"Yearning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... scarlet mermaid, combing her hair with her thin fingers, from which the water almost washed the wedding ring. It was—who knew how long, since the pretty bathing-suit had been taken down from the garret nails? What sudden yearning for the wash of waves, and the spring of girlhood, and the consciousness that one is fair to see, had overtaken her? She watched through her hair and her fingers for the love in ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... fingers clutched convulsively upon their hold, while, with the movement, the faintest possible idea of ultimate escape wandered, like a shadow, through my mind—in the next my whole soul was pervaded with a longing to fall; a desire, a yearning, a passion utterly uncontrollable. I let go at once my grasp upon the peg, and, turning half round from the precipice, remained tottering for an instant against its naked face. But now there came a spinning of the brain; a shrill-sounding and phantom voice screamed within my ears; ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... night too very long, the northerly wind, with its biting gusts, was sufficient to penetrate the flesh and to cleave the bones, so that the whole night long he had a narrow escape from being frozen to death; and he was yearning, with intolerable anxiety for the break of day, when he espied an old matron go first and open the door on the East side, and then come in and ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... knew them all, though able to speak only with those sad, wistful eyes that gazed with new yearning affection into the faces ...
— Grandmother Elsie • Martha Finley
... bright moonlight night; the whole yard was a lovely dapple of lights and shadows. Ellen had a vivid perception of the beauty of it all, and also that unrest and yearning which comes often to a young girl in moonlight. This beauty and strangeness of familiar scenes under the silver glamour of the moon gave her, as it were, an assurance of other delights and beauties of life besides those which she already knew, and along with the assurance came ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... combination from Merle and held it fair before his yearning eyes; the last rite of a monstrous seduction was achieved. The victim wavered and was ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... flashing on his visor, the boy singled for his rifle;—inciting such fearless rivalry, his fall were the fall of a hundred. Something hindered; the marksman delayed an instant; he would not waste a shot; and watching him, the dim outline, the sweeping sabre, the proud prowess, a strange yearning pity seized Ray, and he had half the mind to spare. In the midst of the shock and uproar there came to him a pulse of the brain's double action; he seemed long ago to have loved, to have admired, to have gloried in this splendid valor. But with the hint, and the humanity ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... the soft, brown hair, that had, hitherto, been twisted into an awkward knot, into pretty, graceful curls, and it would be hard to believe that the little, slender, sable-clad child, with the serious, brown eyes, that always followed Clemence with looks of love in their yearning, amber depths, could possibly be the same wild, sly, little Ruth Lynn, ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... Amid my yearning anxiety to exert some influence upon the spirit in which our noblest masterpieces were executed, I had to struggle against the profound dissatisfaction I felt with my employment on the ordinary theatre repertoire. ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... tide far out. He could never have done this if there had not been between them the accidental revelation of that night at Monkland; nor even then perhaps had he not felt in this young sister of his the warmth of life for which he was yearning. In such a matter as love Barbara was the elder of these two. For, besides the motherly knowledge of the heart peculiar to most women, she had the inherent woman-of-the-worldliness to be expected of a daughter of Lord and Lady Valleys. If she ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... beautiful than all the maidens who look at themselves in the Nile. Thy hair is blacker than the feathers of a raven, thy eyes have a milder glance than the eyes of a deer which is yearning for its fawn. Thy stature is the stature of a palm, and the lotus envies thee thy charm. Thy bosoms are like grape clusters with the juice of which kings ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... to call Mrs. Wharton's fine novel narrow. Tendencies, philosophies, irrepressible outbursts would have served as their protagonists, where hers are dwellers in Fifth Avenue or Waverly Place—a cosmopolitan astray, a dowager, a clubman yearning for intellectual sympathy. ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... certainly hope I'm not one of that lot," said Toby, between his set teeth, since his heart had long been yearning for a chance to shine on the gridiron as a particular star, to hear the roar of plaudits from the vast crowd assembled, when fortune allowed him to make some sensational play that would advance his side closer ...
— Jack Winters' Campmates • Mark Overton
... demons, of the sinister brood of doubts and fears and woes, and win their way back again into the bosom of God. He was the simple, heart-whole believer, the poor little man lost in the shambles, shaken and wounded by the "terrible doubt of appearances" and by the cruelty of things, yearning to cry his despair and loneliness and grief to the ears of the God of his childhood, and battling through long vigils for trust and belief and reconciliation. Again and again his music re-echoes the cry, "I will ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... ring of pain in the voice, and the look of unrest had given place to one of intense yearning. Edith's tears fell fast as she laid her head down on the pillow beside her little sister and pressed warm kisses ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... known that this old creature was an object of any other feeling rather than fear. Pale it was, that face that was over him, and wrinkled, and emaciated; but there was upon it a softened expression—an expression of yearning and of longing. That which at a distance had seemed to his frightened fancy a hungry, ghoulish look, was now nothing more than the earnest, fixed gaze of a love that longed to be satisfied—a gaze like that of a bereaved mother who sees some one who reminds ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... said she. Then added, with a yearning accent, "I wish I were older or had more experience. I should not feel so helpless. But the gratitude I owe him will give me strength when I need it most. Only I wish the suffering might be mine ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... floated down from some unseen place, in varying strains of divine music broken by many pauses, and running through every phase of jubilation, sorrow, and pain. It ended in a low wail of unutterable sadness, a pleading, yearning cry of anguish, which seemed to call on God Himself to hear. When it was over, and all was hushed around, the world seemed to ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... tears had set on fire; and the sombre peace of the sky sank into us. We were both filled with the peculiar happiness that comes after a painful confession, a happiness whose source is a sense of security, a joy that seems yearning to cover us with its wings for one ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... the physical yearning for such comforts, a considerable section of intelligent and virtuous women insist on picturing to themselves that the reign of physical force is over, or as good as over; that distinctions based upon physical and intellectual force may be reckoned ...
— The Unexpurgated Case Against Woman Suffrage • Almroth E. Wright
... tongues; they had long passed the time for that, while their bitter familiarity with all these made even a deep revulsion of feeling in their sorely tried souls. Hope, fear, doubt, fatigue, anxious yearning, and vague despair,—all in turn swept through their thoughts, even as the dust of their pitiless pathway swept over their scorched faces, and covered with effacing monotony every vestige of their passage. Mine is no such potent pen, and so let us leave them, bound to their ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... would have thought they were the happiest people in all Corinth, and perhaps they were, though from all usual standards they had little enough to be joyous over. Denny with his poor, crippled body, forever barred from the life his whole soul craved, yearning for books and study with all his heart, but forced to give the last atom of his poor strength in digging in the soil for the bare necessities of life, denied even a pittance to spend for the volumes he loved; Grace Conner marred in spirit and mind, as was ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... their lenses and microscopes make the law of nature? What did the first law-giver think when, seeking for the corner-stone in the social edifice, angered doubtless by some idle importunity, he struck the tables of brass and felt in his bowels the yearning for a law of retaliation? Did he, then, invent justice? And the first who plucked the fruit planted by his neighbor and who fled cowering under his mantle, did he invent shame? And he who, having overtaken that same thief who had robbed him of the product of his toil, forgave him his sin, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... in attention, looking earnestly towards the south, as if she expected some appearance. She resembled the bird that sits among the dewy leaves in the darkness of night, yearning for the coming of the morning, that she may again behold her young, and have light by which to seek the food, that renders her fatigue for them a joy. So stood Beatrice, looking; which caused Dante to watch in the same direction, with the feelings of ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... repeated. Yes: Form is everything. It is the secret of life. Find expression for a sorrow, and it will become dear to you. Find expression for a joy, and you intensify its ecstasy. Do you wish to love? Use Love's Litany, and the words will create the yearning from which the world fancies that they spring. Have you a grief that corrodes your heart? Steep yourself in the Language of grief, learn its utterance from Prince Hamlet and Queen Constance, and you will find that mere expression is a mode of consolation, ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... eyes suddenly fill and threaten to overflow; instead of the grotesquely overdressed and artificial stage favorite he beheld only a yearning woman whose face was softened and glorified as by ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... scenes I had learned so well to conjure up, I explored every nook and corner with the same yearning desire to find a trace of her. I was hardly ever away from "Parva sed Apta." There were Madame Seraskier and Mimsey and the major, and my mother and Gogo, at all times, in and out, and of course as unconscious of my solid presence as though I had never existed. And as I ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... threw a glance over the water as if his soul were yearning for the fancied possibilities of Thompsontown. 'Oh, it's all right enough, so far as she counts,' said he. 'I went straight at it, and put the whole thing afore her. I told her about the house and the two parts to it and what they was for, and she said that was charmin'. And I told her ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... Somehow, with the walk, all soon began to feel better. That first fainting, yearning desire for food was ...
— The High School Boys' Training Hike • H. Irving Hancock
... the letter in his hand during the moment it required for Edith to make ready. The injustice that had been done his blood roused every passion in him. He had himself well in hand, however, and he restrained his yearning to burst forcibly into the police barracks and take his boy to his heart. He determined there should be no possible slip—and he longed ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... many times, notably at the time of the Spanish War, but no keen observer has been deceived for a moment. The recent world crisis, however, seems to have swept aside all hindrances. Perhaps the people, and particularly the women, were unconsciously yearning for a country to love and were ready for a great wave of patriotism to carry them with it. During the week following the declaration of war more national flags were displayed in the South than had been shown in the memory of the oldest resident, for except on public ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson
... What had brought the leader back was the look of heartrending yearning in the gray eyes of a tattered little boy. He smiled, seeing that look swiftly change to one of ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... less dense became the trees and the fewer the cocoa-nut palms. The cocoa-nut palm loves the sea, and the few they had here all had their heads bent in the direction of the lagoon, as if yearning after it. ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... with Vane her heart was fluttering strangely. She had eaten nothing since she had left Twickenham and she was conscious of a weakness, of a trembling of the limbs. That passionate, yearning look in Vane's eyes had aroused an excess of tenderness towards him which overwhelmed her. She suddenly turned dizzy. ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... complete and understanding comradery which one child chum may show another. Almost she said as much of him as she had said of the surrounding mountains, but there was that upon his face which stopped her. It was too plain that friendship was not what he wanted, would not satisfy him. There was a hungry yearning in his eyes, mute, respectful, worshipful, not for comradery, but for a closer tie. She had watched this grow in him within the recent months, with worry and regret. It seemed to her a tragedy that their old friendship should ever ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... tender, yielding nature of his mother, so the coarse pomposity of the dull old man with whom he next came in contact, made him lord over the latter, too. If he had been a prince royal, he could not have been better brought up to think well of himself, and while his mother was yearning after him at home, he was having a number of pleasures and consolations administered to him which made the separation from Amelia a very easy matter to him. In fact, Master George Osborne had every comfort and luxury ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... of their hardships, from the clash of the {338} primordial warfare between the Spirit of the Elements and the Spirit of Man, struck out some sparks of the Divine. There was the courage as dauntless in the teeth of the gale as in the face of death. There was the yearning to know More, to seek it, to follow it over earth's ends, though the quest led to the abyss of a watery grave. What did they want, these fool fellows, following the rushlight of their own desires? That is just it. They didn't know what they sought, but they knew there ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... must be tasted to the utmost, ere entering on the utterances that must give pain; and when she did open the envelope, perhaps the first sensation was disappointment—the lines were not near enough together, the writing not small enough, to satisfy even the first glance of the yearning eye. It was cheerful, it spoke of good health, and full occupation, with the use of books, daily exercise, the chaplain's visits, schooling and attendance at chapel, and of the great pleasure of having heard from her. 'And that good Dr. May inclosed ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... again, but she seemed more interested in other things than himself, as, for instance, the docile William Henry, whose hiding-place he showed, and whose few tricks she made him exhibit to her, and which the gratified Leonidas accepted as a delicate form of flattery to himself. But his yearning, innocent spirit detected a something lacking, which he was too proud to admit even to himself. It was his own fault; he ought to have waited for her, and not gone ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... crowning work of Washington accomplished. Out of the tempests of war, and the tumults of civil commotion, the ages bore their fruit, and the long yearning of humanity was answered. "Rome to America" is the eloquent inscription on one stone contributed to yon colossal shaft—taken from the ancient Temple of Peace that once stood hard by the palace of the Caesars. Uprisen from the sea of revolution, fabricated ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... Birth and desire, satiety and pain, Recurrent yearning that is never stilled, Agony, death, rebirth in other forms, And agony, and desire, and agony. But nowhere saw I happiness or peace Or rest from cravings that like vultures tear The fibres ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... not for me; No more I need of thee; Call back the yearning which would follow where No mortal grief can go; All thine affection throw Around thy living ones; they ...
— Small Means and Great Ends • Edited by Mrs. M. H. Adams
... house to house, trying to conciliate his parishioners, and to recall their wanderings, in nothing changed but the paleness of his countenance and the homeliness of his attire, still reproving with mild authority, and instructing with affectionate solicitude; while his appearance spoke a heart yearning over the sorrows and sins of the kingdom, and habits necessarily restricted to that bare sufficiency which just supports life. The manners of the young ladies were equally mild, uncomplaining, and respectable; the only difference was, that Constantia was pensive and dejected, Isabel ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... the friends that I most long to see again. Indeed, if we analyze that sense of mournful yearning which makes us turn back to childhood, we shall be surprised to find how faint is the longing for our old comrades, nay, we may even discover that no such sentiment exists in us. And why should it, after all? We ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various
... those seen on the majority of human faces, had no trace in it of irony, save for herself, while for all of us kisses seemed to spring from her eyes, which could not look upon those she loved without yearning to bestow upon them passionate caresses. The torments inflicted on her by my great-aunt, the sight of my grandmother's vain entreaties, of her in her weakness conquered before she began, but still making the futile endeavour to wean my grandfather from his liqueur-glass—all ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... a Lord" worth studying if it come from the pencil of a Vandyck. The life of John Sterling, however, has intrinsic interest, even if it be viewed simply as the struggle of a restless aspiring soul, yearning to leave a distinct impress of itself on the spiritual development of humanity, with that fell disease which, with a refinement of torture, heightens the susceptibility and activity of the faculties, while it undermines their creative force. Sterling, moreover, was a man thoroughly ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... actions for its satisfaction affects the animal in one of two ways. Either it has to make more frequent use of some particular member, and this will develop the part and cause it to increase in size; or it must employ new members which will grow in the animal insensibly in response to the inward yearning to satisfy these wants. And this I will presently ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... at the old Wall, who pray each Passover "next year at Jerusalem," and who treasure their little casket of Palestinian earth, which some day will be placed over their shroud, look to Zionism as a "fulfillment" in its literal, Biblical meaning. Although the yearning for such a fulfillment may never be satisfied, it constitutes the impelling force, the prime motive, behind the people who are to settle once again in Canaan, and who are the stuff of which the philosophers' dreams ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... the fine old weatherworn and time-eaten Castle rears its great tower, and challenges a long and satisfying look, especially as this was the only ancient ruin we had seen in the tour, and so there had long been a yearning in the mind for such, just as there is when you travel in Norway or America, until at last the hunger for old things becomes ravenous ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... it myself sometimes—when you get that restless, anxious look—there it is now! Helen, I must have it away. I think it would trouble me in my grave if I left you unhappy," added the earl, regarding her with that expression of yearning tenderness which she had been so used to all her days that she rarely noticed it until the days came when she ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... increases as the square of the distance. The blacker the cloud, the brighter the sun; the thicker the ice, the hotter the flame; the harder the soil, the stronger the ploughshare. Note, too, the undertone of sacrifice and of yearning for the son which may be discerned in the 'householder's' words. The son is his 'dearest treasure,' his mightiest gift, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... shares with the sexual impulse the unceasing yearning, the sentiment of everlastingness, the mystic absorption into the depths of life, the longing for the coalescence of individualities in an eternally blessed union, ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... to tell me that all thy love for thy Folk, and thy yearning hope for its recoverance, was but a painted show. Else why shouldst thou love me the better now that I am become a chieftain, and therefore am more meet to understand thy hope and thy sorrow? Did ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... This incessant yearning and seeking for something new is of recent date, and the key-note of a universal system of revolutions. Every season brings a new style of dress, and what is true of fashion is true of everything else. As it would ill become mothers to leave their family for a time and learn the milliners' ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... She kissed his silky, scented little head, she kissed his chubby little cheek, she kissed his little cold hands. She wanted to squeeze him—to cuddle him, just as she used to squeeze and cuddle her kittens. Something delightful and yearning and brooding seemed to have taken possession of her. She had never felt like ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... of dancing stars. Bright under its limpid waters gleam the towers of many a 'sunken city.' Strong and clear through the night-silence of eager listening, ring the chimes of their far-off bells, the echoes of joyous laughter: and to waiting, yearning ones come, ever and anon, deep glances from gleaming eyes, warm graspings from outstretched hands. And well windeth the river into grim old caves, and even the merriest boat that King Cole ever launched ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... are you going to let the people depart from you without a word to edify them? Can't you see how they are yearning for their God? Make a sacrifice of your own sinful will, and don't let the people go from you like sheep that ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... loon. For him shall the drum be beat, for him be raised the song, For him to the sacred High-place the chaunting people throng, For him the oven smoke as for a speechless beast, And the sire of my Taheia come greedy to the feast." "Rua, be silent, spare me. Taheia closes her ears. Pity my yearning heart, pity my girlish years! Flee from the cruel hands, flee from the knife and coal, Lie hid in the deeps of the woods, Rua, sire ...
