52 Quotes About Yearning

In the labyrinth of human emotions, few feelings resonate as deeply and universally as yearning. It's the silent whisper of what could be, the tender ache for something just out of reach. Yearning is the thread that stitches dreams together and fuels our passions, pushing us to explore both the realms of possibility and the contours of our own hearts. In this collection of the top 52 quotes about yearning, we delve into the poignant and often profound expressions of longing that have captured the imaginations of thinkers, poets, and dreamers throughout history. Whether it’s a yearning for love, adventure, or self-discovery, these quotes serve as a reminder of the beauty and complexity found in our desires. As you journey through these words, may you find reflection, inspiration, and perhaps even a deeper understanding of your own yearnings.

1. “Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.” - Edna St. Vincent Millay

2. “But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.” - Aldous Huxley

3. “I’m wearying to escape into that glorious world, and to be always there: not seeing it dimly through tears, and yearning for it through the walls of an aching heart: but really with it, and in it.” - Emily Brontë

4. “Why is love intensified by absence?” - Audrey Niffenegger

5. “I didn't know then what I wanted, but the ache for it was palpable.” - Sue Monk Kidd

6. “But he does look stupid.'Yearning. Not stupid. He wants awfully to be on the inside staring out: anybody with their nose pressed against a glass is liable to look stupid.” - Truman Capote

7. “My heart only ever had one thought, one want. One need. Despite all, in spite of all...All my heart has ever wanted is you.” - Stephanie Laurens

8. “Time Does Not Bring ReliefTime does not bring relief; you all have lied Who told me time would ease me of my pain! I miss him in the weeping of the rain; I want him at the shrinking of the tide; The old snows melt from every mountain-side, And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane; But last year’s bitter loving must remain Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide. There are a hundred places where I fear To go,—so with his memory they brim. And entering with relief some quiet place Where never fell his foot or shone his face I say, “There is no memory of him here!” And so stand stricken, so remembering him.” - Edna St. Vincent Millay

9. “Dying for love might be pitiable, but it wasn't much different, finally, from any other kind of dying.” - Richard Yates

10. “And then I feel as if I'm witnessing a miracle, as ever so slowly she raises her face towards the moon. I watch her drink in the sight, sensing the flood of memories she's unleashed and wanting nothing more than to let her know I'm here. But instead I stay where I am and stare up at the moon as well. And for the briefest instant, it almost feels like we're together again.” - Nicholas Sparks

11. “The swallow that hibernates underwater is a creature called yearning.” - David Quammen

12. “A friend... sort of. Ren watches me like I'm a cookie jar he wouldn't mind being caught with his hands in.” - Andrea Cremer

13. “What I want is to live of that initial and primordial something that was what made some things reach the point of aspiring to be human.” - Clarice Lispector

14. “Name me no names for my disease,With uninforming breath;I tell you I am none of these,But homesick unto death —Homesick for hills that I had known,For brooks that I had crossed,...Before I met this flesh and boneAnd followed and was lost… .And though they break my heart at last,Yet name no name of ills.Say only, "Here is where he passed,Seeking again those hills.” - Witter Bynner

15. “The simple lack of her is more to me than others' presence.” - Edward Thomas

16. “Because what’s worse than knowing you want something, besides knowing you can never have it?” - James Patterson

17. “Each night I lie and dream about the oneWho kissed me and awakened my desireI spent a single hour with him aloneAnd since that hour, my days are layed with fire.” - L.J. Smith

18. “Ay me! sad hours seem long.” - William Shakespeare

19. “To want and not to have, sent all up her body a hardness, a hollowness, a strain. And then to want and not to have- to want and want- how that wrung the heart, and wrung it again and again!” - Virginia Woolf

20. “The fairest things have fleetest end,Their scent survives their close:But the rose's scent is bitternessTo her who loved the rose.” - Francis Thompson

21. “I wondered if he ever thought of me, and hated the pang I felt when I told myself he didn't.” - Sarah Dessen

22. “The longing for sweets is really a yearning for love or "sweetness.” - Marion Woodman

23. “A lot of people get so hung up on what they can't have that they don't think for a second about whether they really want it.” - Lionel Shriver

24. “It hurts to breathe. It hurts to live. I hate her, yet I do not think I can exist without her.” - Charlotte Featherstone

25. “It’s like when you’re excited about a girl and you see a couple holding hands, and you feel so happy for them. And other times you see the same couple, and they make you so mad. And all you want is to feel happy for them because you know that if you do, then it means you’re happy, too.” - Stephen Chbosky

26. “They say "ya gotta stay hungry"...Hey Baby...I'm just about starvin' tonight!” - Bruce Springsteen

27. “It's been the toughest week of my life, not touching you. Not talking to you. Waiting to see what you were going to do." He kissed her again, a warm, damp touch of lips, exquisitely controlled. "But it doesn't matter whether you stay or go. I'll still need you. So if you want to go off to Boston, Ill wait. Right here, whenever you need me.” - Rachel Caine

28. “She had left me thirsty and all my life would be thirst and longing for what I had lost before I found it.” - Jean Rhys

29. “In violence there is often the quality of yearning - the yearning for completion. For closure. For that which is absent and would if present bring to fulfillment. For the body without which the wing is a useless frozen ornament. ("A Short Guide To The City")” - Peter Straub

30. “Maybe she had it wrong all this time and her empty heart could never be filled by his ingenious broken spirit. Maybe this yearning had nothing to do with him, and everything to do with her.” - Jamie Weise

31. “I want your most vital organ. I want it to be mine.” - Jamie Weise

32. “I won’t let you have it. I won’t give you this moment. I won’t let you fill up this valuable organ...I own it. I won’t do it. I can’t think, I won’t think about it.” - Jamie Weise

33. “Oh, do you understand what I mean? Have you ever felt that about the Moon? Have you ever ached with the sheer beauty of it?” - James Lusarde

34. “I knew what it was to yearn for a life so distant it seemed that it had never been anything more than a dream.” - Alice Hoffman

35. “Her vision of the world under the water represented a beautiful stillness, a version of heaven. It was the lost city of Lena, her alternate universe, the life she yearned for but didn't get to have.” - Ann Brashares

36. “It is rooted deep in your bones; the water calls out to you until it causes you physical pain unless you come to it.” - Nadia Scrieva

37. “A Pause of ThoughtI looked for that which is not, nor can be,And hope deferred made my heart sick in truthBut years must pass before a hope of youthIs resigned utterly.I watched and waited with a steadfast will:And though the object seemed to flee awayThat I so longed for, ever day by dayI watched and waited still.Sometimes I said: This thing shall be no more;My expectation wearies and shall cease;I will resign it now and be at peace:Yet never gave it o'er.Sometimes I said: It is an empty nameI long for; to a name why should I giveThe peace of all the days I have to live?--Yet gave it all the same.Alas, thou foolish one! alike unfitFor healthy joy and salutary pain:Thou knowest the chase useless, and againTurnest to follow it.” - Christina Rossetti

38. “Restriction generates yearning. You want what you cannot have.” - Portia De Rossi

39. “part memory part distance remainingmine in the ways that I learn to miss you” - W.S. Merwin

40. “Yearning for love made her feel like a cat that was always twining around ankles, meowing Pet me, pet me, look at me, love me.” - Laini Taylor

41. “I commit her to memory. When I'm alone, I feel a strange yearning, the hunger of a man fasting not because he believes but because he's ashamed. Not the cleansing hunger of the devout, but the feverish hunger of the hypocrite. I let her go every evening only because there's nothing I can do to stop her.” - Mohsin Hamid

42. “Not everyone can wait: neither the sated nor the satisfied nor those without respect can wait. The only ones who can wait are people who carry restlessness around with them.” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

43. “He gazed up at the blue sky and knew that heaven—at least in this life—was neither a time nor a placeto be grasped and made into a possession. It came in fleeting moments and then went away again toleave one nostalgic and yearning and on the verge of tears.Very much on the verge of tears.And very frightened.” - Mary Balogh

44. “The most beautiful moments always seemed to accelerate and slip beyond one’s grasp just when you want to hold onto them for as long as possible.” - E.A. Bucchianeri

45. “The ocean exerts an inexorable pull over sea people wherever they are-in a bright-lit, inland city or the dead center of a desert-and when they feel the tug there is no choice but somehow to reach it and stand at its immense, earth-dissolving edge, straightaway calmed.” - Anuradha Roy

46. “They no longer wanted to entice anyone; all they wanted was to catch a glimpse for as long as possible of the reflected glory in the great eyes of Odysseus” - Franz Kafka

47. “But as, in ethics, evil is a consequence of good, so, in fact, out of joy is sorrow born. Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of today, or the agonies which are have their origin in the ecstasies which might have been.” - Edgar Alan Poe

48. “I am inhabited by a cry. Nightly it flaps outLooking, with its hooks, for something to love.--from "Elm", written 19 April 1962” - Sylvia Plath

49. “Be not wishing and pining but thankfully content.  For it is a short bridge between wanting and regret."- from "Dimpellumpzki” - Richelle E. Goodrich

50. “He had no idea what missing was. Missing was lying in the dampness of your tears night after night. Missing was a constant hollow spot in the center of your chest. Missing was a yawning ache that was never satisfied.” - Denise Hunter

51. “So often, the discarded love of youth is desperately yearned for in maturity.” - Wayne Gerard Trotman

52. “But the walls of my resolvemortared with stubbornnesshave been breached by circumstancesI cannot handle alone.” - Susie Clevenger