"Longing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... murmur passed through the room, a sigh of longing, an expression of assent. And little Christie whispered softly to himself, "Like to go there! ay, that I would, me ...
— Christie's Old Organ - Or, "Home, Sweet Home" • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... please," she said, slowly. And then she studied his face with sober earnestness—with almost wistful longing. But she shook her head presently, and sighed; and a moment later had ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... glimpses which we get in the Gospel story of the longing heart of Jesus. He loved deeply, and sought to be loved. He was disappointed when he failed to find affection. He welcomed love wherever it came to him,—the love of the poor, the gratitude of those whom he had helped, the ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... longing than the longing of a woman in certain condition. Now, the page noticed his lady's foot, which was delicately slippered in a little shoe of a delicate blue colour. She had angularly placed it on a footstool, since she was too high in the seneschal's chair. ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... beautiful as Octavia—" she thought, "but she is very sweet—and her eyes—they have that same longing to be happy—" she sighed as she tiptoed clumsily out of the room and down the draughty stairway. She stood respectfully beside the Major's chair. "Monsieur," she said gravely, "does Miss Felicia know anything at all about all ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... and thus lives with posterity as well as for it. And when, after enjoying a great man's work, we are seized with admiration for him, and wish him back, so that we might see and speak with him, and have him in our possession, this desire of ours is not unrequited; for he, too, has had his longing for that posterity which will grant the recognition, honor, gratitude and love ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... Moses' longing for the desert was irresistible. His prophetic spirit caused him to foresee that his own greatness and the greatness of Israel would manifest themselves there. In the desert God's wonders would appear, though it would be ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... it a woman's plea, conscious of the tenderness she appealed to, or only a child's instinctive grasping after life, just life? If it were the first, it would be easy to finish; but a child's terror, a child's longing—that pulled hard at my manhood, and under the possibility, ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... on sadly, and I knew That these had met and missed in the dark night, Blinded by blindness of the world untrue, That hideth love and maketh wrong of right. Then midst my pity for their lost delight, Yet more with barren longing I grew weak, Yet more I mourned that I had ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... that pain for him has fallen on rest. The worst we know was his on earth: the best, We fain would think,—a thought no fear deflowers— Is his, released from bonds of rayless hours. Ah, turn our hearts from longing; bid our quest Cease, as content with failure. This thy guest Sleeps, vexed no more of time's imperious powers, The spirit of hope, the spirit of change and loss, The spirit of love bowed down beneath his cross, Nor now needs ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... school, I certainly had never had the happiness of seeing that brown mess spread on slices of bread and butter. Nevertheless, my desire for those "rillons" was so great that it grew to be a fixed idea, like the longing of an elegant Parisian duchess for the stews cooked by a porter's wife,—longings which, being a woman, she found means to satisfy. Children guess each other's covetousness, just as you are able to read a man's love, by the look in the eyes; consequently ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... against her black dress. What was their amazement to see as she drew nearer that she was looking just as pleasant as ever. They stared at her with mouths falling open. Was it possible, thought the twins, that she was longing to leave but hadn't liked to say so, and the letter had come as a release? Was it possible, thought Mr. Twist with a leap of hope in his heart, that she was taking the letter from ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... in, and longing for a bit of toast-and-butter, a little old lady, dressed in a gray silk gown, wearing a mob-cap and long ruffles, came into the kitchen by the inner door. She first spoke to the parrot, then stroked the cat; and then, turning towards the porch-door, ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... this is a very true one, Monseigneur, as I hope you will believe before I have ended. In all his cares of state, and with so great a kingdom his cares were very many, there was no such care, no such sorrow, as this longing, unsatisfied love of the father's heart. Day and night his one thought was how he might win for his old age ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... child who was all that was left to the remnant of a mother heart. And Keeko knew that the dismissal must be accepted. There could be no tender farewell. Her mother forbade it. Yet the girl was longing to nurse and caress the suffering creature in her arms. But she understood. Her mother refused everything for herself in a burning fever of urgency. There was time for nothing—nothing but that purpose which she had set her ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... of his voice? Or again were the gentle, friendly words the sudden revelation of a troubled life, a sensitive soul ready to pour itself out in a single phrase and longing to crystallise itself in one unparalleled second? They surprised me, those words of his, they seemed to me new words, grave words, because I had not believed that it was possible to speak them in that way to a stranger, to speak them in a ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... green fields of alfalfa—Have y' ever noticed how th' light above the alfalfa turns purple? An' y'r Rim Rocks roasted fire red by the heat. 'Tis the same view A've gazed on many a time when A was young." He drew a deep sigh of the longing that only the passing frontiersman knows. "'Tis like if the Devil came tempting to-day, 't would be such a place as this! Many's the time He came to us in them old days, lawless days! 'Tis different to-day. He'd not bait men savage naked ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... delightfully wise and witty. This prose, the only dramatic prose written by Browning, with the exception of that in Pippa Passes, is, in its way, almost as good as the poetry: keen, vivacious, full-thoughted, picturesque, and singularly original. For instance, Chiappino is expressing his longing for a woman who could understand, as he says, the whole of him, to whom he could reveal alike ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... your aid. Your strength will come back to you exultant as of old. Come with me, warrior. You will have great companions. Labraid, who wields the rapid fires as you the sword, and Fand, who has laid aside her Druid wisdom longing for you." ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... falling in torrents. Even the Poor Boy did not feel like going out. He looked with a certain longing at the ...
— If You Touch Them They Vanish • Gouverneur Morris
... not to go on for ever; probably, ay, too probably, he had been creeping round a belt. Oh, precious thought of change! for within three hours there was light a-head, light beneath the tangled underwood: he struggled through the last cluster of thick bushes, longing for a sight of fertile plain, and open country. Who knows? are there not men dwelling there with flocks and herds, and food and plenty? Yes—yes, and Dillaway will do among them yet. You envious boughs, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Faust's discontent. In the most energetic and impetuous of Goethe's creations,— his Prometheus,[264]—it is not Celtic self-will and passion, it is rather the Germanic sense of justice and reason, which revolts against the despotism of Zeus. The German Sehnsucht itself is a wistful, soft, tearful longing, rather than a struggling, fierce, passionate one. But the Celtic melancholy is struggling, fierce, passionate; to catch its note, listen to Llywarch Hen in ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... Then leaving car and wain behind, One eager thought in every mind, Swift toward the weeping, every man, As each could find a passage, ran. Some thither bent their eager course With car, and elephant, and horse, And youthful captains on their feet With longing sped their lord to meet, As though the new-come prince had been An exile for long years unseen. Earth beaten in their frantic zeal By clattering hoof and rumbling wheel, Sent forth a deafening noise as loud As heaven when black with many a cloud. Then, with ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... smoothly. Zaidos did not know how many; but one morning there awoke in him a great longing for his adopted land. And that happened to be the very morning when he heard something that might have made him very ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... time, and wondered that moments could be so stretched out in the clueless mind. I have prayed for the morning or for a little draught of wind, and this I have thought, I say, the extreme of absorption into emptiness and longing. ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... along the very passage by which the vessel had sailed, the ice was closing, and it was far easier to go on than to return. To the eastward, and towards the south-east in particular, however, did Roswell Gardiner turn his longing eyes. Somewhere in that quarter of the ocean, and distant now less than ten leagues, did he expect to find the islands of which he was in quest, if, indeed, they had any existence at all. In that direction there were many passages open among the ice, the latter being generally ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... crowd insisted on hearing the story of his adventures during his voluntary absence, and he was obliged to satisfy them. Eight years ago, he said, the desire to see more of the world had gained an irresistible mastery over him; he yielded to it, and departed secretly. A natural longing took him to his birthplace in Biscay, where he had seen his surviving relatives. There he met the Cardinal of Burgos, who took him into his service, promising him profit, hard knocks to give and take, and plenty of adventure. Some time after, he left the cardinal's ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARTIN GUERRE • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... subservient to what is, not what should be. Society does little else than to teach its girls to be dolls and drudges. The prevailing current of instruction and influence is deplorably low. I feel confident that the best part of society is longing for something better. To obtain it, each one has but to live out, and express to the world his idea of a ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... be thine amid these pleasant plains, Know'st thou not, child, what surely coming pains Await thee, for that eager heart's annoy? Misunderstanding, disappointment, tears, Wronged love, spoiled hope, mistrust and ageing fears, Eternal longing for one perfect friend, And ...
— Primavera - Poems by Four Authors • Stephen Phillips, Laurence Binyon, Manmohan Ghose and Arthur Shearly Cripps
... unheeded glides away 'Mid mirth and music, flattery's whispered tone, Her dreary penance—ever to be gay, Yet longing, oh! how oft—to be alone; But when all other hearts seek needful rest, And heavy sleep the saddest eyelids close, Her dreams are those the wretched only know, As memory o'er her ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... had escaped, and Soa knew everything. Moreover, she was mad with hatred and longing for revenge on Leonard, Otter, and in a less degree on Olfan the king. Had they succeeded in revealing themselves to the people, all might have gone well, for Otter and Juanna would certainly have been accepted as true gods, who had passed and repassed the gates of death scatheless. But ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... in her voice, for there was to her a passion of pathos in those words of his. "You want me, and you know that it is only my soul that shall be lost if I give myself to you. God has decreed that only the soul of the woman pays the penalty of the man's longing for her." ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... impressions to her brain, her whole conscious effort was centred in the act of dominating Arment's will. The fear that he would refuse to hear her mounted like fever to her brain. She felt her purpose melt before it, words and arguments running into each other in the heat of her longing. For a moment her voice failed her, and she imagined herself thrust out before she could speak; but as she was struggling for a word, Arment pushed a chair forward, and said quietly: "You ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... freed herself almost roughly from Annie's embracing arm and stood up. She faced the girl almost wildly, and leaned against the work-table. Her eyes grew hot with unshed tears. Her face suddenly took on a look of longing, of yearning. Her whole attitude was one of appeal. She was a woman who could no longer keep to herself the heart sickness ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... the traders responded, "We swear it," and then Caiaphas proceeded to urge upon them the need of creating a party on their side among the people. "If, my good fellows, you really desire fully to glut your longing for revenge, then take care and use every means to kindle in others the same holy zeal ...
— King of the Jews - A story of Christ's last days on Earth • William T. Stead
... have lived long in the wilderness without fresh meat they have a tremendous longing for it. Bob knew that neither Dick nor Ed had tasted venison since they reached their hunting grounds, for they had not been as fortunate as he, and that some of the fresh-killed meat would be a great treat to them and one they would appreciate. Therefore when Micmac John told him how easily ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... gracefully over the snow, looked about them and trotted off; a furtive deer cautiously peered around with ears erect and trotted off also; but it is not for such as these we stand ankle-deep in the snow, shivering with cold and half frozen. A shot now would spoil all the sport. One has a longing to talk when one is told to be quiet. I can't remember ever having thought of so many clever things I wanted to say as when I stood behind the ducal back—things that would be forever lost! And I tried to enter them and fix them in my brain, to be ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... Blodgett? Save that she was a widow of the British middle class, I doubt if any one of her boarders knew. She had once been rich, and had lived at Gibraltar. I have often meditated with fruitless longing about what manner of man Mr. Blodgett could have been. He must have been, like the Emperor Titus, the delight of mankind in his day. He was a man, we must surmise, whose charms and virtues were such that his wife, having felt the bliss ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... Brihaspati by its commander, well-versed in ways of battle, seemed to dance (as it advanced) and struck terror into the hearts of foes. Like ever-appearing clouds in the season of rains, foot-soldiers and horsemen and car-warriors and elephants, longing for battle began to issue from the wings and further wings of that array. Then king Yudhishthira, beholding Karna at the head of the (hostile) army, addressed Dhananjaya, that slayer of foes, that one hero in the world, and said these words, "Behold, O Arjuna, the mighty array ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... five days in a week, and on Saturday walk ten miles to Boston to spend the day in the Athenaeum Library and ten miles back at night. He told how he used to peer in through the gate as he passed Harvard College with an infinite longing for the treasures of learning that were inside. That refined and fastidious audience was stirred by ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... but refused to follow any master, having, as Vasari says, "a certain inkling of his own." Franois I. was delighted with him at first, and made him head of all the Italian colony at Fontainebleau, where he was known as "Maitre Roux." But in two years the king was longing to patronize some other genius, and implored Giulio Romano, then engaged on the Palazzo del T at Mantua, to come to him. The great master refused to come himself, but in his place sent the Bolognese Primaticcio, who became known ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... God to grant me his grace and Holy Spirit, that he would lead me and take from me everything that would tend to alienate me from him; that I might lose my own will in his, and that I might be his child in his son Jesus Christ. While in this earnest seeking and longing, the door has opened before me, so that I have seen and learned more in a quarter of an hour than I could have gained in many years at great schools.... When I think why it is that I write as I do, I learn that my spirit is set on fire of this spirit about which I write. ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... friendship of the family of our close neighbour Colonel Grant. But I was never able to overcome—or even to attempt to overcome—the absolute isolation of my school position. Of the cricket-ground or racket-court I was allowed to know nothing. And yet I longed for these things with an exceeding longing. I coveted popularity with a covetousness that was almost mean. It seemed to me that there would be an Elysium in the intimacy of those very boys whom I was bound to hate because they hated me. Something of the disgrace of my school-days ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... means jarred upon the ear; nay, every tone revealed its admirable training. She had broken the long silence with Josquin's motet, "Quia amore langueo," and in her quiet chamber dedicated it, as it were, to the man to whom this cry of longing had been so dear. Then, in memory of and gratitude to him, other religious songs which he had liked to hear echoed ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... necessary to act myself. I could not stand the sight of Harley being gradually eaten up by the longing of his own soul, and I tried my hand at exploration. I had no better success for several weeks; and then, like an inspiration, the whole thing came to me. "She won't come when he summons her, because she loves him. She won't summon him to come to her, for the same reason. Why not summon both ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs
... observed, were not respectable. I had got rid of a four-days' beard the night before, but had cut myself in the process, and what with my weather-beaten face and tangled hair looked liker a tinker than a decent bagman. I thought with longing of my portmanteau in the Pentland Hotel, Edinburgh, and the neat blue serge suit and the clean linen that reposed in it. It was no case for a subtle game, for I held no cards. Still I was determined not to chuck in my ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... forgive you; your good days are over, And mine, they are yet to be; No listening, no longing shall aught, aught discover: You leave ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... astonishment that the Americans made no attempt to take the town immediately after the Spanish evacuation. There were foreign merchants anxious to delay the American investment because, meanwhile, they were doing a brisk trade, and there were others longing to see the town in the hands of any civilized and responsible Power. Delegates from one party or the other, including the native civil government, went off in boats almost daily to parley with General Miller in the roadstead, each with a different line ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... truth! How beautifully and forcibly expressed! With what a mournful dignity it invests our fallen nature! Sin has marred the Divine image in which we were made, but the soul in its intense longing after God and good bears, in its sorrowful servitude to evil, the impress of the hand that formed it happy and free. Yes, even in the most abject and fallen, some slight trace of good remains—some spark of the Divine ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... last days invariably do, whether one is longing for their advent or the reverse. Boxes had been brought down and packed, and Miss Russell's linen and silver had been collected and stowed away in great wicker baskets, which were already dispatched on their road to London. The girls, marshalled in order on the drive, were only waiting ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... Ted about it, and he was of the opinion that the Indian girl was getting homesick, that her wild nature was asserting itself, and that she was experiencing a longing to be among her own people again, and free from the ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... a man should see. The grand object of travelling is to see the shores of the Mediterranean."' Ib. p. 36. 'Johnson's desire to go abroad, particularly to see Italy, was very great; and he had a longing wish, too, to leave some Latin verses at the Grand Chartreux. He loved indeed the very act of travelling.... He was in some respects an admirable companion on the road, as he piqued himself upon feeling no inconvenience, and on despising no accommodations.' ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... cigarettes from Harrod's have come in separate parcels, so the next will be the chocolate and hankies and cards, &c. It is a grand lot, and I am longing to get up to the ...
— Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front, 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... to the memory of having taken him for Guy. He was the sort of man—only less polished—that she had believed Guy would become. She tried to picture him as he must have been when younger, but she could see only Guy. And again the bitter longing, the aching disappointment, tore ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... attendant at "Ma'am Kilbourne's" school on West Street, to which she walked every day hand in hand with her chubby, rosy-faced, bare-footed, four-year- old brother, Henry Ward. With the ability to read germinated the intense literary longing that was to be hers through life. In those days but few books were specially prepared for children, and at six years of age we find the little girl hungrily searching for mental food amid barrels of old sermons and pamphlets stored ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... poor Mr. Strange say things like this, and heard of other rich men saying them, after lives of what is called beneficence! Mr. Thrall drew a deep sigh, and cast a longing look at his strawberry-bed. I laughed, and said, "You are anxious to get back to your plants, and I won't keep you. I wonder if Mrs. Thrall could see me if I called; or ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... stirring!" said Richard Turlington. "The weather has got a grudge against us. We have drifted about four or five miles in the last eight-and-forty hours. You will never take another cruise with me—you must be longing to get on shore." ...
— Miss or Mrs.? • Wilkie Collins
... inverts that order. Either arrangement suggests important thoughts. Desire after the true riches naturally follows on consciousness of poverty, while, on the other hand, sorrow for one's conscious lack of these may be regarded as preceding and producing longing. In fact, the three traits of character are contemporaneous, and imply each other. Outward condition comes into view, only in so far as it tends to the production of these spiritual characteristics, and has, in fact, produced them, as it ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... years afterwards. Since that time, the repudiated Oriental capital of the ancient Czars, with her golden tiara and Eastern robe, has sat, like Hagar in the wilderness, deserted and lonely in all her barbarian beauty. Yet even now, in many a backward look and longing sigh, she reads plainly enough that she is not forgotten by her sovereign, that she is still at heart preferred, and that she will eventually triumph over ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... now somehow, and has a new longing for the love he has so often harshly repulsed. He will overcome this sulkiness of his; he will begin this very evening; as soon as he gets home he will tell his mother that he is sorry, that he does love her really, only that when these fits come ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... of the week. We're friends—I feel that we are. You are father's friend; you were his friend when I was away. Tell me if he missed me very much. Tell me about him. I have been longing to ask you all the time. What is he doing? I have heard about his choir. He has got some ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... contentment in doing a simple thing, with only one or two qualities, restrictedly desired, and sufficiently attained, are a most wholesome element of education for you, as opposed to the wild writhing, and wrestling, and longing for the moon, and tilting at windmills, and agony of eyes, and torturing of fingers, and general spinning out of one's soul into fiddle-strings, which constitute the ideal life of ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... gone forever. And now in her loneliness and sorrow, knowing that she, too, must shortly follow, a great yearning rose up in her poor wounded heart to see once more her child, the comfort and stay of her bitter life. And as she had written to him her wish and longing, the boy went to her, saw the striking change, saw that the broken spirit of the saintly woman was day by day nearing the margin of the dark hereafter, into whose healing waters it would bathe and be ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... Harry got to his little chamber, it was with a heart full of surprise and gratitude towards the new friends whom this happy day had brought him. The next morning he was up and watching long before the house was astir, longing to see that fair lady and her children again; and only fearful lest their welcome of the past night should in any way be withdrawn or altered. But presently little Beatrix came out into the garden, and her mother followed, who greeted Harry as kindly ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... lips, it persecuted our eyes, it ate through the delicate membranes and made our noses bleed and kept them bleeding—and truly and seriously the romance all faded far away and disappeared, and left the desert trip nothing but a harsh reality—a thirsty, sweltering, longing, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... pleasure of using the word in that honest sense, because of another which has been given to it. To the ordinary man "Religion" means, not the soul's longing for growth, the "hunger and thirst after righteousness", but certain forms in which this hunger has manifested itself in history, and prevails today throughout the world; that is to say, institutions having ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... and don't you ever forget that, sir," he answered as he gave me another shake and I could see a longing for the embrace, which I so desired, in his keen eyes that had softened with a veil of mist in the last second. "Lord, I'm glad you're not a woman! And from now on just stop knowing the creatures exist—Pat Whitworth ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... humanity, and most resembled the all-pervading happiness of fine weather. Fine weather is due to the sun, but Margaret could think of no central radiance here. She stood in his drawing-room happy, and longing to give happiness. On leaving him she realized that the central radiance had ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... images of youth and the past are vanishing away! We who have lived before railways were made, belong to another world. In how many hours could the Prince of Wales drive from Brighton to London, with a light carriage built expressly, and relays of horses longing to gallop the next stage? Do you remember Sir Somebody, the coachman of the Age, who took our half-crown so affably? It was only yesterday; but what a gulf between now and then! THEN was the old world. Stage-coaches, more or less swift, riding-horses, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... with her cavalier, looking up at him and making some bright little speech as they vanished into the building. Percival stood and gazed for a moment, then turned round and hurried out of the crowd. The grace and freshness and happy beauty of the girl had roused a fierce longing in his heart. He wanted to touch a lady's hand again, to hear the delicate accents of a lady's voice. He remembered how he used to dress himself as that fair-haired young man was dressed, and escort Aunt Harriet and Sissy to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... "this is a rope which only the pale old man (i.e., death) can cut. Let this doctor die or let the father die, and the maiden will be free. Surely heaven is longing for one or both of them, and if necessary, Baas, I believe that I can point out ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... disturb the peace of the world is discredited and destroyed. And more than that—much more than that—has been accomplished. The great nations which associated themselves to destroy it have now definitely united in the common purpose to set up such a peace as will satisfy the longing of the whole world for disinterested justice, embodied in settlements which are based upon something much better and more lasting than the selfish competitive interests of powerful states. There is no longer conjecture ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... felt a cold chill at our hearts every time we heard a footfall near the cave, dreading lest it should prove to be that of our executioner. But as time dragged heavily on we ceased to feel this alarm, and began to experience such a deep, irrepressible longing for freedom that we chafed and fretted in our confinement like tigers. Then a feeling of despair came over us, and we actually longed for the time when the savages would take us forth to die. But these changes took place very gradually, and were mingled sometimes with brighter ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... men occupied about it. Christine had been long enough in South Africa to recognize that this was an odd departure from the general rule of friendliness and equality; but a hint to the proud has the same efficacy as a word to the wise. Besides, she had no longing for the society of men, but rather a wish to forget that she had ever known any. Life had made a hole in her heart which she meant to fill if she could, but only with inanimate things and the love of children. So that Mr. van Cannan's unsociable restriction, far ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... gazing fixedly at us. They seemed to wear dark coats and white waistcoats, and stood quite still, with their arms dropping by their sides, only every now and then one would extend them gently, as though longing to embrace us. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... that wherever I looked he had been there before me—all this delighted and enchanted me, and made him for some years my ideal of intellectual greatness; and I looked forward to the Saturdays on which his weekly sermons reached me with longing and pure joy. ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... and the glory of it overpowered me and brought me near to the death I had always sought. But I recovered, for my hour is not yet. Moreover, for a long while as we reckon time, some years indeed, I obeyed the injunction and sought the Great White Road no more. At length the longing grew too strong for me and I returned thither, but never again did the vision come. Its word was spoken, its mission was fulfilled. Yet from time to time I, a mortal, seem to stand upon the borders of that immortal Road and watch the newly dead who travel ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... first moment, she understood Ben Cohen, realising him as lover and child: understood him better, maybe, then than she did later on: losing her sureness for a while, shaken and bewildered; everything blurred by her own immensity of love, longing; of fearing that she did not ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... want, such a longing came into her soul, that she almost cried out; but Agnes returned, and driving back her emotion, Ruth went ...
— 'Our guy' - or, The elder brother • Mrs. E. E. Boyd
... playing the part of the pursued; it is by no means an added attraction on the part of the pursuer. There is, however, an allied and corresponding desire which is very often clearly or latently present in the woman: a longing for pleasure that is stolen or forbidden. It is a mistake to suppose that this is an indication of viciousness or perversity. It appears to be an impulse that occurs quite naturally in altogether innocent women. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... able in two years to gain the love, instead of the dislike, of his excellent and fond mother?—Well, after all, it was best so; but Paula's image haunted him nevertheless and spoilt his sleep, and his longing for her was not to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Him who had in His mercy delivered us from the hand of our enemies. And oh! my fellow-countrymen, who read this brief account of my early days, I, now an old man, would urge you, when our beloved country is, as soon she may be, beset with foes, burning with hatred and longing for her destruction, that while you bestir yourselves like men and seize your arms for the desperate conflict, you ever turn to the God of battles, the God of your fathers, the God of Israel of old, and with contrite hearts for ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... laws of etiquette in the matter of introductions. A man has seen the lady once, or, it may be, has watched her from a distance with longing eyes for months past. He may not make himself known to her without the aid of a third person, who should first ascertain whether his acquaintance will be agreeable to the object of his admiration. It may happen that the gods will send him some lucky chance of rendering ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... sir, I'm longing to begin. I have been looking forward to this day for weeks. I spent over an hour this morning dressing for it. (He takes papers from his hat and moves to the sofa.) Perhaps I had better ...
— First Plays • A. A. Milne
... left me sticking in them: happiness was no nearer, though the donkey was there. Have you not, my philosophic friend, had your donkey? I mean your moral donkey. Yes, and scores of such. When you were a schoolboy, longing for the holidays, have you not chalked upon doors the legend—OH FOR AUGUST! Vague, delightful visions of perfect happiness were wrapped up in the words. But the holidays came, as all holidays have done and will do; and in a few days you were heartily wearied ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... you had seen how he used to waylay us, and ask for our tidings from you after the fire, you would see I cannot doubt who the "madchen" is. Is there no hope for him? The other affair was so long ago, and who could help longing to ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... by the severe measure of Mpepe's execution. Being unwilling to do this, and fearing the enchantments which, by means of a number of Barotse doctors, Mpepe now used in a hut built for the purpose, and longing for peaceful retirement after thirty years' fighting, he heard with pleasure of our arrival at the lake, and came down as far as Sesheke to meet us. He had an idea, picked up from some of the numerous strangers who visited him, that white men had a "pot (a cannon) ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... to be controlled, when perhaps that had become impossible. He had never asked himself if a return of his passion were even possible, until now, when his whole fervid nature had gone out in a great hungry longing for her love and sympathy. She had never stood so lovely and so inaccessible as he had seen her that day. How deeply through and through came the first greeting of her eyes! It was an electric flash never received before, and which as suddenly disappeared. How cool and indifferent ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... am pretty well content. It would only undo me. If you had a child—your own flesh and blood—part of your life—a child that had been to you what my sweet Moll hath been to me, you would comprehend better how I feel. To pretend indifference when you're longing to hug her to your heart, to talk of fair weather and foul when you're thinking of old times, and then to bow and scrape and go away without a single desire of your aching heart satisfied,—'tis more than a man with a spark of warmth in his soul can bear." And ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... vision dawns afar The goal of glory, gleaming Like some great radiant solar star, And sets us longing, dreaming. Forgetting all things left behind, We strain each nerve to win it, But when 'tis ours—alas! we ...
— Poems of Sentiment • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... become a burden to me was the desire to see my mother, with the added longing to have our little family reunited. There was no good reason why we should longer be separated. My father was a steady, industrious, Christian man, who had repented in sackcloth and ashes the errors of his lifetime. He had ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic
... then it flashed through my mind that these were the night-riders, come to return Nigger, so I told Hugh to go back to bed and forget about it. I waited at the window for a few moments, wondering if the men would pass the house; I felt a horrible longing to see those huge and ghastly things in skirts and bee-skeps striding across the snow, going home from their night's prowl like skulking foxes; but whoever they were they took no risks. Some one softly whistled a scrap of a tune ("Tom, Tom, the piper's son") as though he were pleased at having ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... the excuse of being a schoolboy nor the good-humoured fearlessness that freed her brother from embarrassment, and she stood stock-still, awkward and dismayed, not daring to advance; longing to join in the pig-chase, yet afraid to run away, her eyes stretched wide open, her hair streaming into them, her bonnet awry, her tippet powdered with seeds of hay, her gloves torn and soiled, the colour of her brown holland ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to the spring? I will not give the grave my hands to hold, My shining hair to light oblivion. Have those who wander through the ways of death, The still wan fields Elysian, any love To lift their breasts with longing, any lips To thirst against the quiver of a kiss? Lo, I shall live to conquer Greece again, To make the people love, who hate me now. My dreams are over, I have ceased to cry Against the fate that made men love my mouth And left their spirits all too deaf ...
— Helen of Troy and Other Poems • Sara Teasdale
... Faraday began life as a journeyman bookbinder. He had, however, as he says, "no taste for trade." His love of science became a consuming desire that he sought in every way to gratify. Inspired by his longing for scientific pursuits, he sent his lecture notes to Sir Humphry Davy, with the request that if opportunity offered he would give him employment at the Royal Institution. Davy was favorably impressed with ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... hung upon the sky, and on the horizon the greyness of the heavens mingled with the greyness of the sea. She looked into the distance with longing eyes. Now all her life was set upon that far-off corner of unknown Africa, where Alec and George were doing great deeds. She wondered what was the meaning of the silence which had covered them ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... conscience void of offence towards God': not that he did not feel and know himself to be a sinner; but he felt himself to be a pardoned one, as a sincere believer in Christ. That was the secret of his light-heartedness. Still he had a longing for pure water. He knew, too, that he could the better cook any fish he might obtain if he could find it. How was he to light a fire, however? Just before the gale came on, the cook had sent him below to get his tin-box of matches, ...
— Ben Hadden - or, Do Right Whatever Comes Of It • W.H.G. Kingston
... The longing for Northumberland became very great and one smiles on reading that the good Doctor thought "Philadelphia by no means so agreeable as New York ... Philadelphia would be very irksome to me.... It is only a place ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... indeed I have been told that ladies from the most fashionable quarters of the city are not above buying their millinery in Division Street. Numbers of young girls are passing to and fro here, pausing ever and anon to gaze in at the windows with longing eyes. If there be "sermons in stones," so are there also in show-cases, and many a sad romance of won and lost grows out of the latter too. The shop-girls have nearly got through their work now, and they lean against ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... simple hints that might be given, in answer to inquiring friends. I can remember when they would have saved me some anguish of spirit; and they may be of some use to others now. I write, then, not to induce any one to talk for the sake of talking,—Heaven forbid!—but that those who are longing to say something should not fancy the obstacles insurmountable, when they ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... bench, "eating his heart out," and longing for the chance that he had small hopes would come to him. How he wished to get up there, and show what he ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... will surely do it again. Come, dearest! let us fly now—this moment. I have a lamba here which will conceal most of your dress. Arrangements are made with some of our friends in the Lord to aid us. Bearers are ready. I will guide you to the caverns in the forest where my sister Ra-Ruth is longing to receive you, where many of your old friends are dwelling in security, where we worship God, and pray to Jesus, and sing the sweet old hymns in peace. Come, dear one! will ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... Inger entertained them well. Oline too came again, couldn't help it, belike; came both spring and autumn; fair-spoken, soft as butter, and thoroughly false. "Just looked along to see how things are with you," she said each time. "And I've been longing so for a sight of the lads, I'm that fond of them, the little angels they were. Ay, they're big fellows now, but it's strange ... I can't forget the time when they were small and I had them in my care. And ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... gates, and mute in their places the wardens; No voice in my longing ear whispered the mystical sentence, And my heart was heavy, and chilled with the fruitless endeavour. On this side lay the snow and the wind, like the wail of repentance, Moaned in the branches forlorn but through the closed lattices ever Drifted a stir and a fragrance ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... and night rattle and bang of the city may go unnoticed for years but eventually it takes its toll. Then comes a great longing to get away from it all. If family income is independent of salary earned by a city job, there is nothing to the problem. Free from a desk in some skyscraper that father must tend from nine to five, such a family can select its country home hours away from the city. Ideal! But ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... walk on whatever befall, the good do not prattle, longing for pleasure; whether touched by happiness or sorrow wise people never appear ...
— The Dhammapada • Unknown
... open, and hasten upstairs again. Wooden clogs are deposited on the floor, the staircase creaks gently under little bare feet. Yves and I look at each other, with a longing to laugh. ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... should say that he has two pains; in his body there is the actual experience of pain, and in his soul longing ...
— Philebus • Plato
... because you gave me the rose that day. The rose itself was lovely and I was tremendously happy over it for its own sake, but it meant a whole lot to me besides, and opened the little world of school to my longing feet. I always wanted to thank you for it, but you looked as if you didn't want me to, so I never dared; and lately I wasn't quite sure you knew me, because you never looked my ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... away Monday and she had promised to spend today with a friend in town. But last night her friend telephoned to her not to come because they were quarantined for scarlet fever. So I suggested we come here instead, for I knew you were longing to see her. We called at the White Sands Hotel and brought Mrs. Pendexter with us. She is a friend of aunt's and lives in New York and her husband is a millionaire. We can't stay very long, for Mrs. Pendexter has to be back at the hotel by ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... where the soil is red. Here he lives several weeks, but he is always longing to go back to his old home. He finally says to himself that he is going there in spite of the anger of the priest. He fills his cart with red earth, and hitches his carabao to it. He sits in the middle of ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... we last evening after dark buried them side by side close to Neuve Chapelle. We had three terrific days' fighting (10th, 11th, 12th), and are still engaged. I will answer any questions you may ask as soon as I can. I am writing this in the position we captured, knowing that you must be longing for even a short letter. I cannot tell you what a loss I have suffered. You have ...
— Letters of Lt.-Col. George Brenton Laurie • George Brenton Laurie
... friends of Joan of Arc, also Joan of Arc herself, that poor girl shut up there in that frowning stretch of mighty walls and towers: brooding in darkness, so close to the flooding downpour of sunshine yet so impossibly far away from it; so longing for any little glimpse of it, yet so implacably denied it by those wolves in the black gowns who were plotting her death and the blackening of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain |
