"Yearning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... later, with the feathery stalks of the asparagus. This is often, too, the timid expression of a tender feeling, under Puritanic repression, which has not sufficient vent in the sweet-william and hollyhock at the front door. This is a yearning after beauty and ornamentation which has no other means ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... dearest son,(653) 20 A child of delights? That as oft as against him I speak I must think of him still. My bowels for him are yearning, Pity him ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... was underlined. I read the note which I received early in the morning a second time. Then I had a donkey saddled, an animal symbolic of learned professors, and rode into the mountains. I wanted to numb my desire, my yearning, with the magnificent scenery of the Carpathians. I am back, tired, hungry, thirsty, and more in love than ever. I quickly change my clothes, and a few moments later knock ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... forever normal when anger takes the reins. And, for the time, Gavin Brice was deaf and blind to every motive or caution, and centered his entire faculties on the yearning to punish Milo Standish. He had fought like a tiger and had risked his own life to save Standish from the unknown assailant's knife thrust. Milo, in gross stupidity, had struck him senseless. And now, coldbloodedly, he had helped to plan for ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... and the small stature of the lad, who was no taller than many boys of twelve or fourteen. But there was a depth of melancholy in those dark brown eyes, that went far into the heart of any one who had the power to be touched with their yearning, appealing, almost piteous gaze, as though their owner had come into a world that was much too hard for him, and were looking out in bewilderment and entreaty for some haven ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... till many years later, partly at Mr Swinburne's most judicious suggestion. The scheme is trochaic, and Mr Arnold (deriving beyond all doubt inspiration from Keats) was happier than most poets with that charming but difficult foot. The note is the old one of yearning rather than passionate melancholy, applied in a new way and put most clearly, though by no means most ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... their children, and in this case the father too much resembled the son in wilful impetuosity of temper. Turned out of his first home, Shelley went wandering forth by land and sea,—a reed shaken by the wind, a restless outcast yearning for repose and human sympathy, and in this way encountering the questionable accidents of his troubled, unguarded life, and gathering all the feverish inspiration of his melancholy and ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... 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 flirtation with Lady Binks, which he justly considered as an insult to his family, considering ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... pity all the more heartfelt because their suffering is so much greater than any they could have endured in this life. See the state of those souls. They are in grace and favor with God; they are burning with love for Him; they are yearning, with a yearning boundless in its intensity, to drink refreshment of life, and love, and sanctification, and to be replenished with goodness and truth, and to perfect their natures at the Fountain-head of all truth, all goodness, all love, and all perfection. ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... compassion is, there is yearning of bowels; and where there is that, there is a readiness to help. And, I say again, the more deplorable and dreadful the condition is, the more directly doth bowels and compassion turn themselves ...
— The Jerusalem Sinner Saved • John Bunyan
... slipped to the floor unheeded. She sat there in her ugly nightgown, yearning with every fibre of her for the unknown joy. The flickering light of the candles was answered by the strange fire that burned in her eyes. At last her head drooped forward and, blind with tears, she hid her ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... and in the room was conscious of no presence save hers; on all his face was expressed his unutterable yearning for life, his bitter, almost craven regret that he was to be snatched away so young, leaving so many joys ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... must be Caesar and the purple. Republics breed in quick succession their Catilines and their Octavius. They run to seed in empire, and so fructify into kingdoms—the staple form of nations. The instinctive yearning for the first change is sure to be developed as soon as the exhilaration of conquest makes evident the importance of concentrated strength, and imperial splendour. If so, the hour that will try the stability of this republic cannot be distant. Already I have heard Americans ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... knows herself their match. But in this man set apart, she recognises the embodied conscience, the moral judge, who is indifferent to her as a woman, observant of her as a soul. Round this attraction she flutters, and has always fluttered since the beginning of things. It is partly a yearning for guidance and submission; partly also a secret pride that she who for other men is mere woman, is, for the priest, spirit, and immortal. She prostrates herself; but at the same time she seems to herself to enter through her submission upon a region of spiritual independence ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... believe that there is no love so altogether good—at least for us here. It is as yearning as that of a mother for her child, and as tender as that of lovers; and I should say, more holy than either, for theirs is natural to them in their mortal life, though it may be the purest part of it; ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau
... hat and went out, leaving the boy feeling as if a fresh sting had been planted in his breast, and his brow wrinkled up more than ever, while his heart grew more heavy in his intense yearning for somebody who seemed to care for ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... like an unseen god. Not as Phoebus or Athene, from their marble pedestals; but as an abiding spirit, felt everywhere, nowhere seized, absorbing in itself all mysteries, all myths, all burning exaltations, all abasements, all love, self-sacrifice, pain, yearning, which the thought of Christ, sweeping the centuries, hath wrought for men. Let, therefore, choir and congregation raise their voices on the tide of prayers and praises; for this is Easter morning—Christ is risen! ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... and a prize set before our longing. In some respects it is only a challenge to search, and the horizons of knowledge forever widen before the explorer. At other points the veil never lifts, but all longing, aspiration, unsatisfied hunger, inarticulate yearning, "groanings which cannot be uttered," reach out to and lay hold on this realm of mystery. It is not an adamantine wall that encircles us, it is the tender mystery of the sunset ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... Yule was evidently yearning for his after-dinner nap, and Mark for his cigar, Moor followed his friend, and they stepped through the window into the garden, now lovely with the ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... of individuality, combined with a sense of power, a self-supremacy, and a "principle of restlessness which would be all, have, see, know, taste, feel all"; of this essential self, imagination is described as the characteristic quality; an imagination, steady and unfailing in its power. A "yearning after God," or supreme and universal good, unconsciously cherished through the earlier stages of the history, keeps this mind from utterly dissipating itself; and, which seems to us the only point in which the coherence fails, there is added an unaptness for love, a mere ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... a yearning cry; Gray's streaked, swollen features were grotesquely contorted. "You won't be mad with ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... 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 Seminary; at ...
— 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
... like to see her. I believe she is a great idol with her father. I wish," added Katherine, after a pause, "he were not so unreasonably prejudiced against me. You may think me weak, Rachel, but I have a sort of yearning for family ties." ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... inclination to that friendly intimacy which would have been sure to arise if her pupils had been of the same race as herself. She recognized their right most fully to careful and polite consideration; she had striven to cultivate among them gentility of deportment; but she had longed with a hungry yearning for friendly white faces, and the warm hands and hearts of ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... a sudden leap, as if something had quickened in it. Her brain glowed. Her pulses throbbed with the race of the glad blood in her veins. Her whole being moved, trembling and yearning, toward an incredible joy. Till that moment she had hardly realised Robert's children. A strange unquietness, not yet recognised as fear, had kept her from asking him many questions about them. Even now, their forms were ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair
... thought 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, it had been with a little feeling in the heart that was pain; and he remembered ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... tried to think and reason Why the fire from one caress Turned my burning, yearning spirit To a cinder of distress. Some one told me, I remember, Long ago when I was small, God made every star up yonder, Everything—the world and all. Then I thought that in His workshop, Up there ...
— Nancy MacIntyre • Lester Shepard Parker
... state of the wretched three hundred. But her head began to nod again, and the fire was suddenly dashed out in blackness. She started up yawning. It was all so dreary! Life—Then and there our wholesome Kitty would have made her first step toward becoming the yearning, misplaced Woman of the Time, but for a knock which came at ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... the box cars on Kinzie Street, partially because he felt that he was fitted for more dignified employment, and as well for the fact that the railroad company had doubled the number of watchmen in the yards; but there were times when he felt the old yearning for excitement and adventure. These times were usually coincident with an acute financial depression in Billy's change pocket, and then he would fare forth in the still watches of the night, with a couple of boon companions and roll a souse, or ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... to look at her, as you may guess; but none looked with yearning until the Woggle-Bug, sauntering gloomily along a path, happened to raise his eyes and see before him his heart's delight the very identical Wagnerian plaids which had filled ...
— The Woggle-Bug Book • L. Frank Baum
... him and his child, though he is the injured and not the injurer, does not long to be reconciled—is not the first to make advances and overtures of peace. In this feature of the parental character God has stamped upon our hearts the beautiful image of His own. Yearning over them as the kind old man over his wayward prodigal, his exiled child, God was willing to receive back sinners to His arms; to reinstate them in His family, and restore them to His favour. But how was this to be done?—done without dishonour to His holy law, and with due ...
— The Angels' Song • Thomas Guthrie
... while before the child becomes conscious of the wondrous love that is bending over it, yet all the time the love is growing in depth and tenderness. In a thousand ways, by a thousand delicate arts, the mother seeks to waken in her child a response to her own yearning love. At length the first gleams of answering affection appear—the child has begun to love. From that hour the holy friendship grows. The two lives become knit ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... with me have been those in which pain and pleasure, yearning and satisfaction, knowledge and seeking, have been so exquisitely and so intangibly blended, in listening to some deep sonata, some stately and pathetic old ciacconna or gavotte, some concerto or symphony; the thing nearest heaven is to sit apart with closed ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... Susan Dixon threw herself into occupation could not last for ever. Times of languor and remembrance would come—times when she recurred with a passionate yearning to bygone days, the recollection of which was so vivid and delicious, that it seemed as though it were the reality, and the present bleak bareness the dream. She smiled anew at the magical sweetness of some touch or tone which in memory she felt and heard, ...
— Half a Life-Time Ago • Elizabeth Gaskell
... the help of what he had stolen, and by the cleverness which afterwards made him so helpful to Paul, he made his way to Rome, naturally drawn to the great centre, and prompted both by a desire to hide himself and by a youthful yearning to see the utmost the world could show of glory ...
— Weymouth New Testament in Modern Speech, Preface and Introductions - Third Edition 1913 • R F Weymouth
... bare room, with its log walls, its utter absence of everything that suggested refinement; he thought of the terrible isolation that in these days had become so depressing even to himself; he thought of all the long hours of weary yearning for the sight and touch of all that he held dear, and for the sake of the girl to whom he had given his heart's love in all its unsullied purity and in all its virgin freshness he made his decision. ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... soothed by the sympathy of the kindly Portuguese, is lulled into harmony with the surrounding scenes of peace and beauty. Only the thought of our ravaged country, struggling still for dear life, though forced upon her knees, brings back the claims of duty and the yearning to be up and doing, to enter once more the ranks of the foemen and ...
— With Steyn and De Wet • Philip Pienaar
... 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, and the interests of the nation are forgotten, and ...
— Is The Young Man Absalom Safe? • David Wright
... another evidence of the fact, that however ignorant man may be, he still feels within him his immortal spirit yearning, after the unknown future. ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... few more Alaska days with John Muir. The itch of the wanderlust in my feet had become a wearisome, nervous ache, increasing with the years, and the call of the wild more imperative, until the fierce yearning for the North was at times more than ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young
... of his style shows the clearness of his perceptions. Occasionally he is epigrammatic "Strong enemies," he says in one place, "are better to us than weak friends. They show us our weak points." Finer and higher is another passage in the same sermon—"The yearning of multitudes is not in vain. After yearning comes impulse, volition, movement." It would be difficult, if not impossible, to better this, unless a great poet cast it in the ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... you understand it? With a tender smile and a tear, And a half-compassionate yearning, I ...
— Separation and Service - or Thoughts on Numbers VI, VII. • James Hudson Taylor
... him, climbing by the self-same way: Quietly as a cloud at break of day Up the long glens of golden dew he stole (And surely Bion called to him afar!) The tearful hyacinths and the greenwood spray Clinging to keep him from the sapphire goal, Kept of his path no trace! Upward the yearning face Clomb the ethereal height, calm ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... Tales," "the pale tint of flowers that blossomed in too retired a shade,—the coolness of a meditative habit, which diffuses itself through the feeling and observation of every sketch." But no such charge can be laid at the door of "Rab and his Friends." The very dumbness of Rab, his mute yearning to help, his brave and loyal ministries in the hospital, doubly affecting because wordless and impotent, lend an appeal to this sketch that few sketches of men and women can be said ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... parchment, and his brown eyes looked enormously large and startlingly bright. But what touched me more than his emaciated appearance was the wonderful expression of emotion which shone from those large eyes as we appeared at the bedside; they looked at Val with the yearning affection that one sees sometimes in a faithful dog. The poor fellow put out his white, wasted hand to ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... she reasoned dumbly, "erred in the sight of God and man. I have been hard, hard. What right have I to hold him to so strict an account? By my own contrition and unutterable yearning to behold his face, will I judge him, and naught else, the husband of my youth, once the ...
