Longing Quotes - Page 38

• I'd like to see much more understanding of emotional issues around hurt, abandonment, disappointment, longing, failure and shame, where they stem from and how they drive people and policies brought into public discourse.

  Susie Orbach

  Hurt, Disappointment, Emotional

  "Britain's intellectuals: leading thinkers have their say" by Alain de Botton, AC Grayling, Susie Orbach, Paul Gilroy, Will Self, Mary Beard, Brian Cox, Lionel Shriver, James Lovelock and Lisa Jardine, www.theguardian.com. May 7, 2011.

  49 Copy quote

  Show source

• Every year we celebrate the holy season of Advent, O God. Every year we pray those beautiful prayers of longing and waiting, and sing those lovely songs of hope and promise.

  Karl Rahner

  Christmas, Beautiful, Song

  17 Copy quote

• Give me my robe, put on my crown; I have Immortal longings in me.

  William Shakespeare

  Giving, Crowns, Immortal

  'Antony and Cleopatra' (1606-7) act 5, sc. 2, l. [282]

  67 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  Confusion, Joy, Lust

  8 Copy quote

• And so much of my life has been about returning home and longing for home, wanting my children to know about my roots. And I thought I can't be the only one to feel this way so I thought it would be an interesting topic to explore.

  Sela Ward

  Children, Home, Roots

  56 Copy quote

• The danger is not lest the soul should doubt whether there is any bread, but lest, by a lie, it should persuade itself that it is not hungry.

  Simone Weil

  Faith, Lying, Soul

  Simone Weil (2009). “Waiting on God (Routledge Revivals)”, p.81, Routledge

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is a political thriller. It's very action packed and it's very exciting, but at the same time it's a very big soulful love story about longing and loss. They're not separate, they're completely dependent on one another.

  Rachel Weisz

  Loss, Political, Stories

  4 Copy quote

• This week, the world gathers in Beijing for the 2008 Olympic games. This is the extraordinary moment China has been dreaming of for 100 years. People have been longing for this moment, because it symbolises a turning point in China's relationship with the outside world.

  Ai Weiwei

  Dream, Years, Games

  6 Copy quote

• After a while I understood that, talking this way, everything dissolves: justice, pine, hair, woman, you and I. There was a woman I made love to and I remembered how, holding her small shoulders in my hands sometimes, I felt a violent wonder at her presence like a thirst for salt, for my childhood river with its island willows, silly music from the pleasure boat, muddy places where we caught the little orange-silver fish called pumpkinseed. It hardly had to do with her. Longing, we say, because desire is full of endless distances.

  Robert Hass

  Distance, Silly, Hands

  Robert Hass, “Meditation At Lagunitas”

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is so much deep contradiction in my soul. Such deep longing for God - so deep that it is painful - a suffering continual - and yet not wanted by God - repulsed - empty - no faith - no love - no zeal. Souls hold no attraction - Heaven means nothing - to me it looks like an empty place - the thought of it means nothing to me and yet this torturing longing for God. Pray for me please that I keep smiling at Him in spite of everything. For I am only His - so He has every right over me. I am perfectly happy to be nobody even to God. . . . Your devoted child in J.C. M. Teresa

  Brian Kolodiejchuk

  Children, Mean, Heaven

  14 Copy quote

• Maybe when people longed for a thing that bad the longing made them trust in anything that might give it to them.

  Carson McCullers

  People, Giving, Might

  Carson McCullers (2010). “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter”, p.51, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  Ian Mcewan

  Sweet, Teenage, Distance

  Ian McEwan (2010). “Saturday”, p.158, Random House

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Let still woman take An elder than herself: so wears she to him, So sways she level in her husband's heart, For, boy, however we do praise ourselves, Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm, More longing, wavering, sooner to be lost and warn, Than women's are.

  William Shakespeare

  Husband, Heart, Boys

  'Twelfth Night' (1601) act 2, sc. 4, l. 29

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I felt instantly at home, and wanted only to dismiss Alistair, along with the rest of Justice Hall, that I might have a closer look at the shelves.I had to content myself instead with a strolling perusal, my hands locked behind my back to keep them from reaching out for Le Morte D'Arthur, Caxton 1485 or the delicious little red-and-gilt Bestiary, MS Circa 1250 or.... If I took one down, I should be lost. So I looked, like a hungry child in a sweet shop, and trailed out on my guide's heels with one longing backward glance.

  Laurie R. King

  Sweet, Children, Home

  4 Copy quote

• It was when I was happiest that I longed most...The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing...to find the place where all the beauty came from.

  C. S. Lewis

  Faith, Inspiration, Religion

  C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.24, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• Dumbledore watched her fly away, and as her silvery glow faded he turned back to Snape, and his eyes were full of tears. "After all this time?" "Always," said Snape.

  J. K. Rowling

  Love, Eye, Tears

  7 Copy quote

• 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 terrors for one who remembers the name.

  Leonard Cohen

  Heart, Night, Sky

  Leonard Cohen (2010). “Book of Mercy”, p.31, McClelland & Stewart

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• They all have tired mouths and bright seamless souls. And a longing (as for sin) sometimes haunts their dreams. They are almost all alike; in God's gardens they keep still, like many, many intervals in his might and melody. Only when they spread their wings are they wakers of a wind: as if God with his broad sculptor- hands leafed through the pages in the dark book of the beginning.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Dream, Book, Tired

  Rainer Maria Rilke (2014). “The Book of Images”, p.31, North Point Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• If you looked down to the bottom of my soul, you would understand fully the source of my longing and – pity me. Even the open, transparent lake has its unknown depths, which no divers know.

  Hans Christian Andersen

  Lakes, Soul, Depth

  23 Copy quote

• What are the stars but points in the body of God where we insert the healing needles of our terror and longing?

  Thomas Pynchon

  Stars, Healing, Rainbow

  "Gravity's Rainbow". Book by Thomas Pynchon, 1973.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• ...Meg learned to love her husband better for his poverty, because it seem to have made a man of him, giving him the strength and courage to fight his own way, and taught him a tender patience with which to bear and comfort the natural longings and failures of those he loved.

  Louisa May Alcott

  Love, Husband, Fighting

  Louisa May Alcott (2001). “Little Women”, p.307, Broadview Press

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• We all dream dreams of unity, of purity; we all dream that there's an authoritative voice out there that will explain things, including ourselves. If it wasn't for our longing for these things, I doubt the novel or the short story would exist in its current form. I'm not going to say much more on the topic. Just remember: In dictatorships, only one person is really allowed to speak. And when I write a book or a story, I too am the only one speaking, no matter how I hide behind my characters.

  Junot Diaz

  Dream, Book, Writing

  "Questions for Junot Díaz". Interview with Meghan O'Rourke, www.slate.com. April 8, 2008.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• God picks up the reed-flute world and blows. Each note is a need coming through one of us, a passion, a longing pain. Remember the lips where the wind-breath originated, and let your note be clear. Don't try to end it. Be your note.

  Rumi

  Inspirational, Pain, Passion

  13 Copy quote

• What are stars but points in the body of God where we insert the healing needles of our terror and longing?

  Lawrence Durrell

  Stars, Healing, Body

  5 Copy quote

• But this was that view of human destiny which she had most passionately hated and rejected: the view that man was ever to be drawn by some vision of the unattainable shining ahead, doomed ever to aspire, but not to achieve. Her life and her values could not bring her to that, she thought; she had never found beauty in longing for the impossible and had never found the possible to be beyond her reach.

  Ayn Rand

  Destiny, Men, Views

  Ayn Rand (2016). “Atlas Shrugged”, p.590, Hamilton Books

  6 Copy quote

  Show source