Longings Quotes

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

Modern man has been in search of a new language of form to satisfy new longings and aspirations - longings for mental appeasement, aspirations to unity, harmony, serenity - an end to his alienation from nature. All these arts of remote times or strange cultures either give or suggest to the modern artist forms which he can adapt to his needs, the elements of a new iconography. ~ Herbert Read

WE END UP with the following situation: on the one hand, we have a news agenda dominated by reports of the workings of a highly complicated social science that wrestles with problems of near cosmic scale and incomprehensible difficulty, upon which it periodically delivers pronouncements at once pessimistic and resigned; and on the other hand, we have a host of inchoate, naive, innocent, impassioned but powerful longings that are carefully concealed and mostly go unmentioned for fear of sacrificing claims to decency and adult seriousness. ~ Alain De Botton

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

I had two longings and one was fighting the other. I wanted to be loved and I wanted to be always alone. ~ Jean Rhys

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

Truth is the aim of story. And though we must take into account the human author's subjectivity and personal slant, the best authors are those who tap universal longings and make connections to our real, lived humanity. ~ Sarah Arthur

What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; what cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor commands me; that against all natural loving and longings, I so keep pushing, and crowding, and jamming myself on all the time; recklessly making me ready to do what in my own proper, natural heart, I durst not so much as dare? ~ Herman Melville

Some of the streets are, however, genuinely narrow. These same streets may not be filled with machine-gun fire and the dramatic screech of violins, but they overflow with the invisible and innumerable longings of the human heart. Love continues to minister here, but betrayal still wears its perfidious face, hatred hollows out the weak man's breast, revenge pursues its self-defeating course; and the unfulfilled dreams of the multitude haunt the island like so many hungry ghosts. ~ John Dolan

The seeds of life - fiery is their force, divine their birth, but they are weighed down by the bodies' ills or dulled by limbs and flesh that's born for death. That is the source of all men's fears and longings, joys and sorrows, nor can they see the heaven's light, shut up in the body's tomb, a prison dark and deep. ~ Virgil

The society that denies its poverty and injustice has lost a part of its freedom as well. If we deny our dissatisfaction, our anger, our pain, our ambition, we will suffer. If we deny our values, our beliefs, our longings, or our goodness, we will suffer. ~ Jack Kornfield

I must teach you to long for something better...For my uncontrollable longings for this man, Lord --- Your strength. ~ Elisabeth Elliot

For this decision, too, he had submitted to the overwhelming force of Sharon's personality, whose longings and needs seemed inalienable rights, whereas Marcus's were merely whims. ~ Panio Gianopoulos

She spoke about her family she'd lost. She spoke about her secret hopes and fears and longings. She had love to give, and no one to give it to. ~ Katherine Applegate

A man should conceive of a legitimate purpose in his heart, and set out to accomplish it. He should make this purpose the centralizing point of his thoughts. It may take the form of a spiritual ideal, or it may be a worldly object, according to his nature at the time being; but whichever it is, he should steadily focus his thought-forces upon the object, which he has set before him. He should make this purpose his supreme duty, and should devote himself to its attainment, not allowing his thoughts to wander away into ephemeral fancies, longings, and imaginings. This is the royal road to self-control and true concentration of thought. Even if he fails again and again to accomplish his purpose (as he necessarily must until weakness is overcome), the strength of character gained will be the measure of his true success, and this will form a new starting-point for future power and triumph. ~ James Allen

The Christian is not always praying; but within his bosom is a heaven-kindled love
fires of desire, fervent longings
which make him always ready to pray, and often engage him in prayer. ~ Thomas Guthrie

Not write what you know, but know what you write. If you write about a world before, after, or other than this one, enter that world completely. Search it to find your deepest longings and most terrible fears. Let imagination carry you as far as it may, as long as you recount the voyage with excitement and wonder. But this is the most important rule: write the book you most long to read. ~ Steven Saylor

I long to see [Jesus] face to face, to hear His voice and touch Him. In the day I go to be with Him, there will be no unfulfilled longings or disappointments. He will welcome me into His mansion, answer my questions, and teach me the wisdom of the ages. ~ Billy Graham

All your body requires of you is that you turn toward it with kindness and compassion, with nonjudgment and plain-vanilla acceptance of all your contradictory emotions, beliefs, and longings. ~ Emily Nagoski

Strive to see God in all things without exception. Do not smother yourself ... If you start smothering yourself with a host of cares and longings and wishes ... you will be disabling yourself from serving God with all your heart. ~ Saint Francis De Sales

These glorious things-words-are man's right alone ... Without words we should know no more of each other's hearts and thoughts than the dog knows of his fellow dog ... for, if you will consider, you always think to yourself in words, though you do not speak them aloud; and without them all our thoughts would be mere blind longings, feelings which we could not understand ourselves. ~ Charles Kingsley

I had vehement longings of soul after God and Christ, and after more holiness,
wherewith my heart seemed to be full, and ready to break ... I spent
most of my time in thinking of divine things, year after year; often walking
alone in the woods, and solitary places, for meditation, soliloquy, and
prayer, and converse with God; and it was always my manner, at such times,
to sing forth my contemplations ... Prayer seemed to be natural to me, as
the breath by which the inward burnings of my heart had vent. ~ Jonathan Edwards

Christ desires nothing so much as to redeem His heritage from the dominion of Satan. But before we are delivered from Satan's power without, we must be delivered {175} from his power within. The Lord permits trials in order that we may be cleansed from earthliness, from selfishness, from harsh, unchristlike traits of character. He suffers the deep waters of affliction to go over our souls in order that we may know Him and Jesus Christ whom He has sent, in order that we may have deep heart longings to be cleansed from defilement, and may come forth from the trial purer, holier, happier. Often we enter the furnace of trial with our souls darkened with selfishness; but if patient under the crucial test, we shall come forth reflecting the divine character. When His purpose in the affliction is accomplished, "He shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light, and thy judgment as the noonday." Ps. 37:6. ~ Ellen G. White

Christianity, in its true form, tells us that there is an Author and that he is good, the essence of all that is good and beautiful and true, for he is the source of all these things. It tells us that he has set our hearts' longings within us, for he has made us to live in an Epic. It warns that the truth is always in danger of being twisted and corrupted and stolen from us because there is a Villain in the Story who hates our hearts and wants to destroy us. It calls us up into a Story that is truer and deeper than any other, and assures us that there we will find the meaning of our lives. ~ John Eldredge

The theater is a communal event, like church. The playwright constructs a mass to be performed for a lot of people. She writes a prayer, which is really just the longings of one heart. ~ Marsha Norman

Then very haltingly at first, but afterwards more easily, he began to tell of the thing that was hidden in his life, the haunting memory of a beauty and a happiness that filled his heart with insatiable longings, that made all the interests and spectacle of worldly life seem dull and tedious and vain to him. ~ H.G.Wells

They thought of home, naturally, but there was no burning desire to be in civilization for its own sake. Worsley recorded: "Waking on a fine morning I feel a great longing for the smell of dewy wet grass and flowers of a Spring morning in New Zealand or England. One has very few other longings for civilization - good bread and butter, Munich beer, Coromandel rock oysters, apple pie and Devonshire cream are pleasant reminiscences rather than longings. ~ Alfred Lansing

God owns and controls all things. And there is nothing that he could give you for Christmas this year that would suit your needs and your longings better than the consolation of Israel and the redemption of Jerusalem, restoration for past losses and liberation from future enemies, forgiveness and freedom, pardon and power, healing the past and sealing the future. ~ John Piper

The human body represents to me the same universal innocence, timelessness and purity of all seed pods, suggesting the mother as well as the child, the parental as well as the descendant, conceived according to nature's longings. ~ Ruth Bernhard

Human longings are perversely obstinate; and to the man whose mouth is watering for a peach, it is of no use to offer the largest vegetable marrow. ~ George Eliot

You see, every man is a safe, a vault of secrets and longings. Now, there are those who take the brute's way, but I prefer a gentler approach- the right pressure applied at the right moment, in the right place. It's a delicate thing. ~ Leigh Bardugo

The country in which I live is not my native country, that lies elsewhere, and it must always be the center of my longings. ~ Therese Of Lisieux

Never give your children a childhood they'll need to heal from ~ Nicky Verd

Any place where their thoughts are not allowed to stray is guarded by his voices steering them back to the permitted pastures. Any sadness or longing is immediately burned from the mind by the steady flame of his teachings in his voice. Sadness, depression, longings are luxuries. How can any sane mind be sad at the prospect of the kingdom of heaven, unless the sadness is merely impatience? ~ Fred D'Aguiar

Beauty is equal parts flesh and imagination: we imbue it with our dreams, saturate it with our longings. ~ Nancy Etcoff

But I think I know so well the pain we children clutch to our chests, how it lasts our whole lifetime, with longings so large you can't even weep. We hold it tight, we do, with each seizure of the beating heart: This is mine, this is mine, this is mine. ~ Elizabeth Strout

His mind, cool, alert, watched it sink there with a sort of vague concern at the absurdity of the occupation, till it rested at the bottom, deep down, where our unexpressed longings lie. ~ Joseph Conrad

The deepest longings we feel on earth, as parents, as lovers, are mere flickers of the hungering desire God feels for us. It is a desire that cost him the Incarnation and the Crucifixion. ~ Philip Yancey

I have Immortal longings in me. ~ William Shakespeare

Jesus is a teacher who doesn't just inform our intellect but forms our very loves. He isn't content to simply deposit new ideas into your mind; he is after nothing less than your wants, your loves, your longings. ~ James K.A. Smith

The further a soul advances in grace the more spiritual and divine are its longings: an outward walk does not content the gracious soul, nor even the treasured testimonies; it reaches out in due time after God himself, and when it in a measure finds him, still yearns for more of him, and seeks him still. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

If you think in terms of teaching as a shared journey of discovery, instead of just a job, look what's involved: sharing of knowledge, hunger for understanding, desire for approval, opening of another spirit, penetration of one mind into another, the mystery of the unknown, the pleasure of success, mental intimacy in shared moments of revelation, maybe even climactic moments... Internal changes, growth, expansion, opening, tapping into unconscious longings-well, most of those words describe an erotic relationship. If you hung them all on a clothesline and picked only three, you'd have enough to produce a spark, a thin column of smoke, maybe even a small flame. ~ Jacquie Gordon

Tis my Mary, my Mary herself! She promised that my boy, every morning, should be carried to the hill to catch the first glimpse of his father's sail! Yes, yes! no more! it is done! we head for Nantucket! Come, my Captain, study out the course, and let us away! See, see! the boy's face from the window! the boy's hand on the hill!"

But Ahab's glance was averted; like a blighted fruit tree he shook, and cast his last, cindered apple to the soil.

"What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; what cozzening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor commands me; that against all natural lovings and longings, I so keep pushing, and crowding, and jamming myself on all the time; recklessly making me ready to do what in my own proper, natural heart, I durst not so much as dare? Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is as an errand-boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power; how then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I. By heaven, man, we are turned round and round in this world, like yonder windlass, and Fate is the handspike. And all the time, lo! that smiling sky, and this unsounded sea! Look! see yon Albicore! who put it into him to chase and fang that flying-fish? Where do murderers go, man! Who's to doom, when the judge hi ~ Herman Melville

Man is a tragic animal. Not because of his smallness, but because he is too well endowed. Man has longings and spiritual demands that reality cannot fulfill. We have expectations of a just and moral world. Man requires meaning in a meaningless world. ~ Peter Wessel Zapffe

...and one might suspect too that A. Cretan said : "To long to read!"

"My library is an archive of longings."
― Susan Sontag"

"There is a space between man's [sic] imagination and man's [sic] attainment that may only be traversed by his longing."
― Khalil Gibran [sick] ~ A. Cretan

God too longs; and because the Absolute Life itself, which dwells in our life, and inspires these very longings, possesses the true world, and is that world. ~ Josiah Royce

One reason Christians respond positively to a needs psychology is that it takes people's pain seriously. However, this perspective can actually make pain worse. It compounds pain by suggesting that not did the sins of others hurt deeply, but they also deprived you of something
a right, something you were owed
that is necessary for life. Being deeply hurt by others is hard enough, but when we believe that their sin was a near-lethal blow that damaged the core of our being, the hurt is intensified ... Therefore, one task in counseling is to begin to separate the real hurt from the pain that is amplified by our own lusts and longings. ~ Edward T. Welch

Human life without death would be something other than human; consciousness of mortality gives rise to our deepest longings and greatest accomplishments. - LEON KASS, CHAIR OF THE PRESIDENTIAL COMMISSION ON BIOETHICS, 2003 ~ Ray Kurzweil

