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Yearning   Listen
adjective
yearning  adj.  
1.
Full of longing or unfulfilled desire.
Synonyms: wistful.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Yearning" Quotes from Famous Books



... cry is the yearning, the thirst for the tempest, And anger's hot might in its wild notes is heard; The keen fire of passion, the faith in sure triumph— All these the clouds hear in ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various

... Sonata" (Op. 27, No. 2)—"alla damigella contessa Giulietta Guicciardi." It was in 1802, when he was thirty-two and she eighteen, that he wrote her so luscious name on the lintel of that sonata, so deep with yearning, so delicious in its middle mood, and so passionately despairing in its close. She had been his pupil. She told Otto Jahn long years after, when she was sixty-eight years old, that Beethoven had first ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes

... airy sprite, the beholder feels an exhilarating influence steal over him, and involuntarily there goes up from his heart, like incense, that yearning prayer: ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... and she rested drowsily again, grateful for the damp wind which made the others shiver. Angelique's sweet fixed gaze, with an unconscious focus of vital power, dwelt on the sick girl; she felt the yearning pity which mothers feel. And this, or the glamour of dim light, made her oval face and dark hair so beautiful that Rice looked at her; and Peggy, coming from the screens, ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... his smooth, loose, effortless lope, perhaps a quarter of a mile, then stopped, and putting up his head, howled a howl so full of hopeless, cruel yearning, so vibrant with desolation, that it sounded like the cry of a soul doomed forever to seek something it could never find. It was a lugubrious yowl there, in that setting, and it made one's scalp creep all ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars

... looked at Julia Cloud, saw the white, strained look around her lips, the yearning light in her eyes, and had some swift man's intuition about the true woman's soul of her. For men, especially young men, do have these intuitions sometimes as ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill

... with clear, level eyes. Her curt, crisp speech was full of meaning. He looked long at her, with a yearning denied for many a day. Her face was the same, yet wonderfully changed; the same in line and color, but different in soul and spirit. The old sombre shadow lay deep in the eyes, but to it had been added gleam of will and reflection of thought. The whole face had ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey

... final separation came, and little by little the old corps fell apart, every man, as with inexpressible yearning he turned his face homeward, bore with him, as the richest heritage of his children and his children's children, the proud consciousness ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin

... when manhood shall be in the glory and strength of its prime, and it looks forward into the dark cloud beyond, and backward into the bright sunshine of the past, the aspiration, the hope will change into regret, and the yearning of the heart, speaking from its silent depths, will be, 'would ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond

... professor, "we find it free from many of the blemishes that offend us in its later phases. The founders of the ancient religions of the world, as far as we can judge, were minds of a high stamp, full of noble aspirations, yearning for truth, devoted to the welfare of their neighbors, examples of purity and unselfishness. What they desired to found upon earth was but seldom realized, and their sayings, if preserved in their original form, offered often a strange contrast to the practice ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood

... this diseased spot, and threatened, precisely by means of this vitality, to involve body and soul into an incurable disorder. In this melancholy condition nothing more seemed to me worth a desire, nothing worth a wish. An infinite yearning, indeed, seized me at times to know how it had gone with my poor friends and my beloved, what had been the result of a stricter scrutiny, how far they were implicated in those crimes, or had been found guiltless. This also I circumstantially painted to myself in the ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... and colour I suppose he calls it. I wish"—this with a tender, yearning smile—"I wish, for your sake and mine, dear, that his genius ran in another direction, stocks or banking—anything with an office. It is so worrying, this trick of his of ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock

... nor church,' sighed Gertrude. 'He was false! He married his father's cook—a fat, rosy-cheeked Swabian. All that was delicate and refined in his nature, every poetical yearning of his soul, had been trampled out of him in that ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... you and sympathise with you!' was Rudin's rejoinder. 'What generous soul has not experienced a yearning for self-humiliation? But one ought not to remain in that condition from which there ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev

... porter of the chapel, without knowing it, watched that night not only the mother of the rhetorician Augustin, but the ancestor of an innumerable line of souls; this humble woman, who slept there on the ground, on the flags of the courtyard, carried in her heart all the yearning of all the mothers of ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand

... his arm about the slender "scholar." Suddenly there flooded in upon him the old, old call, the call that had brought his Pilgrim forefathers across the Atlantic, the call that was as old as the yearning ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow

... to the extreme hour; Then, light from heaven fell, making us aware, So that, repenting us and pardoned, out Of life we passed to God, at peace with Him Who fills the heart with yearning Him ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... subordinated to love and human tenderness and infinite sorrow. The small number and conciseness of the people's choruses have already been alluded to, and it may easily be shown that the penitential music is brief compared with the love music, besides having a great deal of the love, the yearning love, feeling in it. The list of penitential pieces is exhausted when I have mentioned "Come, ye daughters," "Guilt for sin," "Break and die," "O Grief," "Alas! now is my Saviour gone," and "Have mercy upon me"; and, on the other hand, we have "Thou blessed Saviour," ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman

... sensation. Then will he forgive, and endure, and pour out his soul for the beloved who yet grope their way in doubt and passion. Then every man will be dear and precious to him, even the worst, for in him also lies an unknown yearning after the same peace wherein ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald

... who had been for hours close at her father's side, waiting upon him, smoothing his pillow, moistening his lips, gazing with yearning tenderness into his eyes, drinking in his every word and look while displaying a power of self-control wonderful to see in a child of her years, burst into a passion of tears and sobs, pressing her lips again and again to the brow, the cheek, ...
— The Two Elsies - A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket, Book 10 • Martha Finley

... about the well—the meeting-place of his companions—loved with all the passionate energy of his nature, and still loved in spite of the troublous times that had come upon him. As David broods over these memories, he longs with a yearning, homesick feeling for Bethlehem and its well. And, like a poet as he was, he conceives that if he could but drink of its water, it would relieve this feverish unrest and longing for the past. It was a very natural ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells

... says Abbot, vaguely, "I am doing quite well." Then he pauses. There is such yearning and—something he cannot fathom in the old man's face. He feels that he is expected to say still more—that this is not the welcome looked for. "I beg a thousand pardons, sir, perhaps I did not catch the name aright. Did you say ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King

... that of a woman who held a secret. At first I had been conscious that there was something unusual about her, and suspected her to be an adventuress; but now, on further acquaintance, I became convinced that she held possession of some knowledge that she was yearning to betray, ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux

... soon had some coffee boiling, bacon frying, and sweet potatoes roasting, and when I spread the lay out on the ground, and said, "Colonel, this is on me. Won't you join me?" I think he was the most surprised man I ever saw, He had watched every move I made, in cooking, with a yearning such as is seldom seen, and he probably had no more idea that he was going to have a mouthful of it, than that he should fly. His eyes might have been weak, but if he had been a man I knew well, I should ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck

... the first cold storm of the world sweeps over it, if the warm sunlight of love from the eyes of mother and father did not shine upon him like the soft reflection of divine light and love? The ardent yearning, which then awakes in the child, is the purest and deepest love. It is the love which embraces the whole world; which shines resplendent wherever the eyes of men beam upon it, which exults wherever it hears the human voice. It is the old, ...
— Memories • Max Muller

... invasion taken place fifty years before, amongst the French troops would have been the Irish brigade, who were always yearning for the opportunity of making an attack on their native land. But half a century had caused strange changes; the Irish brigade had fallen with the collapse of the French monarchy; and some of the few survivors were now actually ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous

... the house and then run out to Nokomis for a breath of air. That friendly flat of the Paulovitch's has almost strangled me. I have a great yearning for wide open spaces," Mr. Jerry told Miss Thorley over Mary ...
— Mary Rose of Mifflin • Frances R. Sterrett

... again been heard of, others are found equally ready to go in the same direction, believing that their predecessors have reached the happy land. The priests encourage this infatuation, as those who embark leave their property to them. This is faith, but alas! sadly misdirected. It shows a yearning for something better,—to escape from cruel wars and practices and misgovernment, to attain peace and quiet and rest. It is certain that almost all who thus embark perish horribly at sea. A few may be thrown on coral islands,—probably to ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston

... length the day came when, in reply to her inquiry at the Shipping Office, they told her that the owners had given up Hope of ever hearing more of the Betsy-Jane, and had sent in their claim upon the underwriters. Now that he was gone for ever, she first felt a yearning, longing love for the kind cousin, the dear friend, the sympathising protector, whom she should never see again,—first felt a passionate desire to show him his child, whom she had hitherto rather craved ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens

... clung to that right the more because Lilian made no attempt at reconciliation. This, too, was wholly unlike herself, for her temper was ordinarily sweet,—sweet to the extreme of meekness; saddened if the slightest misunderstanding between us had ever vexed me, and yearning to ask forgiveness if a look or a word had pained me. I was in hopes that, before I went away, peace between us would be restored. But long ere her usual hour for retiring to rest, she rose abruptly, and, complaining of fatigue and headache, wished me "good-night," and avoided the hand I ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... oh, wound it not! A yearning anguish is its lot; In the green shadow of the tree, The stranger finds no ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely

... the Communist empire has been heightened by two other formidable forces. One is the historical force of nationalism—and the yearning of all men to be free. The other is the gross inefficiency of their economies. For a closed society is not open to ideas of progress—and a police state finds that it cannot command the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John F. Kennedy • John F. Kennedy

... calmly, loosening Dixie's cinch. "I'm the long-lost top hand that the Cross L's been watching the sky-line for, lo! these many moons, a-yearning for the privilege of handing me forty plunks about twice as fast as I've got 'em coming. Where's ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower

... rifle;—inciting such fearless rivalry, his fall were the fall of a hundred. Something hindered; the marksman delayed an instant; he would not waste a shot; and watching him, the dim outline, the sweeping sabre, the proud prowess, a strange yearning pity seized Ray, and he had half the mind to spare. In the midst of the shock and uproar there came to him a pulse of the brain's double action; he seemed long ago to have loved, to have admired, to have gloried in this splendid valor. But with the hint, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various

... would seem logically to cause him to find his chief pleasure in undisturbed communion with himself, still this picture of the poet delighting in solitude cannot be said to follow, usually, upon his banishment from society. For the most part the poet is characterized by an insatiable yearning for affection, and by the stupidity and hostility of other men he is driven into proud loneliness, even while his heart thirsts for companionship.[Footnote: See John Clare, The Stranger, The Peasant Poet, I ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins

... our peace; so that as I looked across the purple rolling plain, with all its wooded ridges, its rich pastures, the smoke going up from a hundred hamlets, a confidence, a quiet trust seemed to rise in my mind, filling me with a strange yearning to know what were the thoughts of the vast Mind that makes us and sustains us, mingled with a faith in some large and far-off issue that shall receive and enfold our little fretful spirits, as the sea receives the troubled leaping streams, ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson

... from out the boundless deep". In some incomprehensible way the infinite is in us, and we are therefore restless, dissatisfied ultimately with all that is not it. "The eye is not filled with sight nor the ear with hearing," for in us there is the capacity, and therefore, in our best moments, the yearning to see and hear something which sense can never give. Greater than all that is here, in silent moments, when the senses are tired and disappointment steals over us, the truth of the insignificance of things bursts upon us. "Man is but a reed, the feeblest thing in ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan

... keen. Of George Eliot's types of adolescent character, this may best be seen in Maggie Tulliver, with her enthusiastic self-renunciation, with "her volcanic upheavings of imprisoned passions," with her "wide, hopeless yearning for that something, whatever it was, that was greatest and best on this earth," and in Gwendolen, who, from the moment she caught Deronda's eye, was "totally swayed in feeling and action by the presence of a person of the other sex whom she ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall

... angered though he might be, cut to the heart though he expressed himself, has she not here the means to call him back?—to bid him come and know how contrite she is? Hour after hour she glances at the broad archway at the east, yearning to see his dark, handsome face among the new-comers,—all in vain. Time and again she encounters Sallie Waring, brilliant, bewitching, in the most ravishing of toilets, and always with half a dozen men about her. Twice she notices Will among them with ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King

... of all the countries of Europe, conditions were such that Luther's appearance wrought like an electric shock throughout the nation, leaving no class unaffected. Throughout the land there was discontent and a yearning for betterment. Very various, to be sure, were the particular longings of the prince and the scholar, of knight, burgher, and peasant; but almost all were ready to consider, at least, the teachings of one who presented to them a new conception ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson

... was yearning To be quit of life's turmoil, In the land of no returning, Where all ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore

... tears gushed out in support of this appeal and in a moment she was caught up with Love's mighty arms, and her head laid on her mother's yearning bosom. No word was needed to reconcile ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... steps; but there was yet another butterfly of my namesake's. He led us to a by-path that followed the river bank up to the bridge, running far ahead of us. When we reached him he was seated, dumb with yearning, ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson

... this point of view that we can see the cogency of Gurney's remark, that when music seems to be yearning for unutterable things, it is really yearning only for the next note. "In this step from the state of rest into movement and return, the coming again to rest; on what circuitous ways, with what reluctances and hesitations; whether quick and decisively ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer

... that if Rodney knew. He wouldn't let her. He'd want to care for her, comfort her, pack her in cotton-wool. And there was a terrible yearning down in her heart, to let him. For just that reason, he ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... sudden yearning that seemed to be beyond her control, she leaned her body against him. Her warm breath was on his face; her arm found its way around him and held ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin

... his letters we see his ambitious yearning. "George," says he in one place, "before I die your heart shall be gladdened by seeing your wayward, vain, and too often selfish friend do something that shall make his name honored. As Sheridan once said, 'It's in me, and' (we'll skip the ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody

... times is the unhappy division existing among the professors of Christianity, and from thousands of hearts a yearning cry goes forth for unity of faith and ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons

... up to his ankles in peaty ground, now tearing his shins, now bruising his knees, Spargo, yearning for the London lights, the well-paved London streets, the convenient taxi-cab, even the humble omnibus, plodded forward after his guide. It seemed to him that they had walked for ages and had traversed a whole continent of mountains and valley when at last Breton, halting ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher

... wish to forget past joys, but I must simply remember them and not try to paint them. I must cut short any yearning for them. ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford

... haunt the spirit of a child? Mayhap thou weepest for the embattled lands, The bloody ruin of decaying realms That a war overwhelms And buries deep in the dust of history? He raises his wet eyes and looks at me, His boyish face full of a yearning, An ancient pain, As of a ghost long dead who yearns to live again, And answers, "In myself, thy thoughts returning To other times shall slumber in the past, And be a child again, and die at last In the protecting arms of our great Mother Who bore us both, O well-beloved brother. Thou ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer

... doesn't look so happy to halt through life. O Eric, Eric, I am young, but I am dying—dying, Eric," he said solemnly, "my brother—let me call you brother—I have no near relations, you know, to fill up the love in my yearning heart, but I do love you. I wish you were my brother," he said, as Eric took his hand between both his own. "There, that comforts me; I feel as if I were a child again, and had a brother; and I shall be ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar

... the direction pointed out by Kant. Bruns, an admirable writer, expresses a characteristic yearning of the German mind, when he demands an internal juristic necessity drawn from the nature of possession itself, and therefore rejects empirical reasons. /2/ He finds the necessity he seeks in the freedom of the human will, which the whole legal system does but recognize [208] and carry out. Constraint ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

... pitied him for having met the woman, so that her tenderness for both inspired many signs of warm affection, not very unlike the thing it moaned secretly the not being. For she could not but distinguish a more poignant sorrow in the seeing of the object we yearn to vainly than in vainly yearning to one unseen. Dressed, to delight him, in Prince Marko's colours, the care she bestowed on her dressing was for the one absent, the shrouded comer: so she pleased the prince to be pleasing to her soul's lord, and this, owing to an appearance of satisfactory ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... illustrated papers or shop windows, and it occurred to him that some of the more marked contortions of Sister Soulsby's eyes—notably a trick she had of rolling them swiftly round and plunging them, so to speak, into an intent, yearning, one might almost say devouring, gaze at the speaker—were probably employed by eminent actresses like ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic

... down, surprisingly full after so much gusto, but withheld it from Sam; and the two scuffled for its possession. Nothing in the world could have so worked upon the desire of the yearning observer beyond the fence. ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington

... its new life and promise, sweetly and serenely to the home and heart of Barton's mother, who was looking and hoping for his return, with a strong, intense, but silent yearning. For herself, for his brothers, and more for Julia, whom she now understood, and tenderly loved, and whose secret was sacred to her woman's heart; and most of all for Barton's own sake; for she knew that when these two met, the shadow that had surrounded them ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle

... uttered an exclamation. This, then, was Remus—the home of Expectant Dobbs—and these his wife and father; and the Washington banquet-table, ah me! had sparkled with the yearning heart's blood of this poor wife, and had been upheld by this tottering Caryatid of ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte

... slave" 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

... Father," he said, in a tone which betrayed the emotion under which he was still labouring. "You just shouldn't." Then with a movement of irritation: "Oh, I'm not a feller yearning for homicide. No. It's not that. You know Arden Laval," he went on, his brows depressing. "Of course you do. You must know him a whole heap better than I do. Well? Say, I guess that feller hasn't a right to walk ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum

... densely clothed. The few villages there are, bordering on the coast, are poor and meagre-looking, but their inhabitants were very hospitable, especially where there were any Banyans. Nothing could exceed the mingled pride and yearning pleasure these exotic Indians seemed to derive from having us as their guests. Being Indian officers, they looked upon us as their guardians, and did everything they could to show they felt it so. Our conversing in their ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke

... 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 like the forms of ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair

... the mother Searching, searching everywhere; Seeks, and knows not what, with yearning, ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque

... exuberant youth, the eternal child of Wordsworth, over whom its immortality broods like the day; it is so simple and yet so complicated; it sees so much and so little; it loves so many toys and cares for so few necessities; its youth is so young, its age so old, and its youthful yearning for old thought is so disconcerting, like the mysterious senility of ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams

... to dreaming of the man who had been her lover in girlhood, and her husband and dear companion these past six years. He was surely at home, aching, yearning for the little girl he had lost. She could see him sitting before the fireplace in their big living-room, his head on his hands, his tired face in repose, while he gazed into the flames and longed and longed for her. The picture grew in ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades

... woods rejoice and ring Till earth seems glorious as the sea: With yearning love too glad for glee The world's heart quivers toward the spring As ...
— Poems and Ballads (Third Series) - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... moved her hand over the head of her poor dwarf, as though she would know if he were truly her own son. A new spirit also had come into Parpon's eyes, gentler, less weird, less distant. With the advent of their joy a great yearning came to save Elise. They hung watchful, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... the living child of the other, who lodged with her. He knew when he sent for the executioner, and told him to cut in two parts the live babe, giving to each a half, that the mother would be seen in the effect of the command to slay. And so it was. The faithless woman said let it be so; the loving, yearning mother exclaimed no, rather let the other have the child. Solomon wisely decided the matter, directing the attendants to give the unconscious object of controversy to her to ...
— Half Hours in Bible Lands, Volume 2 - Patriarchs, Kings, and Kingdoms • Rev. P. C. Headley

... eyes. Edmund might have been smoking across the table—I could hear his voice, I could have put out my hand and touched him. And all round me were the streets, the lights, the smells, the busy youthful va-et-vient of the Latin Quarter; and in my heart the yearning, half joy and all despair and anguish, with which we think of the old days when we were young, of how real and dear they were, of how ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland

... of an ode is "Through asceticism, fervent yearning after God and patience in suffering, man becomes God or acquires divine nature" (Horten, Myst., I, p. 16), then this goal is identical with that of the alchemistic transmutation; the base metal acquires (after purification, refining, etc.) by virtue of the tincturing with the Philosopher's Stone ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer

... splendid and fascinating Circe, arrayed with charms, surrounded with illusions, hiding behind perfumed thickets her victims changed to brutes, and building the couch of her seduction on the bones of murdered men. Yet she was so beautiful that, halt as they might for a moment and gaze back with yearning on the Alps that they had crossed, they found themselves unable to resist her smile. Forward they must march through the garden of enchantment, henceforth taking the precaution to walk with drawn sword, and, like Orlando in Morgana's park, to stuff their casques ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... his temple. He fills it 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! Our sister, Death of the Body, for whom S. Francis thanked God in his ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds

... with its causes in their own actions, as closely as they will do when they are removed from the excitement of life and the deceit of its dreams. 'Sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily.' For the long years of our stay here, God's seeking love lingers round every one of us, yearning over us, besetting us behind and before, courting us with kindnesses, lavishing on us its treasures, seeking to win our poor love. It is sometimes said that this is a state of probation. But that phrase suggests far too cold an idea. God does not set ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... a sad, yearning look at the gray head bent now upon the trembling hands. "You know that was how my mother felt when she went so far away from us to die—she only consented to go ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... farewell takes up Isaiah's words, already used by Jesus. It is his last recorded utterance to his brethren after the flesh, weighty, and full of repressed yearning and sorrow. It is heavy with prophecy, and marks an epoch in the sad, strange history of that strange nation. Israel passes out of sight with that dread sentence fastened to its breast, like criminals of old, on whose front was fixed the record of their crimes and their condemnation. So this ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... of anguish, the lament of the Mother of Wisdom at her children's deathly ignorance, which plucks them down from the Mount of the Beautiful Vision. But as the thousands neared, as its paeans became a prayer, as yearning answered to yearning, lo! the hidden song swelled and soared,—for the goddess looked for her own, and her own were come to her. And thus in beneath the massy pediment, in through the wide-flung doors, floated the peplus, while under ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... for Edgar, his words brought vague yearning and distress, while Felix's very tone gave support. How could Edgar say patient, silent, self-devotion was not to be found except ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the 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

... human being there is the desire to rise to something great. The most thoughtless boy on the street looks serious as the Presidential carriage rolls past. In the deep recesses of his nature there is kindled by the spectacle a momentary yearning for fame—he would like to be President some day. Likewise does every man, when he seriously views the pageantry of life's ideals and purposes, have aspiration, for such is the natural ...
— A Fleece of Gold - Five Lessons from the Fable of Jason and the Golden Fleece • Charles Stewart Given

... the gods. It was not that she loved him less, but that she had so long reflected upon him that her imagination was numb; her thoughts, arid, unfruitful as the desert, turned from him to the problems that beset her, and from them back to him again, in dull, subconscious yearning. She could no longer project an anguished consciousness to those scenes wherein he walked and talked with Kitty. Her Indian fatalism had intervened. "Life was life," to be lived or left. And yet she felt herself a poor creature, one who had lived ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning

... the audience I was much struck by Irving's treatment of interjections and exclamations in "Hamlet." He breathed the line: "O, that this too, too solid flesh would melt," as one long yearning, and, "O horrible, O horrible! most horrible!" as a groan. When we first went to America his address at Harvard touched on this very subject, and it may be interesting to know that what he preached in 1885 he had practiced as far back ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry

... gray November weather came, and hung its soft dark clouds low and unbroken over the brown of the ploughed fields and the vivid emerald of the stretches of winter corn, the heavy stillness weighed my heart down to a forlorn yearning after the pleasant things of childhood, the petting, the comforting, the warming faith in the unfailing wisdom of elders. A great need of something to lean on, and a great weariness of independence and responsibility took possession of my soul; and looking round ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp

... a mingled yarn;" few of its afflictions but are accompanied with some alleviation—none of its blessings that do not bring some alloy. Like most other events that long have formed the object of yearning and almost hopeless wishes, and on which have been built the fairest structure of human felicity, the arrival of the young heir of Glenfern produced a less extraordinary degree of happiness than had been anticipated. ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier

... bond with rapture crown'd. Did I not see thee, when a stripling, yearning To welcome me with tears, ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe

... these years his heart had clung to the memory of his native land. On the rocks of West Point he had walked in solitude under the trees of his garden, and sat by the fountain which is still shown, yearning with an exile's home-sickness for his country. At times, probably very rarely in days of long and difficult transit and when communications for a fighting-line were doubly uncertain, letters crossed between Kosciuszko and friends ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner

... Prince's object may have been part of the political intrigue, rather than carnal intercourse with a woman of nearly fifty years of age. Josephine, always sorry for herself, a sieve of the first water, susceptible to flattery, blind to device, yearning for admiration and pity, was rejoiced to find attention extended to her from any quarter, but coming from the Royal House of Prussia or any other royal personage it was a dazzling compliment to the high esteem in which she believed ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman

... systematic study, but 'read with the heart, and was learning more from social experience than from books.' The interval of her life, between sixteen and twenty-five, is characterised by one of her biographers as a period of 'preponderating sentimentality, of romance and dreams, of yearning and of passion.' While residing at Cambridge, she suffered from profound despondency—conscious of the want of a home for her heart. A sterner schooling awaited her at Groton, whither her father removed in 1833. Here he died suddenly of cholera in 1835. Now she was ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 - Volume 17, New Series, May 22, 1852 • Various

... another fellow-clerk who was named Spooner, as well as most of our men, were from "the old country," where we had left fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters—in some cases sweethearts—behind us. It may be conceived then with what anxiety and yearning we looked forward to the periodical break in the weary six months of total silence that had enveloped us. Men in civilised, or even semi-civilised communities, cannot understand this. Convicts on penal servitude for long periods ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne

... feat of chivalry was never wrought elsewhere? 120 They bore within their breasts the grief that fame can never heal,— The deep, unutterable woe which none save exiles feel. Their hearts were yearning for the land they ne'er might see again,— For Scotland's high and heather'd hills, for mountains, loch and glen— For those who haply lay at rest beyond the distant sea, 125 Beneath the green and daisied turf where they ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty

... I cannot chase The gloom that wraps my soul away, Nor wear, as erst, the smiling face That best beseems this hallow'd day Fain would my yearning heart be gay, Its wonted welcome breathe to thine; But sighs come blended with my lay, And tears of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 405, December 19, 1829 • Various

... Narbonne Lycosa, with her temporary yearning for the heights, is more interesting than other Spiders, by reason of the fact that her usual habitation is underground, she is not so striking at swarming-time, because the youngsters, instead of all migrating at once, leave the ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre

... my reminiscences of him I feel that he was a yearning, lonely man. He was in love with his wife and, in spite of her devotion to him, he was love-lorn. Poor Reb Sender! He was anything but a handsome man, while she was well built and pretty. And so it may be that she showed more reverence ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan

... then the man's expression of vacant malice turned to one pitiful to see, one of indistinct yearning. "Give it to me," he muttered, "they say I am half mad, and perhaps I am, but—I think I could play once——" The yellow dog snapped at a fly, and his master turned towards him, adding, "Before your ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten

... allowance for," the countess said gently. "Women can appreciate simple truth, and are not, as men seem to think, always yearning for compliments. Those who are most proficient in turning phrases are not often among those foremost in battle, or wisest in council, and I can tell you that we women value deeds far higher than words. ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty

... the base, the untrue, Mother, O mother, my heart calls for you! Many a summer 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 ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... sun. The prospect is a charming one at any time, but never more so perhaps than when it is suddenly presented, fresh, green, and beautiful, in the clear atmosphere and the light of early morning, to the vision of those whose eyes, after seventy days of gazing upon sky and sea, are yearning to behold once more the beauties of ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood

... only daughter eloped with an artist named Martin. He had been engaged to paint a portrait of the late Mrs. Haswell from a photograph. It was the first time that Grace Haswell had ever been able to find expression for the artistic yearning which had always been repressed by the cold, practical sense of her father. She remembered her mother perfectly since the sad bereavement of her girlhood and naturally she watched and helped the artist eagerly. The result was a portrait which might ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds

... in all acts and works of life. Now of these, there is no question but that the love of Mimicry is natural and right, and the love of Discipline is natural and right. But it looks a grave question whether the yearning for Idolatry (the desire of companionship with images) is right. Whether, indeed, if such an instinct be essential to good sculpture, the art founded on it can ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin

... general was wrangling with him. The Barclays were talking to themselves, and the children were clattering about underfoot, and in the trees overhead. Bob's eyes and Molly's met, and the man shuddered at what he saw of pathos and yearning, and he said: "Well, why not? It's no worse to go than to want to go. What's wrong ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White

... tossed about by doubts, full of strong passions, and yearning only for what is delightful, his thirst will grow more and more, and he will indeed make his ...
— The Dhammapada • Unknown

... An aeroplane!" Bud was muttering to himself, as he hastened to follow his companions away from the door in order to have a better range of observation. "Of all the things that we could meet up here, an aeroplane! And me just pining away with yearning to see one in action! Oh! don't I hope it turns out that way, though? Do you see it yet, boys? When you do, please put me wise, ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Flying Squadron • Robert Shaler

... handwriting had no longer the business-like firmness which had characterised it; it was larger and wavering: perhaps the illness had shaken him more than he was willing to confess, and he sought in that formal note to express a yearning to see the only relation he had in the world. Philip wrote back that he could come down to Blackstable for a fortnight in July. The invitation was convenient, for he had not known what to do, with his brief holiday. The Athelnys went ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham

... 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 ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... were just as tempting as ever, and she yearned for the opal silk with a renewed yearning when she got back. It is not certain that it would not have been bought in spite of her better self if a good angel in the likeness of a stout lady with silvery curls about the benevolent face, enshrined in a plain bonnet, ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott

... accompaniment of those earlier meetings. Hearing the tolling bell she strove to relive them, and found she did so with singularly mounting wealth and precision of detail. Not only vision but sense pushed backward and inward, revitalizing what had been; until she ached with suspense and yearning, shrewdly evaded dangers, surmounted obstructions by action at once bold and wary and tasted the transfiguring rapture ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... of his being. He tells a thoroughly characteristic story of himself in his days as an undergraduate. He was on the coach between Birmingham and Sheffield. Two men shared the front seat with him, and conversed during the whole of the journey about the things which he was yearning to know and to learn. 'I tried once or twice to put in my oar, but it was a failure: I was too far below their level of knowledge; I relapsed into enchanted listening. I thought to myself, "There ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 5: On Pattison's Memoirs • John Morley

... into a scarce audible tone, which sank into Brandon's heart, lingering and dying about the last word, with touching and unutterable melancholy. It was like the lament of one who loved. It was like the cry of some yearning heart. ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille

... 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 blood will faintly glow, When reckless ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler

... story had grown to a lurid whole in her imagination, based on a few distorted facts, yet radically and monstrously untrue. Generally, however, when she dwelt upon it, it had power to soothe any smart of conscience, to harden any yearning of the heart, supposing she felt any. And by now she had almost ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Birth and desire, satiety and pain, Recurrent yearning that is never stilled, Agony, death, rebirth in other forms, And agony, and desire, and agony. But nowhere saw I happiness or peace Or rest from cravings that like vultures tear The fibres ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke

... I did know two minutes afterwards. But at the moment, falling in with some of my thoughts, the word made me start and look at Thorold. I cannot tell what was in my look; I know what was in my heart; the surprised inquiry and the yearning wish. Thorold's face flushed. He met my eyes with an intense recognition and inquiry in his own, and then, I am almost sure, his were dim. He set my chair for me at the table, and took hold of me and put me in it with a very gentle touch ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell

... makes each one use it as heartily as if it were new and true for him, though it might have been a common-place for others. When he glances hurriedly across the wide extent of his subject, when he feels how inadequate his expression will be even to his conception, and, at the same time, has a yearning desire to bring his audience into the same mind with himself, it is no wonder if he begins with a few, hesitating, oft repeated, words about his own insufficiency compared with the greatness ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps

... they were a defacement to a town and cluttered up blank spaces in an unseemly way. But when you are trouping, the first thing you do, after registering at the hotel, is to go out and scout round the town yearning for billboards and complaining because there aren't enough of them. You meet another member of the company on the same errand and say, "I don't see much paper out," this being the technical phrase. You both agree that the ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley

... press thee Close to my yearning heart, Ah! once more softly bless thee Ere we for ever part! I adjure thee not to falter In the trial now so nigh, But, as victim on the ...
— The Poetical Works of Mrs. Leprohon (Mrs. R.E. Mullins) • Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon

... corner of the earth. The man hastens on with all the speed his weary limbs will permit, stumbling as he goes, for the frost of the high altitudes has entered his bones, and he cannot now feel the touch of the broken earth. But his yearning heart is ceaseless in its despairing cry. Where—where is She? The trees come up higher and higher and the gloom closes in upon him as ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum

... the Fourth of July, Tom and Harry left, on a morning train, the two young West Pointers going to the station to see them off with many a handshake, many a yearning wish for the two dear old chums ...
— Dick Prescott's Third Year at West Point - Standing Firm for Flag and Honor • H. Irving Hancock

... hair and young, young face. Her wistful eyes were gazing into mine continually. Their wistfulness I had never realized at the time; but now I did; and I saw it for what it seemed always to have been, the soft, sad, yearning look of one fated to die young. So young—so young! And I might live to be an old man, ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung

... As she watched, with yearning heart, she suddenly became aware of the appearance of Suma on the far edge of the upheaved barrier and with a sob she realized that in a moment her joy would be ended. The little creature would disappear into the dark cavity with its mother; ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller

... be on their guard against the opposing fiends who especially assailed a soldier's life. "Above all," he said, "beware of the drink-fiend—the worst enemy King George has got. He kills more of the King's troops than all his other foes together." Then, with a yearning tenderness in his voice, he exhorted them to "ground the weapons of their rebellion and enlist in the service of King Jesus, the great Captain of their salvation, who would lead them to victory over the world, the flesh, and the devil, and at last make them kings and priests forever in ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow



Words linked to "Yearning" :   wishfulness, longing, yearn, discontent, yen, discontentedness, desire, wistfulness, discontentment, pining, nostalgia



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