"Longing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... my incontestable right to a confused style by inserting here, in the wrong place, one of the many incoherent sheets which I once filled with rubbish, and which you, good creature, carefully preserved without my knowing it. It was written in a mood of impatient longing, due to my not finding you where I most surely expected to find you—in your room, on our sofa—in the haphazard words suggested by the pen you had ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... almost limitless extent as it seems to the traveler; its abundant herbage and floral wealth in early spring; its desolation, its crumbling monuments, and its evidences of a vanished civilization, fill the mind with a sweet sadness, which readily awakens the longing for the infinite spoken of in the poem." (Berdoe, Browning ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... impulse, lust, propensity, craving, inclination, passion, relish, desire, liking, proclivity, thirst, disposition, longing, proneness, zest. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... author had realized one of the dreams of his ambitious youth, the possession of an ancestral hall in England. It was not so much the good American's reverence for ancestors that inspired the longing to consort with the ghosts of an ancient line, as artistic appreciation of the mellowness, the dignity, the aristocratic aloofness of walls that have sheltered, and furniture that has embraced, generations and generations of the ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... done more than this for us; and yet how few cry to Him and say, "By this I know that Thou lovest me!"' I thought, and felt then, that you knew something which I should like to know; and I have been longing to speak to you ever since. Oh, I do thank you ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... low, and passed through into the other room; and AEnone followed him with a glance which betrayed the longing she felt to enter with him and witness the meeting of the two lovers. But a sense of propriety outweighed her curiosity and restrained her. It was not right, indeed, that she should intrude. Such recognitions should be sacred to the persons directly interested in them. She would therefore ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... Loveliest weather, Born of blue ether, Break from the sky! O that the darkling Clouds had departed! Starlight is sparkling, Tranquiller-hearted Suns are on high. Heaven's own children In beauty bewildering, Waveringly bending, Pass as they hover; Longing unending Follows them over. They, with their glowing Garments, out-flowing, Cover, in going, Landscape and bower, Where, in seclusion, Lovers are plighted, Lost in illusion. Bower on bower! Tendrils unblighted! Lo! in a shower Grapes that o'ercluster ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... His eyes rested at last on a great dish of stewed figs which stood on the counter. He had eaten an incredible quantity of food in the dining-hall two hours before, soup, beef, potatoes, cabbage, pudding, cheese. But he had not eaten stewed figs. His whole boy's nature rose in him in one fierce longing for stewed figs. He remembered. Before he went into the attack he had possessed half a franc and two sous. He thrust his hand into his one trouser pocket. It was empty. He tore at the string with which ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... received; which hates because it is enraged by a high example; which hates even more virulently because the object of its hatred is meek or weak or pitiable. "I have read of a woman who said that she never saw a cripple without longing to throw a stone at him. Do you comprehend what she meant? No? Well, I do." It was a woman who ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... over seventy years trial and experience of the Federal Union and Constitution, and the heart of every true American patriot swells with a just and noble pride as he contemplates them, and more than this, it swells with an earnest longing—an ardent desire—that prompts him as he looks into the future, to breathe to the Sovereign Ruler of the Universe, the prayer—"God save the Union ...
— The Relations of the Federal Government to Slavery - Delivered at Fort Wayne, Ind., October 30th 1860 • Joseph Ketchum Edgerton
... and night rattle and bang of the city may go unnoticed for years but eventually it takes its toll. Then comes a great longing to get away from it all. If family income is independent of salary earned by a city job, there is nothing to the problem. Free from a desk in some skyscraper that father must tend from nine to five, such ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... that about a fortnight previously some violent passion to return home to their own country had seized these interesting individuals, and they felt the most irresistible longing to abandon the savage and unnatural condiments of roast beef and Guinness's porter, and resume their ancient and more civilized habits of life. In fact, like the old African lady, mentioned by the missionary at the Cape, they felt they could die happy if they 'could ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... his eyes anxiously on the distant point and sapling, hoping, longing, and expecting to catch a glimpse of the fluttering square of red which would wave the welcome news that Walter had sighted ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... melancholy from its obscurity; some contempt of human reason, that it can give no solution more satisfactory with regard to so extraordinary and magnificent a question. But believe me, Cleanthes, the most natural sentiment which a well-disposed mind will feel on this occasion, is a longing desire and expectation that Heaven would be pleased to dissipate, at least alleviate, this profound ignorance, by affording some more particular revelation to mankind, and making discoveries of the nature, attributes, and operations of the Divine object of our faith."[29]—(II. ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... is in the shape of a woman, Brighter than woman, ineffably fair! Shelter thyself from the splendour, and sue, man; Light that was never a loveliness human Lives in the face of this sinister snare, Longing to strangle thy soul with ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... in the azure water, A swan of dazzling white Floats longing round the lily, That ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... night before I started eastward into the desert—for the last time," said Durrance, and the deep longing and regret with which he dwelt upon that "last time" for once left Ethne ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... By no stretch of my rather elastic imagination can I even now picture a situation that would, at one and the same time, have so perfectly afforded a means of livelihood, leisure in which to indulge my longing to write the story of my experiences, and an opportunity to ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... and communicated to him her plan. He tried to dissuade her; for he considered the project extremely dangerous, and well nigh hopeless. But the mother's heart yearned for her babe, and the incessant longing stimulated her courage to incur all hazards. To Baltimore she went; her pulses throbbing hard and fast, with the double excitement of hope and fear. She arrived safely, and went directly to the house of a colored family, old friends of hers, in whom she could confide with perfect ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... resemblance to persons I had known, or to the principals or victims of the crimes with which I imagined myself charged. I refused to read; for to read veiled charges and fail to assert my innocence was to incriminate both myself and others. But I looked with longing glances upon all printed matter and, as my curiosity was continually piqued, this enforced abstinence grew to be ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... be sensible of this, and to sigh for her conversation, as she walked along the pump-room one morning, by Mrs. Allen's side, without anything to say or to hear; and scarcely had she felt a five minutes' longing of friendship, before the object of it appeared, and inviting her to a secret conference, led the way to a seat. "This is my favourite place," said she as they sat down on a bench between the doors, which commanded a tolerable ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... and Polly walked slowly through the house, longing yet dreading to meet her mother. Down the stairway came the sound of voices. She stopped ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... getting to be quite energetic, especially since his sister's accident; for while she was laid up he was the head of the house, and much enjoyed his promotion. But Ben did not seem to flourish as he had done at first. The loss of Sancho preyed upon him sadly, and the longing to go and find his dog grew into such a strong temptation that he could hardly resist it. He said little about it; but now and then a word escaped him which might have enlightened any one who chanced to be watching ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... men, to look life in the eyes and learn something of its meaning. But there comes a period in the life of almost every woman—except the aforesaid degenerate—when she feels it is time to 'put away childish things,' and into her heart there steals a longing for the real things of life—the things that matter, the things that last—wedded love and little children, and that priceless possession, ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... a heap of gold, while La Ferlina gazed upon it with longing sighs. Harrach and Colloredo poured showers from their purses, and Sacco looked from one to the other with her most ineffable smiles. Kaunitz saw it all, and as he threw the dice into the golden dice-box, he muttered, "Miserable worms, ye think yourselves gods, and are the ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... had put an end to his boredom, and, though he was longing to get away from his surroundings, she certainly cheered ...
— Mademoiselle of Monte Carlo • William Le Queux
... say that he has two pains; in his body there is the actual experience of pain, and in his soul longing and expectation. ...
— Philebus • Plato
... against the loyalist population of South Africa. E.g. Sir William Harcourt (in a letter in The Times of December 17th, 1900), wrote: "I sometimes think that those bellicose gentlemen—especially those who do not fight—must occasionally cast longing, lingering looks towards the times before they were subsidised (sic) by the authors of the Raid to bring about the position in which they ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... lovly flowers and trees, and numbers of bewtiful ladies, a dancing and enjoying theirselves like fun, until his Liar leads him rite up to his wife, and then he raps harf his scarf round her, and off they gos together, both on 'em dowtless a longing for a reel nupshal kiss, but poor Mr. Horfay not a daring for to look at her, becoz if he does before he gets her home, she will be ded again direckly! Was there hever such a tanterlising case ever known! When she sings ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 6, 1890 • Various
... places. Custom had dulled the feeling with Ben-Hur, but only measurably. Pulling away hour after hour, sometimes days and nights together, sensible all the time that the galley was gliding swiftly along some of the many tracks of the broad sea, the longing to know where he was, and whither going, was always present with him; but now it seemed quickened by the hope which had come to new life in his breast since the interview with the tribune. The narrower the abiding-place happens to be, the more intense is the longing; and so he found. He ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... but chill desolation makes this cemetery its abode. A country churchyard touches the tenderest memories, and softens the heart with longing for the eternal rest. The cemeteries of wealthy London abound in dear and great associations, or at worst preach homilies which connect themselves with human dignity and pride. Here on the waste limits ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... cupboard, and put it on. Her hair was always smooth; the white line of disunion curved from brow to the braids pinned primly above the nape of the neck. As she looked into the glass to-day she experienced a sudden desire to fringe her hair, to put red on her cheeks; longing to see if any semblance of her youthful prettiness could be coaxed back. She lifted a pair of scissors, but threw them hastily down. She had not the courage to face the smiles and questions that would greet the daring innovation, the scathing ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... eighty-thousand-dollar house and twenty thousand dollars worth of furniture, three servants, a carriage and a handsome span of horses, two bicycles and an automobile, with a good fat bank account to draw on, she is not going to spend many sad days in the house alone, longing for the return of her husband. Nor will she be contented to remain at home and become fascinated in reading Milton's "Paradise Lost" or Moody's sermons. No. She is going to have company, and gay companions, and they will not be all of her own sex either. About a month after Ben West had returned ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... yet by time and place to act betray'd. Whom spies, or some faint virtue force to fly That scene of joy, which yet she dies to try. 'Till fancy bawds, and by mysterious charms Brings the dear object to her longing arms; Unguarded then she melts, acts fierce delight, And curses the returns of envious light. In such bless'd dreams Biblis enjoys a flame; Which waking she detests, and dares not name. Ixion gives a loose ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... an opportunity occurred for him to defend his newly adopted name. Truth to tell, he had been longing for such an occasion from the day on which old Captain Carew had asked him to fight for ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... may blow, When we think what a host of misery Lies down in the sea below! Didst ever hear of a little boat, And in her there were three; They had nothing to eat, and nothing to drink, Adrift on the desert sea. For seven days they bore their pain; Then two men on the other Did fix their longing, hungry eyes,— And that one was their brother! And him they killed, and ate, and drank— Oh me! 'twas a horrid thing! For the dead should lie in a churchyard green, Where the pleasant flowers do spring. And think'st thou but for mortal sin Such frightful things would be? In the ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... could not get any sleep; he was longing to have a drink. There was nothing in the house he could lay his hand on to take to the public-house. He put on his cap and went out. He walked along the street up to the house where the priest and the deacon lived together. The deacon's harrow stood outside leaning ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... It's lazy he is, holy father, and not wanting to work; for a while before you had him cured he was always talking, and wishing, and longing for his sight. ...
— The Well of the Saints • J. M. Synge
... on, when they had resumed their somewhat arduous promenade,—"it seems the woman, Giuditta, is quite alone in the world and has been longing to get back to Italy. So she easily persuaded herself that she could find the child's family and establish her in high life. Giuditta has an uncommonly high idea of high life," he added. "I think she imagines that somebody in a court ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... the customs I have mentioned, though barbarous and debased, may have been derived from ancient tradition? Whence has sprung that strange expectation of the return of their long-lost god, Rona, to bring a blessing on their nation? What means that longing for a better land far away in the east, entertained by the Marquesas islanders? The king of this island seems to have great power. He is the owner of all the land, and is the lord and master of all his subjects. He rules wisely, and has the ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... He has been described by the German Lichtenberg as 'das rastlose Ursachenthier'—the restless cause-seeking animal—in whom facts excite a kind of hunger to know the sources from which they spring. Never, I venture to say, in the history of the world has this longing been more liberally responded to, both among men of science and the general public, than during the last thirty or forty years. I say 'the general public,' because it is a feature of our time that the man of science no longer limits his labours to the society of his colleagues ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... his people, in killing a too persistent tiger here or there, in sleeping out in the reeking jungle, or in tracking the Suria Kol raiders who had taken a few heads from their brethren of the Buria clan. He was a knock-kneed, shambling young man, naturally devoid of creed or reverence, with a longing for absolute power ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... by dramatising, but by now she was acting—acting with all her histrionic power at fullest stretch, acting the part of a woman unhappy amid luxuries, who looked back with regret and with longing towards a joyous, simple childhood. She was sincere and she was not sincere. Part of her—one of those two Laura Jadwins who at different times, but with equal right called themselves "I," knew just what effect her words, her pose, would ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... familiar look of the happy days once fled, An old familiar look of one that I love as we love the dead. Love her? love Aimee? do I love her less, because since I kissed her last Over my desolate heart the tides of twenty-five years have passed? I am longing to-night to hear her hymn, her sweet "Abide with me," As she sang it, leaning upon my breast the night I put out to sea. I know it was only she I loved, and thought of that eventide; But now I can fully endorse the draft, "O Lord with me abide," And spite of the heavy clouds that hang o'er my life ...
— Victor Roy, A Masonic Poem • Harriet Annie Wilkins
... engaged as a principal in the war, and to induce the French court to send more effectual succours to the aid of congress, without any reference to the conquest of Canada. It is well known, however, that both the Marquis and his court cast a longing eye upon Canada; and it cannot be doubted but that its conquest was the chief end which he had in view when he recommended an increase of French troops in America. On his arrival in France, Lafayette was enthusiastically welcomed ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... shout I sprang past my aunt, and in an instant I had my lifelong foe by the throat. After so many years of waiting and longing, he was mine at last. I tore him to shreds and fragments. I rent the fragments to bits. I cast the bleeding rubbish into the fire, and drew into my nostrils the grateful incense of my burnt-offering. At last, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... His letters were a curious contrast to those of his girl-bride. She was evidently rather annoyed at his demands upon her for expressions of love, and could not quite understand what he meant by repeating the same thing over in so many different ways; but what she was quite clear about was a longing for a white "Paduasoy"—whatever that might be; and six or seven letters were principally occupied in asking her lover to use his influence with her parents (who evidently kept her in good order) to obtain this or that article of dress, more especially the white "Paduasoy." He cared ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... very smell of the liquor crazing them with the desire for drink. They want help, they pray to be saved; and we who are praying to help them are powerless. What if, in the future, my boy should be like one of them,—weak, tempted, longing for help, and getting nothing but help towards vice and ruin? Haven't mothers a right to help those they love in every way,—by prayer, by influence, by legal ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... of life, which in like manner awaken the budding flowers of feeling in our bosom. Light and air contend with chivalric emulation for the love of the fair flower that bestowed her chief favors on the latter; full of longing she turned towards the light, and as soon as it vanished, rolled her tender leaves together and slept in the embraces of the air. "It is the light which ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... the manor hall on the Hudson, which had been left closed up in the steward's charge when the family had sought safety in their New York City residence in 1777, had sprung in part from a powerful longing for the country and in part from a dream which had reawakened strongly her love for the old house of her birth and of most of her girlhood. The peril of her resolve only increased her determination ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... of war are quadrupled by darkness; and as I rode along our outer lines at night, and watched the glimmering flames which at regular intervals starred the opposite river-shore, the longing was irresistible to cross the barrier of dusk, and see whether it were men or ghosts who hovered round those dying embers. I had yielded to these impulses in boat-adventures by night,—for it was a part of my instructions to obtain all possible information about ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... 'What's the excitement all about?' he thought. 'How pretty she looks!' She blushed, drew in her hands with a quick tense movement, and gazed again beyond him into the room. 'What is it?' thought Swithin; he had a longing to lean back and kiss her lips. He tried angrily to see what she was seeing in those ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... analogy; and in the development of this human element, the writer of the hymn sometimes displays a genuine power of pathetic expression. The whole episode of the fostering of Demophoon, in which over the body of the dying child human longing and regret are blent so subtly with the mysterious design of the goddess to make the child immortal, is an excellent example of the sentiment of pity in literature. Yet though it has reached the stage of ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... you, we will maturely weigh and consider an hour or two hence in a full meeting of the Great Council. I have not come to you thus early in order to invent a plan for defeating yon presumptuous Doria or bringing to reason Louis[18] the Hungarian, who is again setting his longing eyes upon our Dalmatian seaports. No, Marino, I was thinking solely about you, and about what you perhaps would not guess—your marriage." "How came you to think of such a thing as that?" replied the Doge, greatly annoyed; and rising to his feet, he turned ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... and choking nights with the thermometer at 108 deg., were trying in the extreme to those accustomed to the fresh air of northern climates; but sailors have always something of the 'Mark Tapley' about them and are generally jolly under all circumstances, and so it was with me. One day, while longing for something to do, I discovered that the crew had been ordered to paint the ship outside; as a pastime I put on old clothes and joined the painting party. Planks were hung round the ship by ropes being tied to each end of the plank; on these the men stood to ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... train, south-bound for San Antonio, I learned something of Thornton's history. The son of a judge of Peoria, Ill., he had until fifteen the advantage of the schools of his city. Then, possessed with a longing for a life of adventure in the West, he ran away from home, worked in various places at various tasks, until, at sixteen (in 1887) he had made his way to Socorro. Arrived there, he attached himself to a small party of prospectors ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... insatiable, that there is no knowing how it is ever to be appeased. I must succumb for the present, and—Ah!" cried he, interrupting the current of his despondency, "I think I can repair my error. We must allow his envious majesty to gather a handful of these laurels for which he has such a longing. We must put the Emperor of ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... and comfortable speech, but it shall stick as a pearl in that crown which the Lord the righteous Judge shall give thee at that day; that is, if thou doest it willingly, delighting to lift up the name of God among men; if thou doest it with love, and longing after the salvation of sinners: otherwise thou wilt have only thy labor for thy pains, and no more. If I do this willingly, I have a reward; but if against my will, a dispensation of the gospel ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... abolition and arbitrary power, not Union and constitutional liberty, are the governing ideas of the administration. They are in no temper to be trifled with. They think they have been deceived. There is danger of revolution. They are longing ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... prayer. I arose at four o'clock in the morning to pray. I went very far to the church, which was so situated, that the coach could not come to it. There was a steep hill to go down and another to ascend. All that cost me nothing; I had such a longing desire to meet with my God, as my only good, who on His part was graciously forward to give Himself to His poor creature, and for it to do even visible miracles. Such as saw me lead a life so very different from the ...
— The Autobiography of Madame Guyon • Jeanne Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyon
... late, and where poverty and frugality were so much and so long honoured; so that the less wealth there was, the less desire was there. Of late, riches have introduced avarice, and excessive pleasures a longing for them, amidst luxury and a passion for ruining ourselves and destroying every thing else. But let complaints, which will not be agreeable even then, when perhaps they will be also necessary, be kept aloof at least from the first stage of commencing so great a work. We should rather, if it was ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... wish it at all," said the minister, giving a somewhat longing look at the green wilderness before them, of which the lovely hilly outlines were all that the gathering twilight left distinct. "But the thing is, Di, I cannot play when ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... surely, from the very beginning, and finding in his love a fresh glory and an all-sufficient consolation. This had been the inmost truth, the centre, the kernel of all his thought, of all his life. He saw it now with sharp distinctness,—now that every perception was intensified by pain and longing. ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... are all wrong, for there's such a breeze here coming off the sea, hitting slap agin the rocks and coming back right in your face, that I have been longing for a piece of paper to fold up and put inside the band of my hat to make it tight. Why I nearly ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... George Gray Barnard began life as a jeweller's apprentice, became an expert engraver and letterer, and finally, urged by a ceaseless longing, deserted that lucrative profession for the extremely uncertain one of sculpture. A year and a half of study in Chicago brought him an order for a portrait bust of a little girl, and with the $350 he received ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... "Ef you want something, an' jest dead set a-longin' fer it with both eyes wet, and tears won't bring it, why, you try sweat"? Well, we had tried sweat and longing for two years, with planning and hoping and the saving of nickels, and now we ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... his teeth with impotent rage. This range-rider always had interfered with his affairs from the first moment he had met him. If ever he got the chance again to stamp him out—! The strong fingers of the man worked with the nervous longing to tighten on the throat of the gay youth who had worsted him in the duel the prizefighter had forced upon him. The cowpuncher had introduced himself by knocking him down. A few hours later he had turned a bruised ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... know anything about the Chinese Government, we know this, that its coastguard is neither trusty nor efficient; and we know that a coastguard as trusty and efficient as our own would not be able to cut off communication between the merchant longing for silver and the smoker longing for his pipe. Whole fleets of vessels would have managed to land their cargoes along the shore. Conflicts would have arisen between our countrymen and the local magistrates, who would not, like the authorities of Canton, have ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... poems of this period betray much more clearly the real temper of the man. They are filled full and brimming over with longing and impatience, with painful passion and with hope deferred. It is in the strident lyrics Ibsen wrote between 1857 and 1863 that we can best read the record of his mind, and share its exasperations, and wonder at ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... the window look'd With all the longing of a mother; His little sister weeping walk'd The green-wood path to meet her brother; They sought him east, they sought him west, They sought him all the forest thorough; They only saw the cloud of night, They only heard the roar ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... For a moment she fought with the longing to run back—back from this strange, silent place—back to Daddy. Then she gulped down something in her throat, and giving herself an impatient shake, she went resolutely across the clearing to the tent ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... in a circle, with one of their number in the middle, who is supposed to be a captive, longing for freedom and reduced to diplomatic ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... strength. It was then that he knew how fully that strength was spent: his lungs and legs refused to work with his will and impulse after the first hundred yards, and he fell to the ground with a sensation of utter indifference, longing only for physical rest. He heard the bear plunging after, the loud sound of a horse's hoofs, mingled with a single shout, then gave up ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... London had been, "This is a place an Englishman ought to see once, but I will never come to it again," so my first impression about Loch Awe was a profound sort of melancholy happiness in the place and a longing to revisit it. I never afterwards quitted Loch Awe without the same longing to return, and I have never seen any place in the world that inspired in me that nostalgia in anything like ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... been told that the old 15th was being hard pressed. Each of us regretted loudly that we had not been attached to it, though our hearts spoke differently. Despatch riders have muddled thoughts. There is a longing for the excitement of danger and a very earnest desire to ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... pavilion, revolving in his mind how he could get some one to speed inside and deliver a message for him. But, as it happened, not a soul appeared. He was quite at a loss to know where even Pei Ming could be. His longing was at its height, when he perceived an old nurse come on the scene. The sight of her exulted Pao-yue, just as much as if he had obtained pearls or gems; and hurriedly approaching her, he dragged her and forced her to halt. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... arrived, and there was general satisfaction among the troops. They were now in fine fighting condition, and, having had one taste of battle, were longing to advance and get in ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... Miss Crawford's confession of old age went to her heart. So did that pathetic cry, which was half longing for her who had been so many years at rest, and half for Miss Crawford's own stronger and brighter self of bygone days. She put her arm round the schoolmistress and held up the shaking, unsubstantial little figure. "If Bertie has done this, he has killed her," said ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... they had sought training and experience in the offices of an engineering firm in their home town of Gridley. After being graduated from the Gridley High School, Tom and Harry had done more work in the same offices. Then, in a sudden desire for advancement, and possessed by the longing for a wider field of endeavor, Tom Reade and Harry Hazelton had secured positions as "cub engineers" on the construction work that was being done to rush a new railway, system over the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. The stern, hard work that lay before them, the many adventures in a rough ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... disparage the west side; and indeed I have been told that ladies from the most fashionable quarters of the city are not above buying their millinery in Division Street. Numbers of young girls are passing to and fro here, pausing ever and anon to gaze in at the windows with longing eyes. If there be "sermons in stones," so are there also in show-cases, and many a sad romance of won and lost grows out of the latter too. The shop-girls have nearly got through their work now, and they lean against the door-posts ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... so he is sent to the servants' hall, there to wait, whilst snap-dragon is being prepared in the library—that the evening may end with a grand blue-fire tableaux. The room resembles the Black Hole of Calcutta!—Hundreds of little itching fingers are longing to be amongst that pound of raisins, in spirits—all eager, as imps, for the fiendish sport; the darkness and suspense rendering it very exciting—causing Master Jewel (a model boy), who is "wanted directly," to make no answer from the sable mass; ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... their corn beside their cottages: wherefore she heard but the cicalas, while Arno, tantalizing her with the sight of his waters, increased rather than diminished her thirst. Ay, and in like manner, wherever she espied a copse, or a patch of shade, or a house, 'twas a torment to her, for the longing she had for it. What more is to be said of this hapless woman? Only this: that what with the heat of the sun above and the floor beneath her, and the scarification of her flesh in every part by the flies and gadflies, that flesh, ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... and the desire of my desire. It was she for whom, unwittingly, I had been longing always, since I first went away from Suskind, to climb upon the gray heights of Vraidex in my long pursuit of much wealth and fame. I had seen my wishes fulfilled, and my dreams accomplished; all the godlike discontents which ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... neighbouring forest range Diana and her chaste nymphs, amongst whom Cupid, out of pure mischief, lets fly his golden-headed arrows. At once the nymphs feel strange emotions within them, which quicken into uneasiness and longing at the sight of Gallathea and Phillida. But Diana detects the change, guesses at the cause, and promptly makes capture of Cupid. His wings clipped, his bow burnt, all his arrows broken, he is beaten and set to a task. Meanwhile the ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... Mabel said, "I begin to despair of ever gratifying my longing after a rambling life. It is probably all for the best. I dare say I would have become a mere vagabond. But I had embraced a wide field in my contemplated travels: romantic Spain, la belle France, classic Italy, and that dreamy, misty Faderland. But ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... for Black Andy, Abel's son, was not an inspiring figure, though even his moroseness gave way under her influence. So it was that when Cassy's letter came her breast seemed to grow warmer and swell with longing to see the wife of her nephew, who had such a bad reputation in Abel's eyes, and to see George's little boy, who was coming, too. After all, whatever Cassy was, she was the mother of Abel's son's son; and Aunt Kate was too old and wise to be frightened ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... Dorothy used great caution in exchanging words and glances, but familiarity with danger breeds contempt for it. So they utilized every opportunity that niggard chance offered, and blinded by their great longing soon began to make opportunities for speech with each other, thereby bringing trouble to Dorothy and deadly peril to John. Of that ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... than he who has imbibed the current through a hundred vulgar streams, and, were truth but known, may have no natural claim at all upon the much-prized blood! This comes of artfully leading the mind to prejudices, and of a vicious longing in man to forget his origin and destiny, by wishing to be more than nature ever ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... while in the heart of a foeman's country, and not a little also against his own sense of propriety: for his whole course in relation to the keg was like that of a fish that dallies around the angler's worm, uncertain whether to bite, now looking and longing, now suspecting the hook and retreating, now returning to look and long again, until, finally, unable to resist the temptation, it resolves upon a little nibble, which ends, even against its own will, ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... with any admixture of defect or imperfection. The mind needs an infinite object to rest upon, though it cannot grasp that object positively in its infinity. If this is the case even with the human mind, still wearing "this muddy vesture of decay," how much more ardent the longing, as how much keener the gaze, of the pure spirit after Him who is the centre and rest ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... cobbles. And in the morning, the sun's on that side of the house. Helen," he pleaded, "will you come?" It was Miriam who had come before, a dark sprite, making and loving mischief, lowering him in his own regard until he had a longing to touch bottom and make her touch it, too; but if Helen came in her grey frock, slipping among the trees like silver light, he knew she would bring healing to his home and to ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... and wise God would not have framed our bodies with such exquisite care only to corrupt our souls,—that physical beauty, being created in such profuse abundance around us, and we being possessed with such a longing for it, must have its uses, its legitimate sphere of exercise. Even the poor, shrouded nun, as she walks the convent garden, cannot help asking herself why, if the crimson velvet of the rose was made by God, all colors except black and white are sinful for her; ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... stood there, humiliated, yet defiant of him and of the world, Sommers remembered the first time he had seen her that night at the hospital. He read her, somehow, extraordinarily well; he knew the misery, the longing, the anger, the hate, the stubborn power to fight. Her deep eyes glanced at him frankly, willing to be read by this stranger out of the multitude of men. They had no more need of words now than at that first moment in the operating room at St. Isidore's. They were man and woman, in the ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... his shoulder. Not even to my husband could I confess just then how the touch of the naked, rigid little body of that other woman's child had sent a thrill of longing through me for a baby's hands ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... see her man's face brighten, and take on a look of longing at this suggestion; and it seemed to her that the bird she heard in the night was calling in his ears now. Her eyes went blind ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... much I was longing for you, just as you are now, Brandon, and in the midst of it all you came. It is like a fairy story, and oh, I shall always believe ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... Typographical errors in two Scriptural quotations have been corrected: In L 21 note 10, I have changed "Quae praeparavit Deus iis qui" to "Quae praeparavit Deus his qui;" and in L 29 note 12, I have changed "As the longing of the heart" to "As the longing of ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... see how we could return it and I didn't want the Polydore web woven any tighter. To think of Silvia's receiving from them what it had been my longing to give her! But as I was to learn later, she was to acquire much more than a piano ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... Anderson!" and so on. No,—I may forget the playfellows of my childhood, my college classmates, my professional associates, my comrades in arms, but I will remember you and your benedictions until I cease to breathe! Farewell, honest hearts, longing to be free! and may the kind Providence which for-gets not the sparrow shelter ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... might be, for him, a risky and perhaps dangerous experience, he did not as yet realize. When he was with her, and busy with Fair Harbor affairs, he could forget the slowness with which his crippled legs were mending, and the increasing longing—sometimes approaching desperation—for the quarter deck of his own ship and the ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... weep for you, when I know that you have the knowledge—perhaps the guilt of this heinous crime locked up in your heart, and will not reveal it. Have compassion, then, on the widow—enable her friends to restore her child to her longing arms; purge yourself of this great guilt, and you may believe me, that even in a temporal point of view it will be the best rewarded action you ever performed; but this is little—the darkness that is over your heart will ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... longing of Kingsley's tenderly regretful words and Nevin's wistful setting, while the violin sang a ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... early we rowed away again, full of longing, but not of hope, of reaching one or other of the Guacharo caves. Keeping along under the lee of the island, we crossed the 'Umbrella Mouth,' between it and Huevos, or Egg Island. On our right were the islands; on our left the shoreless gulf; and ahead, the great mountain of the mainland, ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... the sun from above, its thousandfold reflection from the waves, the sea-water that fell and dried upon me, caking my very lips with salt, combined to make my throat burn and my brain ache. The sight of the trees so near at hand had almost made me sick with longing; but the current had soon carried me past the point; and, as the next reach of sea opened out, I beheld a sight that changed ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... out of the night; A lurch to the left, a wrench to the right, Hands grim-gripping and teeth clenched tight, Eyes that glare through the dark. "Priscilla, you're doing me proud this day; Hospital's only a league away, And, honey, I'm longing to hit the hay, So hurry, old girl. . . ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... the jests and unwritten ballads of the populace, yet his early acquaintance with them must have lingered in the young Prince's mind, acquiring additional zest from the prepossessions of exile and the longing for home. And when the polished singer of the King's "Quhair" found himself again in his native land he seems to have burst forth with the most genuine impulse into the broad fun, rustical and natural and racy of the soil, which perhaps was more congenial ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... his hand; and Ethel, leaning against his chair, could not hinder herself from a shudder at the longing those words seemed to convey. He felt her movement, and put his arm round her, saying, 'No, Ethel, do not think I envy them. I might have done so once—I had not then learnt the meaning of the discipline of being without her—no, ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... I should have heard it." And yet she was silent. She felt at the moment that the time had come,—the only possible time. But she let the moment pass by. Though she was ever thinking of her secret, and ever wishing that she could tell it, longing that it had been told, she could not bear that it should be surprised from her in this way. "I think it nicer as it is," he added as ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... Father through the Son, because there is no other Way. We have seen the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, the very Image of His Substance. Divine Love, mighty to save, full of redemptive power, longing for the soul with infinite affection—in fine, Fatherhood—this is what constitutes {21} religion's ultimate; and this revelation we have in the Incarnate Son, in whom the Spirit dwelt without measure—who, i.e., stands forth as the supreme and unparalleled illustration ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... two or three verses which it is worth while to compare with a poem of Anne's called 'Home.' Emily was sixteen at the time of writing; Anne about twenty-one or twenty-two. Both sisters take for their motive the exile's longing thought of home. Emily's lines are full of faults, but they have the indefinable quality—here, no doubt, only in the bud, only as a matter of promise—which Anne's are entirely without. From the twilight schoolroom at Roehead, Emily turns ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... Longing already to search in and round The heavenly forest, dense and living green, Which to the eyes ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... mind your promise to stand by till twelve o'clock," he said. "It's the only thing that keeps me going, for I have a powerful longing to remove my mask in defiance of orders. It feels like a porous plaster. I shall only hold out till midnight with your ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... | [59] On the Spenserian stanza see especially Corson, pp. 87 | | ff. Lowell's characterization of Spenser's use of it is | | interesting: "In the alexandrine, the melody of one stanza | | seems forever longing and feeling forward after that which | | is to follow.... In all this there is soothingness, indeed, | | but no slumberous monotony; for Spenser was no mere metrist, | | but a great composer. By the variety of his pauses—now at | | the close of the first or second foot, now of ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... about it, and he was of the opinion that the Indian girl was getting homesick, that her wild nature was asserting itself, and that she was experiencing a longing to be among her own people again, and free from the conventions of ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... soldiers in the trenches upon the far-flung battle lines pause to listen, look to see as for a moment dies away the cannonade? Do not even the sailors of war and trade peer across the tossing waters of the great deep, longing for a truce of God if only for an hour upon ...
— A Little Book for Christmas • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... had thought of marriage; he could scarcely have done otherwise; but he had thought of it as an abstract condition pertaining to himself only in a general way as it pertains to all mankind. He had never seen himself plainly enough in his fancy as a lover and husband to have a pang of regret or longing. He had been really contented as he was. He had a powerful mind, and the exercising of that held in restraint the purely physical which might have precipitated matters. Some men advance, the soul pushing the body with more or less effort; ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... fire." He was, as yet, ignorant of the tender bond of gratitude fast ripening into Love. For, Love, that strange plant, rooted in the human heart, thrives in absence, and, watered by the tears of sorrow and adversity, fills the longing and faithful heart, in days of absence, with its flowers of rarest fragrance and blossoms of unfading beauty. Nadine Johnstone, speeding on over sapphire seas, had already conquered the tender secret ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... meanest. In theology the interval is small indeed between Aristotle and a child, between Archimedes and a naked savage. It is not strange, therefore, that wise men, weary of investigation, tormented by uncertainty, longing to believe something, and yet seeing objections to every thing, should submit themselves absolutely to teachers who, with firm and undoubting faith, lay claim to a supernatural commission. Thus we frequently see inquisitive and restless spirits take refuge from their ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and it was all real. My suffering was horrible; my tears were flowing, scorching and bitter. I implored Hippolyte for the love which was killing me, and my arms stretched out to Mounet-Sully were the arms of Phedre writhing in the cruel longing for his ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... possession of a letter from Mr. Peter Lytton,—for a fortnight forgotten,—presented himself at Mistress Fawcett's door, and was admitted. The first call was brief and perfunctory, but he came the next day and the next. Rachael, surprised, but little interested, and longing for her next ball, strummed the harp at her mother's command and received his compliments with indifference. A week after his first call Mary Fawcett drove into town and spent an hour with the Governor. He told her that Levine had brought him a personal letter from the Governor of ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton |
