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Yearn   Listen
verb
Yearn  v. i.  To be filled with longing desire; to be harassed or rendered uneasy with longing, or feeling the want of a thing; to strain with emotions of affection or tenderness; to long; to be eager. "Joseph made haste; for his bowels did yearn upon his brother; and he sought where to weep." "Your mother's heart yearns towards you."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Yearn" Quotes from Famous Books



... summer heats were over and the hearts of one and all began to yearn for the sweets of home; all the more when word reached them through the mails that the members of their party left in the Newport cottages had already succumbed to the same sort of sickness, and were on their homeward way by land. A day or ...
— Elsie's Vacation and After Events • Martha Finley

... is the road that leads to wealth, another the road that leads to Nirvana;" if the Bhikshu, the disciple of Buddha, has learnt this, he will not yearn for honour, he will strive after separation from ...
— The Dhammapada • Unknown

... may yearn to be the filling in an ice sandwich, but I don't! Another shock and we'll be buried so deep even a drill couldn't find us. Let's get out now. The kid is right about that—if we ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton

... o'er the snowy pearls, That morn and eve ran swiftly through her hands; The days flow'd on—one morn the pearls ran not, And well she knew that Perviz too was lost. Tears doubled every bead; but, evermore, Through pain and sorrow, yearn'd her thirsting soul For that far Golden Water in the East, Whence one bright drop would fill her fountain full, With glistening jets still rising in the midst. She rose up straight, and donning man's attire, For that the road was hard and difficult, Took horse, and towards the sunrise swiftly rode, ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels

... noises, and hurried dinners; but the greater part of that period is a miserable blank in my memory. Towards the sixth day, however, the savoury flavour of a splendid salmon-trout floated past my dried-up nostrils like "Afric's spicy gale," and caused my collapsed stomach to yearn with strong emotion. The ship, too, was going more quietly through the water; and a broad stream of sunshine shot through the small window of my berth, penetrated my breast, and went down into the centre of my heart, filling it with a calm, complacent pleasure quite indescribable. Sounds, ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne

... of those sweet, generous natures which expand, instead of shrivelling under the influence of prosperity. Just in proportion as her own life was beautiful and hedged round with all the sweet fences of love, so did she yearn more and more over her sisters whose lots were cast in such different places—which is the true spirit of Christ, who left the very heavens for our sakes. She had woven many happy dreams about these afternoon meetings, seeing ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey

... than spend time in self-improvement. They have a sort of vague wish to do something great, but few have that intensity of longing which impels them to make the sacrifice of the present for the future. Few are willing to work underground for years laying a foundation for the life monument. They yearn for greatness, but their yearning is not the kind which is willing to pay any price in endeavor or make any sacrifice for ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... which had been much delayed owing to the dilatoriness of those to whom he had applied for facts and statistics. On April 14, 1868, he says in a letter to the Honorable John Thompson: "Pleasant as has been our European visit, with its advantages in certain branches of education, our hearts yearn for our American home. We can appreciate, I hope, the good in European countries, be grateful for European hospitality, and yet be thorough Americans, as we all profess to be notwithstanding the display of so many defects which tend to ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse

... the penetration, the uncompromising realism on occasion, of Raphael; the happy mixture of the Giorgionesque, the Raphaelesque, and later on the Michelangelesque, in Sebastiano del Piombo. Another will yearn for the poetic glamour, gilding realistic truth, of Giorgione; for the intensely pathetic interpretation of Lorenzo Lotto, with its unique combination of the strongest subjective and objective elements, the one serving to poetise and accentuate the other. Yet another ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips

... 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 clothed in living beams, Pure lilies of eternal peace, Whose odors haunt my dreams; And, stricken by an angel's hand, This mortal armor ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman

... of having done something timely, sensible, and decisive, even though not put down in the book, seemed to have paralyzed all the others. Ah! she was the only one there who was not less than a shadow. The author felt his desolate heart yearn towards her, and the next moment found himself on his knees at ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various

... beating her breast, and rocking herself to and fro, uttering her incessant "Mea culpa!" "Tell me more," she said again, presently; "show me more dreadful sights, that I may suffer more. I yearn for it; it will do my soul good—it is ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai

... love?' said she. 'This would be no happiness to my child, who is a mortal and a woman, and who will yearn for a closer and a dearer thing than the love of goodness alone; erring creatures cannot love perfection as their daily food. Beautiful spirit, thou art fitted for heaven, not earth, for an ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams

... that breath in the air, A perfume and freshness strange and rare, A warmth in the light, and a bliss everywhere, When young hearts yearn together? All sweets below, and all sunny above, Oh! there's nothing in life like making Love, Save making hay in ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley

... Council, and the Jesuits, contradicts the true gospel of Christ. The painting which embodies it belongs to a spirit at strife with what was vital and progressive in the modern world. It is therefore naturally abhorrent to us now; nor can it be appreciated except by those who yearn for the ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... are the curs'd! the souls who yearn and evermore pursue The vision of a vain desire, a splendor far ahead; To whom God gives the poet's dream without the grasp to do, The artist's hope without the scope ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein

... speak; he contented himself with gazing at the tender girlishness of her, the blue-black eyes, and flesh that was so bright and pure that he knew it to be soft and firm, making him yearn for her. ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco

... thing more about it than do you girls," returned Arline. "Suppose we go directly to our houses, and then meet at Vinton's for dinner to-night. I don't yearn for a Morton House dinner. The meals there won't be strictly up to the mark for another week yet. When the house is full again, the standard of Morton House cooking will rise in a day, but until then—let us thank our stars for Vinton's. Are you going to take ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower

... Russian Jew, a former Talmud student like myself, who is the greatest physiologist in the New World, or with the Russian Jew who holds the foremost place among American song-writers and whose soulful compositions are sung in almost every English-speaking house in the world. I love music to madness. I yearn for the world of great singers, violinists, pianists. Several of the greatest of them are of my race and country, and I have met them, but all my acquaintance with them has brought me is a sense of being looked down ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan

... are that bloom 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, ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne

... himself. His eyes strayed towards the far valley, shimmering in earliest daylight. He, too, had he not suffered dread things whilst living in the world? And could he expect that life in the future would be more kindly to him? None the less did his heart yearn for that valley of human tribulation. He struggled ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing

... am stricken, and my heart, Like a bruised reed, is waiting to be broken, How will its love for thee, as I depart, Yearn for thine ear to drink its last deep token! It were so sweet, amid death's gathering ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various

... world that we know. Deep to my 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 ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein

... possessing one of the richest territories under the sun, capable of supporting a population of 10,000,000 people in luxury. The people of San Domingo are not capable of maintaining themselves in their present condition, and must look for outside support. They yearn for the protection of our free institutions and laws, our progress and civilization. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... 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 now. All his tremendous, if misdirected, effort on her behalf, his ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum

... walls grow luminous and warm, the walls Tremble and glow with the lives within them moving, Moving like music, secret and rich and warm. How shall we live tonight? Where shall we turn? To what new light or darkness yearn? A thousand winding stairs lead down before us; And one by one in myriads we descend By lamplit flowered walls, long balustrades, Through half-lit halls which reach ...
— The House of Dust - A Symphony • Conrad Aiken

... filling the darkness with tumult, his mother had brought him into the world. Love of it was in his blood, a part of his soul, and there were times when he yearned for this "talk of the mountains" as others yearn for the coming of spring. He welcomed it now as his eyes sought through the darkness for a glimmer of the light that always burned from dusk until dawn in Olaf ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood

... willing, 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

... the great function of the heart and breath. Ah, the aspiration, the aspiration, like a hope, like a yearning constant and unfailing with which we take in breath. When we breathe, when we take in breath, it is not as when we take in food. When we breathe in we aspire, we yearn towards the heaven of air and light. And when the heart dilates to draw in the stream of dark blood, it opens its arms as to a beloved. It dilates with reverent joy, as a host opening his doors to an honored guest, whom he delights to serve: opening his doors to the wonder ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence

... softened toward the whole world, and most of all did he yearn for the old look of confidence from the now constantly averted eyes of his son. Just as these feelings were strongest in his bosom, Frederick entered the room where he sat. The Mayor ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens

... mother, brother nor sister, that I had a country and friends. The bit of marble on which I was found in the stone-cutter's yard, then seemed as dear to me as a gold cradle is to a king's son; and I thought of you, and all the rest of you—nay, I yearned after you, as a mother would yearn for ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper

... these things that you yearn to teach Bear wisdom, in your judgment, rich and strong, Give voice to them though no man heed your speech, Since right is right though all the ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... void that's there No other form may hope to fill, For those who now with sorrow thrill In gazing on that vacant chair; Whither it seems he must return, For whose warm hand-clasp yet we yearn. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 22, 1892 • Various

... Whenever I have asked this very boon, Now asked again: for see you not, dear love, That such a mood as that, which lately gloomed Your fancy when ye saw me following you, Must make me fear still more you are not mine, Must make me yearn still more to prove you mine, And make me wish still more to learn this charm Of woven paces and of waving hands, As proof of trust. O Merlin, teach it me. The charm so taught will charm us both to rest. For, grant me some slight power upon your fate, I, feeling that you felt me worthy ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson

... soon? Have you room for me, leisure for me, and are you all pretty well? Tell me all this honestly—immediately. And by what day—coach could I come soonest and nearest to Stowey? A few months hence may suit you better; certainly me as well. If so, say so. I long, I yearn, with all the longings of a child do I desire to see you, to come among you—to see the young philosopher, to thank Sara for her last year's invitation in person—to read your tragedy—to read over together our ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas

... soft blue haze that wrapped the beautiful shores in the distance. After gazin' silently for a minute he turned to me and sez, "Didn't you bring any nut cakes with you? I'd like one to eat whilst I think of another Island far more beautiful than this, where I yearn to be." ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley

... shore, but far in the distance, seen across wide, flat expanses, shadow villages and tapering spires were painted in violet on the horizon—such a shimmering horizon as we of the lowlands love, and yearn for when we sojourn in mountain lands. At Halfweg, a little cluster of humble dwellings, I turned out of the main canal, skirting the side of the Haarlemmer-meer Polder, opposite to that which ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson

... sense of the word? What we do find is a very widespread art-literature and talk of art, a large number of working artists varying in temperament, and a vast horde of amateurs, who are not content to be patrons, but yearn also ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various

... hymn we used to sing in church. We yearn to be satisfied and yet we know because we are not satisfied ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane

... not in the 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 known, and seemed ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge

... method in that madness, a method simple and direct. He had stalked first of all into a great silk-mercer's and demanded a silk suitable for an old lady, a satin suitable for a young lady, another satin for a lady—not so young. Then, suddenly remembering that his mother used to yearn even in widowhood for plum color, while Minnie (who was pretty and had red hair) fancied a moss-green, and Kate (who was not pretty) a rose-pink, he neither paused nor rested till he had obtained these tints. Lace, too—his mother had had ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair

... rest, through combat to victory;" "The glory which men give and take is transitory," these and like phrases were already deeply engraven on the fleshly tablets of his heart. Amid all his glowing triumphs he was developing a curious disinclination to appear in public; he seemed to yearn for solitude ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various

... How 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 ...
— All That Matters • Edgar A. Guest

... yourself two thousand feet in mid-air with your feet on one piano wire, and one hand clutching another, while with the other hand you grope blindly for a bomb charged with high explosive, is an experience for which few men would yearn. But in this case it was successful. The bombs fell—nobody cared where—and the two imperilled ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot

... welling of indignant tears Love's simpleness first hears The meaning of his mortal covenant, And from what pride comes down To wear the crown Of which 'twas very heaven to feel the want. How envies he the ways Of yonder hopeless star, And so would laugh and yearn With trembling lids eterne, Ineffably content from infinitely far Only to gaze On his bright Mistress's responding rays, That never know eclipse; And, once in his long year, With praeternuptial ecstasy and fear, By the delicious law of that ellipse Wherein all citizens of ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore

... he remembered how that in The Dream One told him of the marvel of that stream, Whose waters are a well of youth eterne. And night and day its crystal heart doth yearn To wed its youthhood with the sea's old age; And faring on that bridal pilgrimage, Its waters past the shining city are rolled, And all the people drink and ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson

... so much that you kiss the cold reflection, yet fear not to drown. To reveal yourself to yourself in a thousand lovely poses, and bird-like poises of the head. To kneel to yourself in adoration, to laugh and nod and beckon to yourself with your own smiles and dimples, to yearn in hopeless passion for your own loveliness. To finger silken garments, linings to the casket of your beauty, never seen of men, to draw on stiff embroidered gowns, to deck your hands with glittering jewels, and your wrists with bands of gold—and then to sail forth from your boudoir ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne

... no 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 ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... know now why I love him so. And yet when he say things that touch my husband-heart to the quick, and make my father-heart yearn to him as to no other man, not even you, friend John, for we are more level in experiences than father and son, yet even at such a moment King Laugh he come to me and shout and bellow in my ear, 'Here I am! Here I am!' till the blood come ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker

... one hope of his life, or so I thought; and that he expressed this by silence made my heart yearn toward him for the first time since I recognized him as my brother. I tried to stammer some excuse. I was glad when the darkness fell again, for the sight of his bowed head and set features was insupportable to me. It seemed to make it easier for me to talk; for ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green

... myself away from thy beauty." Her mother probably gave her a scolding, but she hardly minds it, and in the retirement of her chamber never wearies of thinking of her brother, and of passionately crying for him: "O my beautiful friend! I yearn to be with thee as thy wife—and that thou shouldest go whither thou wishest with thine arm upon my arm,—for then I will repeat to my heart, which is in thy breast, my supplications.—If my great brother does not come to-night,—I am as those who lie in the tomb—for thou, art thou not health ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 5 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... but if thou hast still left her to wander further in the pilgrimage of life, we confide in thy goodness. She is of a long-suffering race, and thou wilt not desert her to the blindness of the heathen. She is thine, she is wholly thine, King of Heaven! and yet hast thou permitted our hearts to yearn towards her, with the fondness of earthly love. We await some further manifestation of thy will, that we may know whether the fountains of our affection shall be dried in the certainty of her blessedness—" (scalding tears were rolling ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper

... and faithful though ignorant; there were the old miller and his son, who had come all that distance since there had as yet been no restoration in their church, and the goings on of Original-Sin Hopkins and his friends had thoroughly disgusted them, and made the old man yearn towards the church of his youth, and there was the little group of three, the toil-worn but sweet-faced sister, calm and restful, though watchful; the tall youth with thoughtful, earnest, awe-struck face, come for his first Communion, for which through those many years he had been taught ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge

... savage virtue, justification of what one has in one's self, whatever it is, is demanded. 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 ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... of about five thousand feet a second. I remember that from mere snobbishness I work for the Government without a penny of salary, and that my sole reward is to be insulted and libelled by high-brow novelists who write for the press. Therefore you ought not to be startled if I secretly yearn to resign. However, I shall not be asked to resign. I said that the Government had been in a very serious situation. It was. But it ...
— The Title - A Comedy in Three Acts • Arnold Bennett

... rolled between them there. What could the mountain do but gaze and burn? What could the meadow do but look and yearn, And gem its ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... was a weariness of life, and an unwillingness to resume her ordinary routine, that made her almost welcome her weakness and sinking; and now that the black terror had cleared away from the future, she seemed to long to follow Margaret at once, and to yearn after her lost child; while appeals to the affection that surrounded her often seemed to oppress her, as if there were nothing but weariness and toil ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge

... was, as she had told me, her life—a fact discernible in her increasing bloom, an air of conscious privilege that, cleverly corrected by pretty charities, gave distinction to her appearance—it had yet not a direct influence on her work. That only made—everything only made—one yearn the more for it, rounded it off with ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James

... swept from my side, and two bonnie grand-bairns; and now, even now, your waters foam and flash for my destruction, did I venture my infirm limbs in quest of food in your deadly bay. I see by that ripple and that foam, and hear by the sound and singing of your surge, that ye yearn for another victim; but it shall ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous

... 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 sun, to ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... dinner on Tuesday. Lord Mulgrave lingered with us till last Tuesday (we had our little captain to dinner on the Monday), and then went on to Canada. Kate is quite well, and so is Anne, whose smartness surpasses belief. They yearn for ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... demand from him this sham of Divine Omnipotence, is utterly incomprehensible. But so it is; and these solutions are legitimate inasmuch as they satisfy the desire for finality, for which our hearts yearn with a longing greater than the longing for the loaves and fishes of this earth. Perhaps the only true desire of mankind, coming thus to light in its hours of leisure, is to be set at rest. One is never set at rest by Mr. Henry James's novels. His books end as an episode ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad

... the ludicrous frequently makes us delighted to find even the most estimable characters in a ridiculous position. The above anecdote is perhaps exaggerated, but it is here recorded as a moral warning to those who yearn like Sancho Panza for a government, and not from a desire to cast ridicule upon one who was universally respected and esteemed, for the quiet decorum of his life, his high principles, his strict impartiality, and the conscientious ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor

... the crudest of the revolutionists, although I call myself a philosophical anarchist. Sometimes the jails seem to yearn for my reception, and I question my right to be at large. Nothing but a decreasing cowardice leaves me at liberty. And if I could not do more for my soul behind the bars than I have done in front of ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood

... if now you were holding A talk over womanhood, what would you say, The words of wise counsel while you were unfolding, If some one should show you these pictures to-day? I dream of your faces: divinest compassion Would yearn the poor toiler to pity and save; And your largeness of scorn would descend on the fashion Which binds, unresisting, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various

... among whom she had passed the last two years. In delightful harmony with this air of wildness was the rich and delicate beauty of her sun-browned face, and the golden glow of her silken brown hair. Willock's heart yearned toward her as only the heart of one destined to profound loneliness can yearn toward the exquisite grace and unconscious charm of a child; but to the degree that he felt this attraction, he held himself firmly aloof, knowing that wild animals are frightened when kindness ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis

... prince nor pope, and I don't seek a window on men's souls. In fact, I yearn for a greater tolerance, an easy-goingness about each other's attitudes and way ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various

... body wherefrom I had been released as it were to mingle with the ocean of human existence, free from the pressure of individual bondage. I opened the letter; and the name came again as a cry that would have disturbed me in the bosom of heaven, and made me yearn to reach where that sorrow ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... them. Life under the new government grew more and more intolerable to him; both his hereditary instincts and prejudices, and his temperament, revolted. He found himself more and more alone in the country. Even the Spanish tongue was less and less spoken. He was beginning to yearn for Mexico,—for Mexico, which he had never seen, yet yearned for like an exile. There he might yet live among men of his own race and degree, and of congenial beliefs and occupations. Whenever he thought of this change, always came the quick memory of Ramona. ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson

... pleasant kitchen, was tempted to linger. Sallie's conversation yielded, to the discerning, something of the rich essence of the past; and Agatha began to yearn for a better knowledge of the recluse who had been her friend, unknown, through all the years. But she remembered her industrious plans for the day and postponed her talk ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger

... elastic, their work is never strenuous (if they can help it), and their accomplishments hardly ever of practical use. This is all true of the born artist, as well. Both inverts and artists are inordinately fond of praise; both yearn for a life where admiration is the reward for little energy. In a word, they seem to be 'born tired,' begotten by parents who were ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... thy lover find thee harsh and cold: Oh thou accuser! be my love's excuser, * Nor chide if love-pangs deal me woes untold! I bear no blame: 'tis all my hear and eyne; * So leave thy blaming, let me yearn and pine." ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... well, to let the dead past bury its dead, and to commence a brighter and a newer and a friendlier era between the two countries? Why cannot we do it? Is there an Englishman representing any party who does not yearn for a better future between Ireland and Great Britain? There is no Irishman who is not anxious for it also. Why cannot there be a settlement? Why must it be that, when British soldiers and Irish soldiers are suffering and ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn

... 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 herd was a menace to its successful ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams

... ill and tired and old, and then you'll crawl back into the herd. Won't you be ashamed when you feel in your heart the desire for comfort and sympathy? You're trying an impossible thing. Sooner or later the human being in you will yearn for ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham

... your desire to observe the Red Indian of the Plains engaged in his tribal sports and pastimes wait for the Wild West Show; there is sure to be one coming to your town before the season is over. Or if you are bloodthirsty by nature and yearn to see him prancing round upon the warpath, destroying the hated paleface and strewing the soil with his shredded fragments, restrain your longings until next fall and then arrange to take in the football game between Carlisle and Princeton. ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb

... a trying summer for our emotions, torn as we were between our pity for Mrs. Bentley and our compassion for her daughter. We had no repose, except when we centred our sympathies upon Glendenning, whom we could yearn over in tender regret without doing any one else wrong, or even criticising another. He was our great stay in that respect, and though a mere external witness might have thought that he had the easiest part, we who knew his gentle and affectionate nature could ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells

... voyage, the treatment of the crew threw Harry more and more upon myself for companionship; and few can keep constant company with another, without revealing some, at least, of their secrets; for all of us yearn for sympathy, even if we do not for love; and to be intellectually alone is a thing only tolerable to genius, whose ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... crowded; and do they also like to leave a brilliant 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, ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street

... malady is she, a malady the ancients knew of and called nympholepsy—a beautiful name evocative and symbolic of its ideal aspect, "the breast of the nymph in the brake." And the disease is not extinct in these modern days, nor will it ever be so long as men shall yearn for the unattainable; and the prosy bachelors who trail their ill-fated lives from their chambers to their clubs know of, and they call ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore

... things. And the other things all focussed down upon his Doggie self. And he never knew what to make of his Doggie self at all. For he would curse the things that he once loved as being the cause of his inexpiable shame, and at the same time yearn for them with an agony ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke

... her." Then, as Dave continued to yearn over the animal, like a small boy tempted beyond his strength, Alaire laughed. "I owe you something, Mr. Law, and a horse more or less means very ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach

... Bowels do yearn, There are divers pretend to an equal Concern; And by her Perswasion their Hearts they reveal, In case if not guilty, to bring an Appeal: They all will unite, The young Blade to indite, And in Prosecution will ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various

... "My friends, I yearn in heart distraught for him; * Longing abides and with sore pains I brim: I mourn like childless mother, nor can find * One to console me when the light grows dim; Yet when the breezes blow from off thy land, * I feel their freshness shed on heart and limb; ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton

... Violante was not aware that if the beauty had been there the devotional aspirations would not have been there! That, which causes more deeply implanted in her nature than she knew of were impelling her to desire and to yearn for, the imperfect teaching of the world around her had led her to imagine to be unattainable save by the gifts of personal beauty. And, knowing that if that were so there was no hope for her, her bruised heart had sought the only refuge which seemed ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... social Queens, this lesson learn If for supremacy you yearn, And of your fitness there is doubt, See that ...
— Children of Our Town • Carolyn Wells

... as they are financially established, they usually do so, but a craving for a home of her own is the first stirring of maturity in a woman. To many women, however, a home is not wholly satisfying unless she is making it for someone else, and nature has made most women yearn ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various

... casual visitor 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, or in some similar way displays ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... there rang on my ear a song mighty simple an' old; Heart-hungry an' high it thrilled to the sky, all about "silver threads in the gold". 'Twas tender to tears, an' it brung back the years, the mem'ries that hallow an' yearn; 'Twas home-love an' joy, 'twas the thought of my boy . . . an' right there ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service

... feebly, blindly groping for the full of the water, and always pushed gently, hopelessly back; that sense that you are still young and warm, and yet so furbelowed with old thoughts and fashions that none can see how young and warm you are, none see how you long to rub hearts with the active, how you yearn for something real to do that can help life on, and how no one will give it you! All this—this tragedy—was for the time defeated. She was, in triumph, doing something real for those she loved and longed to do things for. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... bowman is without triumph; so for this reason, we prefer the accidental meetings and impromptu adventures to the more certain contact. Still when at night we hear the tingling call of the lynx up in the woods, we yearn for a willing dog and a ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope

... 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 preserving ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... 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

... is Go-Murakami. Go-Daigo's will declared that his only regret in leaving the world was his failure to effect the restoration, and that though his body was buried at Yoshino, his spirit would always yearn for Kyoto. Tradition says that he expired holding a sword in his right hand, the Hokke-kyo-sutra in his left, and that Kitabatake Chikafusa spoke of the event as a dream ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... and to look at their present condition and future prospects in this country as a matter in which they are personally interested. When they do this in earnest, the result can be easily foreseen. They will desire to escape from their present anomalous condition, will yearn to be free and disenthralled, to have a land of their own, to have rights unquestioned by any superiors, where character, enterprise, education, and all that is lovely and noble in life shall combine to elevate and ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various

... should say, to periods of ennui. I must either be painting or reading or writing. I had not the precious faculty of being able on occasions to sit and let the rich waters of life flow over me. I would yearn for amusement, and search in vain for some object to amuse me. When you first came I was deeply interested in so extraordinary a case as yours; and after a while, when the acuteness of my curiosity and ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... said of old: The words so stern and sweet Still make believing mothers bold To gather at His Feet, And bring their babes; their hearts discern (And oh, that others would!) How mother-like His Heart must yearn Who ...
— A Christmas Faggot • Alfred Gurney

... sad night draws down, When the austere stars burn: Roaming the vast live town, My thoughts and memories yearn Toward him, ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various

... the icy rage that awes with its intensity; the deliberate bringing to the verge of deadly action the nerves and muscles that yearn for violent expression—and then holding them there, ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer

... these," my calm companion said, "From the crowd yonder! These yearn not for bed As rest from leaden labour." The night may be far spent, the Sabbath dawns, But here no dull brain-palsied drowser ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 January 11, 1890 • Various

... know the perverse little devil that is in you. When you realise what you've let yourself in for you'll break loose, suddenly—like that." He threw out his arms as if he burst bonds asunder. "You can't help yourself. You simply can't live the life. You may yearn for it, ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair

... notes from another pair of feathered lovers, "chukwa, chukwi," "chukwa, chukwi," in a sort of mournful alternation. They were the branning ducks, he on one side, she on the other side of the stream, as is their habit, whence they are fabled to be a pair of lovers who must yearn unavailingly through the long nights from opposite banks ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various

... provinciality of the town, exemplified by the childish preoccupation of the inhabitants with their own two-penny affairs. No characteristic of life in Bursley annoyed her more than this. None had oftener caused her to yearn in a brief madness for the desert-like freedom of great cities. But she had got accustomed to it. Indeed, she had almost ceased to notice it. Only occasionally, when her nerves were more upset than usual, ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... all things seen to yearn In due time for due return; And no order fixed may stay, Save which in th' appointed way Joins the end to the beginning In a ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius

... the floor and wash the dishes, Nor dream about the things you'll do in 1928! My counsel is to cease to sit and yearn about your wishes, Cursing the throws ...
— Something Else Again • Franklin P. Adams

... sock; namely, harmony—ha! ha! ha! You think sometimes one way and sometimes another. Your soul is full of bites! You are idyllic and also satirical. You jeer at idyls, and still, at odd times, you yearn for one somewhat. Have I touched the point accurately? ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)



Words linked to "Yearn" :   languish, long, yearner, desire, hold dear, hanker, treasure, die, care for, yen, cherish, ache, yearning, pine



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