#longing

But I have one want which I have never yet been able to satisfy; and the absence of the object of which I now feel as a most severe evil. I have no friend, Margaret: when I am glowing with the enthusiasm of success, there will be none to participate my joy; if I am assailed by disappointment, no one will endeavour to sustain me in dejection. I shall commit my thoughts to paper, it is true; but that is a poor medium for the communication of feeling. I desire the company of a man who could sympathise with me; whose eyes would reply to mine. You may deem me romantic, my dear sister, but I bitterly feel the want of a friend. I have no one near me, gentle yet courageous, possessed of a cultivated as well as of a capacious mind, whose tastes are like my own, to approve or amend my plans. How would such a friend repair the faults of your poor brother! ↗

— Mary Shelley

#loneliness #longing #communication

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

#longing #reaching #sadness #sameness #life

Tough to part; lock, stock and barrel. Something remains, like recognizable tastes and smells, which kindle the faculty of memory, yea-pricks the soul. ↗

— Aporva Kala

#life

It is said that many children who live in the central provinces, away from the ocean, have a great longing to see it. I who had never been away from the monotonous country surrounding us looked forward eagerly to seeing the mountains. ↗

— Pierre Loti

#been #central #children #country #eagerly

To put meaning in one's life may end in madness, But life without meaning is the torture Of restlessness and vague desire-It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid. ↗

— Edgar Lee Masters

#boat #end #life #longing #madness

I had friends at school, but I was never part of a gang and I dreamed of that sense of belonging to a group. You know, where people would call me 'Em' and shout across the bar, 'Em, what are you drinking?' after the show. ↗

— Emily Mortimer

#after #bar #belonging #call #dreamed

We will live with racism for ever. But senses of self, senses of belonging, senses of us and of others? Those are up for grabs. ↗

— Richard Powers

#ever #grabs #live #others #racism

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 #experiences #express #fear #generally

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

#beauty

It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are still alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger for them. ↗

— George Eliot

#living #longing #wish #wishing #beauty