— Ballads • Robert Louis Stevenson
... face in profile, at her crown of gold-brown hair, at her singing throat, felt the old ache at the heart, the hunger and the yearning. The nearness of her was a provocation. The sight of her, in her fawn-colored silk corduroy, tormented him with a rush of visions of that form of hers—swimming Mountain Lad, swan- diving through forty feet of air, moving ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... again. The trees still leaned slightly to the right. He tried others, with the same result. Good! That was east! Ever in nature there is the unconscious longing for the life-giving sun, and it was in yearning toward its point of rising that the trees betrayed the secret. Here and there, tufts of shrub-growth pointed through the snow in one direction. That, he knew, should be south, and yet he must prove it. With his snowshoes, he dug busily at the base ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... the desire of the esteem of good men is one of the strongest auxiliary motives to virtue; while a yearning for the Divine approval forms an essential part of true ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... shifting haloes,—admitted faults spoken of as peculiarities of sacred origin,—and the world given to understand that no common rule or measure could apply to such an undoubtedly divine production; and so the hearts of men were to be wrung with pity for his sorrows as the yearning pain of a god, and with anger at his injuries as sacrilege on the sacredness of genius, till they were ready to cast themselves at his ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... for her to continue acting. She had swallowed her aspirations, shedding a few tears. She lived in the hope of his triumph, and, as she had more time to think than he had, she suffered more keenly the agony of yearning unsatisfied. ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... look from Sintram stopped the flow of his words. With a gentle smile, Weigand bowed towards him, and said: "You know now all the deep, unutterably deep, sorrow which preyed upon me. My fear of you, and my yearning love for you, are no longer an enigma to your kind heart. For, dear youth, though you may be like your fearful father, you have also the kind, gentle heart of your mother; and its reflection brightens your pallid, stern ...
— Sintram and His Companions • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... what refuge she gained, I never knew. My father who had received in this scene a great shock, began to fail so rapidly, he demanded my constant care; and though from time to time as I ministered to him and noted with what a yearning persistency he would eye the door and then turn and meet my gaze with a look I could not understand, I caught myself asking whether I had done a deed destined to hang forever about me like a pall; it was not till after his death that the despairing image of the bright young creature to whom ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... city wastes this most valuable moment in the life of the girl, and drives into all sorts of absurd and obscure expressions her love and yearning towards the world in which she forecasts her destiny, so it often drives the boy into gambling and drinking in ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... hard. I get my lessons at home, and recite them to him [Mr. Oliver] at 7 o'clock in the morning.... Shall you want me to be a Minister, Doctor, or Lawyer? A minister I will not be." This is the first dawn of the question of a career, apparently. Yet he still has a yearning to escape the solution. "I am extremely homesick," he says, in one part of the letter; and at the close he gives way to the sentiment entirely: "O how I wish I was again with you, with nothing to do but to go a gunning. But the happiest days of my life are gone.... ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... tigress, friend, Spoiled of her mate and young, and yearning for them. Don't thwart her! Come, thy news! What fear'st thou, man? What more hath she to dread, who reads thy looks, And knows the most has come? Thy news! ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... trance. A great, bright, beautiful world had that night swum into her view, and all her heart was yearning for it with vague and blind aspirations. It might be a world of dreams, but it seemed more real than reality, and when the omnibus passed the corner of Piccadilly Circus she forgot to look at the women ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... thought grew intolerable to him; yet there was not a homely pleasure of those years gone, when the old school-master kept high holiday on Christmas, that he did not recall and linger over with a boyish yearning, now that these things were over forever. He chafed under his weakness. If the day would but come when he could go out and conquer his fate, as a man ought to do! On Christmas eve he would put an end to these torturing taunts, be done with ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... below it lies the poet, With his fair face bare and white, Still with yearning ever turning Azure ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... the night of slavery would end and the dawn of freedom appear. They often talked to each other of the progress of the war and conferred in secret as to what they might do to aid in the struggle. Worn out with long bondage, yearning for the boon of freedom, longing for the sun of liberty to rise, they kept their peace and left the result to God." Mr. Douglass, whom this same Bishop Gaines speaks of very inappropriately as a ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... out on to a balustered balcony; he is an old man, with a grey beard and rusty red face, his features indicating a peculiar blending of expressions, now revealing strength, now weakness, again pride and arrogance, and again pure good-nature; she is a young woman, with a far-away look of yearning sadness and dreamy aspiration not only in her eyes but also in her general bearing. Behind them is an elderly lady and a man holding an open sun-shade. At one end of the balcony is a young man blowing a conch-shaped horn, whilst in front of it a richly decorated gondola, ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... fallen?" He is not asking these questions. The king of the people—the commander of the hosts—might be expected to ask such questions. And David was both these. But David was the father of Absalom, and all things besides gave way to the yearning of the father's heart. "Is the young man Absalom safe?" The first messenger cannot answer: or rather he evades the answer, for he does know the fact. And then quickly comes up the second messenger. And again the king is forgotten, ...
— Is The Young Man Absalom Safe? • David Wright
... not see the fire in his eyes, nor the look of passionate yearning that crossed his face as he stood beside her, or she would scarcely have been surprised when he bent down suddenly and pressed his lips to her forehead. She started to her feet, colouring vividly and angrily. "How dare you, Percival!——" ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... surging souls shall seek; For practice which necessity hath caused Hath built a cunning it were hard to meet; But when, impatient of long smould'ring wrongs, We open take the bolo in our hands, With bellies yearning for the blood of those Who long have winked a proud disdainful eye Beware! I say, beware! for mercy then is dead. Francos: But Quezox, hold! Water thy burning thoughts. 'Twere well to bridle firm such wordy steed, For mayhap there be one with ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)
... luck with Lord Etherington, except for trifling stakes; but his conceit led him to suppose that he now fully understood his play, and, agreeably to the practice of those who have habituated themselves to gambling, he had every now and then felt a yearning to try for his revenge. He wished also to be out of Lord Etherington's debt, feeling galled under a sense of pecuniary obligation, which hindered his speaking his mind to him fully upon the subject of his ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... doing their evening chores. Over all the land brooded an atmosphere of rest, of calm serenity, of perpetual peace. Sitting there in the warm twilight and gazing out over this charming Ohio landscape was in itself "more refreshing than slumber to tired eyes." "The restless yearning and longing that reigns in the mind of all was quieted for a time," and we let our fancy roam until higher ideals floated before us and we experienced that exaltation of spirit that comes at rare intervals in times ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... marched exclusively for nigh six hundred years, the most splendid by far is its connection with this ever-memorable journey of the great Apostle of the Gentiles. We can trace the influence of the scenes and objects along the route in all his subsequent writings. He had a deeper yearning for the Gentiles, because he thus beheld with his own eyes the places associated with the darkest aspects of paganism; the scenes that gave rise to the pagan ideas of heaven and hell; the splendid temples ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... the heavens vomit forth white fire. Yes, you will hear it, and hear it, till a madness comes over you, till you leave the crawling men of the sticky pavements to seek it out once more, the sapphire of its lustrous lakes, the white yearning of its peaks to the myriad stars. Then, as a child comes home, will you come home. And I knew that some day to the land wherein he had reigned a conqueror, Locasto, ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... all means," Adrian hastened to agree. "I have a sort of humphy feeling myself—a sort of unsatisfied yearning, that is scarcely akin to pain, and resembles sorrow only as the mist resembles the rain. I think it may be imputed to inadequate nourishment. I think I will try some of that mortadella, if you 'll ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... me the princess fit for my embrace, The vision of my breast,— For her search every clime and every race." My yearning arms were blessed! ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... mean to do when I grow up," resolved Magsie. "Did you see the way Miss Carr ran up that ladder? And she's begun to thatch the roof so neatly. She does it far better than that old man from the village who potters about. I'm just yearning to try my hand at thatching. I wish Miss Carr ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... lamp the great gem in her hair, and making the champak blossom that floated in the hollow of her bosom's wave glimmer like the foam on a midnight sea. And after a while, I began to steal towards her on tiptoe, fearing to disturb her, lest the lovely picture should be spoiled, yet yearning to be with her with the whole strength of my soul. But all at once, she heard me coming, and looked round and saw me. And instantly she left her swing, and came towards me, walking quickly with undulating steps, as upright as a pillar of her own tree. And I stood still, ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... because my heart is yearning for my little Junior boy at home on the ranch with his grandmother. Dear little Mother Stewart, I feel very tender toward her. Junior is the pride of her heart. She would not allow us to bring him on this trip, so she is at the ranch taking care of my brown-eyed boy. Every one is so good, so ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... of love as a rapture which seized one so that all the world seemed spring-like, he had looked forward to an ecstatic happiness; but this was not happiness; it was a hunger of the soul, it was a painful yearning, it was a bitter anguish, he had never known before. He tried to think when it had first come to him. He did not know. He only remembered that each time he had gone into the shop, after the first two or three times, ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... were regarded as all-important, and the preservation of the body after death was the passion of life; among a people who were even then carrying the remains of their great ancestor, Joseph, to rest with his fathers, he yet conquered the last natural yearning and withdrew from the sight and sympathy of men to die alone and unattended, lest the idolatrous feeling, always ready to break forth, should in death accord him the superstitious reverence he had ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... the utter unhappiness of the little girl, together with the words of yearning for the dead mother, filled the woman with a strange tenderness. Though she never allowed sentiment to sway her from doing what she considered her duty she did yield to its influence and spoke gently to ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... on the Cross," a yearning longing after the Cross and the raising of the Cross,—this was ever my true inner calling; I have felt it in my innermost heart ever since my seventeenth year, in which I implored with humility and tears that I might be permitted to enter the Paris ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... pity, the yearning of rekindled love, the struggle of silenced memories passed from his face and left a shining calm—foretaste of the perpetual ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... the sudden softenings, so singularly attractive, in Cadman's look when he really began to talk. Sometimes it was like a sudden drop into summer after protracted frost, and the lines of the thin weathered face revealed the whole secret of yearning, something altogether chaste. And that was only the beginning. It was all unexpected; that was the charm of the whole relation. Skag found that Cadman had a real love for India; that he saw things from a nature full ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... a long time. Once more he stole over to the safety vault containing his Ideal. It was at a time when he had suffered a severe business loss. With great yearning in his breast, he lifted the cover of the case. He was worn from practical life and his heart and head felt heavy. He found the case empty. His Ideal had vanished, evaporated!—It dawned upon him that he had proven false to the Ideal, and not the ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 3, May 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... many lofty peaks, but never one without passing these places with the fearful possibilities of destruction. Always the novice has looked with the same unspeakable fear into the yawning depths, with the same unspeakable yearning towards the jewel-crowned heights beyond. This, or something of this, was in the startled attitude of the trembling figure, whose eyes met mine without ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... thought I believed) what my companion said, and I had—absurd as it may appear—an irritated vision of her throwing herself upon consular sympathy. It seemed to me, for a moment, that to pass out of that gate with this yearning, straining, young creature, would be to pass into some mysterious felicity. If I were only a hero of romance, I would offer, myself, ...
— The Pension Beaurepas • Henry James
... on which the poor women sat weeping bitterly when they heard that the greatest and most generous of all men was dead within the black oak door.(184) Ah, it was a different lot from that for which the poor fellow sighed, when he wrote with heart yearning for home those most charming of all fond verses, in which he fancies he ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... over there in the brush a soft, persuasive cooing, a sound so subtile and wild and unobtrusive that it requires the most alert and watchful ear to hear it. How gentle and solicitous and full of yearning love! It is the voice of the mother hen. Presently a faint, timid "Yeap!" which almost eludes the ear, is heard in various directions,—the young responding. As no danger seems near, the cooing of the parent bird is soon a very audible clucking call, and the young ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... on the bed with the artless freedom of an animal, the yearning of a plant for the sun, the airy motion of a branch waltzing to the breeze. As she unbuttoned the wristbands of her sleeves, she began to sing, not in the pitch that won her the applause of an audience at the Fenice, but in a warble tender with emotion. Her song was a zephyr carrying the caresses ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... the frankly kind manner in which he has allowed me to become acquainted with him, and the merciless dislike and distrust with which I am met by other people? Or is there really something in him which answers to the yearning that I have for a little human sympathy—the yearning, which has survived the solitude and persecution of many years; which seems to grow keener and keener, as the time comes nearer and nearer when I shall endure and feel no ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... and stiff, his mind slack and sullen. At such extreme seasons he had felt a consuming thirst, a thirst which burned and scorched until his very bones cried out feverishly. Not a thirst for water, nor a thirst which eaten snow could quench, but a savage yearning of his whole exhausted system for some stimulant, for some coursing fiery fluid that would burn and strangle. A thirst for whiskey—for brandy! Remembering these occasional ferocious desires, he had ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... about their ears, or evaporating the Bible in the thin generalities of the pulpit, this man drove God's truths home to the hearts of men and women. In his hands the divine virtues were thunderbolts, not swans' down. With good sense, plain speaking, and a heart yearning for the souls of his brethren and his sisters, he stormed the bosoms of many; and this afternoon, as he reasoned like Paul of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, sinners trembled—and Margaret Woffington was of ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... moral nature, without the strength of nerve which forms a hero, sinks beneath a burden which it cannot bear and must not cast away.' When this idea is isolated, developed and popularised, we get the picture of a graceful youth, sweet and sensitive, full of delicate sympathies and yearning aspirations, shrinking from the touch of everything gross and earthly; but frail and weak, a kind of Werther, with a face like Shelley's and a voice like Mr. Tree's. And then we ask in tender pity, how could such a man perform the ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... with him That asks it not: but he who hath Watched o'er the waves thy fading path Will never more on ocean's rim, At morn or eve, behold returning Thy high-heaped canvas shoreward yearning: Thou only teachest us the core And inmost meaning of No More, Thou, who first showest us thy face Turned o'er the shoulder's parting grace, And whose sad footprints we can trace ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... final separation came, and little by little the old corps fell apart, every man, as with inexpressible yearning he turned his face homeward, bore with him, as the richest heritage of his children and his children's children, the ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... one more turning! The horses cannot go too fast, So eagerly our hearts are yearning To see ...
— Poems • John L. Stoddard
... pillow, mother dear," she said, and suited the action to the word. Her mother clasped the deft hands that arranged things so comfortably, and looked long with yearning ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... experienced the full effect of that sickening vibration. Now he walked as though he might be stepping on eggs. Several times he even stopped, and looked around. Perhaps he simply wanted to know how far out from the shore he might be; or else he felt an almost irresistible yearning to hurry back to safety and tell his cronies they could try the trick ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie
... love that could never gaze enough, there were traces of late weeping. At her feet, on a low ottoman, half sat and half knelt Marion Hobart—or she who had so lately borne that name—her blonde hair thrown back from her brow, and her eyes looking up with an answering expression of yearning affection that would need years to satisfy. She was in white, and around her waist were thrown the arms of the other, holding her in a clasp of agonized force and intensity. Neither seemed to be aware that others were near—apparently neither had heard the knock or the opening ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... street Christmas brings something of picturesqueness, of cheer. Its message was ever to the poor and the heavy-laden, and by them it is understood with an instinctive yearning to do it honor. In the stiff dignity of the brownstone streets up-town there may be scarce a hint of it. In the homes of the poor it blossoms on stoop and fire-escape, looks out of the front window, and makes the unsightly barber-pole to sprout overnight like an Aaron's-rod. Poor indeed ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis |
