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Link Quote Stars Tags Author
4e98adf Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee. christianity desire god heart jesus longing peace religion rest restlessness Augustine of Hippo
247a542 My heart only ever had one thought, one want. One need. Despite all, in spite of all...All my heart has ever wanted is you. dream longing love need romance yearning Stephanie Laurens
8c0a944 ...There is the heat of Love, the pulsing rush of Longing, the lover's whisper, irresistible--magic to make the sanest man go mad. greece longing love lovers Homer
f3f88f2 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. jo-march longing lost-love love spoil teddy-lawrence unrequited-love waste-of-life Louisa May Alcott
013142c Desiring another person is perhaps the most risky endeavor of all. As soon as you want somebody--really want him--it is as though you have taken a surgical needle and sutured your happiness to the skin of that person, so that any separation will now cause a lacerating injury. longing love Elizabeth Gilbert
9cdc163 She hardly ever thought of him. He had worn a place for himself in some corner of her heart, as a sea shell, always boring against the rock, might do. The making of the place had been her pain. But now the shell was safely in the rock. It was lodged, and ground no longer. longing love pain sorrow unrequited-love T.H. White
d2bed66 Just because I'm not forever by your side doesn't mean that's not precisely where I want to be. demon-cynster longing love romance Stephanie Laurens
6721215 See how she leans her cheek upon her hand. O, that I were a glove upon that hand That I might touch that cheek! glove hand-in-glove longing love touch William Shakespeare
7c8ee71 I imagine a line, a white line, painted on the sand and on the ocean, from me to you. longing love Jonathan Safran Foer
dc71b30 For millions of years flowers have been producing thorns. For millions of years sheep have been eating them all the same. And it's not serious, trying to understand why flowers go to such trouble to produce thorns that are good for nothing? It's not important, the war between the sheep and the flowers? It's no more serious and more important than the numbers that fat red gentleman is adding up? Suppose I happen to know a unique flower, one that exists nowhere in the world except on my planet, one that a little sheep can wipe out in a single bite one morning, just like that, without even realizing what he'd doing - that isn't important? If someone loves a flower of which just one example exists among all the millions and millions of stars, that's enough to make him happy when he looks at the stars. He tells himself 'My flower's up there somewhere...' But if the sheep eats the flower, then for him it's as if, suddenly, all the stars went out. And that isn't important? importance longing love protection roses sheep stars thorns uniqueness war Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
60be14e To want and not to have, sent all up her body a hardness, a hollowness, a strain. And then to want and not to have- to want and want- how that wrung the heart, and wrung it again and again! longing yearning Virginia Woolf
5e0dbd6 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. craving foreshadowing lack longing loss need shadow wholeness wish Marilynne Robinson
546b6ff Touch. It is touch that is the deadliest enemy of chastity, loyalty, monogamy, gentility with its codes and conventions and restraints. By touch we are betrayed and betray others ... an accidental brushing of shoulders or touching of hands ... hands laid on shoulders in a gesture of comfort that lies like a thief, that takes, not gives, that wants, not offers, that awakes, not pacifies. When one flesh is waiting, there is electricity in the merest contact. infidelity longing touch Wallace Stegner
82eb1de Ah, it's my longing for whom I might have been that distracts and torments me! longing regret self Fernando Pessoa
7183fdc I love you, he thought, looking at Win. I love every part of you, every thought and word... the entire complex, fascinating bundle of all the things you are. I want you with ten different kinds of need at once. I love all the seasons of you, the way you are now, the thought of how much more beautiful you'll be in the decades to come. I love you for being the answer to every question my heart could ask. And it seemed so easy, once he capitulated. It seemed natural and right. Kev wasn't certain if he was surrendering to Win or to his own passion for her. Only that there was no more holding back. He would take her. And he would give her everything he had, every part of his soul, even the broken pieces. longing love merripen passion soulmates win Lisa Kleypas
3760cc0 Stop longing. You poison today's ease, reaching always for tomorrow. longing philosophy poison present today tomorrow Robin Hobb
51cc61c I am running after you, and life, in desperate pursuit. My dream is that someday you will both turn and let me catch you. That dream carries me through every night... I have enclosed a hundred kisses in this letter. You must count them out carefully and not lose any. longing love romance Lisa Kleypas
09b8acf For the first time, she did want more. She did not know what she wanted, knew that it was dangerous and that she should rest content with what she had, but she knew an emptiness deep inside her, which began to ache. contentment desires dreams longing Iain Pears
129b160 Like you're riding a train at night across some vast plain, and you catch a glimpse of a tiny light in a window of a farmhouse. In an instant it's sucked back into the darkness behind and vanishes. But if you close your eyes, that point of light stays with you, just barely for a few moments. longing love Haruki Murakami
bff04b3 I've always tried to make a home for myself, but I have not felt at home myself. I've worked hard at being the hero of my own life. But every time I checked the register of displaced persons, I was still on it. I didn't know how to belong. Longing? Yes. Belonging? No. displaced hero longing Jeanette Winterson
5b61f29 The day is done, and the darkness Falls from the wings of Night, As a feather is wafted downward From an eagle in his flight. I see the lights of the village Gleam through the rain and the mist, And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me That my soul cannot resist: A feeling of sadness and longing, That is not akin to pain, And resembles sorrow only As the mist resembles the rain. Come, read to me some poem, Some simple and heartfelt lay, That shall soothe this restless feeling, And banish the thoughts of day. Not from the grand old masters, Not from the bards sublime, Whose distant footsteps echo Through the corridors of Time. For, like strains of martial music, Their mighty thoughts suggest Life's endless toil and endeavor; And to-night I long for rest. Read from some humbler poet, Whose songs gushed from his heart, As showers from the clouds of summer, Or tears from the eyelids start; Who, through long days of labor, And nights devoid of ease, Still heard in his soul the music Of wonderful melodies. Such songs have power to quiet The restless pulse of care, And come like the benediction That follows after prayer. Then read from the treasured volume The poem of thy choice, And lend to the rhyme of the poet The beauty of thy voice. And the night shall be filled with music, And the cares, that infest the day, Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs, And as silently steal away. longing music poetry rest sadness Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
6e3d395 I like being on my own better than I like anything else, but I can't give up love. Maybe it's the tension between longing and aloneness that I need. My own funicular railway, holding in balance the two things most likely to destroy me. longing love solitude Jeanette Winterson
b55820e There's a taste in the air, sweet and vaguely antiseptic, that reminds him of his teenage years in these streets, and of a general state of longing, a hunger for life to begin that from this distance seems like happiness. hope longing Ian McEwan
61b2d00 But no one can predict of a certainty what will happen. And none of it will change how I intend to spend the rest of my life. I will live it on my terms. And you... you can have all of me or nothing. I won't be an invalid any longer. Not even if it means losing you. longing love romance Lisa Kleypas
98eca82 Being in love with your best friend is problematic. awesome-quotes bandaids best-friend-love best-friend-quotes best-friends bitterness davin fate first-aid friend friend-quotes friends friends-to-lovers friendship-and-love friendship-quotes friendship-true-and-loyal frienship hurt i-m-in-love ignoring-issues in-love-with-best-friend in-love-with-my-friend j-m-richards life-quotes longing love-issues love-problems mazing-quotes pain quotes-about-life real-friends real-friendship so-true tall-dark-streak-of-lightning tdsol J.M. Richards
0ec2362 Wealth is not an absolute. It is relative to desire. Every time we yearn for something we cannot afford, we grow poorer, whatever our resources. And every time we feel satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as rich, however little we may actually possess. longing possessions poverty satisfaction wealth Alain de Botton
8e9cd62 In fact her maturity and blood kinship converted her passion to fever, so it was more affliction than affection. It literally knocked her down at night, and raised her up in the morning, for when she dragged herself off to bed, having spent another day without his presence, her heart beat like a gloved fist against her ribs. And in the morning, long before she was fully awake, she felt a longing so bitter and tight it yanked her out of a sleep swept clean of dreams. longing Toni Morrison
845360d The whole world can't lick us but we can lick ourselves by longing too hard for things we haven't got any more - and by remembering too much. lick longing remembering world Margaret Mitchell
e2c8fd9 You will remember this when all else fades, this moment, here, together, by this well. There will be certain days, and certain nights, you'll feel my presence near you, hear my voice. You'll think you have imagined it and yet, inside you, you will catch an answering cry. On April evenings, when the rain has ceased, your heart will shake, you'll weep for nothing, pine for what's not there. For you, this life will never be enough, there will forever be an emptiness, where once the god was all in all in you. languor longing memories John Banville
9108341 I long for you; I who usually longs without longing, as though I am unconscious and absorbed in neutrality and apathy, really, utterly long for every bit of you. letters-to-milena longing love-quotes Franz Kafka
70bdfb5 While a common reaction to seeing a thing of beauty is to want to buy it, our real desire may be not so much to own what we find beautiful as to lay permanent claim to the inner qualities it embodies. Owning such an object may help us realise our ambition of absorbing the virtues to which it alludes, but we ought not to presume that those virtues will automatically or effortlessly begin to rub off on us through tenure. Endeavouring to purchase something we think beautiful may in fact be the most unimaginative way of dealing with the longing it excites in us, just as trying to sleep with someone may be the bluntest response to a feeling of love. What we seek, at the deepest level, is inwardly to resemble, rather than physically possess, the objects and places that touch us through their beauty. longing Alain de Botton
4a84439 I wanted a heaven. And I grew up striving for that world-- an eternal world- that would wash away my temporary misery. insightful longing Craig Thompson
8e9c0c4 "Witch, do this for me, Find me a moon made of longing. Then cut it sliver thin, and having cut it, hang it high above my beloved's house, so that she may look up tonight and see it, and seeing it, sigh for me days-of-magic-nights-of-war longing love sad-love Clive Barker i Days of Magic Nights of War i
5577880 I watched the spinning stars, grateful, sad and proud, as only a man who has outlived his destiny and realizes he might yet forge himself another, can be. life longing poetry pride sense-of-wonder stars Roger Zelazny
21dfa9d There is a German word, , 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. longing sehnsucht Julian Barnes
4aaced0 As much as I cared about him, I wasn't a slave to fate. I could choose to ignore my feelings, strong as they were. It would be painful, but no more so than letting myself pine for my friend. arguments awesome-quotes bandaids best-friend-love best-friend-quotes best-friends bitterness fate first-aid friend friend-quotes friends friends-to-lovers friendship-and-love friendship-quotes friendship-true-and-loyal frienship hurt ignoring-issues in-love-with-best-friend in-love-with-my-friend j-m-richards life-quotes longing mazing-quotes pain quotes-about-life real-friends real-friendship so-true tall-dark-streak-of-lightning tdsol J.M. Richards
765a021 When Summer lies upon the world, and in a noon of gold, Beneath the roof of sleeping leaves the dreams of trees unfold; When woodland halls are green and cool, and wind is in the West, Come back to me! Come back to me, and say my land is best! entwives longing loss song J.R.R. Tolkien
696b456 Even her name seemed empty, as though it had detached itself from her and was floating untethered in his mind. How am I supposed to live without you? It was not a matter of the body; his body would carry on as usual. The problem was located in the word how: he would live, but without Elspeth the flavour, the manner, the method of living were lost to him. He would have to relearn solitude. longing mourning Audrey Niffenegger
7728a8e Perhaps your hunger to belong is always active and intense because you belonged so totally before you came here. This hunger to belong is the echo and reverberation of your invisible heritage. You are from somewhere else, where you were known, embraced and sheltered. This is also the secret root from which all longing grows. Something in you knows, perhaps remembers, that eternal belonging liberates longing into its surest and most potent creativity. This is why your longing is often wiser than your conventional sense of appropriateness, safety and truth... Your longing desires to take you towards the absolute realization of all the possibilities that sleep in the clay of your heart; it knows your eternal potential, and it will not rest until it is awakened. longing John O'Donohue
4cc730d I realized that the longing for art, like the longing for love, is a malady that blinds us, and makes us forget the things we already know, obscuring reality. longing love reality Orhan Pamuk
568379d The beauty of a fragment is that it still supports the hope of brilliant completeness. longing Tobias Wolff
ab17cf3 ...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. heathcliff longing wal-mart wuthering-heights Marisha Pessl
b32a64c "For a moment, there is silence between us. He takes a step toward me. "The other night--" I cut him off. "I did it for the same reason that you did. To get it out of my system." "And is it?" he asks. "Out of your system?" I look him in the face and lie. "Yes." If he touches me, if he even takes another step toward me, my deceit will be exposed. I don't think I can keep the longing off my face. Instead, to my relief, he gives a thin-lipped nod and departs. From the next room, I hear the Roach call out to Cardan, to offer to teach him the trick of levitating a playing card. I hear Cardan laugh. It occurs to me that maybe desire isn't something overindulging helps. Maybe it is not unlike mithridatism; maybe I took a killing dose when I should have been poisoning myself slowly, one kiss at a time." longing sex Holly Black
d46fa26 Gwynn, she was always talking about wanting to be drunk and honestly I did want to encourage that, I wanted to go to a bar with her and let all the stuff sobriety pushed down be released so I could catch it in my palms and finally kiss her. She was just so sad. Melancholy was a fleshy wave permanently cresting on her face, she had to speak through it when she talked. emotion longing love melancholy sobriety Michelle Tea
1e10484 Now Doon seemed to care for his new friends more than he did for her. Every time she thought about him she felt a thud of pain, like a bruised place inside her. city-of-ember friendship jeanne-duprau lef-out loneliness longing people-of-sparks sadness sweet Jeanne DuPrau
0e16360 So through endless twilights I dreamed and waited, though I knew not what I waited for. Then in the shadowy solitude my longing for light grew so frantic that I could rest no more, and I lifted entreating hands to the single black ruined tower that reached above the forest into the unknown outer sky. And at last I resolved to scale that tower, fall through I might; since it were better to glimpse the sky and perish, than to live without even beholding day. forest light longing sky solitude tower unknown waiting H.P. Lovecraft
fff70b1 What had survived - maybe all that had survived of Trism - was Liir's sense of him. A catalog of impressions that arose from time to time, unbidden and often upsetting. From the sandy smell of his sandy hair to the locked grip of his muscles as they had wrestled in sensuous aggression - unwelcome nostalgia. Trism lived in Liir's heart like a full suit of clothes in a wardrobe, dress habillards maybe, hollow and real at once. The involuntary memory of the best of Trism's glinting virtues sometimes kicked up unquietable spasms of longing. longing lost-love love wicked Gregory Maguire
35e400b What the dead had no speech for, when living, They can tell you, being dead: the communication Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living. communication death longing unsaid-words T.S. Eliot
55c70a4 I have become a sour woman. I take no joy in meat nor mead, and song and laughter have become suspicious strangers to me. I am a creature of grief and dust and bitter longings. There is an empty place within me where my heart was once. catelyn emptiness empty grief longing sour woman George R.R. Martin
49ad510 You get a strange feeling when you're about to leave a place...like you'll not only miss the people you love but you'll miss the person you are now at this time and this place, because you'll never be this way ever again. leaving-home longing sense-of-place Azar Nafisi
f35b232 ""It always seemed somehow less real here... a really detailed dream, but sort of washed out, like a thin watercolor. Softer, somehow, even with their electric light and engines and everything. I guess it was because there was hardly any magic." longing real-world reality Garth Nix
171cde5 A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, the longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one's suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. longing nature trees Hermann Hesse
e0d2495 How sad, he thought, that desire found new objects but did not abate, that when it came to longing there was no end. longing Allegra Goodman
7fe57e4 Year after year of dirty snow and bitter winds... houses and whole districts of people who aren't really unhappy, but worse, who are neither happy nor unhappy; people who are ugly because they're neither ugly nor beautiful; creatures that are dismally neutral, who long without longings as though they're unconscious, unconsciously suffering from being alive. happiness living longing Eugène Ionesco
3bdc5ee It occurs to me that I really can't remember your face in any precise detail. Only the way you walked away through the tables in the cafe, your figure, your dress, that I still see. face figure longing love remember walked-away Franz Kafka
8d79680 "Cathy, don't look so defeated. She was only trying to put us down again. Maybe nothing did work out right for her, but that doesn't mean we are doomed. Let's go forth tomorrow with no great expectations of finding perfection. Then, expecting only a small share of happiness, we won't be disappointed." If a little hill of happiness would satisfy Chris, good for him. But after all these years of striving, hoping, dreaming, longing-I wanted a mountain high! A hill wasn't enough. From this day forward, I vowed to myself, I was in control of my life. Not fate, not God, not even Chris was ever again going to tell me what to do, or dominate me in any way. From this day forward, I was my own person, to take what I would, when I would, and I would answer only to myself. I'd been kept prisoner, held captive by greed. I'd been betrayed, deceived, tied to, used, poisoned ... but all that was over now." captive decieved defeat defeated doom doomed dreaming expectations fate great-expectations greed happiness longing perfection poisened put-downs striving towmorrow used vow vows wanting wants years years-of-struggle V.C. Andrews
cee1f69 The past is devoid of meaning like the present, and a refuge for cowards. cowardice longing maurice past refuge E.M. Forster
9ab74b1 Oh, I wish I lived in a caravan!' said Jimmy longingly. 'How lovely it must be to live in a house that has wheels and can go away down the lanes and through the towns, and stand still in fields at night! fields house longing towns wheels Enid Blyton
6f636cc It was as if she had thought him into existence again, as if her mind were a flask into which had been poured a measure of longing, a measure of discontent, a measure of fatigue, a dash of bitterness, and pouf, there he stood. longing love Wallace Stegner
a608e7f Hope is such a tenuous quality. To feel it and then to be denied what one most longs for ... Better, surely, not to hope at all, than to open the heart to a hope that is impossible. longing Juliet Marillier
eb18bb1 Under the ground seep the toxins of the population that lives above. If you have to, you will eat roots and earthworms. It is always night. Candles burn in lanterns made from tin cans. When it is nighttime up above, you can crawl out, but only for a little while. You feel ashamed of your matted hair, your torn clothes, the dirt on your face. Who would want to speak to you? They are all shiny and pretty. They have parents and house with gardens. What do you have? The earth. Whole handfuls of it. The lizard people with their slit eyes and scaly skin. Your loneliness. Your longing. longing Francesca Lia Block
ec16aae "[T]he radical geographer Iain Boal had prophesied, "The longing for a better world will need to arise at the imagined meeting place of many movements of resistance, as many as there are sites of closure and exclusion. The resistance will be as transnational capitalism." longing resistance Rebecca Solnit
5655893 He loved her; in some ways he was devoted to her. But he couldn't reach her, and it was the same on her side. It was as if they'd drunk some fatal potion that would keep them forever apart, even though they lived in the same house, ate at the same table, slept in the same bed. longing love love-hurts separation Margaret Atwood
f5bc6b8 Oh, if only I could hurt with such misery once again, to feel the powers of love here inside my heart, the joys of heaven and the pains of hell! longing love pain Victor Villaseñor
576abfb She did not tell him this, because it would hurt him to know she had felt that way for a while, that her relationship with him was like being content in a house but always sitting by the window and looking out. longing chimamanda ngozi adichie
e9d3aa9 She had said he had been driven away from her by a dream... bitter breaking-up breakup breakups dream dreaming heart-break heart-burn heartache indigestion longing love sad Joseph Conrad
c3bc95c The many contradictions in our lives - such as being home while feeling homeless, being busy while feeling bored, being popular while feeling lonely, being believers while feeling many doubts - can frustrate, irritate, and even discourage us. They make us feel that we are never fully present. Every door that opens for us makes us see how many more doors are closed. But there is another response. These same contradictions can bring us into touch with a deeper longing, for the fulfillment of a desire that lives beneath all desires and that only God can satisfy. Contradictions, thus understood, create the friction that can help us move toward God. god longing paradox Henri J.M. Nouwen
fb90b81 We were both smiling, in that bittersweet way one does when imagining something the heart longs for and the head would dread. fitz fool head heart imagine longing smile Robin Hobb
61861e3 When you learn to love and let yourself be loved, you come home to the hearth of your own spirit. You are warm and sheltered. Your are completely at one in the house of your own longing and belonging. hearth home house-of-belonging longing love John O'Donohue
706206d If a little hill of happiness would satisfy Chris, good for him. But after all these years of striving, hoping, dreaming, longing-I wanted a mountain high! A hill wasn't enough. dreams happiness hill hoping longing mountain mountains satisfy striving V.C. Andrews
dc8ae39 Orito banishes all thoughts of Jacob de Zoet, and recalls Jacob de Zoet. longing love David Mitchell
e72a7a8 The human heart is a theater of longing. celtic-spirituality communion community dependant-origination interdependence longing love nature John O'Donohue
ac830bd [...]when he closed his eyes, the torrent of longing waiting inside was so thick he thought he might drown in it. eyes longing love Aimee Bender
9f3fc72 "30 cents, two transfers, love Thinking hard about you I got on the bus and paid 30 cents car fare and asked the driver for two transfers before discovering longing love poetry Richard Brautigan
8f015dc "Do you know that high fever which invades us in our cold suffering, that aching for a land we do not know, that anguish of curiosity? There is a country which resembles you, where everything is beautiful, sumptuous, authentic, still, where fantasy has built and adorned a western China, where life is sweet to breathe, where happiness is wed to silence. That is where to live, that is where to die!" - Invitation to a Voyage" golden-age hiraeth imagination longing nostalgia Charles Baudelaire
f3629a7 "Um, thanks," Jackson told her. "And your name is...?" "I'm Margaret, Margaret Van Der Graaf," she answered with another eerie smile. Her teeth were so white that they looked bleached. "Van Der Graaf?" Jackson repeated, trying to stifle his laughter. He didn't want to be rude to the only person in sight, to this kind-hearted stranger who was offering to help him, but... Van Der Graaf? "What are you laughing at?" Margaret asked with curiosity, flashing him a calculating gaze. "I like my name. If you're going to be a jerk, then I won't help you. You can stay out here on the street through the night for all I care." "...Harsh," said Jackson, giving her a quizzical glance back. There was something 'off' about her, something that Jackson couldn't quite place, something that bordered on horrible loneliness and longing. "Who else lives here, Margaret Van Der Graaf?" He couldn't resist saying her name aloud. Despite its hilarity, it had a nice ring to it. "Who else lives here?" he urged. "Me, myself and I," said Margaret simply, snickering when she saw his horrified and annoyed expression" comedy friendship funny ghost humor longing lonliness name smile stranger weird Rebecca McNutt
e10680f "Today is the winter solstice. The planet tilts just so to its star, lists and holds circling in a fixed tension between veering and longing, and spins helpless, exalted, in and out of that fleet blazing touch. Last night Orion vaulted and spread all over the sky, pagan and lunatic, his shoulder and knee on fire, his sword three suns at the ready-for what? I won't see this year again, not again so innocent; and longing wrapped round my throat like a scarf. "For the Heavenly Father desires that we should see," says Ruysbroeck, "and that is why He is ever saying to our inmost spirit one deep unfathomable word and nothing else." But what is the word? Is this mystery or coyness? A cast-iron bell hung from the arch of my rib cage; when I stirred, it rang, or it tolled, a long syllable pulsing ripples up my lungs and down the gritty sap inside my bones, and I couldn't make it out; I felt the voiced vowel like a sigh or a note but I couldn't catch the consonant that shaped it into sense." beauty belief consciousness creation curiosity disbelief energy enoughness epiphany exploration exultant faith fate fearless fire free freedom gaps god grace growth hallelujah humility illumination intricacy joy joyful joyfulness life-force light living-in-the-present-moment longing mindfulness multiplicity mystery nature philosopher-s-stone philosophy poem poet poetry power praise prayer prayers praying religion religious-diversity ring-the-bells science seeing seeking soul spirit stalking-the-gaps the-tree-with-the-lights-in-it tolerance walking watching wonder Annie Dillard
4b1e34f I believe that we are arks of the covenant and our true nature is not rage or deceit or terror or logic or craft or even sorrow. It is longing. imortality longing Cormac McCarthy
e15c297 "I had to do something about my longing, so I got up, went to the kitchen in my nightgown, peeled a pound of potatoes, boiled them up, sliced them, fried them in butter, salted them generously and ate every bite of them - asking my body the whole while if it would please accept the satisfaction of a pound of fried potatoes in lieu of the fulfillment of lovemaking. My body replied, only after eating every bite of food: "No deal, babe." -- life longing love women Elizabeth Gilbert
e0c2ab8 You travel certainly, in every sense of the word. But you take with you everything that you have been, just as the landscape stores up its own past. Because you were once at home somewhere, you are never an alien anywhere. celtic-spirituality home hospitality longing nature John O'Donohue
c23bb41 One soft humid early spring morning driving a winding road across Mount Tamalpais, the 2,500-foot mountain just north of the Golden Gate Bridge, a bend reveals a sudden vision of San Francisco in shades of blue, a city in a dream, and I was filled with a tremendous yearning to live in that place of blue hills and blue buildings, though I do live there, I had just left there after breakfast. golden-gate-bridge longing mount-tamalpais san-francisco travel wanderlust Rebecca Solnit
19f8a1c "The beauty of being human is the capacity and desire for intimacy. Yet we know that even those who are most intimate remain strange to us. Like children, we often "make strange" with each other." belonging communion divine-love friendship intimacy longing love relationship solitude John O'Donohue
2e6fa8f "Have a drink?" " I don't need it," said Halloway. "But someone inside me does." "Who?" The boy I once was, thought Halloway, who runs like the leaves down the sidewalk autumn nights. But he couldn't say that. So he drank, eyes shut, listening to hear if that thing inside turned over again, rustling in the deep bons that were stacked for burning but never burned." alcohol drink longing regret youth Ray Bradbury
eaa94fc She left two mermaid tears, crystals with a bit of salt embedded in them, on his pillow. longing mermaid sadness tears Jane Yolen
38bbf2a She looks after him, feeling a wave of longing, loneliness. Not sexual particularly but to do with the nature of cities, the thousands of strangers you pass in a day, probably never to see again. longing William Gibson
8b53126 Nothing in creation is ever totally at home in itself. ... It is the deepest intimacy which is nevertheless infused with infinite distance. communion longing love oneness spiritual-seeking John O'Donohue
70af45f Why is it we want so badly to memorialize ourselves? Even while we're still alive. We wish to assert our existence, like dogs peeing on fire hydrants. We put on display our framed photographs, our parchment diplomas, our silver-plated cups; we monogram our linen, we carve our names on trees, we scrawl them on washroom walls. It's all the same impulse. What do we hope from it? Applause, envy, respect? Or simply attention, of any kind we can get? At the very least we want a witness. We can't stand the idea of our own voices falling silent finally, like a radio running down. fear human-condition longing powerful sad-but-true self-conciousness Margaret Atwood
0254e93 Wouldn't it be nice to be done with it? To be done with sex and longing? Mitchell could almost imagine pulling it off, sitting on a bridge at night with the Seine flowing by. He looked up at all the lighted windows along the river's arc. He thought of all the people going to sleep or reading or listening to music, all the lives contained by a great city like this, and, floating up in his mind, rising just above the rooftops, he tried to feel, to vibrate among, all those million tremulous souls. He was sick of craving, of wanting, of hoping, of losing. longing Jeffrey Eugenides
76e28cb This breakage within us is what makes us human and vulnerable. There is nothing more sinister than someone whose mind seems to be an absolute circle; there is a helpless coldness and a deadly certainty about such a presence. celtic-spirituality humanness longing love sensitivity spirituality vulnerability John O'Donohue
b527a52 Bones was lost in the sweat on her exquisitely sweating body. He was jealous of her sweat. He wanted to be her sweat. Even through the viewfinder he could see her ribcage pressing against her leotard like a musical instrument. He wanted to play her long into the night. longing lust Sherry Shahan
2c898c3 Miro hacia la biblioteca. Aquella sabiduria no calmaria nunca su fuego; siglos y siglos de palabras no podian satisfacer aquel deseo imperativo e irracional. books desire frustration knowledge libraries longing sex wisdom world-literature Richard Matheson
1c9404a Getting back to Audrey, though, I should really feel complimented that she won't ever touch me because she likes me more than anyone else. It makes perfect sense, really, doesn't it? If she ever gets down or depressed, i can make out the figure of her through the front window of the shack. She comes in and we drink cheap beer or wine and watch a movie or all three. Something old and long like Ben-Hur that stretches into the night. She'll be next to me on the couch in her flannel shirt and jeans that have been cut into shorts,and eventually, when she's asleep, I'll bring a blanket out and cover her up. I kiss her cheek. I stroke her hair. I think of how she lives alone, just like me, and how she never had any real family, and how she only has sex with people. She never lets any love get in the way. I think she had a family once, but it was one of those beat-the-crap-out-of-each-other situations. There's no shortage of them around here. I think she loved them and all she ever did was hurt her. That's why she refuses to love. Anybody. I guess she feels better off that way, and who can blame her? When she sleeps on my couch, I think about all that. Everytime. I cover her up, then go to the bed and dream. With my eyes open. longing love Markus Zusak
8816208 He had not meant the words in that way. He had been talking strictly about possession. But oh, the longing for his love was an unbearably painful ache in her. georgian heartless historical-romance longing mary-balogh possession romance sexy Mary Balogh
5a6ffba The temptation is too strong for me. Oh, Lord! where is Thy peace that I believed in, in my childhood? - that I hear people speaking of now, as if it hushed up the troubles of life, and had not to be sought for - sought for, as with tears of blood! [-Jemima, chapter 26, pg. 275] longing peace tears temptation troubles Elizabeth Gaskell
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