Quotes about Yearning

Marius and Cosette were in the dark in regard to each other. They did not speak, they did not bow, they were not acquainted; they saw each other; and, like the stars in the sky separated by millions of leagues, they lived by gazing upon each other.

He had never known a kind woman friend in his native parts. He had not had the time to fall in love.

Does not this comprehend all, in fact? and what is there left to desire beyond it? A little garden in which to walk, and immensity in which to dream. At

In that etymological light nostalgia seems something like the pain of ignorance, of not knowing. You are far away, and I don't know what has become of you. My country is far away, and I don't know what is happening there.

It means what you are, wanting what you want and going after it without a sens od shame. People are slaves to rules.

She was in the grip of an insuperable longing to fall. She lived in a constant state of vertigo. "Pick me up", is the message of a person who keeps falling.

Mesmerized, all she can do is watch this piece of her life move off; all she can do is watch it and suffer. She is experiencing a brand-new feeling called nostalgia. That feeling, that irrepressible yearning to return, suddenly reveals to her the existence of the past, the power of the past, of her past; in the house of her life […] from now on her existence will be inconceivable without these feelings.

Now we are longtime outcasts, flying through the emptiness of time in a straight line. Yet somewhere deep down a thin thread still ties us to that far-off misty Paradise, where Adam leans over a well and, unlike Narcissus, never even suspects that the pale yellow blotch appearing in it is he himself. The longing for Paradise is man's longing not to be man.

She had an overwhelming desire to tell him, like the most banal of women, Don't let me go, hold me tight, make me your plaything, your slave, be strong! But they were words she could not say. The only things she said when he released her from his embrace was, 'You don't know how happy I am to be with you.' That was the most her reserved nature allowed her to express.

I might put it another way: Franz felt his book life to be unreal. He yearned for real life, for the touch of people walking side by side with him, for their shouts. It never occurred to him that what he considered unreal (the work he did in the solitude of the office or library) was in fact his real life, whereas the parades he imagined to be reality were nothing but theater, dance, carnival- in other words, a dream.

We can never know what to want, because living only one life, we can neither compare it with our precious lives nor perfect it in our lives to come

Now he too tried hard to think of something else (it was the only thing they had in common), so as to be able to go on making love to her.