Longing Quotes

If you do not want to write, at least spit on a piece of paper, put it in an envelope, and send it to me. You are not taking any notice of me at all. God forgive you – all I wanted was a few words from you.

~ Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Wait,” he said, and he had his hand outstretched toward me, fingertips just brushing the sleeve of my sweatshirt, gently rooting me to the spot. I wanted to shrug him off, but at the same time, I wanted to fall against him and bury my face in his shoulder. I wanted to commiserate about what had just happened, and make sure he was okay, and discuss how Stanton really is psychotic. I did none of the above.

~ Emma Mills

you’re gone andyour unfinished poemlies alone on my desk—empty of tears,I only hope it rains today

~ John J. Geddes

He is on his way to her. In a moment he will leave the wooden sidewalks and vacant lots for the paved streets. The small suburban houses flash by like the pages of a book, not as when you turn them over one by one with your forefinger but as when you hold your thumb on the edge of the book and let them all swish past at once. The speed is breathtaking. And over there is her house at the far end of the street, under the white gap in the rain clouds where the sky is clearing, toward the evening. How he loves the little houses in the street that lead to her! He could pick them up and kiss them! Those one-eyed attics with their roofs pulled down like caps. And the lamps and icon lights reflected in the puddles and shining like berries! And her house under the white rift of the sky! There he will again receive the dazzling, God-made gift of beauty from the hands of its Creator. A dark muffled figure will open the door, and the promise of her nearness, unowned by anyone in the world and guarded and cold as a white northern night, will reach him like the first wave of the sea as you run down over the sandy beach in the dark.

~ Boris Pasternak

He breathes in deep, then lets it go with a shaky gust. “I hate this. I hate it so much.” His grip makes my ribs protest, and his voice goes rough. “I feel like some essential organ is being ripped from me.

~ Kristen Callihan

For some reason, she thought of how the old people wept when they played fado music at the annual Portuguese Festival. Saudade , her great-aunt Del called it: homesick music. But according to her father, the emotion was about more than place. It was a profound longing for everything that was lost and would never be regained.

~ Patry Francis

If i think about us logically, there is no chance for us. But logic doesn't produce magic.

~ Cristian Peter Marinescu-Ivan

If I had one night, I'd hold you in my arms,Find redemption, no more contention,Keeping you close. Too long, years gone,Wasted away. One night, our night,Remember this. I won't forget you,No I won't forget you.—Red-Eyed Loons

~ Liza M. Wiemer

The voice of the waves was now mixed with strange sounds; laughter, running feet and the clanging of great bells far out to sea. Snufkin lay still and listened. dreaming and remembering his trip round world. Soon I must set out again, he thought. But not yet.

~ Tove Jansson

A chaotic mix of emotions churned inside him. Relief. Anger. Longing. She was the last person in the world he wanted to see. She was the only person in the world he wanted to see.

~ Laura Oliva

We look before and after, And pine for what is not:Our sincerest laughterWith some pain is fraught;Our sweetest songs are those that tell Of saddest thought.Yet if we could scornHate, and pride, and fear;If we were things bornNot to shed a tear,I know not how thy joy we everShould come near.

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

... and you start telling a story about accidentally stealing shoes from an outlet and we've been on the steps for almost twenty minutes and you're so nervous and excited that you keep talking about shoes as if you have to keep talking about shoes or you might jump me right here, on the steps. I chose this spot because my whole fucking life I've walked by these steps and seen couples that make me feel alone, rejected. And now there are loners passing by you and me, jealous, and you're still talking and fuck, it's hard to listen when I can smell your body wash.

~ Caroline Kepnes

30 cents, two transfers, loveThinking hard about you I got on the bus and paid 30 cents car fare and asked the driver for two transfers before discovering that I was alone.

~ Richard Brautigan

Spirituality is, ultimately, about what we do with that desire. What we do with our longings, both in terms of handling the pain and the hope they bring us, that is our spirituality.

~ Ronald Rolheiser

Sometimes what we want lies behind a door our own actions have locked tight.

~ Natasha Knight

I miss you like the mismatching sock I can't find. You're out there somewhere.

~ Karen Quan

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.

~ Henri J.m. Nouwen

While I'd been plagued by nightmares of Jonathan's unrest in the hereafter, it was only now that I'd seen Adair again—and seen him so changed—that I could admit, even to myself, that it was him I daydreamed of, who I longed for, who I ached for, physically. That was how I'd betrayed Luke—in my desire for Adair. It wasn't so uncommon, was it? Living with one man while your mind is on another? Being unable to stop thinking of this other man who, for one reason or another, was not the one sitting beside you. Thinking of the way his eyes lit up when he saw you, of his wicked smile and what it was like when he held you, how you responded to the touch of his hands. In solitary moments, you remembered the little intimacies, the feel of his skin against yours, the way he liked to be touched, the velvet nap of his member, the way he tasted. You thought of him even though you could never be with him. His absence nagged like an itch you could never scratch.

~ Alma Katsu

His heat warmed her, even as her insides turned to ice.

~ Katherine Mcintyre

But I love him.So love him.But I miss him.So miss him. Send him love and light every time you think about him, and then drop it.

~ Elizabeth Gilbert

It's not that I wait for you.It's that my arms are doors I cannot close.

~ Derrick Brown

When we lay together, she showed me her soul, and I showed her mine, and they were the same. As you can imagine, mine was battered and bruised, tarnished like ancient metal. She scrubbed it clean. I cannot deny my own soul any more than I can deny she held it in her hands for a time.

~ Carol Oates

I gave up hoping...But, still, I would think of him, I would cherish his image in my mind, and treasure every word, look and gesture that memory could retain.

~ Anne Brontë

The same thing that had happened with the flowers was happening with my longing: once I held it in my hands, I didn't know where to put it.

~ Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Love a girl and she will give you a story to tell,Love a woman and she will give you a novel to pen...

~ Dinesh Kumar Biran

Some people are like swings...They give us an exciting thing to do for a while..Thereafter leave us alone, dizzy and not very far ahead in life...

~ Dinesh Kumar Biran

To feel such a longing for his own life, even as he’s living it—he wonders what that means.

~ David Levithan

Sometimes, one yearns for something.For the ultimate in happiness. I yearn for it,and don't know where to look for it any longer. And I don't know if I would recognize it if I found it. And the longer I look, the more selfish I grow.For I think only of my own happiness. i think I have lost the ability to make someone else happy. If I ever had it. And I suppose we can never be happy unless we can also give happiness.

~ Mary Balogh

Perhaps it is better not to tell what you wish. if you cannot have it.

~ J.r.r. Tolkien

There is a legend that everything that falls into the waters of this river -- leaves, insects, the feathers of birds -- is transformed into the rocks that make the riverbed. If only I could tear out my heart and hurl it into the current, then my pain and longing would be over, and I could finally forget.

~ Paulo Coelho

There’s a time when it all comes together—what you long for and what you fear—and as tentative as you may feel, you’re driven to continue. At that point, the need to forge ahead is the only option, and your direction is defined despite yourself.

~ Lorii Myers

To long to read.

~ A. Cretan

Methinks I lied all winter, when I sworeMy love was infinite, if spring makes it more.

~ John Donne

We fear what we long for. This is the paradox.

~ Tony Brasunas

I’m always soft for you, that’s the problem. You could come knocking on my door five years from now and I would open my arms wider and say ‘come here, it’s been too long, it felt like home with you.

~ Azra T.

Let’s call my mood melancholy; let’s call it remembrance. Or maybe let’s call it longing. Yes, let’s call it longing instead.

~ Shannon Celebi

...and when he dies, cut him out in little stars, and the face of heaven will be so fine that all the world will be in love with night and pay no heed to the garish sun.

~ William Shakespeare

Surely some revelation is at hand.

~ W.b. Yeats

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.

~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

It is poetic and lyrical, words that spill forth like cool waters into the dusty dry rock bed of the Soul desiring love. It has been said that I’ve lived in the desert all my life and do not know what it means to be wet.

~ Sophia Rose