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Yearn   Listen
verb
Yearn  v. i.  To be filled with longing desire; to be harassed or rendered uneasy with longing, or feeling the want of a thing; to strain with emotions of affection or tenderness; to long; to be eager. "Joseph made haste; for his bowels did yearn upon his brother; and he sought where to weep." "Your mother's heart yearns towards you."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Yearn" Quotes from Famous Books



... Angora goats about it, but they had been in captivity so long they did not yearn for freedom, as they had no homes to go to. Besides, they were well treated where they were and so they decided to go out into the Park and roam around a little, but not to ...
— Billy Whiskers' Adventures • Frances Trego Montgomery

... of thy magic, Egyptian," she said. "It is yet hot abroad, and I am weary of those Hebrew Ambassadors and their talk of Herod and Jerusalem. I hate that Herod, as he shall find—and will have none of the Ambassadors to-day, though I yearn a little to try my Hebrew on them. What canst thou do? Hast thou no new trick? By Serapis! if thou canst conjure as well as thou canst prophesy, thou shalt have a place at Court, with pay and perquisites to boot, if thy lofty soul ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard

... go visit Nelly, and 'gad, my limbs yearn for bed, Joe. This fellow can still carry the bag; ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang

... proceeding succeeds tolerably well, till the owner makes discovery of volumes positively essential to his object, and unattainable save by a heavy outlay—perchance not even to be had at any price. It is nearly always the lacunae for which we yearn; one or two of our richer friends have them, and we have not. What we possess anybody can get in a morning's walk; we find that we have travelled a long distance, and have come to an impasse. It is very seldom indeed that a man is satisfied with the cheaper ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt

... kindly on me, for I am sick, Martino, and shall be worse. I never can abide a rolling ship—'tis this cursed woman's body o' mine. So to-day am I all woman and yearn for tenderness—and we shall have more bad weather by the look o' things! Have you enough knowledge to handle this ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol

... three cunies, after being exhibited to be spat upon by the rabble of half the villages and walled cities of Cho-Sen, were buried to their necks in the ground of the open space before the palace gate. Water was given them that they might live longer to yearn for the food, steaming hot and savoury and changed hourly, that was place temptingly before them. They say old Johannes Maartens lived longest, not giving up the ghost for a ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London

... you in the bowels of Christ, search after the mind of the Lord in it towards you, and we shall help you by our prayers, that you may find it. For yet, if we know our heart at all, our bowels do in Christ yearn after the godly in Scotland." Thurloe, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume

... taken up his present business, all for his son's sake, ungentlemanly business as it is, and quite beneath a man of his type. He's buying up prisoners of war, to see if he can't come across one to exchange for his boy. And Lord! how I do yearn for him to succeed! You see, it's a matter of his coming ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius

... his veins." In fifteen minutes the Union troops were marching to Gettysburg, where they gained a victory. Character is power. The great thing is to be a man, to have a high purpose, a noble aim, to be dead in earnest, to yearn for the good ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden

... the lake they return o'er the emerald hills of the prairies; Like grey-hounds they pant and they yearn, and the leader of all is Tamdoka. At his heels flies Hu-pa-hu,[AA] the fleet—the pride of the band of Kaoza,— A warrior with eagle-winged feet, but his prize is the bow and the quiver. Tamdoka first reaches the post, and his are the knife and the blanket, By the ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon

... Hall Avail: I am fain for to water the plain. Downward the voices of Duty call — Downward, to toil and be mixed with the main, The dry fields burn, and the mills are to turn, And a myriad flowers mortally yearn, And the lordly main from beyond the plain Calls o'er the hills of Habersham, Calls ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier

... it visits its earthly home no more, Nor looks on the haunts it loved before. But why should the bodiless soul be sent Far off, to a long, long banishment? Talk not of the light and the living green! It will pine for the dear familiar scene; It will yearn, in that strange bright world, to behold The rock and the stream it knew ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant

... the time she had not been able to make it conform to her ideas of a man's duty to the woman he had promised to marry—or to any woman. She had heard him speak of reason in connection with the affair, as though there were no such thing in the world as rage so justifiable as to make a man yearn to inflict punishment upon another man who had attacked his woman. He had looked upon the matter cold-bloodedly, and she had resented that. But now that she had been avenged, she felt that she had been wrong. It had been such a trivial thing, ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer

... Anthony's surprise when one after the other, two tenders should reach the quay without me; and if the Gilded Rose had not been so sweet, her youthful cocksureness would have made me yearn to slap her. In spite of all, however, the girl's excitement became contagious as passengers crowded down the gangway and Rechid ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson

... aye I stand and stay, * Nor shall change or dwelling depart us tway! No distance of homestead shall gar me forget * Your love, O friends, but yearn alway: Ne'er flies your phantom the babes of these eyne * You are moons in Nighttide's murkest array: And with growing passion mine unrest grows * And each morn I find union dissolved ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... I wish you could have a turn at it, my bonny boy! Your hair'd go grey, like mine! And look here—what are the plays to-day? They're either so chock-full of intellect that they send you to sleep—or they reek of sentiment till you yearn for the ...
— Five Little Plays • Alfred Sutro

... and I felt it my duty to cancel our engagement, you bore it bravely, you kept my counsel, you assisted me in my projects; you proved yourself all that was noble and magnanimous in woman. What marvel, then, that I more than ever loved you, and wished the obstacle removed that divides us, and yearn for my lost happiness now dearer to me than before, only to be renewed through you, Evelyn! that I still ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... your lack of intelligence is a distinct reflection on me as a parent. Fancy a son of mine trying to make a lawyer's bowels yearn with compassion! I'm positively ashamed of you. Why are you so elementary? The situation must have contained some elements of humour, though. I should like to have witnessed it. Did you call down Heaven's vengeance on the murderer ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees

... brother, the dusky-skinned and patient Douw. Old Mr. Stewart, in particular, became dotingly attached to the younger lad, and scarce could bear to have him out of sight the whole day long. It was a pretty spectacle indeed—one which makes my old heart yearn in memory, even now—to see the simple, soft-mannered, childish patriarch gravely obeying the whims and freaks of the boy, and finding the chief delight of his waning life in being thus commanded. Sometimes, ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic

... aspect of it attracts him most, in Oenone's grief, in the indomitableness of Ulysses, the weariness and disillusionment in Tithonus. It has been the cause of the comfort he has brought to sorrow; none of his generation takes such a human attitude to death. Shelley could yearn for the infinite, Browning treat it as the last and greatest adventure, Arnold meet it clear eyed and resigned. To Wordsworth it is the mere return of man the transient to Nature ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair

... lips moving to the old prayers for help. These things have not changed. The sunlight and shadows bring their old beauty and waken the old heart-strains at morning, noon, and eventide; the little children are still the symbol of the eternal marriage between love and duty; and men still yearn for the reign of peace and righteousness—still own that life to be the highest which is a conscious voluntary sacrifice. For the Pope Angelico is not ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... book be published, and at once you will see every one making a rush for it. Similarly will you find folk saying: 'The peasant leads an over-simple life. He ought to be familiarised with luxuries, and so led to yearn for things above his station.' And the result of such luxuries will be that the peasant will become a rag rather than a man, and suffer from the devil only knows what diseases, until there will remain in the land ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... shadows deepen and the twilight dies;— And still I muse, and wait, and list in vain For feet that never, never will return,— For loving words I may not hear again, Howe'er with ear attent I wait and yearn. ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)

... indeed been second nature, and who have come almost to love each brick and stone that formed the narrow boundaries of their daily walks; even they, with the hand of death upon them, have been known to yearn at last for one short glimpse of Nature's face; and, carried far from the scenes of their old pains and pleasures, have seemed to pass at once into a new state of being. Crawling forth, from day to day, to some green sunny spot, they have had ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens

... of those two brave fellows; there is the soul of England's brightest days in it. I am sick of slavish poverty on the one hand, and callous pride on the other. I yearn for the sound of language breathed from the lungs of humble independence, and the cordial, earnest greetings of poor, but warm-hearted men, as I long for the breeze of the mountains and the sea. Oh! ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... enterprise. Hers was one of those sweet, generous natures which expand, instead of shrivelling under the influence of prosperity. Just in proportion as her own life was beautiful and hedged round with all the sweet fences of love, so did she yearn more and more over her sisters whose lots were cast in such different places—which is the true spirit of Christ, who left the very heavens for our sakes. She had woven many happy dreams about these afternoon meetings, ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey

... these things that you yearn to teach Bear wisdom, in your judgment, rich and strong, Give voice to them though no man heed your speech, Since right is right though ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... are, in doubt and fear, Yet, when we yearn for realms of bliss, We scarce can dream, while lingering here, Of any fairer heaven ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar

... presumption smiled; And then I wept that I should smile at all, Having such cause of grief! I wept outright; Tears like a river flooded all my face, And I began to pray, and found I could pray; And still I yearn'd to say my prayers in the church. "Doubtless (said I) one might find comfort in it." So stealing down the stairs, like one that fear'd detection, Or was about to act unlawful business At that dead time of dawn, I flew to the church, and found ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb

... the husks that ye proffer Or yearn to your song? And we—have we nothing to offer Who ruled them so long— In the fume of the incense, the clash of the cymbal, the blare of ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling

... go hard with, come to grief, fall a sacrifice to, drain the cup of misery to the dregs, "sup full of horrors" [Macbeth]. sit on thorns, be on pins and needles, wince, fret, chafe, worry oneself, be in a taking, fret and fume; take on, take to heart; cark[obs3]. grieve; mourn &c. (lament) 839; yearn, repine, pine, droop, languish, sink; give way; despair &c. 859; break one's heart; weigh upon the heart &c. (inflict pain) 830. Adj. in pain, in a state of pain, full of pain &c. n.; suffering &c. v.; pained, afflicted, worried, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... actions and two aims. Therefore all things are in twos, the one opposite to the other. But ye, my children, ye shall not be double, pursuing both goodness and wickedness. Ye shall cling only to the ways of goodness, for the Lord taketh delight in them, and men yearn after them. And flee from wickedness, for thus you will destroy the evil inclination. Heed well the commands of the Lord, by following truth with a single mind. Observe the law of the Lord, and have ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... of no world that we know. Deep to my innermost soul am I shaken, Helplessly shaken and tossed, And of thy tyrannous yearnings so utterly taken, My lips, unsatisfied, thirst; Mine eyes are accurst With longings for visions that far in the night are forsaken; And mine ears, in listening lost, Yearn, yearn for the note of a chord that ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein

... gentleman, and all the money she could save went towards helping out his pocket and his wardrobe. She would look out of the window after him, as he sallied forth in his best array, and her heart would yearn with delight; and once, when Peter de Groodt, struck with the youngster's gallant appearance on a bright Sunday morning, observed, "Well, after all, Dolph does grow a comely fellow!" the tear of pride started into ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving

... not by disposition a pioneer; I belong instinctively to the old civilisations. In the midst of rudimentary towns and incipient fields, I yearn for grey houses, a Norman church, an English ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen

... young or old, in a few days they both grew a-weary of the star country to which they were taken, and wished to return to the earth. And then that came to pass which made them yearn with tenfold longing; for their husbands, who were absent all day hunting, had pointed out to them a large flat stone, which they were on no account to lift; which they obeyed in this wise, that they did not both lift the stone, but only the younger, who, as soon as the Stars had gone to ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland

... before us, sufficiently certain of being reached to make our efforts hopeful and confident, sufficiently certain of never being reached to make our efforts blessed with endless aspirations, the great light and love of that dear Lord, to yearn after whom is better than to possess all besides, and following hard after whom, even in the very motion there is rest, and in the search there is finding. Religion is the flight of the soul, the aspiration of the whole man after the unattainable Attainable—'that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... abundance. Apart from what he plagiarises, from what he borrows from ancient or exotically modern styles—he is a master in the art of copying,—there remains as his most individual quality a longing.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} And this is what the dissatisfied of all kinds, and all those who yearn, divine in him. He is much too little of a personality, too little of a central figure.{HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS} The "impersonal," those who are not self-centred, love him for this. He is especially the musician ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.

... vernacular translators have totally misunderstood the second line. Asyatam is explained by the commentator as tushnim sthiyatam. Ruchitahchcchandah means chcchandah or yearning arises from ruchi or like. What the Rishi says is Asyet I do not yearn after thy company, for I do not like thee. Of course, if, after staying with thee for some time, I begin to like thee, I may then feel a yearning ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... husband, my dear, and of that poor young man as well. Does not your heart yearn to be with them? You do not reflect that their lifeless forms may be brought in and laid before ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... think of my old plan of the valleys and lakes of Wales? a pretty foreign tongue spoken round us, and no one but ourselves to commune with, and books, and music. It is not, Radie, altogether jest. I sometimes yearn for it, as they say foreign girls ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... willing, we are ready: We would learn if thou would teach: We have hearts that yearn towards duty, We have minds alive to beauty, Souls ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope

... fray, only to find English society so formed that, climb they never so wisely, the top can never be reached. Work as hard as they may, succeed even beyond their fondest hopes, there will always remain circles above, toward which to yearn—people who will refuse to know them, houses they will never be invited to enter. Think of the charm, the attraction such a civilization must have for the real born climber, and you, my reader, will understand ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory

... and flee! Thy heart is deeper than the heavens are high, Thy frame consists of base ignominy! Thy looks and clever mind resentment will provoke, And thine untimely death vile slander will evoke! A loving noble youth in vain for love will yearn. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... yearn upward, touch you close, Then stand away. I kiss your cheek, Catch your soul's warmth—I pluck the rose And love it more than tongue can speak— Then ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... prayers diverse; Some hope to wound: others, in secret, yearn For hands still innocent. Chance rules supreme, And wayward Fortune upon whom she wills Makes fall the guilt. Yet for the hatred bred By civil war suffices spear nor lance, Urged on their flight afar: the hand must grip The sword and drive it to the foeman's heart. But while Pompeius' ranks, ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan

... enchantment of returning spring in the frozen wilderness of North America. The long, long winter, seems as though it would never pass away. The intense frost seals up all the sweet odours of the woods for so many months, that the nostrils become powerfully sensitive, and, as it were, yearn for something to smell. The skin gets so used to frost, that a balmy breeze is thought of as a thing of the past, or ...
— Silver Lake • R.M. Ballantyne

... will you let me come back to you and take the vows after all? I feel the convent is the only home for me; and I believe I am capable of higher, nobler aims because of what I have been taught by a great love. I yearn to be with you now, I am so homesick! I will go through any penance, even if it be years long, if at the end you will accept me for your daughter. I beg of you to write at once, and say if you will have me again. If your answer be yes, I will start ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... and that during this long life he had not been absent from his family, at least not from Lady Robinson (if I am not mistaken) except during the transient separation when he was on the circuit. It is natural that your hearts should yearn for him, should long to see him again, and enjoy the pleasure of his company; yet death must sooner or later have separated you, and longer life might have been a scene of suffering. Would it not have been inexpressibly painful to you all to have seen his mental and bodily powers decay and fade ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson

... your heart yearn back with last regret For the maiden meads of mignonette And the fairy-haunted wood, That you had not withheld from love, A little while, the ...
— Songs, Merry and Sad • John Charles McNeill

... positively wrong; even the dear old institution of the "cut" is falling into disrepute. The quarrelling is all forced back into the system, as it were; it poisons the blood. This is why our literature grows sinister and bitter, and our daughters yearn after this and that, write odd books, and ride about on bicycles in remarkable clothes. They have shut down the safety valve, they suffer from the present lamentable increase of gentleness. They must find some outlet, or perish. If they could only put ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells

... thought, "though I yearn to see The face of the youth that was, To know no boy could smile on me As the little ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley

... of Kentfield's days, his homely game of cannons off list cushions and gently-played strength strokes; or by chance those that favour Marden's style, his losing hazards and forcing half balls, have revived once more, and we yearn with wonder to see the great spot strokes of the present age, when as many red hazards can be scored in one break as were made in olden times in an evening's play. At the present time Roberts, sen., may claim the honour in the billiard ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... the broken-hearted friends, who, to life's end, will suffer over and over all that their dear ones endured. Pity the mothers who hear their sons' faint calls in dreams, who in many a weary night-watch see them pining and wasting, and yearn with a lifelong, unappeasable yearning to have been able to soothe those forsaken, lonely death-beds. O man or woman, if you have pity to spare, spend it not on Lee or Davis,—spend it on their victims, on the thousands of living ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... recti, proudly run away, we have Democracy with a vengeance. Not one of the Defenders of Democracy who are writing in this book would stand for it a second. Nor would they stand for the slobbering maniacs who yearn to throw themselves into the arms of the Germans, and, with the kiss of peace and universal brotherhood, kiss away their brother's blood from their blood-smeared faces. Nor would they stand entirely for those staunch democrats who, ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy

... her wedding-dress; and they never knit their brows, nor bedew their eyes, thinking of that; that's a smiling subject. No, it is true love on both sides, I do believe; and that makes my woman's heart yearn. Harry, dear, I'll make you a confession. You have heard that a mother's love is purer and more unselfish than any other love: and so it is. But even mothers are not quite angels always. Sometimes ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade

... feeling and actions would surely ensue. Since love is the greatest thing in the world, this quality may well be made the major goal toward which the thinking of all nations shall be directed. When all peoples come to think and yearn toward this goal, hatred and strife will be banished and peace and righteousness will be enthroned in the hearts of men. When there has been developed in all the nations of the earth an ardent love for the true, the beautiful, ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson

... words, Wrought by his mother's hand, Valiant and True. He hears at last the stirring words that move His soul as it has never yet been moved; Words that have haunted his imagining For days and nights, making his young heart yearn With restless longing for this present hour; Words that presage the glory of his life, The consecrated purpose of his youth In its fulfilment and accomplishment; The holy, sacred, solemn, early vow Of future knighthood for the noble lad. And now his father's sword is ...
— Under King Constantine • Katrina Trask

... with what I anticipated discovering somewhere in those depths below, set my nerves tingling, yet I felt cool, and determined to press on. Indeed, deep in my heart I welcomed the adventure, even hoped it might end in some encounter serious enough to arouse me to new thoughts—especially did I yearn to learn something definite about Philip Henley. This to me was now the one matter of importance; to be assured that he was living or dead. Nothing else greatly mattered, for nothing could again efface from my memory the woman he had called wife. Right or wrong, I knew she held me captive; ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish

... I yearn to say yes, and don't see why I shouldn't; so I do. We have dejeuner together in the summer-house where Brian and I always eat. We chat about a million things. We linger over our coffee, and I smoke two or three of his gold-tipped Egyptians. When we suppose an ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... to be understood that, when we meet by chance, we might shake hands, and speak to one another as old acquaintances, and likewise that we may exchange a letter occasionally, for I find there are many things which I yearn to communicate to you, and the tears rush to my eyes when I consider that I ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... suffer. She had actually expected at one time to be more to her husband than the mere docile female of his own kind which was all he wanted his wife to be. She had had aspirations which had caused her to yearn for help to develop something beyond the animal side of her, proving the possession in embryo of faculties other than those which had survived Mr. Frayling's rule; but her nature was plastic; one of those which requires the strong and delicate hand of a master to mould ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... she continued. "I yearn for wise counsel. O son! why do we, both of us, so distrust and shun our one only common friend? He could tell us what to do, son; and, oh, how we need ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable

... the shadowy fern Shine like spears between sun and sea, The tide and the summer begin to turn, And ah, for hearts, for hearts that yearn, For fires of autumn that catch and burn, For love gone out between thee ...
— Ballads and Lyrics of Old France: with other Poems • Andrew Lang

... Our Square binds the heartstrings of those who have once lived in it! To find it unendurable in life, to yearn back to it in the hour of death! Many have known the experience. So our tiny God's Acre, shrunk to a small fraction of human acreage through pressure of the encroaching tenements, has filled up until now it has space but for few more of the returning. Laws have been ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... have yearn'd 830 With too much passion, will here stay and pity, For the mere sake of truth; as 'tis a ditty Not of these days, but long ago 'twas told By a cavern wind unto a forest old; And then the forest told it in ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats

... cling closer than his sacerdotal sanctimony to a priest; which feed on the intellect like a worm, sapping energy, hope, creative power, all that makes a man higher than a beast—leaving only the power to yearn, to regret, and to sink lower ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner

... and do they also like to leave a brilliant street and dive into the darkness of some somber byway? Does a long row of lights lure them, block by block, toward distances unknown? Are they tempted by the unfamiliar signs on passing street cars? Do they yearn to board those cars and be transported by them into the mystic caverns of the night? And when they see strangers who are evidently going somewhere with some special purpose, do they wish to follow; to find out where these beings are going, and why? Do they wish to trail them, let the trail ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street

... is soon told and the role of the bowman is without triumph; so for this reason, we prefer the accidental meetings and impromptu adventures to the more certain contact. Still when at night we hear the tingling call of the lynx up in the woods, we yearn for a willing dog and a ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope

... of the promised land. Weary and spirit-sore, less from the travel than the bitter experiences which prompted it, we yearn for the hospitable welcome due to a stranger, a helper arrived in due season. We are come, O potentate. Open wide the glad gates that shall receive us. Is not this the Canaan which we but ask to divide with thee?—a goodly ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... praise, and Nature seems to be parading its loveliness. But her face is sorrowful still, and she shakes her head dejectedly. "It is of no avail," she murmurs; "even here in such a scene I cannot obtain my heart's desire! I yearn more for it day by day, and yet with the crushing longing within my breast I seem further away than ever ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre

... fire of Genius burn Within that ample brow? Or some patient spirit yearn For things that are not now? Hidden in the over-soul Of the Future, to be born When the world has ceased its scorn, When the sceptic's heart will bow To the ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster

... my domestic instincts may be sproutin' late, they're comin' strong. I'm beginnin' to yearn for nourishment that I don't have to learn the French for or pick off'm a menu. I'd like to eat without bein' surrounded by three-chinned female parties with high blood pressure, or bein' stared at by pop-eyed old sports who're givin' some kittenish cloak model a bright evenin'. And Vee feels ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford

... long nights that she came at my call to me! Oh, the soft touch of her hands on my brow! Oh, the long years that she gave up her all to me! Oh, how I yearn for her gentleness now! ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest

... all men yearn to belong to a State like that, and never count the toil of getting there, nor lose heart over the time it takes? Enough that one day they will arrive, and be naturalized, and given ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata

... that He felt toward them a parental tenderness, and spoke as a dying father might have done to the helpless babes that gathered around his bed, "I am to be with you for a very little time longer; the sand has nearly run out in the hour-glass. I know you will seek Me; your love will make you yearn to be with Me where I am, to continue the blessed intimacy, the ties which within the last few weeks have been drawn so much closer; but it will not be possible. As I said to the Jews, so must I say to you, Whither I go, ye cannot come." He then ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer

... is, in all cases where they remain long enough together, and their characters and manners are such as naturally command respect and love from each other. Even when children are ignoble and unworthy, their fathers and mothers may yearn over them with every strictly parental affection; and even when parents are vicious and degraded, their children may regard them with every strictly filial affection; but friendship between them is generally impossible without ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger

... vocation with airy contempt, as if he did not yearn for it with every fibre of his being,—its utility, its competence, its future. The recollection of the very feel of the fair smooth paper under his hand, the delicate hair-line chirography trailing off so fast from the swift pen, could wring a pang from him. He might ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock

... were! And, oh, how we watched the mails; But nobody writes of the quaint delights Of the sunny days and the merry nights Or tells us the things that we yearn to know— That art passed out with the long ago, And lost are the simple tales; Yet we all would happier be, I think, If we'd spend more time with ...
— All That Matters • Edgar A. Guest

... very disagreeable; but, after all, she is helpless and alone, and if you could only once get her to like you, and would come and see her now and then, it would be a kindness to her, and a great help to me; and I do yearn to know you better; and I never can, unless you will begin the acquaintance by being on ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson

... that are dead shall quicken, the seasons that were shall return; And the streets and the pastures of England, the woods that burgeon and yearn, Shall be whitened with ashes of women and children ...
— Poems and Ballads (Third Series) - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... more. But—I don't dare ask you again to be my wife unless—unless—I can be sure that the differences between us will not make you unhappy. But, oh, if this happiness could be mine! You cannot love these people more than I do. Or yearn over them more. And we are not ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon

... your son? You love him—love him intensely. Probably you are more conscious of your love for him than for any other of your children. Your heart yearns over him every day; you pray for him night and day; you dream of him by night; your bowels yearn over your son, and you say, with David, "Absalom, Absalom, my son, my son." Why are you not reconciled? Why not pat him on the head, or stroke his face, and say, "My dear lad, I am well pleased with you. I love you complacently; I give you my approbation?" Why are you always reproving him? Why ...
— Godliness • Catherine Booth

... yourself and by yourself. Sooner or later you'll be ill and tired and old, and then you'll crawl back into the herd. Won't you be ashamed when you feel in your heart the desire for comfort and sympathy? You're trying an impossible thing. Sooner or later the human being in you will yearn for the common ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham

... Ofterdingen reaches a depth of obscurity which is saved from absurdity only by the genuinely fervent glow of a soul on the quest for its mystic ideals: "The blue flower it is that I yearn to look upon!" No farcical romance of the nursery shows more truly the mingled stuff that dreams are made on, yet the intimation that the dream is not all a dream, that the spirit of an older day is symbolically struggling ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... Bold, I shall live alone, quite alone as far as the heart is concerned, if those with whom I yearn to ally myself turn away from me. But enough of this; I have called you my friend, and I hope you will not contradict me. I trust the time may come when I may also call your father so. May God bless you, Mrs. Bold, ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... were growing chill; and the repair of the buildings went on slowly, carpenters being scarce; and Peakslow, who had a heart for domestic comforts, began to yearn for the presence of his family ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge

... will—you will. A time will come when you will feel you would gladly give everything you possess to undo what you are doing to-day. You will be sick at heart, lonely, disillusioned, suspicious of me and of everybody. You will see the horrible emptiness of it all, and you will yearn for better things. But it will be too late then. What once we fling away never comes again to us. We shall be too far apart by that time, too hopelessly estranged, ever to be more to each other than what we are at this moment—master and slave. Through all our lives we shall ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell

... certainly do believe it, and generally the more parochial their outlook, the more cosmic their pretensions. All of us at times yearn for the comfort of an absolute philosophy. We try to believe that, however finite we may be, our intellect is something apart from the cycle of our life, capable by an Olympian detachment from human ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann

... that it produced great saints. It is the hard-headed stockbroker, who knows no history and believes no religion, who is, nevertheless, perfectly convinced that all these priests are knaves. The Salvationist at the Marble Arch may be bigoted, but he is not too bigoted to yearn from a common human kinship after the dandy on church parade. But the dandy on church parade is so bigoted that he does not in the least yearn after the Salvationist at the Marble Arch. Bigotry may be roughly defined as the anger of ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... O sad Antaeus, wilt thou yearn For dense green woodlands and the fragrant fern; Then stretch thy form upon the sward, and rest From worldly toil on Hertha's gracious breast; Plunge in the foaming river, or divide With happy ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... know, in which Socialist actresses yearn out passages from 'The Cenci,' feeling that they do a fearful thing. The voice began, I believe, with Miss Ellen Terry. With her, though, it is charming, for it is, we feel, the voice of real emotion. There are real ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne

... are that bloom but once in a hundred years, but here in this tomb had blossomed one of those marvellous flowers that bloom but once throughout eternity. Poets and kings in after-times, O men of Verona, will yearn to have seen what you look upon to-day. For you, you thick and greasy citizens, are chosen out of all time to behold this beauty. There were once in the world thousands of men and women who had heard the very words ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne

... forgotten in this land: I yearn that men I know not, men unborn, Shall find, amid these fields, King Arthur's fame. Here let them say, by proud Dundagel's walls— 'They brought the Sangraal back at his command, They touched these rugged rocks with hues of God,' So shall ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon

... aware that if the beauty had been there the devotional aspirations would not have been there! That, which causes more deeply implanted in her nature than she knew of were impelling her to desire and to yearn for, the imperfect teaching of the world around her had led her to imagine to be unattainable save by the gifts of personal beauty. And, knowing that if that were so there was no hope for her, her bruised heart had sought the only ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... boy? I am glad to see you, my dear, and hope you'll be happy here," said the lady, drawing him to her, and stroking back the hair from his forehead with a kind hand and a motherly look, which made Nat's lonely little heart yearn toward her. ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott

... late! My own sweetest, there is just this good in such praise, that by it one comes to something pleasantly definite amid the hazy uncertainties of mere wishes and possibilities—while my whole heart does, does so yearn, love, to do something to prove its devotion for you; and, now and then, amuses itself with foolish imaginings of real substantial services to which it should be found equal if fortune so granted; suddenly ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... Christian I! The healing, cleansing flood o'er me shall flow, I would efface the stain from birth I owe; I would be pure—my sealed eyes would see! The birthright Adam lost restored to me This, this, the unfading crown! For this I yearn, For that exhaustless fount I thirst, I burn. Then, since my heart is true, Nearchus, say— Shall I not grant ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille

... months ago chance bestowed the opportunity of listening to the conversation of one who for very many yearn has hung upon the skirts of civilisation. A bushman of rare resourcefulness, wide knowledge of the dry as well as the moist parts of North Queensland, a reader, and an acute and accurate observer of natural phenomena, he has often entertained me ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... did I yearn to gaze (For was there not the dear abode Of her whose love lit up my days?) On Karu's ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various

... the masquerade is over we'll then turn our undivided attention to laying the juniors up for the winter. That may be the last game of the year, unless the freshies yearn for another. I am tired of playing, to tell you the truth. I don't intend ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester

... the voyage, the treatment of the crew threw Harry more and more upon myself for companionship; and few can keep constant company with another, without revealing some, at least, of their secrets; for all of us yearn for sympathy, even if we do not for love; and to be intellectually alone is a thing only tolerable to genius, whose ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... the farm abode William and Dora. William was his son, And she his niece. He often look'd at them, And often thought "I'll make them man and wife." Now Dora felt her uncle's will in all, And yearn'd towards William; but the youth, because He had been always with her in the house, Thought ...
— Successful Recitations • Various

... thing more about it than do you girls," returned Arline. "Suppose we go directly to our houses, and then meet at Vinton's for dinner to-night. I don't yearn for a Morton House dinner. The meals there won't be strictly up to the mark for another week yet. When the house is full again, the standard of Morton House cooking will rise in a day, but until then—let us thank our stars for Vinton's. Are you going ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower

... on a Grecian urn Scans the fair shapes some Attic hand hath made, God with slim goddess, goodly man with maid, And for their beauty's sake is loth to turn And face the obvious day, must I not yearn For many a secret moon of indolent bliss, When in midmost shrine of Artemis I see thee standing, antique-limbed, ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde

... of a summer's moon, its lowly walls and tiny towers seemed to stand only as the shell of a larger and wider monument, amidst the memorials of the dead. Look upon it when and where we will, we find our affections yearn towards it; and we contemplate the little parish church with a delight and reverence, that palaces cannot command. Whence then arises this? It arises not from the beauties and ornaments of the building, but from the thoughts ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... Lynch alone, but the citizens at large, collectively and as individuals; and he had planted the seeds of envy and rage to rankle in their hairy breasts. He had shown them his gold, to make them yearn to find it, and his money to make them envy him his wealth; and then he had left them to stew in their own juice, for Blackwater was as hot as Jail Canyon. He was riding a horse now, and, in addition to Old Walker, he had a third mule, heavily packed; and he was headed for the hills ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge

... chilluns, w'ich yo' ma make Mars John strop you, hit make my mine run back to ole Brer B'ar. Ole Brer B'ar, he got de swell-headedness hisse'f, en ef der wuz enny swinkin', hit swunk too late fer ter he'p ole Brer B'ar. Leas'ways dat's w'at dey tells me, en I ain't never yearn it 'sputed." ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris

... and yearn for anything in the nature of an income that would come in—mine has all got to be gone and fished for with the immortal mind of man. What I want is the income that really comes in of itself while all you have to do is just to blossom and exist and sit on chairs. Think how beautiful it would ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... resumed: "Hanaford San nice gentleman. I give wonder why he stay this far-away place. I hear some time he have much sadful. Too bad. Maybe he have the yearn for his country. If this be truthful why he not give quick return ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay

... and wishes to hasten the crisis of the present sickness, must yearn for war as the awakener of all that is good, healthy and strong in the nation.—D. FRYMANN, ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various

... His pleasure! what was his high pleasure in The fumes of scorching flesh and smoking blood, To the pain of the bleating mothers, which 300 Still yearn for their dead offspring? or the pangs Of the sad ignorant victims underneath Thy pious knife? Give way! this bloody record Shall not stand in the sun, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... you may yearn to be the filling in an ice sandwich, but I don't! Another shock and we'll be buried so deep even a drill couldn't find us. Let's get out now. The kid is right about ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton

... houses along shore, but far in the distance, seen across wide, flat expanses, shadow villages and tapering spires were painted in violet on the horizon—such a shimmering horizon as we of the lowlands love, and yearn for when we sojourn in mountain lands. At Halfweg, a little cluster of humble dwellings, I turned out of the main canal, skirting the side of the Haarlemmer-meer Polder, opposite to that which ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson

... Whether love shines, or darkness sleeps Cold on the spirit's changeful deeps. Enough if, to my earthly share, Fall gleams that keep me from despair. Happy the things we here discern; More happy those for which we yearn; But measurelessly happy above All else are those we guess ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore

... stripped of every adventitions advantage and placed, by custom, beyond the pale of marriage with men of his own race. Custom was tyranny. Love was the only law. Would God have made hearts to so yearn for one another if He had meant them to stay forever apart? If this girl should die, it would be he who had killed her, by his cruelty, no less surely than if with his own hand he had struck her down. He had been so dazzled by his own superiority, so blinded by his own glory, that he ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt

... how could fallen men have names or graves? I thought of sorrow in the wilderness, And death in solitude, and pitiless Interment in the tiger's hideous maw: I pray'd, and, praying, turn'd from all I saw; My prayers were curses! But the sexton came; How my heart yearn'd to name my Hannah's name! White was his hair, for full of days was he, And walk'd o'er tombstones, like their history. With well feign'd carelessness I rais'd a spade, Left near a grave, which seem'd but newly made, And ask'd who slept below? "You knew him well," The old man answer'd, "Sir, his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 541, Saturday, April 7, 1832 • Various

... and fluttered around, but the twittering and fluttering did not bring that light back to Wayne's face. He went over to the far side of the room and began reading the paper, and that grim little understanding smile—a smile at himself—made Katie yearn to go over and wind her arms about his neck—dear strange Wayne who had believed there was so much, and found so little, and who was so alive to the bitter humor of being drawn to the heart of things only to be pushed back to the outer rim. But Katie ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell

... for it is not enough merely to go to Europe; one has to choose where to go when one has got there. A European city is certainly always more tolerable than an American city, but one cannot very well pass the summer in Paris, or even in London. The heart there, as here, will yearn for ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... that line of flame, one soul that would not rise, To seize the Victor's wreath of blood, tho' Death must give the prize— There's not in all this anxious crowd that throngs the ancient Town, A maid who does not yearn for power to strike ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various

... we yearn for her— Yes, ardently we yearn For her return. Recalling those beloved days (Days intimate with ways Of friends so near to us And life so dear to us), We yearn ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE

... at this second reproach that Mrs. Gaunt's heart began to yearn. However, he said humbly that Francis was a secular priest, whereas he was convent-bred. He added, that by his years and experience Francis was better fitted to advise persons of her age and sex, in matters secular, than he was. He concluded timidly that he was ready, nevertheless, to try ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... That still, despite the distance and the dark, What was, again may be; some interchange Of grace, some splendour once thy very thought, Some benediction anciently thy smile: —Never conclude, but raising hand and head Thither where eyes, that cannot reach, yet yearn For all hope, all sustainment, all reward, Their utmost up and on,—so blessing back In those thy realms of help, that heaven thy home, Some whiteness which, I judge, thy face makes proud, Some wanness where, I think, thy foot may fall!" * * * ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp

... glorious ring! She {226} stood—she gazed upon her own countenance and form, and worshipped! "Now all good angels succour thee, dear Alice, and bend Sir Bevil's soul! Fain am I to see thee a wedded wife, before I die! I yearn to hold thy children on my knee! Often shall I pray to-night that the Granville heart may yield! Thy victory shall be ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 45, Saturday, September 7, 1850 • Various

... means to travel should be furnished to me." Thorkell said, "I do not think I have done against you two brothers in anything since our alliance began. Now, I think it is the most natural thing that you should yearn to get to know the customs of other men, for I know you will be counted a brisk man wheresoever you may come among doughty men." Thorleik said he did not want much money, "for it is uncertain how I may look after matters, being young and in many ways of an unsettled ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous

... He never translated that message, for his was an art of silence; but the painter of The Maiden with the Head of Orpheus, of Salome, of Jason and Medea, of Jupiter and Semele, will never fail to win the admiration and homage of those art lovers who yearn for dreams of vanished ages, who long to escape the commonplaces of the present. Gustave Moreau will be their ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker

... the crudest of the revolutionists, although I call myself a philosophical anarchist. Sometimes the jails seem to yearn for my reception, and I question my right to be at large. Nothing but a decreasing cowardice leaves me at liberty. And if I could not do more for my soul behind the bars than I have done in front of them, then I am fit only for ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood

... day and returnest not to us till sundown, wherefore there betideth us extreme desolation. Indeed this is exceeding grievous to us and we abide in sore longing for such reason." The Francolin replied, "Indeed, I love you also and yearn for you yet more than you can yearn for me, nor is it easy for me to leave you; but my hand hath no help for this, seeing that I am a fowl with wings and may not wone with you always, because that is not of my nature. For a bird, being a winged creature, may not ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton

... what's the use of wishing for the days that won't return— The vanished faces of the friends for whom we fondly yearn? And what's the use of trying to look beyond the misty screen Time's hand has hung between the eye ...
— The Old Hanging Fork and Other Poems • George W. Doneghy

... Thee do I yearn, Justice and Innocence, Beautiful and Fair in Thy beauteous light that satisfies and yet never sates! For with Thee is repose exceedingly and life without disquiet! He that enters into Thee enters into the joy of his Lord; he shall know no fear, ...
— On Prayer and The Contemplative Life • St. Thomas Aquinas

... can, while you can, without grudging, but the moment you feel you love me no more, don't do injustice to your own prospective children by giving them a father whom you no longer respect, or admire, or yearn for." When men and women can both alike say this, the world will be civilised. Until they can say it truly, the world will be as now, a jarring ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon

... Queens, this lesson learn If for supremacy you yearn, And of your fitness there is doubt, See that your rival ...
— Children of Our Town • Carolyn Wells

... came over Anna a longing to go up to her neighbour and say: "Tell me your troubles; we are both women." She had lost a son, perhaps, some love—or perhaps not really love, only some illusion. Ah! Love. . . . Why should any spirit yearn, why should any body, full of strength and joy, wither slowly away for want of love? Was there not enough in this great world for her, Anna, to have a little? She would not harm him, for she would know when ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... of the desire for a forest trip which stirred in the boys' breasts, making them yearn all day and toss all night, Cyrus gave them both a cordial invitation to accompany him into Maine. Mr. Farrar did not purpose returning to Europe till midwinter. His consent was easily obtained. He presented each of his sons with a new Winchester repeating rifle, with which they practised ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook

... anxious for the story. I saw that Somerled desired me to speak, but I threw the responsibility on him. I wanted to know how he would tell the story; but I might have guessed that he would be as laconic, as non-committal as possible, and that, much as he might yearn to do so, he would not ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... encouragement to certain of her companion's most vehement sentiments. She seemed to yearn for exactly that side of life from which the younger shrank with so much horror. She saw it under an entirely different aspect. Hadria felt thrown back on herself, ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... and Buddhas yearn, However high their spirits' stage, For man's salvation to return, As Saviour or ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard

... the way up towards the park I gets the scenario of the acts I'd missed. His name was Dipworthy—you've seen it on the labels, "Dipworthy's Drowsy Drops, Younsgters Yearn for 'Em"—only he was Dipworthy, jr., and knew as little about the "Drop" business as only sons usually do about such things. Drops wa'n't his long suit; quarts came nearer being ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford

... our hands, the pungent aromatic odour of the hops biting our nostrils, and the while remembering dimly the sounding cities whence these people came. Poor street people! Poor gutter folk! Even they grow earth-hungry, and yearn vaguely for the soil from which they have been driven, and for the free life in the open, and the wind and rain and sun all undefiled by city smirches. As the sea calls to the sailor, so calls the land to them; and, deep down in their aborted and decaying carcasses, they ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London

... let them go. They hastened back, Steenie in his most jubilant mood, which seemed always to have in it a touch of deathly frost and a flash as of the primal fire. What could be the strange displacement or maladjustment which, in the brain harbouring the immortal thing, troubled it so, and made it yearn after an untasted liberty? The source of his jubilance now was easy to tell: the idea of the bonny man was henceforth, in that troubled brain of his, associated with the place into which ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald

... Henry, explaining easy in the idioms he learned at college, 'are peculiarly adapted to be victims of the phonograph. They have the artistic temperament. They yearn for music and color and gaiety. They give wampum to the hand-organ man and the four-legged chicken in the tent when they're months behind with the grocery ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry

... answered Montagu, with a sigh; "and yet, cool as we now are in our outward intercourse, he little knows how I love him, and yearn for the Eric I once knew—Eric the fair-haired, as Russell and I used sometimes to call him in fun. Would to God poor Russell had lived, and then I believe that he wouldn't ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar

... home! With heart and soul we yearn To find the long-lost pathway, and return!... The child's shout lifted from the questing band Of old folk, faring weary, hand in hand, But faces brightening, as if clouds at last Were showering sunshine on us as ...
— Riley Songs of Home • James Whitcomb Riley

... children as soon as they are financially established, they usually do so, but a craving for a home of her own is the first stirring of maturity in a woman. To many women, however, a home is not wholly satisfying unless she is making it for someone else, and nature has made most women yearn for ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various

... was a poor groom of thy stable, King, When thou wert King; who, travelling towards York, With much ado, at length have gotten leave To look upon my sometimes master's face. O, how it yearn'd my heart, when I beheld, In London streets, that coronation day, When Bolingbroke rode on roan Barbary! That horse, that thou so often hast bestrid; That horse, that I ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge

... whatever it is, is demanded. Negative qualities, even deficiencies, would be a relief. Singleness and normal simplicity and separation, amid this more and more complex, more and more artificialized state of society—how pensively we yearn for them! how we ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... trying summer for our emotions, torn as we were between our pity for Mrs. Bentley and our compassion for her daughter. We had no repose, except when we centred our sympathies upon Glendenning, whom we could yearn over in tender regret without doing any one else wrong, or even criticising another. He was our great stay in that respect, and though a mere external witness might have thought that he had the easiest part, we who knew his gentle and affectionate nature could not but feel for ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells

... that some one or other was told that some one or other believed or said; and above all I don't want to print it. There's plenty of that flowing in, and the best part of the job's to keep it out. People just yearn to come in; they make love to me for it all over the place; there's the biggest crowd at the door. But I say to them: 'You've got to do something first, then I'll see; or at any rate you've got ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James

... no harm of Master Hood," the knight hastened to say, "but I much yearn to see and ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick

... their striving after system they get away from the atmosphere of moral suggestiveness with which the Gospels and Epistles surround the cross. That God will do his part in the redemption of men is set before us in the cross. That part can be nothing short of making men yearn to be like Christ and of aiding them in their struggle for the Christlike character. It will be remembered that in the last chapter we called attention to the hopelessness of the Christian ideal viewed as an ideal in itself without ...
— Understanding the Scriptures • Francis McConnell

... till some longer And fairer eve we meet again. By one kiss on thy brow the stronger Let me depart—thy lips, once, then! Sleep now and dream of me, and waken When mid-day comes, and faithful tell The hours as I yearn forsaken, And sigh ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... I overspeechful, or did you yearn When I sat silent, for songs or speech? Ah, Beloved, I had been so apt to learn, So apt, had you only cared to teach. But time for silence and song is done, You wanted nothing, ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.

... power in themselves, cry out, as the clock strikes or the postman knocks, in their eagerness for news (even if it be bad news), for some emotion (even that of grief); when the heartstrings, which prosperity has silenced, like a harp laid by, yearn to be plucked and sounded again by some hand, even a brutal hand, even if it shall break them; when the will, which has with such difficulty brought itself to subdue its impulse, to renounce its right to abandon itself ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... happened that there was not a single Jew in the tavern on that memorable Sunday. The twelve Israelitish families of Togarog found sufficient relaxation and entertainment in their own circle, and did not in the least yearn after the boisterous and uncivil companionship of Russian moujiks. Alas! they knew but too well that taunts and insults would be their portion, if they but dared to show themselves at one of these public gatherings. Moreover, the Jews were in the midst ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith

... fruits of modern art and science are offering themselves as a means of exchange, the pale outline of Hellenism is beginning to dawn faintly in the distance. The earth which, up to the present, has been more than adequately Orientalised, begins to yearn once more for Hellenism. He who wishes to help her in this respect will certainly need to be gifted for speedy action and to have wings on his heels, in order to synthetise the multitudinous and still undiscovered facts ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche

... Grosvenor Street, as everybody knows), where he just had the pleasure of peeping upwards at Miss Amory's pink window-curtains, having achieved which satisfactory feat, he drove off to Pen's chambers. Why did he want to see his dear friend Pen so much? Why did he yearn and long after him; and did it seem necessary to Foker's very existence that he should see Pen that morning, having parted with him in perfect health on the night previous? Pen had lived two years in London, and Foker had not paid half a dozen visits to his chambers. What ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... twelve-year-old son, the Crown Prince Yoshinaga, whose historical name is Go-Murakami. Go-Daigo's will declared that his only regret in leaving the world was his failure to effect the restoration, and that though his body was buried at Yoshino, his spirit would always yearn for Kyoto. Tradition says that he expired holding a sword in his right hand, the Hokke-kyo-sutra in his left, and that Kitabatake Chikafusa spoke of the event as ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... wronged me."[12] His conscience, however, tells him that inasmuch as there is such a thing as eternal justice, a time will come when the truth will be proclaimed and his honour fully vindicated; Shaddai will then yearn for the work of His hands, but it will be too late, "For now I must lay myself down in the dust; and Thou shalt seek me, but I shall not be." And it is to this conviction, not to a belief in future retribution, that the hero gives utterance in the ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon

... girl. I get only so high, and then have to come back and lie down. George and Annie beat me all to pieces with their exploits. I do not believe we could have found anywhere in the world a spot better adapted to our needs. How you would enjoy it! I perfectly yearn to show you these mountains and all this green valley. The views I send will give you a very good idea of it, however. The smaller chalet in the print is ours. In a little summer house opposite Isabella now sits at work on the ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss

... Tears, prayers, yes! not hopes." "Hush!" the sweet voice replied. "Fool'd away by a fancy, again to your side Must your husband return. Doubt not this. And return For the love you can give, with the love that you yearn To receive, lady. What was it chill'd you both now? Not the absence of love, but the ignorance how Love is nourish'd by love. Well! henceforth you will prove Your heart worthy of love,—since ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith

... of friends may not give us the happiness which we yearn for, but there is one thing that will always steer us safely into port—one thing that will bring us the blessing of happiness though all things else fail us—and that ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague

... tears On every cheek are wet; each shining wall And beauteous interspace of beam and beam Weeps tears of blood, and shadows in the door Flicker, and fill the portals and the court— Shadows of men that hellwards yearn—and now The sun himself hath perished out of heaven, And all the land is darkened ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang

... She sez 'huh' again jes' ez she done befo'. Miss Mitty ain't de kind dat's gwinter eat her words, honey. W'at she sez, she sez, en she's gwinter stick up ter hit. The hull time I 'uz dar, I ain' never yearn nuttin' but 'huh!' pass ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow

... lays of Demodocus in the Odyssey remained mere hints of the woful catastrophe of Priam. But if you wish to see how Homer could handle a ballad, turn up the eighth book of your Odyssey until you come to the Minstrel's son—or if haply you are somewhat rusted in your Greek, and yearn for the aid of Donnegan, listen to the noble version of Maginn, who alone of all late translators has caught the true fire and spirit ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various



Words linked to "Yearn" :   desire, yearner, pine, long, treasure, hanker, care for, ache, die, cherish, languish



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