Longing Quotes

Longing for the mountains ~ John Muir

Hannah. He looks at me, the same way he looked at me last night in the diner, with longing and sadness, and it's like everything I'm feeling I can see in his eyes. I want to kiss him so bad it hurts, but I know I can't. So instead, I tear my gaze from his and look down at the ground. ~ Lauren Barnholdt

His heart hurt with the wanting of it, the hurt no less painful for being difficult to explain. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

Longing for God's love help us to earn peace, joy and strength that educates us how to pull through vicious storms of life. ~ Euginia Herlihy

When I give my time, when I can make someone smile after they were feeling sad, it's as close to healthy as I ever feel.
Do the kinds of things that come from the heart. When you do, you won't be dissatisfied, you won't be envious, you won't be longing for somebody else's things. On the contrary, you'll be overwhelmed with what comes back. ~ Mitch Albom

We all start out with the same alphabet. We are all unique. Talent is not the most important thing
discipline and dedication are. Craft can be learned but desire and longing are innate. Despite the demands of school and just being young, try to write SOMETHING every day
a description, a captured emotion, a simile, a metaphor. Read, for crying out loud! A writer must read the way a ball player must go to the ballfield every day to practice. Everything is possible in this world of ours
and so's publication. ~ Robert Cormier

I go backwards and forwards, recapturing the past, wondering about the future - and, most unreasonably, I find myself longing for the past more than for the future. ~ Dodie Smith

Marry me." A statement. Not a question. It came again. "Marry. Me." His eyes burned into
mine. I breathed in, my ears ringing. My pulse sped up, my heart raced, I was trying to remember exactly what breathing meant. I was wet, and I was gasping.
"I want you. I want that, what they had today. I want it all, and I want it with you. I want you, want you to be my wife. I've got a ring, I'll give it to you right now if you'll say yes." With every
word, his hands tightened on my hips, desperate, crazy, longing. "I had this all planned out, so much smoother and romantic and everything you deserve. But my head's been spinning since
yesterday, when I saw my best friend steal a van to go meet his new family. And all I want, all I've ever wanted, is exactly that. Exactly you. And when I walked up those stairs, and heard the
shower go on, and knew you were in here all naked and wet and waiting for me, I knew I couldn't wait another day, another hour, another minute, without asking you to be my wife. So. Marry. Me."
He knelt. Christ on a crutch, he knelt on the shower floor, where he had knelt countless times before . . . ahem . . . took my hand, and repeated those words
again. Finally, with a question mark at the end. "Marry me?"
And in that moment, I realized all the worrying, all the hand wringing and wonder ponder, all the thoughts about who says what's right for a couple, and when is it too soon, and when is it the right time, and if it ain't b ~ Alice Clayton

A thousand recollected lives were passing through her, a thousand stories - of love and work, of parents and children, of duty and joy and grief. Beds slept in and meals eaten, and the bliss and pain of the body, and a view of summer leaves from a window on a morning it had rained; the nights of loneliness and the nights of love, the soul in it's body keeping always longing to be known. ~ Justin Cronin

There are times when, that which we wish to be, will come to be, when we let it be. ~ Tom Althouse

Endless longing; a face you'd known since childhood, since birth almost; a body that moved as though it were your own. These were things you never spoke of, things you never hoped for; things you could never admit to. Things you'd die for, and die of. ~ Elizabeth Hand

When you love someone that much and that person is away from you, sometimes it literally feels like you can't breathe, as if your body is aching for air. And then that person walks into the room, and all that ache inside of you, all that longing, dissolves and you feel yourself breathe again. But it's as if he takes the same breath with you. You're both one. ~ Diane Les Becquets

The great thing about fantasy is that you can drag dreams and longings and hopes and fears and strivings out of your subconscious and call them 'magic' or 'dragons' or 'faeries' and get to know them better. But then I write the stuff. Obviously I'm prejudiced. ~ Robin McKinley

But the part of ourselves we hate the most is our longing to be wanted and enjoyed. ~ Dan B. Allender

If only you would kiss me.
Press your lips to mine like a searing iron. Wrap me in your arms as if you were a monarch claiming a kingdom. Hold me close until I warm through to the core. Do this, and I promise to melt into you, no longer a cold and frozen figure in your narrowed sight. How devoted I would be if only your lips burned for mine!
If only you would kiss me. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

I couldn't let go of the thought that it had, in fact, been he, restless and moody Heathcliff. Day after day, he floated through all the Wal-Marts in America, searching for me in a million lonely aisles. ~ Marisha Pessl

He sucked in more longing with every inhale, he exhaled some of his happiness on the other side. How miserable. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

There is the heat of her beautiful smile , the pulsing rush of Longing, the irresistible magic to make man go mad ... ~ Imran Shaikh

Taylor, listen to me. I could tell you that it's okay. That she wasn't a wonderful person, or I didn't love her. I could tell you that she's happier now, and her life would've been sad and filled with pain and longing to see her love again. I could say that I'm not struggling with her death, as well as the death of the hope that she could once again be part of my life. But instead I'll just say that I'm sad, too, sweetheart. That way I can spare you the struggle of detecting the lie in my words. ~ Embee

Somewhere along the way, there develops within the soul a yearning that can no longer be ignored, a craving for the great love affair. We feel it drawing ever closer. It is the greatest of them all. It cannot fail. It is all consuming. It is incomparable. It is the love affair with our own true nature and the source from which it comes. The desire is in all of us but, more often than not, it is ignored for other interests. We wrestle with each interest, trying to make it work, growing with each adventure until the light has grown bright enough for us to reach for it. ~ Donna Goddard

And there you have it ... if I knew that I could only have a few nights in that man's arms or nothing, I would take those magic nights and use them to keep me warm for the rest of my life. ~ Karen Marie Moning

Patiently, hopefully, actively we are waiting for Jesus. And yet here is the astonishing twist: As we wait for our Lord and the bodily resurrection yet to come for the departed, the world waits for us. As we long for God, the world is longing for God in us. ~ Jonathan Martin

A religion addresses the longing in us to have that said from which we can go on to speak of next and next things rightly, in their immediate time - the telling of what came first and before done forever. ~ Laura Riding

I felt a wave of longing roll out of me, but not the way it usually did, diffuse and sad. This was hopeful, as though it had been coaxed out by a whispered promise. ~ Michele Jaffe

Longing was a feeling that was hard to live with. It didn't ask permission. It didn't pay attention to time or place. It was overwhelming and demanding, grasping and selfish. It clouded thoughts or made them too bright, too sharp. Longing demanded unconditional surrender. Lumikki tried to fight it and failed. She didn't want to long and yet she longed. She didn't want to remember, and yet her dreams and her body remembered, reminding her constantly.
The longing was physical. It was dizziness. It was a seizing in her belly. It was the need to wrap her arms around herself alone in bed when there was no one else to do it for her. She felt the longing in her fingertips that yearned to stroke, to touch, to caress. The longing made her fingers restless, fiddling with the zipper of her jacket, the strings in her hoodie, fidgeting with whatever little thing happened to her hand. The longing made her teeth bite into her lower lip, leaving it chipped and almost bleeding. She knew she was being stupid. She knew her longing was pointless. ~ Salla Simukka

Dilemmas of the Angels: Flight"

Before the angel there was something else -
not this coffee shop next to a drug rehabilitation center
filled with war veterans of the past, men and women
strapped to their chairs, birds straining to rise
from piles of feathers, bones, and blood.

Drenched in sweat and a little shaky
from too much caffeine, she takes flight,
a shining white-winged trumpeter swan
crossing open water, steam rising
from the feathers' barbs. Below her,
a cormorant, unfolding its black wings,
explodes from the surface, and even fish,
leaping from the oily sheen, glide
for a moment, gills pumping
in the poisonous atmosphere.

Such longing. How large
the muscles in our shoulders must be
to lift our wings even a single time. ~ David Romtvedt

Homesickness is just a state of mind for me. i'm always missing someone or someplace or something, i'm always trying to get back to some imaginary somewhere. my life has been one long longing. ~ Elizabeth Wurtzel

This is what I think, but I don't say the words because the counterpoint of yes and no, love and hate, fear and longing, the need to tear down and the need to build up are synonymous and one. ~ Robert Vivian

Reality is perhaps not at all what I imagine. Perhaps it doesn't exist, in fact. Perhaps it only exists as a longing. ~ Ingmar Bergman

My longing for someone to talk to made Himillsy the lightning bug in my honey jar. I punched holes in the lid so she could breathe. ~ Chip Kidd

Opposite to where she sat the water was a boggy brown, but not too far along it was a dark violet colour, always changing, the way the sweep of the current changed, but as she saw it, her own life did not change at all - the same routine, the same longing and the same loneliness. ~ Edna O'Brien

She goes on with her beautiful hair and mouth like before,
I go on like before, alone in the field.
It's like my head had been lowered,
And if I think this, and raise my head
And the golden sun dries the need to cry I can't stop having.
How vast the field and interior love... !
I look, and I forget, like dryness where there was water and trees losing their leaves. ~ Alberto Caeiro

I am the love, the pain, the intensity
I am the remnants of a banished plea;
I am the trivialized doors of a jubilant home
I am the shadows of an abandoned dome;
I am the instinct, the bizarre sound
I am the fate of a trampled mound;
I am the words half-heard when half-said
I am the memories of a longing thread;
I am the anarchist in disdain,
I am the bewilderment of an orphan pain;
I am your hand, I am the bar
I am the bellicosity of our resilient scar;
I am the love, the pain, the intensity
I am the predicament of the silent sea. ~ Ashfaq Saraf

All his longings came out as a kind of disdain for what he longed for. ~ Alan Hollinghurst

Pondering all this down in Reva's black room under her sad, pilly sheets, I felt nothing. I could think of feelings, emotions, but I couldn't bring them up in me. I couldn't even locate where my emotions came from. My brain? It made no sense. Irritation was what I knew best - a heaviness on my chest, a vibration in my neck like my head was revving up before it would rocket off my body. But that seemed directly tied to my nervous system - a physiological response. Was sadness the same kind of thing? Was joy? Was longing? Was love? ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

Deep down under where his heart resided, strangled up in thorny vines of guilt, anger, fear and longing, there lay something deeper in him, something that he couldn't see but she could. ~ Carol Oates

Spencer repeats, a little harsher now. I want kissing, I want mad fucking passionate kissing. The kind of kissing I've seen in all those other photos of you, the kissing that is so filled with emotion and longing and lust, I'm instantly hard. Kiss me like that, Blackbird. ~ J.A. Huss

In the distance I hear a song - a simple song - a song of despair - a song of longing and a song of sorrow.
I have forgotten the words and the rhythm, but I sing.
Yes, I sing. ~ Pietros Maneos

At the heart of the matter of masculine excess is a great longing for the love and approval of a father, a man who can tell another man that his masculinity is splendid enough and he can now relax. ~ Frank Pittman

And the black box in her arms whimpered itself to sleep with longing to be a normal person who is chosen, not a special person who is discovered. To be the kind of duck who gets included by wild swans ~ Nell Zink

It is Jesus that The Proverbs 31 Lady seeks when she dreams of happiness; He is waiting for her when nothing else she finds satisfies her; He is the beauty to which she is so attracted to; it is He who provoked her with that thirst for fullness that will not let her settle for compromise; it is He who urges her to shed the masks of a false life; it is He who reads in her heart her most genuine choices, the choices that others try to suppress.
Do you desire to be that Lady of God? God desires a relationship with you. He's made this relationship possible by sending His Son. That inner void is filled through a relationship with the Lord. The place to start to fulfill the longing in your heart is to trust in the Lord for His salvation and allow the Holy Spirit to work within you to satisfy your thirst. As we go together to the well that never runs dry, I know the savior of our soul will meet us there. We will drink from the water of life He gives, the water that quenches our thirsty souls. ~ Mary Maina

I stood there silently, under the cold embrace of that rain,
and watched myself drown,
as all of that sadness soaked itself onto me,
It did not wash away my sorrows,
nor did it comfort me,
it just gave in to me, like a falling leaf gives in to the ground,
filling my chest with all the sorrows, of both tomorrow and yesterday,
it broke something in me, something i once cherished,
and without that torn self, i often ask myself, i wonder,
what's worse ??
To lose one's own self? or to lose one's own reason to live .... ~ Syed Murtaza Haroon

Clairey knew well that it was one thing to occupy his bed, quite another to occupy his heart. ~ Tracy Winegar

His manner showed a curious mixture of longing and enthusiasm, which is to say that his enthusiasms were always of a wistful sort, and his longings, always enthusiastic. He was delighted by things of an improbable or impractical nature, which he sought out with the open-hearted gladness of a child at play. When he spoke, he did so originally, and with an idealistic agony that was enough to make all but the most rigid of his critics smile; when he was silent, one had the sense, watching him, that his imagination was nevertheless usefully occupied, for he often sighed, or nodded, as though in agreement with an interlocutor whom no one else could see. ~ Eleanor Catton

We will die soon; and still our "hope is from him." May we not expect that when we face illness He will send angels to carry us to His bosom? We believe that when the pulse is faint and the heart is weak, some angelic messenger shall stand and look with loving eyes upon us and whisper, "Come away!" As we approach the heavenly gate, we expect to hear the welcome invitation, "Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world."1 We are expecting harps of gold and crowns of glory; we are hoping soon to be among the company of shining ones before the throne; we are looking forward and longing for the time when we shall be like our glorious Lord - for "We shall see him as he is."2 Then if these are your hopes, O my soul, live for God; live with the desire and resolve to glorify Him from whose grace in your election, redemption, and calling you safely "hope" for the coming glory. ~ Anonymous

The Music of Negro religion is that plaintive rhythmic melody, with its touching minor cadences, which, despite caricature and defilement, still remains the most original and beautiful expression of human life and longing yet born on American soil. ~ W.E.B. Du Bois

Forget about enlightenment.
Sit down wherever you are
And listen to the wind 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, touch in, let go. ~ John Welwood

How many times we have picked up in the streets human beings who had been living like animals and were longing to die like angels! ~ Mother Teresa

In the end, maybe love just meant longing for something impossibly bright and forever out of reach. ~ Leigh Bardugo

…Longing, of course,
becomes its own object, the way
that desire can make anything into a god. ~ Mark Doty

Yet, it ought to be obvious that good music generally occupies a higher plane that mere politics. Great writers can express moods through melody and capture experiences we share most powerfully - love, lust, longing; joy, rage, fear; triumph, yearning and confusion. ~ Tony Snow

And the heart has become so tired, and the longing so vast. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

I did not grow up in poverty. But I did grow up with a poor boy's sense of longing, in my case not for what my family had never had, but for what we had had and lost. ~ Mohsin Hamid

The life around me was not meaningful. I always longed to be away from it, and always had done. So the life I led was not my own. I tried to make it mine, this was my struggle, because of course I wanted it, but I failed, the longing for something else undermined all my efforts. ~ Karl Ove Knausgaard

It is possible for a man to know whether God has called him or not, and he may know it too beyond a doubt. He may know it as surely as if he read it with his own eyes; nay, he may know it more surely than that, for if I read a thing with my eyes, even my eyes may deceived me, the testimony of sense may be false, but the testimony of the Spirit must be true. We have the witness of the Spirit within, bearing witness with our spirits that we are born of God. There is such a thing on earth as an infallible assurance of our election. Let a man once get that, and it will anoint his head with fresh oil, it will clothe him with the white garment of praise, and put the son of the angel into his mouth. Happy, happy man! who is fully assured of his interest in the covenant of grace, in the blood of atonement, and in the glories of heaven! Such men there are here this very day. Let them 'rejoice in the Lord alway, and again I say rejoice.'

What would some of you give if you could arrive at this assurance? Mark, if you anxiously desire to know, you may know. If your heart pants to read its title clear it shall do so ere long. No man ever desired Christ in his heart with a living and longing desire, who did not find Him sooner or later. If thou hast a desire, God has given it thee. If thou pantest, and criest, and groanest after Christ, even this is His gift; bless Him for it. Thank Him for little grace, and ask Him for great grace. He has given thee hope, ask for faith; and wh ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

I am a creature of the Fey
Prepare to give your soul away
My spell is passion and it is art
My song can bind a human heart
And if you chance to know my face
My hold shall be your last embrace.

I shall be thy lover...

I am unlike a mortal lass
From dreams of longing I have passed
I came upon your lonely cries
Revealed beauty to your eyes
So shun the world that you have known
And spend your nights within my own.

I shall be thy lover...

You shall be known by other men
For your great works of voice and pen
Yet inspiration has a cost
For with me know your soul is lost
I'll take your passion and your skill
I'll take your young life quicker still.

I shall be thy lover...

Through the kisses that I give
I draw from you that I will live
And though you think this weakness grand
The touch of death your lover's hand
Your will to live has come too late
Come to my arms and love this fate

I shall be thy lover...

I am a creature of the Fey
Prepare to give your soul away
My spell is passion and it is art
My song can bind a human heart
And if you chance to know my face
My hold shall be your last embrace. ~ Heather Alexander

At first we cannot see beyond the path that leads downward to dark and hateful things but no light or beauty will ever come from the man who cannot bear this sight. Light is always born of darkness, and the sun never yet stood still in heaven to satisfy man's longing or to still his fears. ~ C. G. Jung

Sometimes we let our thoughts of tomorrow take up too much of today. Daydreaming of the past and longing for the future may provide comfort but will not take the place of living in the present. This is the day of our opportunity, and we must grasp it ~ Thomas S. Monson

Yet my longing for her was like a bad cold that had hung on for years despite my conviction that I was sure to get over it at any moment. ~ Donna Tartt

But in spite of my great desire for intimacy, I've always been a loner. Perhaps when the longing for connection is as strong as it is in me, when the desire is for something so deep and true, one knows better than to try. One sees that this is not the place for that. ~ Elizabeth Berg

The odd thing was, Dickie longed to experience that feeling. It wasn't any kind of death wish: there was not a suicidal cell in his body. rather, it seemed that the very sensation, the inner force that made Dickie's scrotum tighten, his throat constrict, and his eyeballs swim in dizziness also made him want to tumble into the precipitous void. And ultimately, his fear of longing to fall was greater, more disturbing, than his fear of falling. ~ Tom Robbins

The bible never belittles disappointment, but it does add one key word: temporary - What we feel now, we will not always feel. Our disappointment is itself a sign, and aching, a hunger for something better. And faith is, in the end, a kind of homesickness - for a home we have never visited but have never once stopped longing for. ~ Philip Yancey

People often miss things that don't exist
miss things that were but are not anymore. ~ Sarah McCoy

They did not talk, not because they hated conversation, but because they wanted to listen intently to the voice of God in silence; they did not dislike eating, but were feeding on the Word of God so that they did not have room for earthly food or time to bother with it; they did not avoid company because it bored them, but, as one of them said, 'I cannot be with you and with God.'34 It was not a dislike of sleep that made them keep vigil, but an eager and longing attitude of waiting for the coming of Christ: ~ Benedicta Ward

Smiling at an echo of his voice on my mind's stage, I felt the void of all I hadn't said. ~ Aspen Matis

Oh my love! You are the light of love in the darkness. I am longing for you, you are my flower and freshness. ~ Debasish Mridha

Memories lurk like dustballs in the backs of drawers. The stereo is a special model that plays only music fraught with poignant associations. ~ Jay McInerney

Silences of my days
Silences of my wanderings
Silences of my nights
Silences of my loneliness

Silences of my work
Silences of my insanity
Silences of my dreams
Silences of my craziness


Silences of my passions
Silences of my reading
Silences of my obsessions
Silences of my writing


Silences of my thoughts
Silences of my pondering
Silences of my emotions
Silences of my aching

Silences of my stares
Silences of my pining
Silences of my feelings
Silences of my longing

Silences where I truly live
My Silences
Leave me to my silences... ~ Avijeet Das

Will it be here that we shall find a place which will not elude us, or which if it remains does not exert on us a culpable attraction? Or must we, leaning over the deck and watching the shores glide by, move forever onward? ~ Andre Gide

A house means a family house, a place specially meant for putting children and men in so as to restrict their waywardness and distract them from the longing for adventure and escape they've had since time began. ~ Marguerite Duras

That haunting longing for the moon returned. Stronger, broader, flavoured with all the bone-deep desire only a nocturnal creature could feel for their sole light-giver, the lonely satellite that watched over them when the rest of the daylight world abandoned them. ~ L.J. Hayward

You cant see the hurt in my eyes. I cover it up too good. You cant see the loneliness in my eyes. I cover it up too good. You cant see the depression in my eyes. I cover it up too good. You cant see my past in my eyes. No one has seen my whole past. Not even me. One thing I cant cover up, though, is my longing to be with you. The longing to just be together in any way possible. We are both broken. But that's okay. The only way two things can fit together to make a whole is if they were incomplete to begin with. ~ Youknownotmyname

All I ever wanted was to sing to God. He gave me that longing and then made me mute. ~ Peter Shaffer

Looking at the turmoil of life from this standpoint we find all occupied with its want and misery, exerting all their strength in order to satisfy its endless needs and avert manifold suffering, without, however, daring to expect anything else in return than merely the preservation of this tormented individual existence for a short span of time. And yet, amid all this turmoil we see a pair of lovers exchanging longing glances - yet why so secretly, timidly, and stealthily? Because these lovers are traitors secretly striving to perpetuate all this misery and turmoil that otherwise would come to a timely end. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

It is said that he was the first of Men to reach the Great Sea, and that none, save the Eldar, have ever felt more deeply the longing that it brings. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

Musical people always want one to be perfectly dumb at the very moment when one is longing to be perfectly deaf. ~ Oscar Wilde

My soul is full of longing for the secret of the sea, and the heart of the great ocean sends a thrilling pulse through me. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

In the whole history of my letters, of my liking boys, not once has a boy liked me back at the same time as I liked him. It was always me alone, longing after a boy, and that was fine, that was safe ~ Jenny Han

Whatever condition we are in, we must always do what we want to do, and if we want to go on a journey, then we must do so and not worry about our condition, even if it's the worst possible condition, because, if it is, we're finished anyway, whether we go on the journey or not, and it's better to die having made the journey we're been longing for than to be stifled by our longing. ~ Thomas Bernhard

I miss my old life ~ Richard C. Morais

If he has the courage to unearth his dreams, he then faces a second obstacle: love. He now knows what he desires to do, but he thinks he will harm those around him, if he gives everything up to follow his dreams. He does not understand that love is an additional impulse, not something which hinders one from going forward. He does not understand that those who truly wish him well are longing for his happiness, and are ready to accompany him on this adventure. ~ Paulo Coelho

This was what people fought wars over, she thought, and killed each other over, and destroyed their lives for: this nerve-shredding mixture of longing and pleasure. ~ Cassandra Clare

Letter 90


When I used to sit up late at night writing in our bed, I was calmed by the sound of your breathing. I would hold my breath and watch your chest rise and fall. I felt like a blind man soothed by the scents and sounds of a garden.

As I lie here in bed writing this letter, there is only the sound of my own breathing.

When I hold my breath, there is only silence.

Tonight I feel like a miner being lowered farther and farther into a dark mine shaft, longing for the scents and the sounds of a garden. ~ Gregory Colbert

But perhaps one day, you'll find yourself walking through a forest, and maybe if you listen closely enough, and maybe if you ask from the very bottom of your heart, one of the trees might hear the longing in your soul - the longing for connection, the longing for something deeper that resides so far below the surface of the world in which we choose to live out our day-to-day. And you'll hear it, the voice of one of those trees, calling back to you, telling you that the world is alive with mysteries, and that in order to understand them, one must first learn to be still, to listen, and the world will unveil itself to you, as though it was waiting to do so all along. ~ Aditi Khorana

Longing on a large scale is what makes history. This is just a kid with a
local yearning but he is part of an assembling crowd, anonymous
thousands off the buses and trains, people in narrow columns tramping over
the swing bridge above the river, and even if they are not a migration or a
revolution, some vast shaking of the soul, they bring with them the body
heat of a great city and their own small reveries and desperations, the
unseen something that haunts the day - men in fedoras and sailors on
shore leave, the stray tumble of their thoughts, going to a game. ~ Don DeLillo

A millenarian fire burned in Oppenheimer's spirit, fueled by his pride as a world-historical individual, by his fear that the natural force he loosed upon the world would escape all human control, and by a pure-hearted longing to ensure that his discovery of the devastation latent in the elemental substance of the world would serve concord rather than the ultimate discord, perpetual peace rather than permanent self-destruction. ~ Algis Valiunas

Does not man lack the force at the very point where he needs it most? And when he soars upward in joy, or sinks down in suffering, is not checked in both, is he not returned again to the dull, cold sphere of awareness, just when he was longing to lose himself in the fullness of the infinite. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

At other times, at the edge of a wood, especially at dusk, the trees themselves would assume strange shapes: sometimes they were arms rising heavenwards, , or else the trunk would twist and turn like a body being bent by the wind. At night, when I woke up and the moon and the stars were out, I would see in the sky things that filled me simultaneously with dread and longing. I remember that once, one Christmas Eve, I saw a great naked women, standing erect, with rolling eyes; she must have been a hundred feet high, but along she drifted, growing ever longer and ever thinner, and finally fell apart, each limb remaining separate, with the head floating away first as the rest of her body continued to waver ~ Gustave Flaubert

You are not a human being living your life, but you are a spiritual being longing for life. ~ Debasish Mridha

Through all my years
enslaved,
I've listened to
ancestral voices
echoing through
my weariness,
giving me strength
to withstand injustice,
to believe in myself
and survive.

May our songs and stories
keep alive in us
the will to grow in learning.
The longing to be free! ~ Ashley Bryan

Give to God just one thought of sincere love and longing and He responds: 'My child, one silent call from the depths of your soul, and I am there in an instant.' ~ Daya Mata

How do you generalize? War is hell, but that's not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead. The truths are contradictory. ~ Tim O'Brien

However much you have been wanting and hoping and dreaming of meeting the person of your dreams, it is only when you meet them that you will start missing them. It seems that the presence of an object is required to make its absence felt (or to make the absence of something felt). A kind of longing may have preceded their arrival, but you have to meet in order to feel the full force of your frustration in their absence. ~ Adam Phillips

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. ~ Anne Lamott

Here you are.
Still standing. Fierce with the reality of love and loss. Wearing the truth of our hearts on your tattered sleeves. And yes, this one very nearly took you out. And yes, there were days when the darkness was heavy and the climb out of that rabbit hole required you to mine your depths for strength you didn't even know you had.

But here you are.
Broken open by hope. Cracked wide by loss. Full of longing and grief and the burn of that phoenix fire. Warrior painted with ashes. Embers from the blaze still clinging to your newborn skin, leaving you forever marked with scars of rebirth.

And just look at you. Heart broken but still beating. Arms empty but still open. Face raised to the sky and giving thanks for the light, even when it hurts your eyes.

My god, you are beautiful. ~ Jeanette LeBlanc

When I have not rage or sorrow, and you depart from me, then I am most afraid. When the belly is full, and the mind has its sayings, then I fear for my soul; I rush to you as a child at night breaks into its parents' room. Do not forget me in my satisfaction. When the heart grins at itself, the world is destroyed. And I am found alone with the husks and the shells. Then the dangerous moment comes: I am too great to ask for help. I have other hopes. I legislate from the fortress of my disappointments, with a set jaw. Overthrow this even terror with a sweet remembrance: when I was with you, when my soul delighted you, when I was what you wanted. 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 terror for one who remembers the Name. ~ Leonard Cohen

My non-co-operation is a token of my earnest longing for real heart co-operation in the place of co-operation falsely so called. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

You are that angel of paradise.
You are that flower of heaven.
This universe was longing for you,
with endless love for infinite time. ~ Debasish Mridha

The Greek word "nostalgia" derives from the root nostros, meaning "return home," and algia, meaning "longing." Doctors in seventeenth-century Europe considered nostalgia an illness, like the flu, mainly suffered by displaced migrant servants, soldiers, and job seekers, and curable through opium, leeches, or, for the affluent, a journey to the Swiss Alps. Throughout time, such feeling has been widely acknowledged. The Portuguese have the term saudade. The Russians have toska. The Czechs have litost. Others too name the feeling: for Romanians, it's dor, for Germans, it's heimweh. The Welsh have hiraeth, the Spanish mal de corazon. Many ~ Arlie Russell Hochschild

As Christians, we needn't be at all ashamed of some impatience, longing, opposition to what is unnatural, and our full share of desire for freedom, earthly happiness, and opportunity for effective work. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer