#longing

I introduced Nora as my wife, though that was a lie. Old people, that's what they wanted to hear. If you were married, you were mature, reliable, exactly like them, because in their day men and women didn't just live together--they made a commitment, they had children and went on cruises and built big houses on lakes and filled them with all the precious trinkets and manufactured artifacts they'd collected along the way. ↗

— T.C. Boyle

#cohabitation #commitment #marriage #maturity #reliability

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

#long #longing #growth

I wanted a heaven. And I grew up striving for that world-- an eternal world- that would wash away my temporary misery. ↗

— Craig Thompson

#insightful #longing #insight

The sea always filled her with longing, though for what she was never sure. ↗

— Cornelia Funke

#sea #sea

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. ↗

— Bertrand Russell

#knowledge #life #longing #love #mankind

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

...my body has become another country and I feel like an unemployed illegal alien how will I survive where I do not belong I belong with you ↗

— Patrick Califia-Rice

#change #longing #poem #change

They should not clench their fists, it’s my longing that’s drawing me near to them; they should not stand there full of rage, my longing is timidly drawing near to them; they should not be ready to pounce like vicious dogs, as if they wanted to tear my longing to shreds; they should not threaten with broad sleeves, that pains my longing. Why have they suddenly changed? As great and deep is my longing. No matter how difficult, no matter how menacing: I must reach them and I’m already there. ↗

— Robert Walser

#the-trees #change

You could not spend your entire span of life in thrall to the code of stuff. There was no code of stuff. Stuff was just stuff. You couldn't live by it or for it. ↗

— John Lanchester

#life #material-possessions #stuff #life