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verb
Yearn  v. i.  To be pained or distressed; to grieve; to mourn. (Obs.) "Falstaff he is dead, and we must yearn therefore."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Yearn" Quotes from Famous Books



... live according to untrammeled common sense, the unconquerable efficiency of good will. We grant ourselves the complete and selfish pleasure of loving others better than ourselves. How odd it seems, how unnaturally happy we are! We feel there must be some mistake, and rather yearn for the familiar frictions and distresses. Just for a few hours we "purge out of every heart the lurking grudge." We know then that hatred is a form of illness; that suspicion and pride are only fear; that the rascally ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley

... religionists of a more ecstatic doctrine. Her childhood was very unhappy; the household seems to have been unamiable, and she was treated with none of that tenderness and sympathy for which firm and defiant natures are apt to yearn as strongly as others that get the credit of greater sensibility. With that singular impulse to suicide which is frequent among children, though rarer with girls than boys, she went one day into the kitchen for the carving-knife, that she might cut her throat; luckily ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 6: Harriet Martineau • John Morley

... exaggerating my own sagacity if I say that I should begin to suspect the doctor if on entering my room he flung his legs and arms about, crying wildly, "Health! Health! priceless gift of Nature! I possess it! I overflow with it! I yearn to impart it! Oh, the sacred rapture of imparting health!" In that case I should suspect him of being rather in a position to receive ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton

... myself choking when I think of these poor people who yearn for salvation. They are crying for water—for living water—but there is no one who ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg

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

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

... might occur to give him another thrill such as those that had passed. For while Max Hastings might be said to be a resolute lad, about as fearless as the ordinary boy of his years, perhaps more so, still he did not yearn for excitement. ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie

... presence! may your wellcome home Retayne proportion with those worthye deeds Whereby y'ave yearn'd all wellcome. ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III • Various

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

... surprise—he had quite forgotten Gotzkowsky. "Ah! are you still there? and you prophesy me victory? Well, that will be as good to me as the Leipsic money. Go back home, and tell the Leipsigers to hurry with the money. And hark ye! when you get to Potsdam, greet the Correggio, and tell him I yearn for him as a lover ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach

... had loved the child from the moment the big lustrous gray eyes opened, on the day of her sudden illness at Outside Inn, and looked confidingly up into hers. For the first time in her life her maternal ardor—the instinct which made her yearn to nourish and minister to a race—had concentrated on a single human being. Sheila, hungry for mothering, had turned to her with the simplicity of the people among whom she had been brought up, taking her sympathetic response as a matter ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley

... made haste; for his bowels did yearn upon his brother: and he sought where to weep; and he entered into ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge

... knight—to me is given Such hope, I know not fear; I yearn to breathe the airs of heaven That often meet me here. I muse on joy that will not cease, Pure spaces cloth'd in living beams, Pure lilies of eternal peace, Whose odours haunt my dreams; And, stricken ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various

... a good maid," said Nathan, surveying her with, an interest that became mournful as he spoke. "When thee goes back to thee father's house, thee will find them that will gladden at thee coming; and hearts will yearn with joy over thee young and lovely looks. Thee will smile upon them, and they will be happy. Such," he added, with deep emotion, "such might have been my fate, had the Injun axe spared me but a single child. But it is not ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird

... at Sierra Leone the Mohammedan is a mere passing sensation. You neither feel a burning desire to laugh with, or at him, as in the case of the country folks, nor do you wish to punch his head, and split his coat up his back—things you yearn to do to that perfect flower of Sierra Leone culture, who yells your bald name across the street at you, condescendingly informs you that you can go and get letters that are waiting for you, while he smokes his cigar and lolls in the shade, ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

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

... a man; but when that same child, loud-voiced, insistent, unblushingly eager for praise, but thin-skinned as the most morbid of hobbledehoys, stands about all your ways telling you the same story in the same voice, you begin to yearn for something made and finished—say Egypt and a completely dead mummy. It is neither seemly nor safe to hint that the government of the largest city in the States is a despotism of the alien by the alien ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling

... do?" exclaimed the Tsar in despair. "I do not wish to torture, to flog, to corrupt, to kill any one! I only want the welfare of all. Just as I yearn for happiness myself, so I want the world to be happy as well. Am I actually responsible for everything that is done in my name? What can I do? What am I to do to rid myself of such a responsibility? What can I do? I do not admit that the responsibility for all this ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy

... winning ways, 5 Which make me for thy presence yearn, Call'd us to pet thee or to praise, Dear little friend! at ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold

... is over! over! For the winds and the waters surcease; Ah, few were the days of the rover That smiled in the beauty of peace, And distant and dim was the omen That hinted redress or release! From the ravage of life, and its riot, What marvel I yearn for the quiet Which bides in the harbor at last,— For the lights, with their welcoming quiver That throb through the sanctified river, Which girdle the harbor at last, ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various

... whose ways are inscrutable, blessed be thy name, for out of darkness thou hast brought light, and turned the misdeeds of the guilty upon themselves, and made the promptings of nature yearn in the heart of the orphan boy towards the father of ...
— Edward Barnett; a Neglected Child of South Carolina, Who Rose to Be a Peer of Great Britain,—and the Stormy Life of His Grandfather, Captain Williams • Tobias Aconite

... for it? Is this what it meant to be "one with God"? Then, if the great, illimitable heart of God thus yearns for the love of his creatures, the greater the heart of a human being, the more must he yearn for a fulness of love, a completion of the cycle of bonds and joys for which he was made. From these simple words of a loving woman's heart had flashed a great light into Mercy's comprehension of God. She was silent for some moments; ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson

... and watch and yearn For news of "Stonewall's" band! Ah! widow, read with eyes that burn That ring upon thy hand. Ah! wife, sew on, pray on, hope on! Thy life shall not be all forlorn; The foe had better ne'er been born ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester

... there with the heartless behavior when the time comes, sailin' away with a gay laugh and leavin' her blue eyed young lobster man to yearn and mourn there on his smelly little island. Anyway, that's how she ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford

... failing to understand the passage, follows Christ in reading desiderant (i.e. pisces). To paraphrase the sense is this "But say my opponents, the Stoics and Antiocheans, we desire no better senses than we have." Well you are like the mole, which does not yearn for the light because it does not know what light is. Of course all the ancients thought the mole blind. A glance will show the insipidity of the sense given by Halm's reading. Quererer cum deo: would enter into an altercation with the god. ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... have a higher aim, a greater mission. What is a kingdom? What are wealth and power? What crown and scepter? They are transient things, I yearn for ...
— The Buddha - A Drama in Five Acts and Four Interludes • Paul Carus

... (Hark! how the sweet things sigh For they have a voice like ours), 'The breath of the blind girl closes The leaves of the saddening roses— We are tender, we sons of light, We shrink from this child of night; From the grasp of the blind girl free us— We yearn for the eyes that see us— We are for night too gay, In your eyes we behold the day— O buy—O buy ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

... house for ever, but the Son abideth ever. Si ergo Filius liberavit, vere liberi eritis." "If the Son should make you free, then are ye free indeed." And for the first time was the true liberty of the redeemed soul comprehensibly proclaimed to the young spirit that had begun to yearn for something beyond the outside. Light began to shine through the outward ordinances; the Church; the world, life, and death, were revealed as something absolutely new; a redeeming, cleansing, sanctifying power was made ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge

... naught that I will not do," saith she. (The jade! a had a way with her to 'a' made Bess herself yearn for matrimony.) But I was stanch; I was ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives

... it is thus with mermaids: one who beholds them must needs find them more beautiful than any one else, and the mermaid's blood being mixed with the water that bathed the shores, her beauty was transferred to both. All who saw them must love them and yearn for them. This was their legacy from ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof

... ready to take advantage of the situation. Yet under an old patron, these same men would never dare to mutiny or assert themselves. That there were possible breakers ahead for this cowman there was no doubt; for every day that those Mexicans traveled into a strange country, their Aztec blood would yearn for their Southern home. And since the unforeseen could not be guarded against, at the first opportunity I warned the stranger that it was altogether too soon to shout. To his anxious inquiries I replied that his very presence with the ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams

... exalting human reason. My poor lost flock will see the change, and I fear, feel it too. Besides, absence is a temporary death. Now I am gone from them, they will forget my frailties and infirmities, and dwell on what little good might have been in me, and, perhaps, yearn towards me. ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... op'd my eyes, before me view'd, and saw Shadows with garments dark as was the rock; And when we pass'd a little forth, I heard A crying, "Blessed Mary! pray for us, Michael and Peter! all ye saintly host!" I do not think there walks on earth this day Man so remorseless, that he hath not yearn'd With pity at the sight that next I saw. Mine eyes a load of sorrow teemed, when now I stood so near them, that their semblances Came clearly to my view. Of sackcloth vile Their cov'ring seem'd; and on his shoulder one Did stay another, leaning, and all lean'd ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

