"Yearning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in the new scenes and labors to which they are introduced, and a large number have already grown up to hold respectable, and, in some cases, prominent places, in the communities which they have joined. Others have pined for the city, until they could no longer resist their yearning for it, and have found their way back to the old, familiar scenes, to resume the former life of suffering and privation. Such is the strange fascination which their lawless and irresponsible mode of life oftentimes exerts upon the minds of these ...
— Ben, the Luggage Boy; - or, Among the Wharves • Horatio Alger
... faults in it? I wish you'd tell me straight out exactly what you think, if you see anything wrong," said Clifford, like all young writers who think they are pining for criticism but are really yearning for praise. "I would like," he said, "for you to find any fault you possibly could! Say ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... wretched three hundred. But her head began to nod again, and the fire was suddenly dashed out in blackness. She started up yawning. It was all so dreary! Life—Then and there our wholesome Kitty would have made her first step toward becoming the yearning, misplaced Woman of the Time, but for a knock which ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... sort of way, while her inmost thoughts pictured the great city to which she was going, and wherein she expected her son to be the most predominant figure. Each hour seemed to be bringing him closer to her, and a mild yearning centred about her heart. Occasionally a twinge of apprehension would mar her tranquillity. She wondered if he would know her, and if he had received the postcard which she had written with so much care a week previous. ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer
... dreamed of intercourse with one of the opposite sex. There was only in one case anything that I could call actual emotion in such a dream. The other dreams have often (not always) been dreams of real yearning, and not at all what I should ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... is Love—and though its name Has been usurped by passion, and profaned To its unholy uses through all time, Still, the external principle is pure; And in these deep affections that we feel Omnipotent within us, can we see The lavish measure in which love is given. And in the yearning tenderness of a child For every bird that sings above its head, And every creature feeding on the hills, And every tree and flower, and running brook, We see how everything was made to love, And how they err, who, in a world like this, Find anything to ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... only made them more anxious to go. It is another case of "like father like son." If I had not travelled while young, I am sure I should never have settled down. And the fact that in every place I visited I found scores of Englishmen yearning to return home made me feel that I was a fortunate man to see our distant possessions without being doomed to pass my life in exile. I have sufficient money to keep a home for my children, but I want my sons to ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... on without speaking. In his yearning for sympathy, in his intense desire to impart the miserable news to some one who would feel for him, he had come to his friend Bill. He had thought first of going to Mr. Porson. But though his master would sympathize with him he would not be ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... made the pain of the old wound come back, so was his mind marked by what he had gone through. He liked Jerry, was glad to be with him and to run with him; but it was Jerry who was ever in the lead, who ever raised the hue and cry of hunting pursuit, who barked indignation and eager yearning at a tree'd squirrel in refuge forty feet above the ground. Michael looked on and listened, but took no part in such ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... trees, the young pines seemed to love this dry, light snow, holding up every limb and every cluster of green needles to receive it, stretching them upward as if in yearning for it. I think it is quite true that in the December cold, when there is a feel of snow in the air, the limbs of young pines do bend a little more toward the vertical. I know that the upward pointing needles ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... glad to encourage the boy in his foolish boasting. On their way they passed near to Fern's Hollow, and Stephen heard little Nan's shrill voice calling his name, as if she were seeking him weariedly; but when he hesitated for a moment, his heart yearning to answer her, Black Thompson again patted him on the back, and bade him never show the white feather, but remember poor dead Snip; at which his passion for revenge returned, and he pressed on eagerly to ...
— Fern's Hollow • Hesba Stretton
... the names of scarcely half-a-dozen birds or trees, my excursions gave me no pleasure. I have stood on Banstead Downs in the blaze of sunlight on a still October morning, and when I saw the smoke-cloud black as night hang over the horizon northwards, I have longed with the yearning of an imprisoned convict to be the meanest of the blessed ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... tantalized him with glimpses of its perfect self too fleeting for him to grasp. The sensation was not new to him. During his maturer years he had tried to remember his mother's face with the same yearning and heart-hurting disappointment. But this time he groped after attributes which should shape the features—he had spirit, not form, in mind; and the odds against which his unguided genius must battle were too heroic for it to succeed without aid. The young ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... vehement a command. Edith turned silently away, confirmed in a growing suspicion, and yearning tenderly over the little sister's suffering. It was the younger brother, of course!—the tall, silent man, whose lips had been so dumb, whose eyes so eloquent, during the critical days of Margot's illness, and who had been the girl's companion on ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... there was Corydon, yearning for his companionship. It had always been their idea that they should do the work together; so completely would they be fused in the fire of love, that she would share his soul states and write parts ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... boisterous humor, which often whirl one off one's feet. This is explained by the fact that the average Russian is extremely emotional and consequently dramatic in his artistic expressions. Late Leo Tolstoy said to me on one occasion: "In our folksong and folk art is evidently yearning without end, without hope, also power invisible, the fateful stamp of destiny, and the fate in preordination, one of the fundamental principles of our race, which explains much that in Russian life ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... to you was this boundless devotion, the trusty arm, the blind slave, the silent tool, the wealth—for henceforth all I possess is mine only as a trust—which lay at your disposal; unknown to you, the heart waiting to receive your confidence, and yearning to replace all that your life (I know it well) has lacked —the liberal ancestress, so ready to meet your needs, a father to whom you could look for protection in every difficulty, a friend, a brother. The secret of your isolation is ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... to look upon as another form of heat, is properly applied. It must be so, and it is the manifest destiny of the race to improve it. Man is a spirit cursed with a mortal body, which glues him to the earth, and his yearning to rise, which is innate, is, I believe, only a part of his probation and trial." "Show us how it can be done," shouted his listeners in chorus. "Apergy is and must be able to do it," Ayrault continued. "Throughout Nature we find a system of compensation. The centripetal force ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... gentleman's family. It does not consist with the common acceptation of his character to fancy him much moved, except with anger. And yet the language of passion came to his pen as readily, whether it was a passion of denunciation against some of the abuses that vexed his righteous spirit, or of yearning for the society of an absent friend. He was vehement in affection, as in doctrine. I will not deny that there may have been, along with his vehemence, something shifty, and for the moment only; ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... looked away from it again as from the face of a stranger. That glance of an instant struck Magdalen to the heart. She stood rooted to the ground after Norah had passed by. A horror of the vile disguise that concealed her; a yearning to burst its trammels and hide her shameful painted face on Norah's bosom, took possession of her, body and soul. She ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... like Meyerbeer, nor even quite Mozart, but, in its way, perhaps even more lovely; something classical and of the Golden Age about it, chaste and mellow, and the Ravogli 'almost worthy of the old days'—highest praise he could bestow. The yearning of Orpheus for the beauty he was losing, for his love going down to Hades, as in life love and beauty did go—the yearning which sang and throbbed through the golden music, stirred also in the lingering beauty of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... that live in Melanesia, without compromising any truth of doctrine or principle of conduct—men who can see, in the midst of the errors and superstitions of a people, whatever fragment of truth or symptom of a yearning after something better may exist among them, and make that the point d'appui, upon which they may build up the structure of Christian teaching. Men, moreover, of industry they must be, for it is useless to talk of "picking up languages." ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a virgin spinster), felt herself out of it because she had no son at the Front to talk about. I gathered that it was not so much a case of unsatisfied yearning for motherhood, as that she wanted to hold her own with the other charwomen who were represented in the trenches. So she assumed the relationship of an anonymous marraine towards a certain unknown namesake in the Black Watch, and made boastful ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 18, 1917 • Various
... dim discerning, We can faintly see the book; Softly stealing, with lore's yearning,— ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... hath for every grief Brought relief. Each grateful heart His praises Now raises. With angels at the manger, We sing the Savior's birth, Who wrought release from danger And peace to man on earth, Who satisfies our yearning, And grief to joy is turning Till we with Him arise And ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... it like an unseen god. Not as Phoebus or Athene, from their marble pedestals; but as an abiding spirit, felt everywhere, nowhere seized, absorbing in itself all mysteries, all myths, all burning exaltations, all abasements, all love, self-sacrifice, pain, yearning, which the thought of Christ, sweeping the centuries, hath wrought for men. Let, therefore, choir and congregation raise their voices on the tide of prayers and praises; for this is Easter morning—Christ ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... north gable. There were letters to be answered too. Lord Fallowfeild wanted to know about something—he could not remember what—Fallowfeild's inquiries had a habit of being vague. And through all these things—serious or trivial—a terrible yearning over Katherine and her baby—the new, little, human life which was his own life, and which yet he would never know or see. And through all these things also, the perpetual, heavy ache of those severed nerves ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... subject than about its treatment, just as we think the "Portrait of a Lord" worth studying if it come from the pencil of a Vandyck. The life of John Sterling, however, has intrinsic interest, even if it be viewed simply as the struggle of a restless aspiring soul, yearning to leave a distinct impress of itself on the spiritual development of humanity, with that fell disease which, with a refinement of torture, heightens the susceptibility and activity of the faculties, while it undermines their creative force. Sterling, moreover, was a man thoroughly in earnest, to ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... Helen's being alone on that mountain seeking him, made Jonathan's heart beat as it never had before. For weeks he had avoided her, almost forgot her. He had conquered the strange, yearning weakness which assailed him after that memorable Sunday, and once more the silent shaded glens, the mystery of the woods, the breath of his wild, free life had claimed him. But now as this evidence of her spirit, her recklessness, ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... A yearning sadness in her face But added to that nameless grace, That spell by which some women reign In hearts they ...
— Daisy Dare, and Baby Power - Poems • Rosa Vertner Jeffrey
... skunk opossum And the stylish leopard mink Scamper as you come across 'em, Climb upon the canon's brink, Gambol with the pony musquash, Claimed not for a collar yet— Far away from London's bus-squash And advertisements of tusk-wash Are my yearning visions set. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various
... wife; but then, to account for her long absence, and her long silence towards all that ought to have been dear to her, it was necessary that she should put on an indifference far distant from her heart, which was loving and yearning, in spite of all its faults. And, perhaps, she over-acted her part, for certainly Mary felt a kind of repugnance to the changed and altered aunt, who so suddenly reappeared on the scene; and it would have cut Esther to the very core, could she have known how her little darling of ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... man is tossed about by doubts, full of strong passions, and yearning only for what is delightful, his thirst will grow more and more, and he will indeed ...
— The Dhammapada • Unknown
... been objected to this wonderful scene that Portia's reticence and delay in relieving Antonio and her husband from their suspense is unnatural. But Portia is a very superior woman, able to control not only her own palpitating sympathy with their anguish, but her impatient yearning to put an end to it, till she has made ever effort to redeem the wretch whose hardness of heart fills her with incredulous amazement—a heavenly instinct akin to the divine love that desires not that a sinner should perish, which enables her to ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... weather and a thousand suns had marked them, and the hand of man had branded them. Here and there was a touch of gray in their hair, and about the mouth of each were lines which in such silent moments as this one gave an expression of infinite and wistful yearning. ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... their own self-protection. We should then hear of fewer attempts to abduct slaves from the slave-holding states; and abolitionists would be content to allow slaves to remain under the care and protection of their masters. Even though at heart sympathizing with the oppressed and task-worn negro, and yearning towards him with all the love of the professed philanthropist, he would still be permitted to toil and bleed; for now that the route to Canada has been closed, there is no alternative but to take ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... of the myth be, or be not, founded on solar phenomena, the yearning Greek mind formed on it an unconscious allegory of the course of the Victor, of whom the Sun, rejoicing as a giant to run his course, is another type, like Samson of old, since the facts of nature and of history are ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... young girl telling one of her elders right to her face, she would not do it. I never heard of such a thing. For a moment I was torn between a desire to administer a stern reproof and leave her, and a great yearning to stand by and with love and sympathy to try to soften the only fate which could be in store for ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... I forgive your wronging, Dead seasons round me thronging, With yearning and with longing, I call your bitters sweet. Vain longing, and vain yearning, There now is no returning; Oh! beating heart and burning, Forget to burn ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... you?" What had brought the leader back was the look of heartrending yearning in the gray eyes of a tattered little boy. He smiled, seeing that look swiftly change to one ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... very different now from the crumpled figure at the bottom of the trench, had escaped death from the sniper's bullet by a fraction of an inch, but he had made quick recovery, and before his month's sick furlough was at an end he was already secretly yearning to get back again. He knew that there was a great push in contemplation, and his only fear was that he ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... man's expression of vacant malice turned to one pitiful to see, one of indistinct yearning. "Give it to me," he muttered, "they say I am half mad, and perhaps I am, but—I think I could play once——" The yellow dog snapped at a fly, and his master turned towards him, adding, "Before your time, ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... is that of achievement. In every human being there is the desire to rise to something great. The most thoughtless boy on the street looks serious as the Presidential carriage rolls past. In the deep recesses of his nature there is kindled by the spectacle a momentary yearning for fame—he would like to be President some day. Likewise does every man, when he seriously views the pageantry of life's ideals and purposes, have aspiration, for such is the natural ...
— A Fleece of Gold - Five Lessons from the Fable of Jason and the Golden Fleece • Charles Stewart Given
... supplemented by a singular personal appeal to Josephine's nature. From the time that he turned his head towards her voice on that fateful night, his eyes had always followed her around the room with a wondering, yearning, canine half-intelligence. Without being able to convince herself that he understood her better than his regular attendant furnished by the doctor, she could not fail to see that he obeyed her implicitly, and that whenever any difficulty arose between him and his nurse she was always appealed ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... every thought, that like a wavelet, breaks Upon the surface of life's charmed pool, Circling instinctively, unbidden, takes Form, hue, direction, from that magic rule! What is it but the yearning of the soul Toward one allied to it by heavenly birth? And seeking to unite, blend, melt the whole Into one miracle of love ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... shod, the other had worn through the stocking, and ugly red blisters showed on the sole as he ran. His face was far whiter than his shirt, save for a blue welt or two and some ugly red scratches; and his gaunt eyes were full of hunger and yearning, and his lips happily babbling the curses that the ships' ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... run no risks, for her sake and my sake. She must find me on the Sparhawk if she should come back. She had left me and she had come back; she might come back again. Even to get her message I must not run the risk of missing her. And so with yearning heart and perhaps tearful eyes I watched the little craft disappear and become ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... position as an Anglican priest? I daresay you know that my heart is not altogether with the Church I serve?" He checked himself; he had not meant to strike this personal note. And how could he explain the yearning of his heart for the great heart of the Mother-church? This would have been possible last year at Oxford, but not now. "I tell you this because I feel that it might ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... on her knees, she could see that other woman sitting by his death-bed. Two candles were burning in the vast studio, and by their dim light she saw the shadow of the profile on the pillow. She thought of him as a man yearning for an ideal which he could never attain, and dying of his yearning in the end! And that so beautiful and so holy an aspiration should proceed from the common concubinage of a studio! Suddenly she decided that Ralph was not worthy of her. Her instinct ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... the opening of the Reformation a deep yearning among serious people for a religion of inward experience, a religion based not on proof-texts nor on external authority of any kind, but on the native capacity of the soul to seek, to find and to enjoy the living God who is the Root and Sap of every twig and ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... spoke. She had a tingling sense of his nearness, a passionate yearning to turn toward him and to break down all barriers which made her afraid. She felt that she had been rash in coming to the studio, and had overestimated her own strength. She glanced around quickly, as if in search of something ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... footstool. He was a man of instinctive moral cleanness, and even in his imagination he had always kept the riotous senses severely in the check of reason. In the domain of the affections he had wanted nothing desperately, he told himself, except his child; and so intense had this yearning of fatherhood become in him that there were moments of bitter loneliness when he seemed almost to feel the touch of the boy's hand upon his knee. He had strange hours, even when his dream became more vivid to him than the pressing ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... stopped for the wee maid to scramble up over a wheel, and there were sweet little sounds of kissing and muffled little cuddlings under the warm plaid. When these soft endearments had been attended to there was time for another yearning. ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... of her imperious dignity. The Princess Marahna was now all woman. And Jerry, looking into her dark eyes, read plainly the yearning and adoration in their depths. The Princess Marahna had forgotten her deference to the god in her love for the man. The tale was told in her ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... again with a still, far-away look of fierce yearning after that missed distinction, with his nostrils for an instant dilated, sniffing the intoxicating breath of that wasted opportunity. If you think I was either surprised or shocked you do me an injustice in more ways than one! Ah, ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... cities,— Loved well enough by me, Then how should I be yearning To scour the earth ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
... up, not to tire her, but it was hard to combat his yearning. She after all told him nothing but that his light had failed—which he knew well enough without her. ...
— The Beast in the Jungle • Henry James
... any poetry to quote which adequately expresses this yearning for the Wild. Approached from this side, the best poetry is tame. I do not know where to find in any literature, ancient or modern, any account which contents me of that Nature with which even I am acquainted. You will perceive that ...
— Walking • Henry David Thoreau
... have all her pupils attain the same level even of excellence. They are different, and she would have them so. Nor would she have her school exemplify the kind of order that is to be found in a gallery of statues. Her school is a place of life, eager, yearning, pulsating life, and not a place of dead and deadening silence. Her pupils have diversified tastes and desires and, in consequence, diversified activities, but work is the golden cord that binds them in a healthy and healthful unity. This is sublime chaos, ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... held with all her favourites upon the subject of the coming marriage—if she could by any means have avoided all these, and above all her honourable office of bridesmaid—she would most gladly have done so. A sudden yearning for the perfect peace, the calm eventless days of her old life at Mill Cottage, had taken possession of her. In a moment, as if by some magical change, the glory and delight of that brilliant existence at the Castle seemed to have vanished away. There were the ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... boy raised his hand instantly in answer to this question, for what boy had not stood at the village printer's yearning to set type or run one of the ...
— The Blue Birds' Winter Nest • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... as any of his race, though he was yearning to look upon that father and mother who would greet him, and he them, as if they had been parted for only a few hours. Slipping to the ground again, the three took a peep at the interior of the tepee which has already been described to you. The boys expressed their delight and thanked ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... the same man who discoursed philosophy last night with the most critical acumen and coolest judgment. He is pacing backwards and forwards upon the quarterdeck like a caged tiger, stopping now and again to throw out his hands with a yearning gesture, and stare impatiently out over the ice. He keeps up a continual mutter to himself, and once he called out, "But a little time, love—but a little time!" Poor fellow, it is sad to see a gallant seaman and accomplished gentleman reduced to such a pass, and ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... floor unheeded. She sat there in her ugly nightgown, yearning with every fibre of her for the unknown joy. The flickering light of the candles was answered by the strange fire that burned in her eyes. At last her head drooped forward and, blind with tears, she hid her ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... folk, the songs and dances at hay-making, the fragrance of the land, the sluggish rivers rolling their brown mud about the plains, the mild long-drawn evenings. He felt again that all-pervading charm of sadness, of tender yearning, that hangs in the pale Russian sky and penetrates to the very soul of ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... Sakumi was following them noiselessly, her camellia in his button-hole, his eyes full of yearning not daring to come nearer. She threw him ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... walnut, green and brown being the most popular colors of the stones out of which they are made. Vast quantities of them have been taken from graves, but these have been absorbed by museums and amateur collectors, and now we have to fall back on imitations. No yearning desire is allowed to yearn long here, and so we find factories making scarabs at Luxor and in many other parts of Egypt. Of course there is a marked difference between a scarab cut by an old Egyptian, ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... at his foolish weakness sent the yearning blood that had settled round his heart flying back into ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... the shining eyes suddenly fill and threaten to overflow; instead of the grotesquely overdressed and artificial stage favorite he beheld only a yearning woman whose face was softened and glorified as ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... burning her for her witchcraft. I watched the flames leap and curl. The last look she gave me before they licked away her face had its infinite allurement, its devilish sorcery so intensified in the fierce yellow light, that the yearning for her clutched me by the throat and shook me through all ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... 'Oberon,' had wound up, alone ticked with painful distinctness. The bed-curtains were torn back. There lay the beloved friend and master dead. His head rested on his left hand, as if in tranquil sleep,—not the slightest trace of pain or suffering on his features. The soul, yearning for the dear objects of its love, had burst its earthly covering and fled. The immortal master was not dead,—he had ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... in art; that he never rises at midnight, amid lightning and rain, to emit an inarticulate cry of aesthetic anguish in some metrical construction of the renaissance period. She does not miss in him that yearning after the unattainable, which in some mysterious wise fills us with a mute despair; which has in it yet I know not what of sweetness amid the delirious aspirations with which it distracts us. She cannot know, with her base instincts dragging her down to the hearth-level of home and ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... of barren blear-eyed learning Where in dust and darkness children's foreheads bow, While men's labour, vain as wind or water turning Wheels and sails of dreams, makes life a leafless bough, Fell the light of scorn and pity touched with yearning, Next, from words that shone as heaven's own kindling brow.[3] Stars were these as watch-fires on the world's waste burning, Stars that fade not ...
— Studies in Song, A Century of Roundels, Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets, The Heptalogia, Etc - From Swinburne's Poems Volume V. • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... grasses to the nostrils, floats past; until at last the sheer delight of the thing seems to work up the lovers to a state of heavenly rapture, and in the final verse of the hymn to night they pray only to be removed from the dangers of returning day; and here the strains swell to an intensity of yearning for peace quite unprecedented in music. And, as we know, their prayer is immediately answered in a fashion ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... away northward, for many minutes, over housetops stenciled black against the glowing sky, his gaze yearning into vast distances of space, melancholy tingeing the complexion of his mind. He fancied himself oppressed by a vague uneasiness, ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... a woman's voice; there could not be a doubt of it. But a voice so charged with entreaty and with yearning love, that it will ring for ever in my ears. It came with a curious faraway tinkle, but every word was clear, though faint—very faint, for they were the last words of ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a space, her eyes fixed and yearning. Then at length in a low voice that thrilled with an emotion beyond ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... distress a wave of self-condemnation brought what seemed to him the answer of the riddle: that this was rightly she, the same angelic incarnation of wisdom and rectitude, as of gentleness and beauty, to whom in yesterday's sunset hour of surprise and ecstatic yearning he had implied things so contrary to their "perfect understanding," and who now, not for herself selfishly, but in the name and defence of all blameless womanhood, was punishing him for his wild presumption. O but if she would only accuse him—here—this ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... over the apostasy of Maurice overshadowed for a time every other feeling. He sorrowed for his friend, praying and yearning, searching his heart to discover whether his own influence or example had helped to bring about this lamentable fall; he turned over in his mind plans for bringing the wanderer back to the fold; he ceased to think about the coming election, ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... maybe there are moments of what is called delusion which are the most sane constituents of a lifetime. As it was, late in the night, as I lay awake and sore in spirit, and wild with all things and almost with the Lord, sleepless and with much yearning grown upon me, I heard the voice calling out in the night up to the stars and the mystery of quiet for love and all that had been near and dear to this one clouded mind; and I turned my face to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... it is a truth that the yearning of our nature is for reality, and that our personality cannot be happy with a fantastic universe of its own creation, then it is clearly best for it that our will can only deal with things by following their law, and cannot do with them just as it ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... Flinders (August 24th, 1804) voices the yearning of the captive for the solace of home:* (* Flinders' Papers.) "I yesterday enjoyed a delicious piece of misery in reading over thy dear letters, my beloved Ann. Shall I tell thee that I have never before done it since I have been shut up in this prison? I have many friends, who are kind and much ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... in that tone of intense pity, thrilled Alick to the heart. This was the meaning of all those looks of tender, yearning compassion which Georgie so continually cast upon him. And was it then such a terrible thing not to ...
— The Old Castle and Other Stories • Anonymous
... effort, and here is mine, holding me fast. When I see, rising out of the dark moor, the lonely cairn that sheltered the bones of my fathers before the White Christ preached peace to their land, a great yearning comes over me. There I want to lay mine. There I want to sleep, under the heather where the bees hum drowsily in the purple broom at noonday and white shadows walk in the night. Mist from the marshes they are, but the people think them wraiths. Half heathen ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... she weeps, her heart within her is bound fast with misery, nor can she sob forth all the groans that struggle for utterance; so without stint wept Alcimede straining her son in her arms, and in her yearning grief spake as follows: ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... a terrible yearning came on him to see his son. He remembered the days when he had been wont to slide him, in a brown holland suit, to and fro under the arch of his legs; the times when he ran beside the boy's pony, teaching ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... have resigned myself to the guillotine but for you. From the course taken by public events, I knew you would be saved; and although your safety was the work of circumstances, still I had a hand in rendering it possible at the outset; and a yearning came over me to behold you both free again with my own eyes—a selfish yearning to see in you a living, breathing, real result of the one good impulse of my heart, which I could look back on with satisfaction. This desire gave me a new interest in life. I resolved ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... persecution, and not the extortion they suffer, is the refrain of all the speakers at negro meetings that are held in encouragement and aid of the emigration. It is idle to deny that the varied injustice which the negroes have suffered as voters is accountable for a large part of their universal yearning for new homes, and it will be folly for the responsible classes at the South to ignore ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... elegy, upon that "rat-hole philosophy," as Mr. Emerson once styled the new fetichism of the mahogany tables. It has not one element that asks the sense of beauty to incorporate it, or challenges the weapon of wit to transfix it. It is humiliating, but not pathetic, not even when yearning hearts are trying to pretend that their first-born vibrates to them through a stranger's and a hireling's mind. It is not even grotesque, but it is gross, and flat, and stale; its messages are fatuous, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... came in, as usual, he patted me on the head gently, with a kind of smile, and then began his silent walk up and down the room. I was yearning to question him on the point that just then engrossed me so disagreeably; but the awe in which I stood ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... anxiously avoided the appearance of having so done. Therefore the true depth of science, and the penetration to the inmost centre, from which all the lines of knowledge diverge to their ever distant circumference, was abandoned to the illiterate and the simple, whom unstilled yearning, and an original ebulliency of spirit, had urged to the investigation of the indwelling and living ground of all things. These, then, because their names had never been enrolled in the guilds of the learned, were persecuted by the registered ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... gazed with so much yearning in his eyes that the man was touched, in spite of the absurdity of it. "Go on," he ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... without helping himself to a share of his master's possessions. By the help of what he had stolen, and by the cleverness which afterwards made him so helpful to Paul, he made his way to Rome, naturally drawn to the great centre, and prompted both by a desire to hide himself and by a youthful yearning to see the utmost the world could show ...
— Weymouth New Testament in Modern Speech, Preface and Introductions - Third Edition 1913 • R F Weymouth
... a chosen vessel of pleasure, and apparently destined by nature to be borne through life in women's arms, handsome, captivating, a flash of passion in his tender eyes, his lips yearning for kisses, regarded by the men with wrath and envy, by the women with glowing cheeks and bewildered hearts. When barely a youth, a page of the Grand Duchess, his attractive person and winning grace turned the heads of all the ladies of the court, and it was rumoured that a princess had been his ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... he was drawn by feelings which every educated and impressible American feels, in a degree scarcely conceivable by the English themselves. And being here (but he had already too much experience of English self-sufficiency to confess so much) he began to feel the deep yearning which a sensitive American—his mind full of English thoughts, his imagination of English poetry, his heart of English character and sentiment—cannot fail to be influenced by,—the yearning of the blood within his veins for that from which it has been estranged; ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... sensible enough to refuse me. What I should have done had she accepted me, I can't imagine; for that was three years ago, and I have more ties and less prospect of marriage now than then. Well, there's no use yearning for what you can't have, and there's no other man living to whom I would speak about the matter at all; but life is a deadly, lonely thing when a man has no one on his side but himself. Why is it that I am sitting here in the moonlight writing to you, except that ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... wages, Stephenson contrived, during the year he worked at Montrose, to save a sum of 28 pounds, which he took back with him to Killingworth. Longing to get back to his kindred, his heart yearning for the son whom he had left behind, our engineman took leave of his employers, and trudged back to Northumberland on foot as he had gone. While on his journey southward he arrived late one evening, footsore and wearied, at the door of a small farmer's ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... His throbbing, yearning heart told him that he still loved his wife. Why should he punish a fault committed so many years ago, and atoned for by twenty years ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... Divide, Alexandra hummed an old Swedish hymn, and Emil wondered why his sister looked so happy. Her face was so radiant that he felt shy about asking her. For the first time, perhaps, since that land emerged from the waters of geologic ages, a human face was set toward it with love and yearning. It seemed beautiful to her, rich and strong and glorious. Her eyes drank in the breadth of it, until her tears blinded her. Then the Genius of the Divide, the great, free spirit which breathes across it, must have bent lower than ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... girl sat on the green shore; her white kerchief fluttered in the wind as she waited every evening for the ship on which her lover had sailed, waited with yearning and prayers. How her heart leaped when, on the distant horizon, she fancied she recognized the slender masts that appeared before her, and measured in her imagination, a hundred times over, the space which yawned between them. Her bosom heaved, her soul ...
— The Corsair King • Mor Jokai
... old woman stood rigidly in the doorway a moment, looking after her departed son, and then she walked quickly down to a rustic seat on the brow of the hill and sat down heavily, following with straining eyes and yearning heart his rapidly disappearing figure. The same pang that every mother must feel, those who have a son at least, once in her life if no more, came to her heart; all her prayers had been unavailing, her requests unheeded, her pleas and wishes disregarded. She had an idea, ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... pity all the more heartfelt because their suffering is so much greater than any they could have endured in this life. See the state of those souls. They are in grace and favor with God; they are burning with love for Him; they are yearning, with a yearning boundless in its intensity, to drink refreshment of life, and love, and sanctification, and to be replenished with goodness and truth, and to perfect their natures at the Fountain-head of all truth, all ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... had taken all of joy that post and settlement, friend and foe could give, lived for naught but his sparkling pleasures, he was now possessed of a great yearning to give to this woman, this goddess of the black braids; to give, only to give to her; to give of his strength, of his overwhelming love; aye, of even his heart's blood itself as he had told her ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... tremor in the upturned corners of her mouth that belied her bantering air and brought Max quickly to her side. I saw the pantomime, though I did not hear the words; and I knew that neither Max nor any other man could withstand the quivering smile that played upon Yolanda's lips and the yearning invitation that was in her eyes. If Max did not soon take himself away from Burgundy and lead himself out of this temptation, I feared that in the end he would cast aside his ancient heritage, rend his sacred family ties, and forego ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... And he went down to the ramparts to hear the purple guard go by singing of Welleran. And the purple guard came by with lights, all singing in the stillness, and dark shapes out in the desert turned and fled. And Rold went back again to his mother's house with a great yearning towards the name of Welleran, such as men feel ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... Jew! fable or not a fable, thou, when first starting on thy endless pilgrimage of woe,—thou, when first flying through the gates of Jerusalem and vainly yearning to leave the pursuing curse behind thee,—couldst not more certainly have read thy doom of sorrow in the misgivings of thy troubled brain, than I when passing forever from my sister's room. The worm was at my ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... held the raging Thompson with some mutual dishevelment. They soothed him with flattery, stayed him with flagons, for he yearned for blood with a great yearning. ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... from side to side at the palely lit faces of the spectators, trying to distinguish Barney Bill and Jane. But he did not see them. He was disappointed and depressed, seized with a curious yearning for his own people. Vehicle after vehicle drew up and carried away the remainder of the platform group, and Paul was left in the doorway with the President and Honorary Secretary of the local lodge. The little crowd began to melt ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... if this craving came to a man in regular pulses; he could go for weeks, serene and happy in his work—and then suddenly would come the restlessness, and he would go out into the night and wander about the streets for hours, impelled by a futile yearning for he knew not what—the hope of something clean in the midst of uncleanliness, of some adventure that would be not quite shameful to a poet's fancy. And then, after midnight, he would steal home, baffled and sick at heart, and wet his pillow ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... he only thought of the puzzles that have faced every man who has a heart to feel since first our race appeared in this wondrous place. Musgrave thought that every man who has faith, every man whose heart has been torn by the wrenches of chance, must sympathize with the yearning of Job; but at the last every man, like Job, comes to see that there are things beyond our minds. Each of us learns that there are things before which our intelligence must be abashed, and that the only safe rule of life is to fall into the attitude of trust, and question no more. He felt ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... she made no answer, putting down her empty cup and yearning over the table as for something more to eat. Suddenly she raised her head and broke out with vehemence: "I will, I ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... these passionate, these worshiping, these supplicating missives, the woman in her nature confessed itself; a strong yearning came upon her to lay her head upon a loyal breast and find rest from the conflict of life, solace for her griefs, the healing of love for her ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... themselves and with their lot; they lived to a ripe and beautiful age, rarely "borrowed trouble," and were patient to endure that which came in the fixed course of things. If the spirit of curiosity, the yearning for an active, joyous grasp of life, sometimes pierced through this placid temper, and stirred the blood of the adolescent members, they were persuaded by grave voices, of almost prophetic authority, to turn their hearts towards "the ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... over the tender, yielding nature of his mother, so the coarse pomposity of the dull old man with whom he next came in contact, made him lord over the latter, too. If he had been a prince royal, he could not have been better brought up to think well of himself, and while his mother was yearning after him at home, he was having a number of pleasures and consolations administered to him which made the separation from Amelia a very easy matter to him. In fact, Master George Osborne had every comfort and luxury that a wealthy and lavish old grandfather thought fit to provide. ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... Fleda suddenly remembered, and was stopped short. From all the strange scenes and interests which lately had whirled her along, her spirit leapt back with strong yearning recollection to her old home and her old ties; and such a rain of tears witnessed the dearness of what she had lost, and the tenderness of the memory that had let them slip for a moment, that Hugh was as much distressed as startled. ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell |
