#absence

The heart may think it knows better: the senses know that absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends. ↗

— Elizabeth Bowen

#absent #better #blots #friends #heart

In 1916 I was discharged from military service, or rather, given a sort of leave of absence on the understanding that I might be recalled within a few months. And so I was a free man, at least for a while. ↗

— George Grosz

#discharged #few #free #free man #given

The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism. ↗

— Wole Soyinka

#criticism #freedom #greatest #greatest threat #threat

Making love to me is amazing. Wait, I meant: making love, to me, is amazing. The absence of two little commas nearly transformed me into a sex god.
 ↗

— Dark Jar Tin Zoo

#amazement #amazing #commas #editing #funny

I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear. ↗

— Nelson Mandela

#absence #afraid #brave #brave man #conquers

People, he thought, were as hungry for a sight of joy as he had always been--for a moment's relief from that gray load of suffering which seemed so inexplicable and unnecessary. He had never been able to understand why men should be unhappy. ↗

— Ayn Rand

#happiness #happy #joy #pain #relief

It's so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone. ↗

— John Steinbeck

#loss #light

And it is strange that absence can feel like presence. ↗

— Ally Condie

#ally-condie #crossed #dystopia #dystopian-fiction #page-

Coughs seem very common here, especially among the children, though people look strong and healthy, but in the absence of proper statistics one cannot undertake to say whether the district is a healthy one or not. ↗

— Edward Burnett Tylor

#among #cannot #children #common #district

Absence from whom we love is worse than death, and frustrates hope severer than despair. ↗

— William Cowper

#death #despair #frustrates #hope #love