— That Old-Time Child, Roberta • Sophie Fox Sea
... bushes, where we could see the great elms, the fountain, the country beyond. We had many walks together; and one afternoon we came to a place on a woodland path amid hills, trees towering above us, a brook playing below us. The air was hushed with a passionate Orpheus, and there I sensed her yearning. I heard the rhythm of her flesh singing to me. Her hands were stretched toward me, the pupils of her eyes grew wide as if a vision stood before her. For the first time I kissed ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... hear, scorned not to sob, And mightily, in stricken heart, did grieve That he so soon so fair a world must leave. And all because the morning wind had brought Earth's dewy fragrance with sweet mem'ries fraught. So Robin wept nor sought his grief to stay, Yearning amain for joys of yesterday; Till, hearing nigh the warder's heavy tread, He sobbed no more but ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... registered electors who actually vote is kept down by the prosaic character of Italian electoral campaigns, by the influence of the papal Non Expedite,[552] and, most of all, by the habitual indifference of citizens, who, if the truth be told, for the most part have never displayed an insatiable yearning for the possession of the voting privilege. With the exception of the Socialists, no party has a clear-cut, continuous programme; none, save again the socialists, attempts systematically to arouse the voters at ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... had died down and sleepy babies were ready to turn their faces bedward, we drove slowly down the winding lane to the dust-covered bridge, past the small cemetery where mother was sleeping, back to where the broad-roofed old house was waiting for us like some huge, faithful creature yearning to receive us once again beneath its wings. It was commonplace to our neighbors and without special significance to the world, but to my children it was noble and beautiful ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... having any real conversation with one, except once. His mother had asked me in his presence (it was in New York) how I liked America, and I had answered that it dazzled me; that the only yearning I felt was for something dark and quiet, and small and uncomfortable. She was rather pleased, but the boy put a string across the drawing-room door when I went out, and tripped me up. Then we had a little conversation—quite a short one—but ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... the fact remains that frequently I feel a longing, amounting almost to a yearning, for her company. Undoubtedly the explanation lies in my increasing desire to develop, by precept, by proverb and by admonition, the higher side of her nature. Moreover, it is to me evident that this intercourse must prove ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... he was face to face with one of these conjunctions of affairs which the credulous accept as manifestations of some hidden power, and sceptics as coincidences and nothing more. All the afternoon he had been thinking of Narcisse, and yearning beyond measure for something suggestive of his art; and here, on his plate before him, was food which might have been touched by the vanished hand. The same subtle influence pervaded the Chartreuse a la cardinal, the roast capon ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... the passing souls we pray, Saviour, meet them on the way; Thou wilt hear our yearning call, Who hast ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... on; 'and the same heat which crisps those thirsty leaves must breed the thunder-shower which cools them? But so it is throughout the universe: every yearning proves the existence of an object meant to satisfy it; the same law creates both the giver and the receiver, ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... rising of a drowning man from the deep, to sink again, was dreadful to the beholders. But, gradually the change stole upon him that it became dreadful to himself. His desire to impart something that was on his mind, his unspeakable yearning to have speech with his friend and make a communication to him, so troubled him when he recovered consciousness, that its term was thereby shortened. As the man rising from the deep would ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... disturbed him deeply; and she immediately concluded that his change of plan was due to some surreptitious interference of Mr. Royall's. All her old resentments and rebellions flamed up, confusedly mingled with the yearning roused by Harney's nearness. Only a few hours earlier she had felt secure in his comprehending pity; now she was flung back on herself, doubly alone after that moment ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... the deed, the sincere intention for the achievement, or the yearning of the heart for the practical accomplishment, is subversive of all our standards of conduct. No business could be run on the basis of paying men in accordance with their readiness to work, irrespective ...
— Hidden from the Prudent - The 7th William Penn Lecture, May 8, 1921 • Paul Jones
... wistfulness came into my soul, as I stood shut apart there from those living men, within reach of their hands, within range of their eyes, within the vibration of their human breath. I looked into the animal's eyes with the yearning of a sudden and an awful sense ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... Melancholiacs? That people there are who by natural constitution have been given a different nature and disposition than the others; that have a larger heart and a swifter blood, that wish and demand more, have stronger desires and a yearning which is wilder and more ardent than that of the common herd. They are fleet as children over whose birth good fairies have presided; their eyes are opened wider; their senses are more subtile in all their perceptions. ...
— Mogens and Other Stories - Mogens; The Plague At Bergamo; There Should Have Been Roses; Mrs. Fonss • Jens Peter Jacobsen
... is good. And flight is destined for the callow wing, And the high appetite implies the food, And souls most reach the level whence they spring; O Life of very life! set free our powers, Hasten the travail of the yearning hours. ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... which Bernard could not answer, though it carried him back with a strange yearning, yet resignation, to the little figure that had curled round on his knee, and the hopes connected with the hands that ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... could not help yearning over this faulty, well-beloved scapegrace Tom, or help thinking, with a little thrill of hope, "If Trix only cared for his money, she may cast him off now he 's lost it; but I 'll love him all the better because he 's poor." With this feeling warm at her heart, I don't wonder that Polly's hand ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... it was time the other went, she would have bowed to his decision, because he was her king, and she realised that it was no wonder that Roger had found out. That moment of which she was so proud because she had said heartily, "Richard, don't you see it's Roger?" without showing by any wild yearning of the eye that she would have given anything to be alone with him, had been instantly followed by a betrayal. For when he had lifted his lips from her cheek and had turned to greet Roger with courtesy ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... the color of lupines damp with the dew of dawn. Their eyes met, the glance held, welded. For a moment the circuit was formed, polarity effected. For a moment Sandy looked deep and then Molly's eyes hazed with tenderness, with a yearning that made Sandy's heart constrict, that warned him his emotions were getting beyond control, his own eyes betraying him. He summoned his will. His face hardened to the effort, his eyes steeled. Molly's face flushed rose, from the line of her white linen riding stock up to her ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... of the hollow, the base, the untrue, Mother, O mother, my heart calls for you. Two weary summers the grass has grown green, Blossomed, and faded, our faces between; Yet with strong yearning and passionate pain, Long I to-night for your presence again; Come from the silence so long and so deep,— Rock me to sleep, mother—rock ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... and arranging the fire at least every ten minutes—a propensity which tested the forbearance of the senior clerk rather severely, and would have surprised any one not aware of poor Harry's incurable antipathy to the desk, and the yearning desire with which he ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... turned soft and contrite. If she had learned to care for the big American herself during the hard days when he had been so tender, she also had learned that her worship was hopeless. She had felt his yearning love for another; now she was looking upon that other. While the attendants were bending over their unconscious companion, the Spanish girl stood guard over the man who had been her guardian, the man whose life was going out before ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... thin grass again, and in the distance there was a rim of melancholy mountains, and the peasants I saw along the road seemed a counterpart of the landscape. "The land has made them," I said, "according to its own image and likeness," and I tried to find words to define the yearning that I read in their eyes as we drove past. But I could find no ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... Richmond, laying her hand in his, as an ineffably sweet look of content beamed from her eyes in his, and there was tender yearning love in every tone of her sweet deep voice; "but you have come back alive after we had long ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... dim discerning, We can faintly see the book; Softly stealing, with lore's yearning,— ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... but then, to account for her long absence, and her long silence towards all that ought to have been dear to her, it was necessary that she should put on an indifference far distant from her heart, which was loving and yearning, in spite of all its faults. And, perhaps, she over-acted her part, for certainly Mary felt a kind of repugnance to the changed and altered aunt, who so suddenly reappeared on the scene; and it would have cut Esther to the very core, could she have ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... both went away seeking work; and then I would be locked up in the cellar for a day or two at a time. I was at my worldliest then. Left alone, I yielded myself up to a worldly yearning for enough of anything (except misery), and for the death of mother's father, who was a machine-maker at Birmingham, and on whose decease, I had heard mother say, she would come into a whole courtful of houses 'if she had her rights.' Worldly little devil, I would stand about, ...
— George Silverman's Explanation • Charles Dickens
... of the Committee of Public Safety. His first thought on hearing of this important advancement was that it opened up an opportunity for proceeding to Turkey to organize the artillery of the Sultan; and in a few days he sent in a formal request to that effect—the first tangible proof of that yearning after the Orient which haunted him all through life. But, while straining his gaze eastwards, he experienced a sharp rebuff. The Committee was on the point of granting his request, when an examination of his recent conduct proved him guilty of a breach of discipline in not ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... and then worked on the railway. He was afraid to tell any one his secret, and was in no hurry, as he had no fear of any chance miners discovering the spot, which he said looked by no means a promising one. Then he fell ill, and a yearning for England seized him, and so he came to me. Before he died he told me the story, and gave me the fullest directions for finding the spot where, he said, a great fortune awaited me. I was by profession ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... His throbbing, yearning heart told him that he still loved his wife. Why should he punish a fault committed so many years ago, and atoned for by twenty years of ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... Esmond thought, with a blush perhaps, of another sweet pale face, sad and faint, and fading out of sight, with its sweet fond gaze of affection; such a last look it seemed to cast as Eurydice might have given, yearning after her lover, when Fate and Pluto summoned her, and she passed away into ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... our thoughts image forth no darker doom, Than that which wraps us in the peaceful tomb? Whom have ye laid beneath that mossy grave, Round which the slender, sunny, grass-blades wave? Who are ye calling back to tread again This weary walk of life? towards whom, in vain, Are your fond eyes and yearning hearts upraised; The young, the loved, the honoured, and the praised? Come hither;—look upon the faded cheek Of that still woman, who with eyelids meek Veils her most mournful eyes;—upon her brow Sometimes the sensitive ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler
... have complained to Diana that my owl stare was "getting on his nerves," even though he could have brought no other complaint. If he had spoken to her she would have made some excuse to scratch me off her list of bridesmaids. I hoped she would, and save me trouble! But perhaps Sidney felt that I was yearning for him to "squeal," and resolved not to please me. In any case, nobody not in the secret of our hearts could have guessed that anything was wrong. And I had to play at spraining my ankle in order to escape being one ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... with the loneliness and doubts which impelled her to speech, the feminine yearning to let another decide her problems. This other's nonchalant strength of decision ...
— The Flying Mercury • Eleanor M. Ingram
... M. Grandissime looked up at the glass, dropped the letter with a slight start of consternation and advanced quickly toward her. For an instant her embarrassment showed itself in a mantling blush and a distressful yearning to escape; but the next moment she rose, all a-flutter within, it is true, but with a face as nearly sedate as the inborn witchery of her ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... failed him; fire was kindled in his vitals and he returned to his lodging, where he passed the day in trouble and transports of grief, without finding ease or patience, till night darkened upon him, when his yearning and love-longing redoubled. Thereupon, by way of concealment, he disguised himself in the ragged garb of a Fakir,[FN42] and set out wandering at random through the glooms of night, distracted and knowing not whither he went. So he wandered on all that night and next ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... scarce less happily assured than his security. An impulse eminently natural had stirred within the Prince; his life, as for some time established, was deliciously dull, and thereby, on the whole, what he best liked; but a small gust of yearning had swept over him, and Maggie repeated to her father, with infinite admiration, the pretty terms in which, after it had lasted a little, he had described to her this experience. He called it a "serenade," a low music that, outside one of the windows of the ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... what? Fleda suddenly remembered, and was stopped short. From all the strange scenes and interests which lately had whirled her along, her spirit leaped back with strong yearning recollection to her old home and her old ties; and such a rain of tears witnessed the dearness of what she had lost and the tenderness of the memory that had let them slip for a moment, that Hugh was as much distressed as startled. With great tenderness and touching delicacy he tried to ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... ideal, yet to one's amazement our very ideals change at times and leave us floundering in the dark. What is an ideal, anyhow? A wraith, a mist, a perfume in the wind, a dream of fair water. The soul-yearning of a girl like Antoinette Nowak was a little too strained for him. It was too ardent, too clinging, and he had gradually extricated himself, not without difficulty, from that particular entanglement. Since then he had been intimate with other women for brief periods, but to no ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... of stagnation, and walked up and down to shake himself out of a torpor which might have been attributed to the hot fire. Well, well, was it because he had had to wait so long that his desires had left him, or at least quit bothering him—no, they had not, why, he was yearning now for the moment when he might crush that woman! He thought he had the explanation of his lack of enthusiasm in the stage fright inseparable from any beginning. "It will not be really exquisite tonight until after ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... street lamp he looked out over the great sea of passionate, brutal faces, crazed with drink and riot, and a great wave of compassionate feeling swept over him. Those nearest never forgot that look. It was Christlike in its yearning love for lost children. His ...
— The Crucifixion of Philip Strong • Charles M. Sheldon
... and knocks at a cottage door. The face—said to be a portrait of Venables, curate of St. Paul's, Oxford—is quite unlike the type which Raphael has made traditional. It is masculine—even rugged—seamed with lines of care, and filled with an expression of yearning. There is anxiety and almost timidity in his pose as he listens for an answer to his knock. The nails and bolts of the door are rusted; it is overgrown with ivy and the tall stalks and flat umbels of fennel. The sill is choked with nettles ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... 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 ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... blew up the road and set her yearning for the joys of Mr. Wilks's best room. "It's very ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... writing, and crossing to you who don't value it, while my poor heart is yearning after my lost child! Really life is somewhat hard to bear ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... passions in their conscience-strife, The conflicts of the heart against the heart, The mother yearning o'er the infant's life, The maiden wrong'd by wealth and lecherous art, The leper's loathsome cell from man apart, War's hell of lust and fire, the village-woe, The tinsel ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... or little-boy: I remember something about green fields, groves, dark mountains, and summer rivers flowing sweetly by. This now, to be sure, is a feeling which but few can understand. It is called homesickness, and assumes different aspects, my worthy friend. Sometimes it is a yearning after immortality, which absorbs and consumes the spirit, and then we die and go to enjoy that which we have pined for. Now, my worthy mute friend, mark me, in my case the malady is not so exalted. I only want my green fields, my dark mountains, my early rivers, with liberty to ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... Plainly there would have to be a purpose in harmony with the divine mind and plan, in order that faith could be exerted at all in such an undertaking. Neither such a miracle nor any other is possible as a gratification of the yearning for curiosity, nor for display, nor for personal gain or selfish satisfaction. Christ wrought no miracle with any such motive; He persistently refused to show signs to mere sign-seekers. But to deny the ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... secret of a spirit Bowed from its wild pride into shame O yearning heart! I did inherit Thy withering portion with the fame, The searing glory which hath shone Amid the Jewels of my throne, Halo of Hell! and with a pain Not Hell shall make me fear again— O craving heart, for the lost flowers ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... back to his place and watched her with a yearning heart, longing for the power to soothe her. She looked so forlorn and desolate, too frail to bear ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... thee, O life, with a yearning so strong, In the maze of the dance, o'er the goblet and song. All hail, beloved race, men so honest and true, And maids who speak raptures with eyes of bright blue! May success round your brows e'er its garlands entwine! Wherever I go is ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... now, and we moved in here in May last. I am very thankful that the lines have fallen to me still in my dear North—I have not pleasant recollections of the South. And I fancy—but perhaps unjustly—that we Northerners have a deeper, more yearning love for our hills and dales than they have down there. We are about midway between Brocklebank and Abbotscliff, which is just where I would have chosen to be, if I could have had the choice. It is not often that God gives a man all the desires of his heart; perhaps to a woman He gives it even less ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... hurry back to his own chambers, feeling that it was impossible for him to go near Bourne Square, knowing what he did, but the yearning for one to share his knowledge proved ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... soon melted into yearning. "Oh, that my dear, true husband still lived," said the Countess, as she looked to heaven, "for then my measure of joy would be full. Now, my dear children, you are poor and fatherless. The sight of you fills the heart of your oppressed mother with pain. ...
— After Long Years and Other Stories • Translated from the German by Sophie A. Miller and Agnes M. Dunne
... impulse of ruth stirred his heart. Did she suffer? So did he—keenly, cruelly. Let her end this torture for them both; let her lay aside these senseless scruples, and place her hand in his. His arms were open to her, his heart yearning for her; let her come and anchor in the sure ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... love in the dream. I have not more than three times at most dreamed of intercourse with one of the opposite sex. There was only in one case anything that I could call actual emotion in such a dream. The other dreams have often (not always) been dreams of real yearning, and not at all what I ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... there they lie 'neath Alma's sod, On pillows dark and gory— As brave a host as ever trod Old England's path to glory. With head to home and face to sky, And feet the tyrant spurning, So grand they look, so proud they lie, We weep for glorious yearning. Ah, Victory! joyful Victory! Like Love, thou bringest sorrow; But, O! for such an hour with thee, Who would not ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... slew the grief in her heart. She had believed she could not live if her husband were to be taken away from her; but she found herself often glad that he was dead,—glad that he was spared the sight and the knowledge of the things which happened; and even the yearning tenderness with which her imagination pictured him among the saints, was often turned into a fierce wondering whether indignation did not fill his soul, even in heaven, at the way things were going in the land for ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... Merlin excitedly, "I understand. Understanding is allowed to us old people—after nothing much matters. I see now that on a certain night when you danced upon a table-top you were nothing but my romantic yearning for a beautiful ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... with for a cardinal's hat. No indeed! Not to be Bishop of Verona, throned and purfled on Can Grande's right hand, will I consent to traffic my Vanna. Eh, sangue di Sangue, because I am a man of the Church must I cease to be a man of bowels, to have a yearning, a tender spot here?" He prodded his cushioned ribs. "Go you, Ser Baldassare Dardicozzo," he cried, rising grandly in his chair—"go you; you have mistaken your man. The father stands up superb in the curate's cassock, and points the door to ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... through which the snow gleamed strangely, mother and son sat talking. Lady Earle told Ronald of his father's death—of the last yearning cry when all the pent-up love of years seemed to rush forth and overpower him with its force. It was some comfort to him, after all, that his father's last thoughts and last words had been ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... this love and hungry yearning of the mother for her child, that his condition—stricken by fever, and that of his father lying at the very gates of ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... broken-hearted friends, who, to life's end, will suffer over and over all that their dear ones endured. Pity the mothers who hear their sons' faint calls in dreams, who in many a weary night-watch see them pining and wasting, and yearn with a lifelong, unappeasable yearning to have been able to soothe those forsaken, lonely death-beds. O man or woman, if you have pity to spare, spend it not on Lee or Davis,—spend it on their victims, on the thousands of living hearts which these men of sin have doomed ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... first of those Yankee clippers that have since almost monopolized the China carrying trade. The "Sea Serpent," bound for the United States, passed close to us, and a magnificent specimen of naval architecture she was. She excited a strong yearning for home, and gladly would I have exchanged on ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... goes beyond present experience. It is the yearning for full redemption. It is the last which is answered. But there lies in it a not indistinct prophecy of that great and blessed time when we shall be like Him, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... really finds out what God is, there can be no true spiritual worship. This is the truth Jesus came to make known to us when He says, "God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth," for the Father seeketh such to worship Him. Yes, the Father is seeking us, yearning for us to come close to Him and to respond to His love for us. When our Lord tells us that we must worship in spirit, He means that it is the spirit in man which responds to the Spirit of God. Do you offer Him your heart's devotion and praise, or is ...
— The One Great Reality • Louisa Clayton
... and obscurity of life, had always been my fortune. With all of these I had striven, to the best of my very small ability, having from nature no gift except the dull one of persistence. And throughout that struggle I had felt quite sure that a noble yearning for justice and a lofty power of devotion were my two impelling principles. But now, when I saw myself sprung of low birth, and the father of my worship base-born, down fell all my arduous castles, and I craved to go under ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... hard to conquer. I never imagined that she could be so stubborn. One thing is certain," he added, heaving a deep sigh; "we must separate for a time, or I shall be in danger of yielding; for it is no easy matter to resist her tearful pleadings, backed as they are by the yearning affection of my own heart. How I love the perverse little thing! Truly she has wound herself around my very heart-strings. But I must get these absurd notions out of her head, or I shall never have any comfort with her; and if I yield now, ...
— Holidays at Roselands • Martha Finley
... greatly amused, but she very willingly gave her consent for me to come home while the guests were absorbed with their supper, and gratify my life-long yearning. The others were quite as well pleased as I; and cook permitted me to concoct, unaided, some special dishes for our repast. I laid the table myself, not accepting the slightest help from any one. My cooking ventures turned out quite successfully, and after a while my preparations ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... no longer heroic. Her sufferings, her mistakes, her physical weakness, and the yearning of her heart for Millard's affection were fast getting the better of all the reasons she had believed so conclusive against the restoration of their engagement. Nevertheless, she found strength to say: "I am quite unfit to be your wife. You are a man that everybody ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... footstool. He was a man of instinctive moral cleanness, and even in his imagination he had always kept the riotous senses severely in the check of reason. In the domain of the affections he had wanted nothing desperately, he told himself, except his child; and so intense had this yearning of fatherhood become in him that there were moments of bitter loneliness when he seemed almost to feel the touch of the boy's hand upon his knee. He had strange hours, even when his dream became more vivid to him than the pressing ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... at his example. But every word which fell from his lips, and every demonstration of sympathy and approbation with which you received his eloquent expressions, renders me unable to respond to his kindness, and leaves me at last all heart and no lips, yearning to respond as I would do to your cordial greeting—possessing, heaven knows, the will, and desiring only to find ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... his hand instantly in answer to this question, for what boy had not stood at the village printer's yearning to set type or run one ...
— The Blue Birds' Winter Nest • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... I landed in the gloaming at thy shore— Dost thou hear their axes clanking on their shields without thy door? But a yearning woke within me my sweet sister's voice to hear, To behold her face and whisper words ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... translators have totally misunderstood the second line. Asyatam is explained by the commentator as tushnim sthiyatam. Ruchitahchcchandah means chcchandah or yearning arises from ruchi or like. What the Rishi says is Asyet I do not yearn after thy company, for I do not like thee. Of course, if, after staying with thee for some time, I begin to like thee, I may then ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... with tingling emotions, had faded into the somber-hued monotony of a dull and spiritless existence, eked out by the charity of the race who had robbed them of their hunting-grounds and deprived them of their rights as free men. The lust for revenge, the fury of hate, the yearning for the return of the days of the red man's independence raged through their speeches like fire in an open forest; and, ever fanning yet ever controlling the flame, old Copperhead presided till the moment should be ripe for such action as he desired. Back ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... fix me thus meant nothing? But I can't tell (there's my weakness) What her look said!—no vile cant, sure, about "need to strew the bleakness Of some lone shore with its pearl-seed, that the sea feels"—no "strange yearning That such souls have, most to lavish where there's ...
— English Satires • Various
... love, my own true love, To thee I'll never tell it, Never to thee I'll tell my burning love! But I will close these amorous eyes, And they shall guard my secret well. Only by days of yearning is it known. The calm blue nights, the golden stars, The dreaming woods that whisper in the night, These, yes, they know it, but are dumb; They will not show the mystery ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... Seeley reached the Yale field the eleven had gone to the dressing-rooms in the training house, and he hovered on the edge of the flooding crowds, fairly yearning for a glimpse of the Freshman full-back and a farewell grasp of his hand. The habitual dread lest the son find cause to be ashamed of his father had been shoved into the background by a stronger, more natural emotion. But he well ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... sincerity of the man. He saw in Rathburn's eyes that he was speaking the gospel truth. He saw something else in those eyes—the yearning of a homeless, friendless man, stamped with the stigma of outlawry, rebelling against the forces which were against him, relentlessly hunting ...
— The Coyote - A Western Story • James Roberts
... THE PAST. Reverence for the past may also be due to a romantic idealization of it. In such cases, it is not an interest in maintaining the present order; it is rather a contempt for the present and wistful yearning for the "good old days." Everyone indulges more or less in such idealization. Such halos are made possible because we retain the pleasant rather than the painful and dreary aspects of our past experience. The college alumnus returning to the campus tells of the since unsurpassed intellectual and ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... wildest inhabitant of the sea coast very soon obtains the idea of distance, which is altogether wanting to the inhabitant of the primeval forest. No sooner does he catch sight of the far-off island than his yearning after the distant assumes a well-defined character. Bits of wood floating past him suggest to his mind the best material to buoy himself up upon the water, and a fish the best form for his craft." (Klemm.) Hence the Mediterranean sea, especially ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher |
