoil you, for it's wicked to throw away so many good gifts because you can't have the one you want.”

IfsWantLongingWickedYou ChooseUnrequited LoveSpoilUnrequited
Book:Greatest Christmas Novels in One Volume: Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, Heidi, The Romance of a Christmas Card, The Little City of Hope, The Wonderful Life, Little Women, Anne of Green Gables, Little Lord Fauntleroy, Peter Pan…
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“He walked on without resting. He had a terrible longing for some distraction, but he did not know what to do, what to attempt. A new overwhelming sensation was gaining more and more mastery over him every moment; this was an immeasurable, almost physical, repulsion for everything surrounding him, an obstinate, malignant feeling of hatred. All who met him were loathsome to him - he loathed their faces, their movements, their gestures. If anyone had addressed him, he felt that he might have spat at him or bitten him... .”

IfsKnowsMomentsFeelingsMightFacesFeltMovementTerribleMetsHatredLongingSensationsOverwhelmingDistractionMasteryGesturesObstinateSpatsRepulsion
Author:Fyodor Dostoevsky
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“The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them,and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols,breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.”

IfsHeartBookCountryPastDesireTurnsFoundMemoriesHeardFlowerNewsLongingDumbTunesIdolsBetrayEchoesScentMistakenWorshippers
Author:C. S. Lewis
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“The very first thing I tell my new students on the first day of a workshop is that good writing is about telling the truth. We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. Sheep lice do not seem to share this longing, which is one reason they write so very little. But we do. We have so much we want to say and figure out.”

WantNeedsWritingFirstsLittlesReasonSeemsShareFiguresStudentsLongingSpeciesWho We AreTelling The TruthSheepGood WritingWorkshopsNeeds And WantsLice
Book:Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
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“But often, in the world’s most crowded streets, But often, in the din of strife, There rises an unspeakable desire After the knowledge of our buried life; A thirst to spend our fire and restless force In tracking out our true, original course; A longing to inquire Into the mystery of this heart which beats So wild, so deep in us—to know Whence our lives come and where they go.”

KnowsWorldHeartDesireCoursesForceFireOur LivesMysteryStreetsBeatsOriginalsLongingBuriedThirstStrifeRestlessCrowdedUnspeakableTrackingCrowded Streets
Book:Dover Beach and Other Poems
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“He knew that all things human are transitory and therefore that it must cease one day or another. He looked forward to that day with eager longing. Love was like a parasite in his heart, nourishing a hateful existence on his life's blood; it absorbed his existence so intensely that he could take pleasure in nothing else.”

HumansHeartPleasureExistenceBloodOne DayAll ThingsLongingCeaseHatefulParasitesTransitory
Book:Of Human Bondage (Diversion Classics)
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