Some kisses pronounced themselvesthe judgment of conviction love,Some kisses are given with an eyeSome kisses are given with the memory.There are silent kisses, kisses noblesThere enigmatic kisses, sincereSome kisses are given only soulsThere forbidden kisses, true.Some kisses calcined and hurt,Some kisses captivate sensesThere mysterious kisses that have leftthousand wandering and lost dreams.There problematic kisses enclosinga key that no one has decipheredSome kisses engender tragedyfew have defoliated roses brooch.There perfumed kisses, warm kissesthrobbing in intimate longings,Some kisses on the lips leave tracesas a field of sun between two ice.Some kisses seem liliesby sublime, naive and pure,There treacherous and cowardly kisses,There cursed and perjured kisses.Judas kisses Jesus and leaves printin the face of God, felony,while Magdalena with kissesfortifies pious agony.From then kisses throbslove, betrayal and pain,in human weddings they seemthe breeze playing with flowers.There are kisses that produce ravingsloving hot and mad passion,you know them well are my kissesinvented by me, for your mouth.Flame kisses printed on trailThey take the grooves of a forbidden love,kisses storm, wild kissesour lips only been tested.Do you remember the first ...? Indefinable;Your face covered with blushes luridand in the throes of terrible emotion,Your eyes were filled with tears.Do you remember that one evening in excess crazyI saw you jealous imagining grievances,He flunked you in ~ Gabriela Mistral

How to appreciate the beauty of a woman: First, close your eyes without any lust or sexual desire, then feel the softness of her body, her delicate hands, her eyes, her lips, her breasts, her thighs. Second, soak your soul in her mind, feel the vortex of her inner needs and desires, listen to the rhythmic sound of her joys and sorrows, and tiptoe on the matrix of her dreams and longings. As soon as you imagine and understand these nuances in a woman, you'll immediately feel a strange sensation of warmth and nurturing presence, almost maternal, like a gentle breeze in the sea or the fragrance of flowers in the forest. You see, her beauty does not reside in her physical appearance - whoever she is and no matter how she looks - because she, the woman herself, is the definition, the embodiment, and the birthplace of beauty. (Danny Castillones Sillada, The Phenomenology of Beauty in a Woman) ~ Danny Castillones Sillada

I've spoken with friends who are rabbis and priests and we've agreed that most people have an emotional attachment to their faith, a desire to fulfill their spiritual longings, but they are not experts in understanding the history of their religion. ~ Feisal Abdul Rauf

How can you be so accepting? How is it that you are not screaming with frustration?"
"I've been spending more time in prayer. I am learning that obedience to God means that you do not put your eyes on your longings, but instead, you simply place one foot ahead of the other into the space that the Lord opens. Tired, wounded, overwhelmed. It does not matter. You merely keep moving where God directs and stop focusing on what you wish you had. It's teaching me patience. ~ Tessa Afshar

All beautiful things bring sadness, nor alone Sweet music, as our wisest Poet spake, Because in us keen longings they awake. ~ Richard Chenevix Trench

No, it was simply that I was uninterested in making, as I saw it, a Xerox of some old emotional state. I was in my mid-thirties, with a marriage more or less behind me. I was no longer vulnerable to curiosity's enormous momentum. I had nothing new to murmur to another on the subject of myself and not the smallest eagerness about being briefed on Danielle's supposedly unique trajectory - a curve described under the action, one could safely guess, of the usual material and maternal and soulful longings, a few thwarting tics of character, and luck good and bad. A life seemed like an old story. ~ Joseph O'Neill

Men and women make sad mistakes about their own symptoms, taking their vague, uneasy longings sometimes for genius, sometimes for religion, and oftener still for a mighty love. ~ George Eliot

The God who is worthy to be known and served for who He is, is Himself the answer to this world's longings. And those who know Him best are best equipped to serve Him. He is their message. If we have discovered the glory of God in the face of Christ, we must not hold back. The God of glory must be made known. ~ Tom Wells

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. ~ Charlotte Bronte

Sadly as some old mediaeval knight
Gazed at the arms he could no longer wield,
The sword two-handed and the shining shield
Suspended in the hall, and full in sight,
While secret longings for the lost delight
Of tourney or adventure in the field
Came over him, and tears but half concealed
Trembled and fell upon his beard of white,
So I behold these books upon their shelf,
My ornaments and arms of other days;
Not wholly useless, though no longer used,
For they remind me of my other self,
Younger and stronger, and the pleasant ways
In which I walked, now clouded and confused. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

As we learn to embrace our authentic longings and feelings - and cultivate self-empathy and the corresponding compassion toward others - our society will gradually evolve in a direction that is more tolerant, humane, and enlightened. ~ John Amodeo

I believe in the immortality of the soul because I have within me immortal longings. ~ Helen Keller

Of all the deep longings, this ache for missing intimacy, cuts through sharply, like a scream in a silent room, like the last gasping breath under a stifling mask, like the huge lump in the throat that one is unable to swallow. This deep ache to be held, to know touch both the casual and intense variety, to catch an eye in answering laughter, to merge into oneness, to sing through existence in resonance with another, to simply be in deep love in openness. to live and die in intimacy and vulnerability in a loved one's arms. And, you ache alone... ~ Srividya Srinivasan

The sovereign quality of wilderness is the same wherever encountered ... Each manifestation has an unshackled quality-each stirs untapped longings-each gives a fillip to living-each has an unsurpassed lilt which bursts from the deepest wellsprings of life. These are the realities found in the wilderness of the Great Smoky Mountains. ~ Harvey Broome

Sometimes it has to do with other longings that are much more existential. Sometimes you go elsewhere not because you are not liking the one you are with; you are not liking the person you have become. ~ Esther Perel

I am very serious when I say this, beware of your dreams, for dreams make dangerous friends. We all have them - longings for a better life, a healthy child, a happy marriage, rewarding work. But dreams are, I have come to believe, misplaced longings. False lovers. Why? Because God is enough. Just God. And he isn't "enough" because he can make our dreams come true - no, you've got him confused with Santa or Merlin or Oprah. The God who created the universe is enough for us - even without our dreams. ~ Phil Vischer

Envy is a sign of insecurity, yes; but so is longing to be envied. ~ Criss Jami

One of the deepest of all human longings is the longing to belong, to be a part of things, to be invited in. We want to be part of the fellowship. Where did that come from? ~ John Eldredge

In dreams, through longings, we can see
All latent in the dust of gold
These forests that perhaps could be
But that will never, ever, grow. ~ Lucian Blaga

He turned to appease the fierce longings of his heart before which everything else was idle and alien. He cared little that he was in mortal sin, that his life had grown to be a tissue of subterfuge and falsehood. ~ James Joyce

All children want to go to space. Earth only offers parents wailing about overdraft notices and evening news playing in an empty den. Dead pets too. Childhood is a rot. And so they look up and see stars shiver, ancient information only just now arriving, because that is the only place left to look, and they yearn. ~ David Connerley Nahm

[She was] a creature full of eager, passionate longings for all that was beautiful and glad; thirsty for all knowledge; with an ear straining after dreamy music that died away and would not come near to her; with a blind unconscious yearning for something that would link together the wonderful impressions of this mysterious life, and give her soul a sense of home in it. ~ George Eliot

Against the alchemy of two naked bodies in a bed in the darkness, and against all the complex longings and attachments and commitments such intimacy might arouse, he had nothing with which to fight. ~ Robert Harris

I've lived to se my longings die
I've lived to se my longings die:
My dreams and I have grown apart;
Now only sorrow haunts my eye,
The wages of a bitter heart.
Beneath the storms of hostile fate,
My flowery wreath has faded fast;
I live alone and sadly wait
To see when death will come at last.
Just so, when the winds in winter moan
And snow descends in frigid flakes,
Upon a naked branch, alone,
The final leaf of summer shakes! ... ~ Alexander Pushkin

The human longings that are deep inside of us never go away. They exist across cultures; they exist throughout life. When people were first made, our deepest longing was to know and be known. And after the Fall, when we all got weird, it's still our deepest longing - but it's now also our deepest fear. ~ John Ortberg

A veritable atlas. What rivers of desire, what mountains of ambition. Want, want, hope, hope, this is what your palm say, your palm is nothing but an atlas of impossible longings. ~ Anuradha Roy

I'm just a girl from Flatbush, Bo. There's nothing special here.""You're so wrong.""I know what people think. To friends and family I'm sweet and helpless. To guys I'm a body.""Your body is spectacular. I'm not going to pretend I don't see that. But I can have any body. You've lit something inside me. And it's you, not your assets.""You don't know me. We've hardly scratched the surface.""That's why I need time. I want to know your story, your dreams, your longings. Every part I see makes me want more." He was speaking her own desire to understand him, because his real self called to her more strongly than anyone she'd known , even people she'd known for years. ~ Kristen Heitzmann

Weaned from all passing fancies, let my soul praise You, O God, Creator of all. You did not allow my soul to remain attached to corruptible things with the glue of love, attached to what my senses find pleasing. For things we are attached to go where they will, then they cease, leaving the lover torn with corrupted longings. ~ Augustine Of Hippo

History overflows time. Love overflows the allowance of the world. All the vessels overflow, and no end or limit stays put. Every shakable thing has got to be shaken. In a sense, nothing that was ever lost in Port William ever has been replaced. In another sense, nothing is ever lost, and we are compacted together forever, even by our failures, our regrets, and our longings. ~ Wendell Berry

There are moments of silence and smiles and breaths taken away from the chest, wherein you truly feel a deep understanding for your position in your life, in this world, and within the walls of yourself that you call bones and tissue. You madly understand yourself (your thoughts, your desires, what you want to be living for, really) and it's amazing because it is within those moments where you will come to see how very few people should actually be important to your heart and to your path: because your heart and your path are glorious and different and breathtaking and not everyone belongs there with you. We all often feel pangs of loneliness and we clamour to hold onto other people because it has not yet dawned on us, that not everyone we wish to hold onto will fit on our paths with us. If you could come to an understanding of your own space, and what it means to occupy that space, then you would come to know, and to feel, and to realise, that we are not lonely in our hearts because others do not occupy with us; rather, we are painfully lonely in our hearts because we do not occupy our own skin. We do not occupy our own souls. We do not occupy the space we've been given by our own dreams, desires, longings... what makes you cry? What makes you laugh? It doesn't matter if you're the only one who cries or who laughs! What matters is that you fill up your space so full that your soul rubs up against your bones and pushes up against just below the surface of your skin. You will ~ C. JoyBell C.

All longings the essence for real liberation only,
Freedom from all sides, an ultimate supremacy;
- 43 - ~ Munindra Misra

His life had already touched upon the age when everything that breathes of impulse shrinks in a man, when a powerful bow has a fainter effect on his soul and no longer twines piercing music around his heart, when the touch of beauty no longer transforms virginal powers into fire and flame, but all the burnt-out feelings become more accessible to the sound of gold, listen more attentively to its alluring music, and little by little allow it imperceptibly to lull them completely. Fame cannot give pleasure to one who did not merit it but stole it; it produces a constant tremor only in one who is worthy of it. And therefore all his feelings and longings turn toward gold. ~ Nikolai Gogol

You don't believe in leprechauns.
A myth you say they be.
You don't believe in pots-o-gold,
or four-leaf-clover tea.

You don't believe the rainbow's end
alights on treasured finds.
They are illusions meant for fools
you say 'ave lost their minds.

You don't believe in whispering
your wishes to the wind,
where on St. Patrick's holiday
they blow t'wards Ireland.

You don't believe in magic spells
or longings coming true.
Yet, head-to-toe you dress in green
on Patty's Day, you do. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

There were so many other people in my life.
I had spent all of my time listening,
learning the longings we all have in common.
I never took the time to hear them in myself
and I heard them speaking to him.
The desire for desire, that hope
for hope, the possibility of everything
truly possible. I had so many friends,
so many nods and conversations,
so many things I'd always wanted
to say to someone. ~ David Levithan

The man of control is the man of repression. He goes on repressing, and because he goes on repressing, he goes on accumulating all that is wrong. His whole life becomes a junkyard. Sooner or later, and it is going to be sooner than later, the volcano explodes - because there is only a certain limit you can contain. You repress anger, you repress sex, you repress all kinds of desires, longings - how long can you go on repressing? You can contain only so much, then one day it is more than you can control. It explodes. Your ~ Osho

All our longings for what is loving and true reach out into heaven. They put us in touch with angels who are feeling the same way and unite us with them. ~ Emanuel Swedenborg

Lovers arrive at their first kisses with scars as well as longings. They're not always looking for advantage. Some need shelter, others press only for the hyperreality of ecstasy, for which they'll tell outrageous lies or make irrational sacrifice. But they rarely ask themselves what they need or want. ~ Ian McEwan

It is a time when one's spirit is subdued and sad, one knows not why; when the past seems a storm-swept desolation, life a vanity and a burden, and the future but a way to death. It is a time when one is filled with vague longings; when one dreams of flight to peaceful islands in the remote solitudes of the sea, or folds his hands and says, What is the use of struggling, and toiling and worrying any more? let us give it all up. ~ Mark Twain

A Muslim woman must not feel wild, or free, or any of the other emotions and longings I felt when I read those books. A Muslim girl does not make her own decisions or seek control. She is trained to be docile. If you are a Muslim girl, you disappear, until there is almost no you inside you. In Islam, becoming an individual is not a necessary development; many people, especially women, never develop a clear individual will. You submit: that is the literal meaning of the word islam: submission. The goal is to become quiet inside, so that you never raise your eyes, not even inside your mind. But ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Modern relationships are cauldrons of contradictory longings: safety and excitement, grounding and transcendence, the comfort of love and the heat of passion We want it all, and we want it with one person. Reconciling the domestic and the erotic is a delicate balancing act that we achieve intermittently at best. It requires knowing your partner while remaining open to the unknown, cultivating intimacy that respects privacy. Separateness and togetherness alternate, or proceed in counterpoint. Desire resists confinement, and commitment mustn't swallow freedom whole. ~ Esther Perel

Your sexuality was never meant to be separate from your deepest spiritual and relational longings but to be an expression of them. ~ Juli Slattery

The familiar mood that awaits the sensitive young who are poor and dispossessed is a mood of sharp and painful inferiority, of violently angry tensions, of desperate and overwhelming longings. ~ Peter Abrahams

Bands of Apollonian lightness and Dionysian darkness fill my inscrutable chamber. Apollo represents harmony, progress, clarity, and logic, whereas Dionysus represents disorder, intoxication, emotion, and ecstasy. Manchurian opposites of good and evil tug at me. My lifelong state of confusion manufactured a gray fog that engulfs me. Multilayers of misgiving line my impenetrable soul. Secret tunnels, coagulation's of light and dense waves of incomprehensible silence, wend through me. I am constantly surprised to see slivers of myself. At times, I am utterly devoid of ambition. At other times, radical surges of energy convulse within me. Guilt, pleasure, anger, joy, impulsivity, watchfulness, sensual longings, and exhibitionist tendencies tumble within. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Our fears are the bastard children of our longings. ~ Tiffany Reisz

Today the clerk in the fancy deli next door asked me how I was, and I said, 'I have deep longings that will never be satisfied. ~ Mary Gaitskill

We are most awake to the world and to our own longings and desires when we suffer. ~ Penny Reid

I had never thought about it, but summer was Dill by the fishpool smoking string, Dill's eyes alive with complicated plans to make Boo Radley emerge; summer was the swiftness with which Dill would reach up and kiss me when Jem was not looking, the longings we sometimes felt each other feel. With him, life was routine; without him, life was unbearable ... - Scout Finch ~ Harper Lee

One of the greatest human longings is to be close to someone. ~ Kathleen R Fischer

Family traditions are more than arguments with the dead, more than collections of family letters you try to decipher. A tradition is also a channel of memory through which fierce and unrequited longings surge, longings that define and shape a whole life. ~ Michael Ignatieff

When the yogi starts to meditate, he must leave behind all sensory thoughts and all longings for possessions by quieting the waves of feeling (chitta), and the mental restlessness that arises therefrom, through the application of techniques that reinstate the controlling power of the untrammeled superconsciousness of the soul. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda

Minli suddenly thought of Ma and Ba. A wave of longing washed through her and a dryness caught in her throat that the tea could not moisten. Where the Mountain Meets the Moon. ~ Grace Lin

Once he had thought it a refuge, once he had thought it holiness ... But now he began to suspect that the good brothers did not shadow the ether not because they were good, but because they had masked themselves from everything, had carefully erased their stray thoughts, had poured out their human longings, emptied themselves of desires and become so transparent as existence that they had not only ceased to be evil, they had ceased to be good. They had ceased to fight the battles of everyday life, and simply weighed nothing. Not a feather. Not a grain. They had given up everything, until they vanished from the scale of all that mattered, having given away themselves long before any power declared the contest. ~ C.J. Cherryh