Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Yearn   Listen
verb
Yearn  v. i. & v. t.  To curdle, as milk. (Scot.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Yearn" Quotes from Famous Books



... of those two brave fellows; there is the soul of England's brightest days in it. I am sick of slavish poverty on the one hand, and callous pride on the other. I yearn for the sound of language breathed from the lungs of humble independence, and the cordial, earnest greetings of poor, but warm-hearted men, as I long for the breeze of the mountains and the sea. Oh! I ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... burst of joy and gratitude! The very walls of the house seemed to ring with it as a harp rings with music. A special train, too! he would not let the mother yearn all night. ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade

... tears—I view them with a lover's eye; And yet your Christ is mine—a Christian I! The healing, cleansing flood o'er me shall flow, I would efface the stain from birth I owe; I would be pure—my sealed eyes would see! The birthright Adam lost restored to me This, this, the unfading crown! For this I yearn, For that exhaustless fount I thirst, I burn. Then, since my heart is true, Nearchus, say— Shall I not grant to pity ...
— Polyuecte • Pierre Corneille

... fitted to the muzzle of a gun. Dar'ling, one dearly loved. 2. Lin'ger-ing, protracted. 3. Mat'ted, twisted together. Del'i-cate, soft and fair. Mold, shape. 4. Wan'der-ing, straying. 7. En-shrined', cherished. Waft'ed, caused to float. 9. Yearn'ing, being eager, longing. ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... proceeding succeeds tolerably well, till the owner makes discovery of volumes positively essential to his object, and unattainable save by a heavy outlay—perchance not even to be had at any price. It is nearly always the lacunae for which we yearn; one or two of our richer friends have them, and we have not. What we possess anybody can get in a morning's walk; we find that we have travelled a long distance, and have come to an impasse. It is very seldom indeed that a man is satisfied with the cheaper and commoner ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt

... the farm abode William and Dora. William was his son, And she his niece. He often look'd at them, And often thought, 'I'll make them man and wife.' Now Dora felt her uncle's will in all, And yearn'd towards William; but the youth, because He had been always with her in the house, Thought not of Dora. Then there came a day When Allan call'd his son, and said: 'My son, I married late, but I would wish to see My grandchild on my knees before I die: And I have set my heart upon a match. ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various

... wholly. When the bodies of Goneril and Regan are brought in he asks merely, 'Alack, why thus?' How can he care? He is waiting for one thing alone. He cannot but yearn for recognition, cannot but beg for it even when Lear is bending over the body of Cordelia; and even in that scene of unmatched pathos we feel a sharp pang at his failure to receive it. It is of himself he is speaking, perhaps, when he murmurs, as his master dies, 'Break, heart, I prithee, ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... blessing," returned Emma modestly. "To-night I happened to be one in disguise. But I yearn to cast aside my sable robes of prophesy and emerge from my room in gala garments. Lead me to my trunk, J. Elfreda. The night is yet young and I'm anxious to make the ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower

... self: First, like the brute, obliged by facts to learn, Next, as man may, obliged by his own mind, Bent, habit, nature, knowledge turned to law. God's gift was that man shall conceive of truth And yearn to gain it, catching at mistake, As midway help till he ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones

... would have nothing to brood on but her wedding-dress; and they never knit their brows, nor bedew their eyes, thinking of that; that's a smiling subject. No, it is true love on both sides, I do believe; and that makes my woman's heart yearn. Harry, dear, I'll make you a confession. You have heard that a mother's love is purer and more unselfish than any other love: and so it is. But even mothers are not quite angels always. Sometimes they are just a little jealous: not, I think, ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade

... in the bowels of Christ, search after the mind of the Lord in it towards you, and we shall help you by our prayers, that you may find it. For yet, if we know our heart at all, our bowels do in Christ yearn after the godly in Scotland." Thurloe, vol. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume

... tied him in a yard, at autumn sees Flocks of his kind pass flying o'er his head To warmer lands, and coasts that keep the sun;— He strains to join their flight, and from his shed Follows them with a long complaining cry— So Hermod gazed, and yearn'd to ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold

... interrupted the full enjoyment I should have felt had they not made me tremble for the security of that attachment, of which I had so many proofs, and which formed my only consolation amid all the malice that for yearn had been endeavouring to deprive me of it! So far as regards my husband's estimation, thank fate, I have defied their wickedness! Would to Heaven I could have been equally secure in the estimation of my people—the object ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe

... a long and tiresome letter, my Honourable Mother? But thou art far away, and in thy sheltered walls yearn to know what has come to us, thy children, in this new and foreign life. It is indeed a new life for me, and I can hardly grasp its meaning. They are trying hard to force us to change our old quietude and peace for the rush and worry of the Western world, and ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper

... weal why not remould?[FN14] Were thy form's softness placed in thy heart, * Ne'er would thy lover find thee harsh and cold: Oh thou accuser! be my love's excuser, * Nor chide if love-pangs deal me woes untold! I bear no blame: 'tis all my hear and eyne; * So leave thy blaming, let me yearn and pine." ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... I wish you could have a turn at it, my bonny boy! Your hair'd go grey, like mine! And look here—what are the plays to-day? They're either so chock-full of intellect that they send you to sleep—or they reek of sentiment till you yearn for the smell of ...
— Five Little Plays • Alfred Sutro

... passed, for a glad day that had slipped behind them forever more. It was a service that thrilled with present joys. It was a meeting that made the future to glow with glorious possibilities. It was wonderful, because Jesus came. He came then, and He comes still. Wherever hungry hearts come together who yearn for Him and make Him welcome, there comes the blessed Christ to stand in the midst. And therefore I would not absent myself from the meeting together of the people of God. I would not because I want to be ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell

... under the sun, capable of supporting a population of 10,000,000 people in luxury. The people of San Domingo are not capable of maintaining themselves in their present condition, and must look for outside support. They yearn for the protection of our free institutions and laws, our progress and civilization. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson

... on the shoulder. "My friend! Everything at the right time! the point is to do that for which you have a talent, not to yearn after things for which ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger

... workhouse slaves, And how could fallen men have names or graves? I thought of sorrow in the wilderness, And death in solitude, and pitiless Interment in the tiger's hideous maw: I pray'd, and, praying, turn'd from all I saw; My prayers were curses! But the sexton came; How my heart yearn'd to name my Hannah's name! White was his hair, for full of days was he, And walk'd o'er tombstones, like their history. With well feign'd carelessness I rais'd a spade, Left near a grave, which seem'd but newly made, And ask'd ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 541, Saturday, April 7, 1832 • Various

... becomes the staff of my support; when I think of these things, what is there in life worth having; when I think of these things, what is there that should not be spurned away: kings in their palaces should groan for such advantages; but we, humbled as we are, should yearn for them. ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith

... saw the terror in her eyes, That yearn'd upon him, shining in such wise As a star ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy

... them free. Under those dark, deep waters, asleep for three hundred years, lay Eileen, with all her massive ornaments on her neck and arms, and red-gold Irish hair. How often did the boy think of her, and picture to himself the motionless face, with its closed, waiting eyes, and yearn to see it. Asleep there for three hundred years! His heart used to burn at the imagination. In all these centuries had no M'Swyne been found bold enough to find the black cat and kill him? Could it be so hard a thing to kill a black cat? ...
— The Cuckoo Clock • Mrs. Molesworth

... triangle and I am ready for softer flutings. When I visit my neighbors, I want them to make a decent pretense. It was Charles Lamb who found his married friends too loving in his presence, but let us not go to extremes! And so, after I have read a few books of marital complication, I yearn for the old-fashioned couple in the older books who went hand in hand to old age. At this minute there is a black book that looks down upon me like a crow. It is "Crime and Punishment." I read it ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks

... religious. But the treatment of these ideas is purely, broadly human, on a level with that of the sculpture of Pheidias. Titian's Virgin received into Heaven, soaring midway between the archangel who descends to crown her and the apostles who yearn to follow her, is far less a Madonna Assunta than the apotheosis of humanity conceived as a radiant mother. Throughout the picture there is nothing ascetic, nothing mystic, nothing devotional. Nor did the art of the Renaissance stop here. It went further, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... the breast Where a God yearn'd to cling; Drink-hael! so Jesu press'd Life from its mystic spring; Then hush and bend in reverent sign And breathe ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... of abundant silver, and tuning of instruments by the band, and he saw the flash of lights, and the dash of serving-men, and the rush of hot hospitality; and although he had not enough true fibre in his stomach to yearn for a taste of the good things going round, there can be little doubt, from what he did thereafter, that his gastric juices must ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

