54 Quotes About Longing

Longing is an emotion that resonates deeply within the human experience, touching on desires for connection, fulfillment, and dreams yet realized. Often indescribable, this feeling is a powerful force that shapes our motivations and reflections. Through the ages, writers, philosophers, and artists have explored the depths of longing, capturing its essence in words that speak directly to the heart. In this collection, delve into 54 of the most evocative quotes about longing, each offering a unique perspective on this timeless sentiment. Whether you're seeking inspiration, comfort, or simply a deeper understanding of your own emotions, these quotes provide a poignant reminder of the universal nature of longing.

1. “It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are still alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger for them.” - George Eliot

2. “To crave and to have are as like as a thing and its shadow. For when does a berry break upon the tongue as sweetly as when one longs to taste it, and when is the taste refracted into so many hues and savors of ripeness and earth, and when do our senses know any thing so utterly as when we lack it? And here again is a foreshadowing -- the world will be made whole. For to wish for a hand on one's hair is all but to feel it. So whatever we may lose, very craving gives it back to us again.” - Marilynne Robinson

3. “Sometimes when I look at you, I feel I'm gazing at a distant star. It's dazzling, but the light is from tens of thousands of years ago.Maybe the star doesn't even exist any more. Yet sometimes that light seems more real to me than anything.” - Haruki Murakami

4. “Witch Baby wanted to ask Ping how to find her Jah-Love angel. She knew Raphael was not him, even though Raphael had the right eyes and smile and name. She knew how he looked--the angel in her dream--but she didn't know how to find him. Should she roller-skate through the streets in the evenings when the streetlights flicker on? Should she stow away to Jamaica on a cruise ship and search for him in the rain forests and along the beaches? Would he come to her? Was he waiting, dreaming of her in the same way she waited and dreamed?” - Francesca Lia Block

5. “Absence is to love what wind is to fire; it extinguishes the small, it inflames the great.” - Roger de Bussy-Rabutin

6. “The Portuguese call it saudade: a longing for something so indefinite as to be indefinable. Love affairs, miseries of life, the way things were, people already dead, those who left and the ocean that tossed them on the shores of a different land — all things born of the soul that can only be felt.” - Anthony De Sa

7. “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

8. “I prayed for all his dreams to come true. I prayed that I would always be able to connect with him--even if I was no longer on earth.” - Alexandra Adornetto

9. “Fair as the moon and joyful as the light;Tot wan with waiting, not with sorrow dim; Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright;Not as she is, but as she fills his dreams.” - Christina Rossetti

10. “One spirit remained unaware of his presence, staring at Miss Parker with such longing that he reluctantly decided to let it stay. The spirit, a hollow-eyed girl with ringlets and clothing from long past, reached toward Percy, wishing to touch her. Alexi understood. When left to her own devices, Miss Parker was neither shy nor awkward; she was radiant.” - Leanna Renee Hieber

11. “The heartland lies where the heart longs to be. Sometimes it takes a lifetime to find the true place to plant it.” - Vera Nazarian

12. “Even her name seemed empty, as though it had detached itself from her and was floating untethered in his mind. How am I supposed to live without you? It was not a matter of the body; his body would carry on as usual. The problem was located in the word how: he would live, but without Elspeth the flavour, the manner, the method of living were lost to him. He would have to relearn solitude.” - Audrey Niffenegger

13. “I'd rather do something than read about it.""That's fine, but if you do it, and then can't think what it means, it's never much of a memory. Life has more to so with memories of the past and longings for the future than it ever does with *right now*.” - Dean Hughes

14. “Stop longing. You poison today’s ease, reaching always for tomorrow.” - Robin Hobb

15. “Let not our longing slay the appetite of our living.” - Jim Elliot

16. “There I was, cold, isolated and desperate for something I knew I couldn't have. A solution. A remedy. Anything. ...I hated it. Alone and confused was the last place I wanted to be. Somehow I knew I deserved this.” - Brian Krans

17. “I love you, he thought, looking at Win. I love every part of you, every thought and word... the entire complex, fascinating bundle of all the things you are. I want you with ten different kinds of need at once. I love all the seasons of you, the way you are now, the thought of how much more beautiful you'll be in the decades to come. I love you for being the answer to every question my heart could ask.And it seemed so easy, once he capitulated. It seemed natural and right.Kev wasn't certain if he was surrendering to Win or to his own passion for her. Only that there was no more holding back. He would take her. And he would give her everything he had, every part of his soul, even the broken pieces.” - Lisa Kleypas

18. “...and I suddenly feel that Henry is there, incredible need for Henry to be there and to put his hand on me even while it seems to me that Henry is the rain and I am alone and wanting him- Clare” - Audrey Niffenegger

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. “Wanting him to come back before anyone notices part of the world has not moved since he left.” - Brian Andreas

21. “Did you miss me while you were looking for yourself out there..” - Train

22. “We long for things that harm us and run from the things that grow and heal us. We think good is bad and bad is good.” - Tessa Afshar

23. “I am running after you, and life, in desperate pursuit. My dream is that someday you will both turn and let me catch you. That dream carries me through every night... I have enclosed a hundred kisses in this letter. You must count them out carefully and not lose any.” - Lisa Kleypas

24. “But no one can predict of a certainty what will happen. And none of it will change how I intend to spend the rest of my life. I will live it on my terms. And you... you can have all of me or nothing. I won't be an invalid any longer. Not even if it means losing you.” - Lisa Kleypas

25. “He was in my hair, my eyes, my fingers, my heart. I day-dreamed about what he was doing, thinking, seeing, smelling, feeling. I could not eat for thoughts of him.” - Lisa See

26. “I couldn't take my eyes off him. Like a desert wanderer afraid of mirages, I gazed at my oasis, but he was real.” - Laura Whitcomb

27. “..he wanted her.And at another time, as another man, he would have her. Without hesitation. As lover. . . as more.” - Sarah MacLean

28. “...my body has becomeanother countryand I feel like an unemployedillegal alienhow will I survivewhere I do not belongI belong with you” - Patrick Califia-Rice

29. “I wanted a heaven. And I grew up striving for that world-- an eternal world- that would wash away my temporary misery.” - Craig Thompson

30. “The glitter in the sky looks as if I could scoop it all up in my hands and let the stars swirl and touch one another but they are so distant so very far apart that they cannot feel the warmth of each other even though they are made of burning.” - Beth Revis

31. “When Summer lies upon the world, and in a noon of gold, Beneath the roof of sleeping leaves the dreams of trees unfold;When woodland halls are green and cool, and wind is in the West, Come back to me! Come back to me, and say my land is best!” - J.R.R. Tolkien

32. “When I opened the box, I had to remove myself from whose handwriting it was that I was reading and whose story I was hearing. I had to, or I never would have made it past the first letter. If I stopped to think about my Grandpa writing to my Grandma, knowing how much he loved her and how many years he spent without her after her death, I knew I wouldn’t be able to make it through just one letter without an onslaught of tears. And it was Grandpa, a voice I knew so well. One that I miss terribly.” - Kara Martinelli

33. “Will it be here that we shall find a place which will not elude us, or which if it remains does not exert on us a culpable attraction? Or must we, leaning over the deck and watching the shores glide by, move forever onward?” - Andre Gide

34. “A pine tree standeth lonelyIn the North on an upland bare;It standeth whitely shroudedWith snow, and sleepeth there.It dreameth of a Palm treeWhich far in the East alone,In the mournful silence standethOn its ridge of burning stone.” - Heinrich Heine

35. “The days passed in a dream. I pictured our reunion again and again, played it out in my mind over and over until I’d almost worn a groove in my thoughts, so deep that it seemed the only thing I could think of was our reunion. Anticipation is a gift. Perhaps there is none greater. Anticipation is born of hope. Indeed it is hope’s finest expression. In hope’s loss, however, is the greatest despair.” - Steven L. Peck

36. “She gave me this look – she might have been watching from a lifeboat as the ship went down. Or maybe it was the other way around.” - Haruki Murakami

37. “I've always tried to make a home for myself, but I have not felt at home in myself. I've worked hard at being the hero of my own life. But every time I checked the register of displaced persons, I was still on it. I didn't know how to belong. Longing? Yes. Belonging? No.” - Jeanette Winterson

38. “Hunger of the heart is much stronger than hunger for food.” - Amanda Comer

39. “The great systems that inform the world about the truth and life invariably claim to be absolutely truthful and well-balanced. In reality they are quaking bridges built out of yearning.” - Peter Høeg

40. “Desire is an appetite, quickly sated. Longing is a wound, an opening in the heart or the spirit. Whatever the cause, whatever the duration, it almost always leaves a scar.” - Philip Sington

41. “There was nowhere I could go that wouldn't be you.” - Jeffrey Eugenides

42. “You just know something is amiss, when you look at someone and long for something that is not yours or you cannot have. It's an absence--a loss of a heartbeat.” - Nadège Richards

43. “But sex as a physical act is merely athletics, a momentary relief. What it needs to be powerful is desire, and the strongest element of desire is longing. It's in the work. Desider-, sidus: from the stars. The longing that reaches beyond space and time.” - Rosemary Sullivan

44. “Perhaps your hunger to belong is always active and intense because you belonged so totally before you came here. This hunger to belong is the echo and reverberation of your invisible heritage. You are from somewhere else, where you were known, embraced and sheltered. This is also the secret root from which all longing grows. Something in you knows, perhaps remembers, that eternal belonging liberates longing into its surest and most potent creativity. This is why your longing is often wiser than your conventional sense of appropriateness, safety and truth... Your longing desires to take you towards the absolute realization of all the possibilities that sleep in the clay of your heart; it knows your eternal potential, and it will not rest until it is awakened.” - John O'Donohue

45. “The whole world can't lick us but we can lick ourselves by longing too hard for things we haven't got any more - and by remembering too much.” - Margaret Mitchell

46. “My beloved has arrived, but rather than greeting him, All I can do is bite the corner of my apron with a blank expression- What an awkward woman am I. My heart has longed for him as hugely and openly as a full moonBut instead I narrow my eyes, and my glance to him Is sharp and narrow as the crescent moon. But then, I'm not the only one who behaves this way. My mother and my mother's mother were as silly and stumbling as I am when they were girls...Still, the love from my heart is overflowing, As bright and crimson as the heated metal in a blacksmith's forge.” - Kim Dong Hwa

47. “The beauty of a fragment is that it still supports the hope of brilliant completeness.” - Tobias Wolff

48. “Through creativity, we are seamlessly connected and sustained as we pullback the veil, revealing beneath our differences and distinctive characteristics,human expression and the human experience are universal. It is the greatnessof this experience that connects us together by infinite invisible threads strewnacross the globe. This is my responsibility, passion and desire as an artist—mysoul purpose.” - Brian Bowers

49. “Even if I now saw youonly once,I would long for youthrough worlds,worlds.” - Izumi Shikibu

50. “Some part of me remembers what snow is, but this is the first time my new mind has seen it. It softens the crumbled sidewalks and turns rusty rooftops white. It’s beautiful. It crunches under my feet as I move toward the house, longing to understand.” - Isaac Marion

51. “...that breath of relief that there is someone in the world, finally, who understands what hurts you.” - Lysley Tenorio

52. “It was suffering and incapacity that created all afterworlds - this, and that brief madness of bliss which is experienced only by those who suffer deeply. Weariness that wants to reach the ultimate with one leap, with one fatal leap, a poor ignorant weariness that does not want to want any more: this created all gods and afterworlds.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

53. “My dear boy, looking like a thing has little to do with being a thing. Be the thing first, and you will grow to resemble it.” - Liam Perrin

54. “I do,” Drew admitted, his eyes devouring my body appreciatively. “But with you…I want so much more, Summer. So much more than you’re willing to give me.” He paused, “Every single touch, every single look you give me, I cherish.” - Kailin Gow