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

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

... for society. The human heart, properly organised, seeks communion with the human heart; and the mind, especially when refined and polished by education, loves the intercourse of social life, and, when deprived of it, will always yearn ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid

... penknives with white handles, A bunch of quills, and pound of candles, A lexicon compiled by COLE, A pewter spoon, and earthen bowl, A hammer, and two homespun towels, For which I yearn with tender bowels, Since I no longer can control them, I leave to those sly lads ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... hear the rattle of the billiard-balls, or the voice of the croupier calling the main, as I sat by my quiet fireside? Should I not yearn for the glitter and confusion of West-end dancing-rooms, or the mad excitement of the ring, while my innocent young wife was sitting by my side and asking me to look at the blue eyes of ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon

... has any "bowels of compassion" it is fit that they should yearn now. This frothy and frenzied Republic is at that ebb where national "extreme unction" must be administered speedily, else the sufferer will pass away from the theatre of sublunary things without the benefit of clergy. I feel ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various

... desire to be embroiled in such an undignified struggle as you suggest," he told her loftily. "But neither do I yearn to spend the day here. I'm hungry. I wonder if our absent host ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton

... that ever the Lord did thus yearn in his bowels for and after any self-righteous man? No, no; they are the publicans and harlots, idolaters and Jerusalem sinners, for whom his bowels thus yearn and tumble about within him: for, alas! poor worms, they ...
— The Jerusalem Sinner Saved • John Bunyan

... spirits yearn for thee, Where'er our changeful lot is cast; Glad, when thy gracious smile we see, Blest, when our ...
— The Otterbein Hymnal - For Use in Public and Social Worship • Edmund S. Lorenz

... was the shock that Honora moved about mechanically, hardly able to think. She knew that in time she should pardon her boy; but she could not yearn to do so till she had seen him repent. He had sinned too deeply against others to be taken home at once to her heart, even though she grieved over him with deep, loving pity, and sought to find the original germs of error rather in ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... after all, this tangle of subdued turbulences? Let no one suppose that it is an easy thing to bear, the relentlessly lucid understanding that I then first exercised; or that, in its first enfranchisement, the timid vision does not yearn for ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various

... life. I have lived in society here all my days, and have found its atmosphere most worthless, most selfish, most impure. I want to be free—to shake the dust of London off my feet, and enter on a life made holy by love. You can respond to such an aspiration: you, too, must yearn for a pure and free life. It is within our reach: you have but to stretch out your hand. Say something to me. ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw

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

... innermost soul am I shaken, Helplessly shaken and tossed, And of thy tyrannous yearnings so utterly taken, My lips, unsatisfied, thirst; Mine eyes are accurst With longings for visions that far in the night are forsaken; And mine ears, in listening lost, Yearn, yearn for the note of a chord that will ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein

... time when desire to sleep so loads you down as in the noon heat after a long march. You very often can't sleep then because of the very heat that makes you drowsy; but the glare has been so trying to your eyes that you yearn to shut them, and inertia sits on your spine and shoulders like ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy

... see what a lot of trouble these deriders of other people's popularity will often take to advertise themselves, and how they yearn for that popular acclaim they so ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

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

... And mere men's love too vile To meet it, or with eyes that worship dims Read o'er the little limbs, Read all the book of all their beauties o'er, Rejoice, revere, adore, Bow down and worship each delight in turn, Laugh, wonder, yield, and yearn. But when our trembling kisses dare, yet dread, Even to draw nigh its head, And touch, and scarce with touch or breath surprise Its mild miraculous eyes Out of their viewless vision—O, what then, What may be said of men? What ...
— Studies in Song, A Century of Roundels, Sonnets on English Dramatic Poets, The Heptalogia, Etc - From Swinburne's Poems Volume V. • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... asked Lord Bidborough. "I enjoy Huckleberry Finn as much now as I did when I was twelve; and I often yearn after the books I had as a boy and never see now. I used to lie on my face poring over them. The Clipper of the Clouds, and Sir Ludar, and a fairy story called Rigmarole in Search of a Soul, which, I remember, was quite beautiful, but ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)

... much, that one must needs look through other people's eyes, and feels as if he were seeing a picture rather than a reality. Man has, in short, entire possession of Nature here, and I should think young men might sometimes yearn for a fresher draught. But an ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

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

... as I pass them in the street— Me, whom sufficient fortune, moderate fame, Have made completely happy in their sight. Well, I am no barbarian: let them have The bliss of envying.... But I am sick With the hour's emptiness; and great desire Fills me for those high beauties which my dreams Yearn ever toward. I am weary; I would go Out to some ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke

... near when men Think much to let my horses draw me home, And new lands welcome me upon their beach, Loving me for my fame. That is the truth Of what I wish, nay, yearn for. Shall I lie? Pretend to seek obscurity—to sing In hope of disregard? A vile pretence! And blasphemy besides. For what is fame But the benignant strength of One, transformed To joy of Many? Tributes, plaudits come As necessary breathing ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke

... Avail: I am fain for to water the plain. Downward the voices of Duty call— Downward, to toil and be mixed with the main. The dry fields burn, and the mills are to turn, And a myriad flowers mortally yearn, And the lordly main from beyond the plain Calls o'er the hills of Habersham, Calls through the ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various

... to a close Your fifty-six years on the road? Do you yearn, after all, for repose, Who with zeal half-a-century glowed? The Muse makes her moan at your loss, And Sentiment silently sobs. Ah! Time, friend, will play pitch-and-toss With all of us, even ...
— Punch, Or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, Feb. 13, 1892 • Various

... eventually return to my beloved France," she remarked sadly, "I anticipate many a heartache to see the terrible condition of the fair country that has been turned into a howling wilderness by the vandal German armies. Ah! I almost dread the day, much as I yearn to tread my native ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson

... link which binds all peoples together. All men are equally creatures of sorrow and desire, of hope and fear. All long to recover some lost harmony with the great order of things, and to feel themselves approved and blessed by the Author of the universe. All know what suffering is, and yearn for happiness. All know what sin is, and ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... his name it is as though I gave him one of those caressing touches for which my fingers yearn and quiver.... ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis

... love and desire, which we lay to heart and live by, is at once the truest expression of our nature and the most potent agency in developing its powers. Now, in youth we form the ideals which we labor to body forth in our lives. What in these growing days we yearn for with all our being, is heaped upon us in old age. All important, therefore, is the choice of an ideal; for this more than rules or precepts will determine what we are to become. The love of the best is twin-born with the soul. What is the best? What ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding

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

... somewhat longer their ideal identity, suffer violence at the hands of the others, already mastered by decay and willing to be self-destructive. Thus a man whose physiological complexion involves more poignant emotion than his ideas can absorb—one who is sentimental—will yearn for new objects that may explain, embody, and focus his dumb feelings; and these objects, if art can produce them, will relieve and glorify those feelings in the act of expressing them. Catharsis ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... difference," he returned pithily; "a gun is a good enough fellow to deserve Christian burial. Carew, do you ever yearn for the fleshpots?" ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller

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

... live—everything which constitutes their happiness, sincere sorrow, strength, tears, and smiles, is barred from me. Morally I have nothing to live on—like a beggar. I have no one to live for—like an orphan. I am not permitted to yearn for a noble and quiet life; I may only nurture myself with grief and defend myself with faded, dead flowers, and remembrances of former pure, honest, and loving Jadwinia. Ah! again I break my promise, our agreement. I must ...
— So Runs the World • Henryk Sienkiewicz,

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

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

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

... which we leaned is but a broken reed that has no pith in it, and no possibility of support. So far as it goes, all trust is blessed, but the most blessed is simple reliance upon, and aspiration after, Jesus Christ. Ever to yearn for Him, not with the yearning of those who have no possession, but with that of those who, having a little, desire to have more, is to bring into our lives the one solid and sufficient good without which there is no gladness, and with which there can be no unmingled sorrow, wrapping the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... plains are richly green, Her azure skies of dazzling sheen, Her rivers vast, her forests grand. Her bowers brilliant,—but the land, Though dear to countless eyes it be, And fair to mine, hath not for me The charm ineffable of home; For still I yearn to see the foam Of wild waves on thy pebbled shore, Dear Albion! to ascend once more Thy snow-white cliffs; to hear again The murmur of thy circling main— To stroll down each romantic dale Beloved in boyhood—to inhale Fresh life on green ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson

... secret desire of Ian to wear this suit, and he rather felt that Thora or his mother-in-law should ask him to do so. For he knew that its whiteness and gilt, and tiny knots of ribbon, gave to the wearer that military air, which all men yearn a little after. He wished to wear it on his wedding day but Thora had not thought of it, neither had Sunna. However, on the 29th, Rahal, that kind, wise woman, asked him as a special favour, to wear his medical uniform. She said, "the townsfolk would be so ...
— An Orkney Maid • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... business. By a very natural psychological paradox, there seems to be a fascination about commerce and finance for many young people who have little aptitude for these vocations. Many people, feeling their deficiencies, yearn to convince themselves and others that they are not deficient. It is only another phase of the fatality with which a Venus longs to be a Diana and a Minerva a Psyche. Thousands enter business who have no commercial or financial ability. They cannot know the requirements; they cannot understand ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb

... officers, in particular, would have examined the low-power overdrive tables, and would have studied longingly the reports of Bors's use of low-power overdrive against an enemy squadron off Meriden. They would yearn passionately to have their ships equipped with apparatus by which it could vanish from a place where it was a target to reappear elsewhere, unharmed, and make the enemy its target. Two fleets equipped with ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... monkey—dancing obediently in the place where she was put down, not asking about the before or after, just dutifully being gay. That monkey did not know the great story about monkeys; doubtless he was even too degraded by clowns to yearn for a tree. He only danced at the end of the string the ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell

... Dunipace were on Hosea 14:1, "O Israel, return unto the Lord thy God;" and Jeremiah 8:20, "Harvest is past." In the evening he writes, "Lord, I feel bowed down because of the little I have done for them which Thou mightest have blessed! My bowels yearn over them, and all the more that I have done so little. Indeed, I might have done ten times as much as I have done. I might have been in every house; I might have spoken always as a minister. Lord, canst ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar

... years since 1953 have been a period of profound change. The human problems in the world grow more acute hour by hour; yet new gains in science and technology continually extend the promise of a better life. People yearn to be free, to govern themselves; yet a third of the people of the world have no freedom, do not govern themselves. The world recognizes the catastrophic nature of nuclear war; yet it sees the wondrous potential of ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Dwight D. Eisenhower • Dwight D. Eisenhower

... dreadful. Johanna saw comfort through it all. Vague hopes arose in Hilary also; visions of the poor sinner sitting "clothed and in his right mind," contrite and humbled; comforted by them all, with the inexpressible tenderness with which we yearn over one who "was dead and is alive again, was lost, and is found;" helped by them all in the way that women—some women especially, and these were of them—seem formed to help the erring and unfortunate; for, erring as he was, ...
— Mistress and Maid • Dinah Craik (aka: Miss Mulock)

... treatment of these ideas is purely, broadly human, on a level with that of the sculpture of Phidias. Titian's "Virgin Received into Heaven," soaring midway between the archangel who descends to crown her and the apostles who yearn to follow her, is far less a Madonna Assunta than the apotheosis of humanity conceived as a radiant mother. Throughout the picture there is nothing ascetic, nothing mystic, nothing devotional. Nor did the art of the Renaissance stop here. It went further, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

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

... upon the fire, and altogether the odours were so mixed and appetising, that Wilson began to yearn for food to break his fast, which had lasted since dinner the day before. If the servants had known this, they would have willingly given him meat and bread in abundance; but they were like the rest of ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell

... said, deep anxiety evident in the tone of his soft speech, "we have remained in solemn prayer ever since the hour of thy departure, and, while we doubt not our petitions have found favor of both Mother and Child, yet the flesh sorroweth, and we yearn greatly to know all from thine own lips as to the fortunes of this day. Tell us, I beg thee, hast thou discovered aught of comfort or ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish

... adopted by literary men, and several parties having responded who were no more essentially saturated with literature than I am, I now take my pen in hand to reveal the true inwardness of my literary life, so that boys, who may yearn to follow in my footsteps and wear a laurel wreath the year round in place of a hat, may know what the personal habits of ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye

... sacrifice my Indian squaw, and my little half-bred son, for all the comforts and pleasures of civilized life—no, not even to be restored to the parents I still love so dearly, and the brother and sister who played with me in childhood. But still I yearn to look upon their faces again, and to hear once more their words of love. I well know how they have all mourned for me: and I know how, even after so many years have passed, they would rejoice at ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb

... me, I'll tell you something. Wonders will never cease. If you had a brother, Burnet, whom you had not seen for thirty-five years, would not your heart yearn towards him? Yes, even a letter from his lawyer would fill your ...
— Littlebourne Lock • F. Bayford Harrison

... story. I saw that Somerled desired me to speak, but I threw the responsibility on him. I wanted to know how he would tell the story; but I might have guessed that he would be as laconic, as non-committal as possible, and that, much as he might yearn to do so, he ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... the lamp should burn, Watching the weary spindle twist and turn, Or o'er the web hold back her tears and yearn: O winter, O ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris

... always a blessing," returned Emma modestly. "To-night I happened to be one in disguise. But I yearn to cast aside my sable robes of prophesy and emerge from my room in gala garments. Lead me to my trunk, J. Elfreda. The night is yet young and I'm anxious to make the ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower

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

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

... dwell in peace. With light And quicken'd footsteps thitherward I tend, Remembering thee, O green and silent dell! And grateful, that by nature's quietness And solitary musings, all my heart Is soften'd, and made worthy to indulge Love, and the thoughts that yearn for human kind. ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman

... course, it was all the same to me. I had never counted upon these social ties to any extent, and would not feel their loss acutely but—these poor human hearts of ours—how they will yearn for other human sympathies and regards? I could have been resigned to leave my home and early associations if I might take away with me the soothing conviction that my absence left a void somewhere, anywhere, that would always be a void until I came back to fill ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"

... all there was one longing, one yearning for all that she had lost, all she had wantonly thrown away. Suffering Creek, with its poverty-stricken home on the dumps, suggested paradise to her now. She yearned as only a mother can yearn for the warm caresses of her children. She longed for the honest love of the little man whom, in the days of her arrogant womanhood, she had so mercilessly despised. All his patient kindliness came back to her ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum

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

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

... controlled himself, he knew not why, save that he was possessed by a nebulous awareness that Skipper must be considered as a god should be considered, and that this was no time to obtrude himself on Skipper. His heart was torn with desire, although he made no sound, and he continued only to yearn over the companion combing and to listen to the faint sounds of ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London

... the open road I have a springtime longing; I yearn to leave my town abode, the jostling and the thronging, and tread again the quiet lanes, among the woodland creatures; where birds are singing joyous strains to beat the music teachers. Afar from honks of motor cars, ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason

... but a kiss from Regina's lips. Of course everybody is astounded at his insolence, and the angry {271} Burgomaster bids him leave the town at once, without his money. But Hunold, nothing daunted, begins to sing so beautifully that the hearts of all the women yearn towards him, he continues still more passionately, addressing himself directly to Regina, and never stops, till the maiden, carried away by a passion unconquerable, offers her lips for a kiss, swearing to be his ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley

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

... flashy sophistications of the Parisian life to which Garnett's trade introduced him, the American sage's conversation had the crisp and homely flavor of a native dish—one of the domestic compounds for which the exiled palate is supposed to yearn. It was a mark of the old man's impersonality that, in spite of the interest he inspired, Garnett had never got beyond idly wondering who he might be, where he lived, and what his occupations were. He was presumably a bachelor—a man of family ties, however relaxed, though he might have ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton

... proportion as they become enlightened and civilized, that men feel the desire and discover the means of extending their memorial far beyond their own lifetime. That is the beginning of history, the offspring of noble and useful sentiments, which cause the mind to dwell upon the future, and to yearn for long continuance; sentiments which testify to the superiority of man over all other creatures living upon our earth, which foreshadow the immortality of the soul, and which are warrant for the progress of the human race by ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... football bull-fight now and then to get room for all the particulars of how—according to the display heading—"Rich Woman Fell Down Cellar—Not Hurt." The falling down the cellar is of no interest to us when the woman is not rich, but no rich woman can fall down cellar and we not yearn to know all about it and wish it ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain

... proudest mother's eyelids fill, As dares her gallant boy, And Plymouth Rock and Bunker Hill Yearn to thee, Illinois." ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin

... beauties of Nature, praised by the classical writers, ended by disgusting him and that he could never know contentment save in the society of great men. His nature craved life on the mountain tops of distinction rather than existence in the valley of content. He did not yearn for Tusculum. ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt

... have no little children, you sleep well of nights, the fall of wood-ash does not rouse you, you do not listen when you awake. You do not——" he paused, the last barrier of reserve broken down, the tears standing openly in his eyes—"it is foolish perhaps—you do not yearn, Messer Blondel, to take all you love in your arms, and shelter them and cover them from the horrors that threaten us, the horrors that may fall on us—any night! You do not"—he looked at Baudichon and ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman

... longing In those who onward gaze, Looking with weary patience Towards the coming days. There is a deeper longing, More sad, more strong, more keen: Those know it who look backward, And yearn ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens

... will go the morrow, While for thy voice, thy smile, I vainly yearn; Oh, from fond thought some comfort I will borrow, To wile away the hours till ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various

... and a kind of fiery sweetness. He closed his eyes and lifted his hands in prayer; and the great responsibility of speaking to that multitude of human beings of their most momentous interests evidently so filled and possessed him, that in the prayer he seemed to yearn for strength and the gifts of grace so earnestly—he cried, so as if his heart were bursting, "Help, Lord, or I perish!" that the great congregation, murmuring with sobs, with gasps and sighs, echoed solemnly, as if it had but one voice, ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis

... was not so much hardness as a wounded spirit that made her look so rigid. It might have been better if the return could have been delayed so as to make her yearn after her son, but there was nowhere for him to go, and the coach was already on its way. How strange it was to feel the wonted glow at Clarence's return coupled with a frightful sense of ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge

... little time to think of the strange loneliness of his existence; nor is it probable that he missed that companionship of others of his own age of which, never having had experience in it, he could scarce be expected to regret or yearn for. ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... early day when the light of a good resolve breaks like a halo over the soul, and by its power, seeks to win it from its selfish idols! Earnest and strong is the hopefulness that bids us labour trustingly to become all we yearn to be—all we may be. How tremblingly Mary Clinton leaned upon her Saviour! experience had taught her the weakness of her fluttering heart; sorrow was familiar, yet she prayed not to shrink from it. How clear and vigorous was the mind of Alice—how ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur

... giant. But then you reckon without Bobbie's quality of Penguinity, and without Ruskin's humanness. It is alike impossible to withstand the contagion of Bobbie's Penguinity, and to fancy a genius so great that he does not at times yearn for the common walks and the common talks of his humbler fellow creatures. He may not always know how to achieve them, his own greatness may be a barrier he cannot cross, or his temperament and circumstances may hinder; but be sure that he feels the loss, though he may not ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton

... than anybody; but Sophy could not follow her far beyond her own old rocking-chair. As for her father, she had made him afraid of her, not for his sake, but for her own. Sometimes she would seem, to be fond of him, and the parent's heart would yearn within him as she twined her supple arms about him; and then some look she gave him, some half-articulated expression, would turn his cheek pale and almost make him shiver, and he would say kindly, "Now go, Elsie, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various

... forget them, Ben," said Bonnet, speaking without anger. "The more you talk about my sins the more I long to do them all over again; the more you say about my vanity and pride, the more I yearn to wear my uniform and wave my naked sword. Ay, to bring it down with blood upon its blade. I am very wicked, Greenway; you never would admit it and you do not admit it now, but I am wicked, and ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton

... my pleasure, I yearn not for treasure, Though gold has a power it lends; And I have a notion, To find without motion, The place where ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... we leave forever Sadly from the campus turn; Yet our love shall fail thee never For old Bannister we'll yearn! Bannister, Bannister, hail, ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice

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

... cannot hold me. I yearn for the white, blinding light and breathless lagoons, and all that makes Venice the Queen City ...
— The Parthenon By Way Of Papendrecht - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith

... him lie in wait for her; and so she would come out no more. He prowled about and contrived to fall in with Jacintha; he told her his grief. She assured him the simple fact was their mourning was worn out, and they were ashamed to go abroad in colors. This revelation made his heart yearn ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade

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

... the very different problems of the next sixty years. Of one thing I am, and always have been, convinced—it is not by the State that man can be regenerated, and the terrible woes of this darkened world effectually dealt with. In some, and some very important, respects, I yearn for the impossible revival of the men and the ideas of my first twenty years, which immediately followed the first Reform Act. But I am stepping out upon a ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell



Words linked to "Yearn" :   desire, treasure, die, yen, yearning, hold dear, yearner, long, hanker



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