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

... are we both," continues the merciless tongue, which, since it has once started, finds it best to clear up this matter which has tortured her conscience ever since she has begun to realize that this rich man who owned this big estate had a heart too which could suffer and yearn. So while her tongue is so well started and all shyness seems to have ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof

... yearn for her— Yes, ardently we yearn For her return. Recalling those beloved days (Days intimate with ways Of friends so near to us And life so dear to us), We yearn ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE

... importance in Boston; she might be going to accept certain difficulties and certain disappointments, but the firm ground on which she stood was the fact that Gerald was charming. At moments she felt herself yearn towards that charm; it was a reviving radiance in which she must steep her rather numbed and rather weary being. To see his eyes, to see his smile, to hear his voice that made her think of bells and breezes, would be enough to banish ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick

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

... I may not follow, Like the swallow, Gayly on the track of Spring. Bounden by an iron fate, I must wait, Dream and wonder, yearn and sing. ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus

... are nothing but deceits and follies; but in spite of all this, Isabella was like a rock in the ocean, which the winds and waves assail in vain. A year and a half had now passed, and her heart began to yearn more and more as the end of the period assigned by Richard drew near. Already, in imagination, she looked upon him as arrived; he stood before her eyes; she asked him what had caused his long delay; she heard his excuses; she forgave him, embraced and welcomed ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... Oenone's grief, in the indomitableness of Ulysses, the weariness and disillusionment in Tithonus. It has been the cause of the comfort he has brought to sorrow; none of his generation takes such a human attitude to death. Shelley could yearn for the infinite, Browning treat it as the last and greatest adventure, Arnold meet it clear eyed and resigned. To Wordsworth it is the mere return of man the ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair

... the conception of a mere immaterial essence floating hither and thither in immensity. The intellect looks eagerly forward to a boundless and excursive state; but the affections, the sentiments, yearn for some locality—some spot of residence and repose. We cannot help cherishing the conception of a place where our friends are grouped together, and whither we shall go, though to be united in wider and more glorious relations. And, knowing no better name ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin

... wouldn't sell her." Then, as Dave continued to yearn over the animal, like a small boy tempted beyond his strength, Alaire laughed. "I owe you something, Mr. Law, and a horse more or less ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach

... against the desirability of a Bolshevist rule or a dictatorship by the proletariat, but a matter of ascertaining the relative strength and probable behavior of the classes in a given society. It is as futile to "see red" in America because of Bolshevism in Russia as to yearn for Bolshevism's advent in the United States. Either view misses the all-important point that so far as social structure is concerned America is the antipodes of Russia, where the capitalists have shown little fighting spirit, where ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman

... and thus said: O Reason, indeed thou knowest that covetousness and the greatness of this earthly power never well pleased me, nor did I altogether very much yearn after this earthly authority. But nevertheless I was desirous of materials for the work which I was commanded to perform; that was, that I might honorably and fitly guide and exercise the power which was committed to me. Moreover, thou knowest that ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... it is for my distress, For it gives my restless hands Blessed work. God understands How we women yearn to be Doing ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung

... I fear, feel it too. Besides, absence is a temporary death. Now I am gone from them, they will forget my frailties and infirmities, and dwell on what little good might have been in me, and, perhaps, yearn ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... while longer, slowly calming down. Wonderful indeed had been some of the moments of thrill, but there had been others not conducive to happiness. Why do men yearn for adventure in wild moments and regret the risks and ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey

... laugh. Somehow now that this simple man was here, now that the responsibility of him had devolved upon her, a delightful feeling of gentle motherliness toward him rose up in her heart, and made her yearn to help him. It was becoming quite ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum

... girls; all the rest are in the burying ground 'side of father. I don't expect to keep her long, and don't ought to regret when I lose her, for Saul is the best of sons; but daughters is more to mothers somehow, and I always yearn over girls that is left without a broodin' wing to keep 'em safe and warm in this world ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott

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

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

... far as the joys of the table are concerned, I think I shall be able to wait for quite a spell before I yearn for another whack at English eating. I opine Charles Dickens would be a most unhappy man could he but return to the scenes ...
— Eating in Two or Three Languages • Irvin S. Cobb

... it was the journey more than the play that tempted me. To be a great traveller has always been one of my cherished ambitions. I yearn to be able to write ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome

... custom has indeed been second nature, and who have come almost to love each brick and stone that formed the narrow boundaries of their daily walks; even they, with the hand of death upon them, have been known to yearn at last for one short glimpse of Nature's face; and, carried far from the scenes of their old pains and pleasures, have seemed to pass at once into a new state of being. Crawling forth, from day to day, to some green sunny spot, they have had such memories wakened ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens

... bright sunshine and an occasional softness in the atmosphere that had a tinge of summer in it. As the doctor paid his afternoon visit the sun's beams streamed in at the little window, and hitting some of the tins hung on the wall for ornament, made a glory in the room which caused Bell to yearn for out-door sunshine ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various

... had loved the child from the moment the big lustrous gray eyes opened, on the day of her sudden illness at Outside Inn, and looked confidingly up into hers. For the first time in her life her maternal ardor—the instinct which made her yearn to nourish and minister to a race—had concentrated on a single human being. Sheila, hungry for mothering, had turned to her with the simplicity of the people among whom she had been brought up, taking her sympathetic response as a matter of course; and the two were soon ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley

... present high school curriculum is ill adapted to a large proportion of children; the "physiologically too young" drop out; only the physiologically mature succeed. The two physiological ages should be given different work. Children whose bodies yearn for pictures, muscular and sense expression, should be given a chance in school for normal development. Analysis should wait for action. Organized play and physical training antedated physical examination in our schools. Like the curriculum they often disregard physiological age, ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen

... realization of republican ideals is small, and I falter in the work of their maintenance in the interest of a people for whom they are too good. Seeing that we are immune to none of the evils besetting monarchies, excepting those for which we secretly yearn; that inequality of fortune and unjust allotment of honors are as conspicuous among us as elsewhere; that the tyranny of individuals is as intolerable, and that of the public more so; that the law's majesty is a dream and its failure a fact—hearing everywhere the footfalls of disorder ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce

... gant pearl ear'ly merge per'son al err per'fect yearn mer'chan dise learn mer'cer swerve ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey

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

... said here when emotive-response returned. Does one return from a horror all-encompassing, or seek to requite the unrequited? Does one yearn for a Way that is no more when deadening shock ...
— The Beginning • Henry Hasse

... before we left home; it is now a certainty that you are fixed there in Harvard and that a wide gulf separates us. But if you will only keep well and prosper in your studies we shall endure the separation cheerfully. Children have but little idea how the hearts of their parents yearn over them. When they grow up and have children of their own, then they understand and sigh, and sigh when it is too late. If you live to be old you will never forget how your father and mother came to visit you at Harvard and tried so hard to do something for you. ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs

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

... His! His pleasure! what was his high pleasure in The fumes of scorching flesh and smoking blood, To the pain of the bleating mothers, which 300 Still yearn for their dead offspring? or the pangs Of the sad ignorant victims underneath Thy pious knife? Give way! this bloody record Shall not stand in ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... not speak; he contented himself with gazing at the tender girlishness of her, the blue-black eyes, and flesh that was so bright and pure that he knew it to be soft and firm, making him yearn for her. ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco

... aristocracy does not exist, he had a high opinion of it. He would yearn for the swords and the stately manners of the Pommards before the Revolution—most of whom had been (in theory) Republicans. But he turned with a more practical eagerness to the one country in Europe where ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton

... Nelly, and 'gad, my limbs yearn for bed, Joe. This fellow can still carry the bag; ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang

... the bitter knowledge clings, We may not follow where my fancies yearn. The years go hence, and wild and lovely things, Their own, go with them, never ...
— Last Poems • Laurence Hope

... persistently defies the effort for tidiness as the charred remains of a match, invariably ignited elsewhere than on the sandpaper conspicuously provided, and more likely to be tossed upon the floor or laid upon the mahogany table than to find its way into the receptacles that yearn for it? ...
— The Complete Home • Various

... men with whom I have lived and labored, I would give my life if you could understand me; if you could know in your hearts how passionately I yearn to get into your souls the knowledge that only as you give you will have, only as you love these men of the mines and mills, only as you are brothers to these ginks and wops and guinnies, will prosperity come to Harvey. 'I am the resurrection and the life' should ring through ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

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

... extravagances were flowing, and when the inevitable moment came he repeated the first three notes. Again Joseph heard the warbling water, and it seemed to him that he could hear the stars throbbing. It was one of those moments when the soul of man seems to break, to yearn for that original unity out of which some sad fate has cast it—a moment when the world seems to be one thing and not several things: the stars and the stream, the odours afloat upon the stream, ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore

... pound cakes had been baked and a nice little pig put in the pen to grow round and tender, later to be roasted whole, with a tempting red apple in his mouth. Mincemeat, souse, and stuffed sausages, those edibles of the early days, which Aunt Betty had grown to love and yearn for, were provided on this occasion by Chloe and Dinah, and when, a few days before Christmas, Metty returned from the woods with a fine, fat possum, the mistress of Bellvieu began to feel that her Christmas would be ...
— Dorothy's Triumph • Evelyn Raymond

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

... of thy magic, Egyptian," she said. "It is yet hot abroad, and I am weary of those Hebrew Ambassadors and their talk of Herod and Jerusalem. I hate that Herod, as he shall find—and will have none of the Ambassadors to-day, though I yearn a little to try my Hebrew on them. What canst thou do? Hast thou no new trick? By Serapis! if thou canst conjure as well as thou canst prophesy, thou shalt have a place at Court, with pay and perquisites to boot, if thy lofty soul ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard

... be different." With too much imagination to be content with the situation in which he found himself, Donald had not imagination enough to realize that he would have to take his old self with him wherever he went, and that he might better fight things out where he stood. Men of his sort yearn constantly for the future, not realizing that in its truest sense the ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord

... that are dead shall quicken, the seasons that were shall return; And the streets and the pastures of England, the woods that burgeon and yearn, Shall be whitened with ashes of women and children and men ...
— Poems and Ballads (Third Series) - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... remarked above that Parliament was now an aristocracy, being an object of ambition. The truth is, perhaps, more subtle than this; but if ever men yearn to serve on juries we may probably guess that juries are no longer popular. Anyhow, this must be kept in mind, as against the opposite idea of the jus divinum or fixed authority, if we would appreciate the fall of Richard. If the thing which dethroned ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton

... Swedish horseman. So I think, it would be pleasant To agree, this is a feast-day, Though no Saint has ever claimed it. Let us saunter through the forest. I will breathe the balmy pine air, And the young folks may try whether Fortune favours them at fishing. Yes, to-day I yearn for pleasure. Anton, get the ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel

... it all there was one longing, one yearning for all that she had lost, all she had wantonly thrown away. Suffering Creek, with its poverty-stricken home on the dumps, suggested paradise to her now. She yearned as only a mother can yearn for the warm caresses of her children. She longed for the honest love of the little man whom, in the days of her arrogant womanhood, she had so mercilessly despised. All his patient kindliness came back to her now. All his tremendous, if misdirected, effort on her behalf, his ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum

... all the troublesome, battering appeals of the day are suspended, in which everything fades from the eye, leaving it free to fix itself upon the only reality, love,—the night is fosterer and patroness of truth. To love the night, to yearn for it, to wish it forever prolonged, is natural in these lovers who have drank of the cup; and, by a natural step further, since earthly life affords no such night, to wish for the night of death, as we hear them presently doing, a night in which they picture themselves eternally floating ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall

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

... jaded blood would jog to a livelier tune: And some few friends, could I begin again, Should know more happiness, and much less pain. I should not wound in ignorance, nor turn In foolish pride from those for whom I yearn. I should have kept nigh half the friends I've lost, And held for dearest those I wronged ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes

... heavily, rising from the lounge. "What is my life? It is something meaningless. I live alone. I understand nothing. And yet there is something I long for. I yearn to spit on all and then disappear somewhere! I would like to run away from everything. ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky

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

... overspeechful, or did you yearn When I sat silent, for songs or speech? Ah, Beloved, I had been so apt to learn, So apt, had you only cared to teach. But time for silence and song is done, You wanted ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.

... like the crudest of the revolutionists, although I call myself a philosophical anarchist. Sometimes the jails seem to yearn for my reception, and I question my right to be at large. Nothing but a decreasing cowardice leaves me at liberty. And if I could not do more for my soul behind the bars than I have done in front of them, then I am fit only for durance vile. I, who have out-fasted the very flies ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood

... thing exists. The abnormal creature seems a mere freak of nature and may chance to be angel, criminal, total insipidity, virago or enchanter, but let such an one enter a room or appear in the street, and heads must turn, eyes light and follow, souls yearn or envy, or sink under the discouragement of comparison. With the complete harmony and perfect balance of the singular thing, it would be folly for the rest of the world to compete. A human being who had lived in poverty for half a lifetime, might, if suddenly ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... her from the room; and returned muttering—'I have no pity! I have no pity! The more the worms writhe, the more I yearn to crush out their entrails! It is a moral teething; and I grind with greater energy in proportion to the ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte

... my sin most barbarous, and a filthy crime, and could not but conclude, and that with great shame and astonishment, that I had horribly abused the holy Son of God: wherefore I felt my soul greatly to love and pity Him, and my bowels to yearn towards Him; for I saw He was still my friend, and did reward me good for evil; yea, the love and affection that then did burn within to my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, did work at this time such a strong and hot desire of revengement upon myself for the abuse I had done unto Him, that to speak ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan

... earliest youth I had made a mistake. Oh, you have no conception of the dullness, the coarseness, the essential vulgarity that obtains in those circles. I am a trodden worm, sir, and yet not for a moment do I yearn to be ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann

... MOSES, thus bring to a close Your fifty-six years on the road? Do you yearn, after all, for repose, Who with zeal half-a-century glowed? The Muse makes her moan at your loss, And Sentiment silently sobs. Ah! Time, friend, will play pitch-and-toss With all of ...
— Punch, Or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, Feb. 13, 1892 • Various

... spare, spare it for the 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 ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... you all wrapped up, and mother put you on my knees; and I took a good look at you. You had the sweetest little face that ever came into the world, but all peaked and pining for want of nature. With you being on my knees, my bosom began to yearn over you, it did. 'The child is starved,' said I; 'that is all its grief. And you did right to bring it' here.' Your mother clasps her hands, 'Oh, Mrs. Wilson,' says she, 'God grant it is not too late.' So then I smiled back to her, and I said, 'Don't you fret; in a fortnight you ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... hinder the rain from attaining the plain, For downward the voices of duty call— Downward to toil and be mixed with the main. The dry fields burn and the mills are to turn, And a thousand meadows mortally yearn, And the final main from beyond the plain Calls o'er the hills of Habersham, And calls through ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter

... is given Such hope, I know not fear; I yearn to breathe the airs of heaven That often meet me here. I muse on joy that will not cease, Pure spaces clothed in living beams, Pure lilies of eternal peace, Whose odors haunt my dreams, And, stricken by an angel's hand, This mortal ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various

... those winning ways, 5 Which make me for thy presence yearn, Call'd us to pet thee or to praise, Dear little friend! ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold

... alike vanished completely, and what had passed between us, gave me nothing to build on for the future—it was as though I had dreamed it all. Sometimes I would scrutinise his clever handsome bright face ... my heart would throb, and my whole being yearn to him ... he would seem to feel what was going on within me, would give me a passing pat on the cheek, and go away, or take up some work, or suddenly freeze all over as only he knew how to freeze, and I shrank into myself at once, and turned cold too. His rare fits of ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev

... Do you know what it is to be heart- hungry? Do you know what it is to yearn for the Indefinable, and yet to be brought face to face, dally, with the Multiplication Table? Do you know what it is to seek oceans and to find puddles? That's my case. Oh, I am a cursed thing! ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan

... of people—I meet them every day—who are in a constant state of yearn to do a bit of travelling. They say they envy me. But it is not money they want, it is courage. It will interest some of them to know what it can be done for. I will put down what it usually costs. A first-class ticket from London via New York, San Francisco, Sydney, Melbourne, ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts

... here a while. This is the only place where I can get courage enough to pray. Couldn't you leave her—the child—with me? It has been years since I could bear the sight of one. I hated children, because my heart was so black—so bitter; but now, I yearn toward this little thing. I am so starved for the kiss of—of—," she swept her hand across her throat, where ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... they were! And, oh, how we watched the mails; But nobody writes of the quaint delights Of the sunny days and the merry nights Or tells us the things that we yearn to know— That art passed out with the long ago, And lost are the simple tales; Yet we all would happier be, I think, If we'd spend more time ...
— All That Matters • Edgar A. Guest

... intelligence is a distinct reflection on me as a parent. Fancy a son of mine trying to make a lawyer's bowels yearn with compassion! I'm positively ashamed of you. Why are you so elementary? The situation must have contained some elements of humour, though. I should like to have witnessed it. Did you call down Heaven's vengeance on the murderer ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees

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

... of the Sunbeams" is the artist's title. Against the sky, upon a cliffy mountain, the radiant temple beams upon them over deep, subjacent woods; they, behind a mound, as if seeking shelter from the splendour—one prostrate on his face, one kneeling, and with hands ecstatically lifted—yearn with passion after that immortal city. Turn the page, and we behold them walking by the very shores of death; Heaven, from this nigher view, has risen half-way to the zenith, and sheds a wider glory; and the two pilgrims, dark against that brightness, walk and sing out of the fulness ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... of trouble at Ploszow, you know," said my aunt, imitating Aniela's voice. "They do not want to be a burden to me, the charitable souls. They evidently think I yearn after solitude; and in case you went away too, it would be ever so much better, more cheerful for me, to be by myself in that big house. They have discussed this all the night, instead of sleeping like ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... be two troopers, not one. And you'll be under the Corporal's orders about range, and distance, and keepin' out of the hands of—the other side. You don't absolutely yearn to be killed or taken prisoner, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... not follow her far beyond her own old rocking-chair. As for her father, she had made him afraid of her, not for his sake, but for her own. Sometimes she would seem to be fond of him, and the parent's heart would yearn within him as she twined her supple arms about him; and then some look she gave him, some half-articulated expression, would turn his cheek pale and almost make him shiver, and he would say kindly, "Now go, Elsie, dear," and smile upon her as she went, and close and lock the door softly ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... of course! She's made to order. The girl has her way to make. She's been rather overdoing lately. I don't like the look in her eyes at times. She never asks for sympathy or consideration, you understand, but she makes every woman, and man, too, judging by that rich cripple, Mr. Boswell, yearn over her. She'd be the merriest soul on earth, with half a chance, and she's the most capable girl I have: ready for an emergency; never weary. Why, ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock

... but I feel myself choking when I think of these poor people who yearn for salvation. They are crying for water—for living water—but there is no one who can give it ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg

... permit ourselves to live according to untrammeled common sense, the unconquerable efficiency of good will. We grant ourselves the complete and selfish pleasure of loving others better than ourselves. How odd it seems, how unnaturally happy we are! We feel there must be some mistake, and rather yearn for the familiar frictions and distresses. Just for a few hours we "purge out of every heart the lurking grudge." We know then that hatred is a form of illness; that suspicion and pride are only fear; ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley

... ever forgotten her standing there in the snow with her baby hidden under her shawl, and her sweet thin face raised to his? Had he ever ceased to love her and yearn for her when his anger was most bitter against her? Surely the demons must have leagued together to keep possession of his soul, or he would never have so hardened himself against her! He had taken her boy from her; he had tempted his youthful weakness with the sight ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey

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

... monstrous passion which had at first view of her possessed the priest, now, like a sheltered taper, glowed an adoration which made him yearn, in defiance of common-sense, to suffer somehow for this beautiful and gracious comrade; though very often pity for her loneliness and knowledge that she dared trust no one save him would throttle Maudelain like two assassins, and would move the hot-blooded young man to a ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell



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



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com