Quotes on Longing

The artist's experience lies so unbelievably close to the sexual, to its pain and its pleasure, that the two phenomena are really just different forms of one and the same longing and bliss.

For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey, This pleasing anxious being e'er resign'd, Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day, Nor cast one longing ling'ring look behind?

Every natural longing has its natural satisfaction. If we thirst, God has created liquids to gratify thirst. If we are susceptible of attachment, there are beings to gratify that love. If we thirst for life and love eternal, it is likely that there are an eternal life and an eternal love to satisfy that craving.

Our restlessness in this world seems to indicate that we are intended for a better. We have all of us a longing after happiness; and surely the Creator will gratify all the natural desires he has implanted in us.

A book is good company. It is full of conversation without loquacity. It comes to your longing with full instruction, but pursues you never.

In the marvelous month of May when all the buds were bursting, then in my heart did love arise. In the marvelous month of May when all the birds were singing, then did I reveal to her my yearning and longing.

In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we've discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We've learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.

We are in an age of religious complexity. The simplicity which is in Christ is rarely found among us. In its stead are programs, methods, organizations, and a world of nervous activities which occupy time and attention but can never satisfy the longing of the heart.

The longing for peace is rooted in the hearts of all men. But the striving, which at present has become so insistent, cannot lay claim to such an ambition as leading the way to eternal peace, or solving all disputes among nations.

At the centre of the human heart is the longing for an absolute good, a longing which is always there and is never appeased by any object in this world.

When we first meet what we love, we could become poets for our longing. When we are removed from what we love, we become singers of grief and weavers of elegant description.

When we slow down, quiet the mind, and allow ourselves to feel hungry for something that we do not understand, we are dipping into the abundant well of spiritual longing.

He whose longing has been aroused for the indescribable, whose mind has been quickened by it, and whose thought is not attached to sensuality is truly called one who is bound upstream.

Art is born and takes hold wherever there is a timeless and insatiable longing for the spiritual...

True values entail suffering. That’s the way we think. All in all, we tend to view melancholia as more true. We prefer music and art to contain a touch of melancholia. So melancholia in itself is a value. Unhappy and unrequited love is more romantic than happy love. For we don’t think that’s completely real, do we?…Longing is true. It may be that there’s no truth at all to long for, but the longing itself is true. Just like pain is true. We feel it inside. It’s part of our reality.

If today's arts love the machine, technology and organization, if they aspire to precision and reject anything vague and dreamy, this implies an instinctive repudiation of chaos and a longing to find the form appropriate to our times.

And your eyes must do some raining if you're ever gonna grow / When crying don't help, you can't compose yourself / It's best to compose a poem, an honest verse of longing / Or a simple song of hope.

The years of anxious searching in the dark, with their intense longing, their alternations of confidence and exhaustion and the final emergence into the light -- only those who have experienced it can understand it.

Through winter-time we call on spring,_x000D_ _x000D_ And through the spring on summer call,_x000D_ _x000D_ And when the abounding hedges ring_x000D_ _x000D_ Declare that winter's best of all:_x000D_ _x000D_ And after that there's nothing good_x000D_ _x000D_ Because the spring time has not come-_x000D_ _x000D_ Not know that what disturbs our blood_x000D_ _x000D_ Is but its longing for the tomb.

Raise a million filters and the rain will not be clean, until the longing for it be refined in deep confession.

I felt a longing to compose a radical or root poem that would speak to what has its back turned to me.