Longing Quotes

“I am inhabited by a cry.
Nightly it flaps out
Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.”
― Sylvia Plath, Ariel

“The Day is Done

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.”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Belfry of Bruges and Other Poems

“We long for things that harm us and run from the things that grow and heal us. We think good is bad and bad is good.”
― Tessa Afshar, Pearl in the Sand

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

“Till then I wasn't alive, I longed for you like the love sick moon pulls the tide”
― Corinne Bailey Rae

“Don't let's ask for the moon! We have the stars!”
― Olive Higgins Prouty , Now, Voyager

“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.”
― Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence

“I know she is coming
I know she will look
And that is the longing
And this is the book.”
― Leonard Cohen, Book of Longing

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

“I kept it to remind me that although there is evil, there is sometimes beauty and light. You, Jillian. You were always my light.”
― Karen Marie Moning, To Tame a Highland Warrior

“In the end, the train stood 2 hours motionless in the middle of nowhere.
Every minute seemed like an eternity.
Time felt crept by slowly, with clear malice towards me. All I could do was grip my teeth and try to hold back my tears...
Akari... Please, don't wait for me...
If you'd just go home.”
― Makoto Shinkai, 5 Centimeters per Second

“and on a soft bed
delicate
you would let loose your longing”
― Sappho, If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho

“Go deeper after your feelings created by your awareness and go into your heart beyond this simple word.”
― Raz Mihal, Just Love Her

“She inhabited a world from which I was excluded, and she had left me in an immense empty space.”
― Alfred Hayes, In Love

“I believe in love at first sight…
But it’s not the first moment you lay eyes on a person, it’s the moment you first see the person they truly are.”
― Ranata Suzuki

“Kaz snagged her wrist. "Inej." His gloved thumb moved over her pulse, traced the top of the feather tattoo. "If we don't make it out, I want you to know..."
She waited. She felt hope rustling its wings inside her, ready to take flight at the right words from Kaz. She willed that hope in to stillness. Those words would never come. The heart is an arrow.
She reached up and touched his cheek. She thought he might flinch again, even knock her hand away. In nearly two years of battling side by side with Kaz, of late-night scheming, impossible heists, clandestine errands, and harried meals of fried potatoes and hutspot gobbled down as they rushed from one place to another, this was the first time she had touched him skin to skin, without the barrier of gloves or coat or shirtsleeve. She let her hand cup his cheek. His skin was cool and damp from the rain. He stayed still, but she saw a tremor pass through him, as if he were waging a war with himself.
"If we don't die this night, I will die unafraid, Kaz. Can you say the same?"
His eyes were nearly black, the pupils dilated. She could see it took every last bit of his terrible will for him to remain still beneath her touch. And yet, he did not pull away. She knew it was the best he could offer. It was not enough.
She dropped her hand. He took a deep breath.
Kaz had said he didn't want her prayers and she wouldn't speak them, but she wished him safe nonetheless. She had her aim now, her heart had direction, and though it hurt to know that path led away from him, she could endure it.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows

“A pine tree standeth lonely
In the North on an upland bare;
It standeth whitely shrouded
With snow, and sleepeth there.

It dreameth of a Palm tree
Which far in the East alone,
In the mournful silence standeth
On its ridge of burning stone.”
― Heinrich Heine

“It had been dark at the beach for hours, he hadn't been smoking much and it wasn't headlights – but before she turned away, he could swear he saw light falling on her face, the orange light just after sunset that catches a face turned to the west, watching the ocean for someone to come in on the last wave of the day, in to shore and safety.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Inherent Vice

“Mika: Were you happy?
Hiro: I was so happy.”
― Ibuki Haneda (伊吹羽田), Koizora (Love Sky), Volume 3

“You kissed me once and now you feel as if you’ve got some special kind of licence to do it whenever you want?”
― Simona Panova, Nightmarish Sacrifice

“This is, to me, the loveliest and saddest landscape in the world. It is the same as that on the preceding page, but I have drawn it again to impress it on your memory. It is here that the little prince appeared on Earth, and disappeared.

Look at it carefully so that you will be sure to recognise it in case you travel some day to the African desert. And, if you should come upon this spot, please do not hurry on. Wait for a time, exactly under the star. Then, if a little man appears who laughs, who has golden hair and who refuses to answer questions, you will know who he is. If this should happen, please comfort me. Send me word that he has come back.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

“Beside Avery, Jameson was looking at her like she was the sun and the moon and the stars and eternity, all rolled into one.”
― Jennifer Lynn Barnes, The Grandest Game

“Dreadful will be the day when the world becomes contented, when one great universal satisfaction spreads itself over the world. Sad will be the day for every man when he becomes absolutely contented with the life that he is living, with the thoughts that he is thinking, with the deeds that he is doing, when there is not forever beating at the doors of his soul some great desire to do something larger which he knows that he was meant and made to do because he is a child of God.”
― Phillips Brooks

“Laine slowly rolled out of bed. The queen size was one of the few new things in the house. But now, even the new bed felt tainted. It was an inner-spring monument to lies, a petri dish of mendacity she had shared with her faithless husband, and shared now with creeping dreams that flew from the light but left harsh scratches and diseased black feathers. Laine promised herself that, as soon as, she could, she would rid herself of this house, this bed, her clothes, her jewelry - everything but the flesh she lived in. She would scrub herself clean and flee to start a new life whose first and only commandment would be: Never let thyself be lied to again.”
― Stephen M. Irwin, The Dead Path

“My letters! all dead paper, mute and white!
And yet they seem alive and quivering
Against my tremulous hands which loose the string
And let them drop down on my knee to-night.
This said, -- he wished to have me in his sight
Once, as a friend: this fixed a day in spring
To come and touch my hand ... a simple thing,
Yet I wept for it! -- this, ... the paper's light ...
Said, Dear I love thee; and I sank and quailed
As if God's future thundered on my past.
This said, I am thine -- and so its ink has paled
With lying at my heart that beat too fast.
And this ... O Love, thy words have ill availed
If, what this said, I dared repeat at last!”
― Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnets from the Portuguese

“Looking from the window at the fantastic light and colour of my glittering fairy-world of fact that holds no tenderness, no quietude, I long suddenly for peace, for understanding.”
― Daphne du Maurier, The Birds and Other Stories

“I still remember that feeling of walking somewhere confidently, seeing him mid stride and putting my foot down just fine… but feeling like I stumbled.”
― Ranata Suzuki

“I wanted you, too. For so long. It was terrible. Sometimes I could barely eat- sorry, I know that sounds like the strangest thing. But for days I didn't feel hungry at all. I was... occupied. You took away all the other wanting from me.”
― Ava Reid, A Study in Drowning

“He slid the ring onto my wedding finger. It fitted perfectly. A good omen? I tipped my hand this way and that, admiring the extravagant sparkle, and kept my truth buttoned all buttoned up.”
― Lesley Glaister, A Particular Man

“Bet it would be even more awkward if I kissed you now, huh?'

Yes, please.

'The next time we kiss had better not be just to piss off Dain.' The next time had better only be because we want it.

'Next time, huh?' His gaze lowers to my mouth again.”
― Rebecca Yarros, Fourth Wing