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Longing Quotes

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Longing Quotes

“Despite not knowing if what he felt from moment to moment would pass or last forever, he entered fully into his shifting states of violent rage, self-pity, longing, heartbreak, cynicism, without losing the ability to think about what was happening to him. That took courage, I thought, living with the suffering in a mindful way, as an artifact of being, neither good nor bad.”

IfsThinkingWayInspirationalSelfStatesMomentsLastsSufferingFeltAbilityForeverKnowingLosingHappeningsLongingRageViolentPityDespiteCynicismNot KnowingShiftingSelf PityArtifacts
Author:Diane Ackerman
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“Vain vision! when the changing world each day Sees some such lordly pleasance pass away; When the mere stripling knows my symbols all Worn tokes, heaven hypothetical, Nature indifferent, and the dreams of men Figments of longing which we must condemn. Yet keep these plants, O Man! a kinder time May yet be moved by them to better rhyme, Or moved, like me, to place his pleasure low, On the firm Earth, whence Men and Blossoms grow.”

KnowsMenWorldMayDreamEarthDeathHeavenGrowsPleasureVisionDyingLowsMovedLongingPlantMereLike MeSymbolsVainFirmEach DayWornIndifferentRhymePassing AwayImpermanenceKinderHypotheticalFigments
Author:Ruth Pitter
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“It is the haunted premises of longing that the true love song inhabits. It is a howl in the void, for love and for comfort and it lives on the lips of the child crying for his mother. It is the song of the lover in need of her loved one, the raving of the lunatic supplicant petitioning his God...The love song is the sound of our endeavors to become God-like, to rise up and above the earthbound and the mediocre.”

NeedsChildrenMotherSongSoundCryLoversComfortLongingLipsSongwritingEndeavorLoved OnesVoidMediocrePremisesLunaticHowl
Author:Nick Cave
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“The sensual and spiritual are linked together by a mysterious bond, sensed by our emotions, though hidden from our eyes. To this double nature of the visible and invisible world - to the profound longing for the latter, coupled with the feeling of the sweet necessity for the former, we owe all sound and logical systems of philosophy, truly based on the immutable principles of our nature, just as from the same source arise the most senseless enthusiasms.”

WorldPhilosophyFeelingsEyeTogetherSpiritualSoundNatureEmotionPrinciplesSweetSourceLongingProfoundInvisibleAriseEnthusiasmMysteriousFormerSensualVisibleLatterLogicalLinked
Author:Wilhelm von Humboldt
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“This sense of being made in God's image calls us all constantly to look for it in others and to do what we can to help them acknowledge it and to realize it by joining in worship. We thereby carry to others the answer to their inmost longing, a yearning for union with the Trinity, a thirst to respond with adoration to the God who made them.”

LooksMadeHelpingRealizingAnswersWorshipLongingUnionsAcknowledgeYearningThirstAdorationJoiningTrinityJoining In
Book:In the Beginning, GOD: Creation, Culture, and the Spiritual Life
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“That adolescent me, the girl who was, as I remember her, insecure, unsure, dreaming, yearning, longing, that girl who was hard on herself, who was cowardly and brave, who was confused and determined-that girl who was me-still exists. I call on her when I write. I am the me of today-the person who has become a woman, a mother, a writer. Yet I am the me of all those other days as well. I believe in the reality of that past.”

WritingBelieveWellsPersonsStillsHardDreamRealityTodayPastRememberMotherGirlI BelieveLongingBraveI Believe InDeterminedConfusedYearningInsecureCowardlyThat GirlUnsure
Author:Norma Fox Mazer
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“For several centuries Western civilization has had a drive for material accumulation, continual extensions of economic power, termed 'progress'...The longing for growth is not wrong. The nub of the problem is how to flip over, as in jujitsu, the magnificent growth energy of modern civilization into a nonacquisitive search for deeper knowledge of self and nature.”

SelfProblemEnergyGrowthProgressEconomicModernCenturyMaterialsCivilizationLongingWesternDeeperMagnificentSelf KnowledgeExtensionsAccumulationFlipWestern CivilizationEconomic PowerModern Civilization
Author:Gary Snyder
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“In some inland post feel the savagery, the utter savagery, had closed round him--all that mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungles, in the hearts of wild men. There's no initiation either into such mysteries. He has to live in the midst of the incomprehensible, which is detestable. And it has a fascination, too, which goes to work upon him. The fascination of the abomination--you know. Imagine the growing regrets, the longing to escape, the powerless disgust, the surrender, the hate.”

KnowsMenFeelsHeartHateDarknessGrowingImagineMysteryRegretLongingRoundsSurrenderForestsMysteriousPostsMidstWildernessDisgustingPowerlessJungleFascinationInitiationSavageryAbominationWild ManMysterious Life
Book:Heart of Darkness - Second Edition
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“To me the sole hope of human salvation lies in teaching Man to regard himself as an experiment in the realization of God, to regard his hands as God's hand, his brain as God's brain, his purpose as God's purpose. He must regard God as a helpless Longing, which longed him into existence by its desperate need for an executive organ.”

MenNeedsHumansGodHandsLyingPurposeExistenceBrainTeachingRegardSalvationLongingExperimentsRealizationDesperateExecutivesOrgansSoleHelplessExperimentation
Author:George Bernard Shaw
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“Industrial societies turn their citizens into image-junkies; it is the most irresistible form of mental pollution. Poignant longings for beauty, for an end to probing below the surface, for a redemption and celebration of the body of the world. Ultimately, having an experience becomes identical with taking a photograph of it.”

WorldEndsBodyFormTurnsWomenBeautyCitizensLongingPhotographSurfaceRedemptionCelebrationPollutionIdenticalIrresistibleJunkiePoignantProbingBelow The Surface
Book:On photography
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“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.”

KnowsHumansHeartMeanSeemsAbleCasesLongingDefinedMysticalHuman HeartConnotation
Author:Julian Barnes
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“This longing for knowledge makes the real artist brave. He never adheres to the first image that appears to him, because he knows that this is not necessarily the richest and more correct. He sacrifices one images for another more intense and expressive, and he does this repeatedly until new and unknown visions strike him with their revealing spell.”

KnowsFirstsDoeRealArtistVisionSacrificeLongingBraveStrikesIntenseSpellsRevealingExpressiveReal Artists
Author:Michael Chekhov
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“Because I have become such a solitary, and not in the Aristotelian sense: not a beast, not a god. Rather, a loner troubled by longings, incapable of finding a suitable language and despairing at the impossibility of composing messages in a playable key--as if I no longer understood the codes used by the estimable people who wanted to hear from me and would have so much to reply if only the impediments were taken away.”

PeopleIfsWantedUsedLanguageTakenKeysFindingsMessagesUnderstoodLongingCodeBeastSolitaryIncapableImpossibilitySuitableLonerComposingImpediments
Book:Saul Bellow: Letters
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“True values entail suffering. That’s the way we think. All in all, we tend to view melancholia as more true. We prefer music and art to contain a touch of melancholia. So melancholia in itself is a value. Unhappy and unrequited love is more romantic than happy love. For we don’t think that’s completely real, do we?…Longing is true. It may be that there’s no truth at all to long for, but the longing itself is true. Just like pain is true. We feel it inside. It’s part of our reality.”

ThinkingWayFeelsMayLongArtRealRealityPainSufferingValuesLove IsViewsLongingUnhappyUnrequited LoveUnrequitedTrue ValueHappy Love
Author:Lars von Trier
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“I root for hurricanes. When, courtesy of the Weather Channel, I see one forming in the ocean off the coast of Africa, I find myself longing for it to become big and strong--Mother Nature's fist of fury, Gaia's stern rebuke. Considering the havoc mankind has wreaked upon nature with deforesting, stripmining, and the destruction of animal habitat, it only seems fair that nature get some of its own back and teach us that there are forces greater than our own.”

BigsSeemsMotherStrongForceAnimalTeachGreaterMankindStupidOceanFairsRootsDestructionLongingWeatherConsideringCoastFistsCourtesyFuryHurricanesMother NatureHabitatHavocRebukeGaia
Author:James Wolcott
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“I ask but one thing of you, only one, That always you will be my dream of you; That never shall I wake to find untrue All this I have believed and rested on, Forever vanished, like a vision gone Out into the night. Alas, how few There are who strike in us a chord we knew Existed, but so seldom heard its tone We tremble at the half-forgotten sound. The world is full of rude awakenings And heaven-born castles shattered to the ground, Yet still our human longing vainly clings To a belief in beauty through all wrongs. O stay your hand, and leave my heart its songs!”

WorldHumansHeartStillsDreamHandsNightSongAsksBeliefHeavenSoundBornHalfVisionGoneForeverOne ThingHeardMy HeartLongingForgottenStrikesAwakeningToneRudeAlasChordsCastlesShatteredUntrue
Book:A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass
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“Forget about enlightenment. Sit down wherever you are and listen to the wind that is singing in your veins. Feel the love, the longing and the fear in your bones. Open your heart to who you are, right now, not who you would like to be. Not the saint you're striving to become. But the being right here before you, inside you, around you. All of you is holy. You're already more and less than whatever you can know. Breathe out, look in, let go.”

KnowsLoveLifeFeelsLooksHeartMotivationalSpiritualFearForgetWindBecomingHolyRight NowLetting GoMindfulnessSingingEnlightenmentYogaWho You AreLongingStriveSaintBonesBreatheUpliftingBeing YourselfBelieve In YourselfVeinsFollow Your HeartListen To Your HeartJust Be YourselfListen To YourselfWherever You AreOpen Your Heart
Author:John Welwood
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“The wise say that it is not an iron, wooden or fiber fetter which is a strong one, but the besotted hankering after trinkets, children and wives, that, say the wise, is the strong fetter. It drags one down, and loose as it feels, it is hard to break. Breaking this fetter, people renounce the world, free from longing and abandoning sensuality.”

PeopleWorldFeelsChildrenHardStrongBreakWiseWifeDown AndLongingSensualityBuddhistIronDragRenounceFiberFettersTrinketsHankering
Author:Gautama Buddha
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“In the hero stories, the call to go on a journey takes the form of a loss, an error, a wound, an unexplainable longing, or a sense of a mission. When any of these happens to us, we are being summoned to make a transition. It will always mean leaving something behind,...The paradox here is that loss is a path to gain.”

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Book:How to Be an Adult: A Handbook on Psychological and Spiritual Integration
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“Patanjali says that we can meditate on anything that our heart desires. The important thing is not what we meditate on, but more that we meditate. And then gradually to meditate more and more on what corresponds to the innermost longing of our heart. The practice of meditation . . . gradually works its magic in stilling the mind. (42)”

MindHeartImportantDesirePracticeMeditationMagicImportant ThingsLongingHearts Desire
Book:The Wisdom of Patañjali's Yoga Sutras: A New Translation and Guide
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