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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



... of the word daughter set the poor creature meditating on her great loss. She sighed deeply, and turned her poor old eyes on me with a yearning, inquiring look. I was accustomed to the look by this time, and having no good news to give her, had latterly got into a way of taking no notice of it. That night, however, my heart felt so sore for her that I ...
— My Doggie and I • R.M. Ballantyne

... campaigns, by the influence of the papal Non Expedite,[552] and, most of all, by the habitual indifference of citizens, who, if the truth be told, for the most part have never displayed an insatiable yearning for the possession of the voting privilege. With the exception of the Socialists, no party has a clear-cut, continuous programme; none, save again the socialists, attempts systematically to arouse ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg

... looked upon his sister's son, his heart went out to him with a great yearning; for the lad was tall and strong, the lad was proud and unconquered. And Charles the Great opened his empty arms and took the boy to his heart, nevermore to be ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene

... Californians, and, in this one particular, they had all been alike. No matter how far they had wandered from the Golden West, no matter how long or how pleasant had been their exile, they yearned, with a great yearning, for that intangible something that all Californians feel but can never explain—which is found nowhere save in this land of romance and plenty, of hearty good will, of life lived without too great effort, and wherein the desire to play ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne

... as well as work has had a large share in her life, but she has borne it all with patient resignation. She is not one to complain, and does not mean to trouble others with her sadness. But left all alone with her musings, a look of yearning comes into her eyes as for something beautiful and much loved, ...
— Rembrandt - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll

... into the bright room with a smiling shrinking from the light, which gave her the expression of an angel. Both men gazed at her with a sort of passion of tenderest admiration, and also a certain sadness of yearning—the Squire because of that instinct of insecurity and possibility of loss to which possession itself gives rise, the Colonel because of the awakening of old vain longings in ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... thrusting down his beak when the bright speckled sides of his prey flash through the water. It was from neither cruelty nor vanity, for Thorne had less of both traits than usually falls to the lot of men; it was rather from the restlessness, the yearning of a strong nature for that which it needed, but had not yet attained; the experimental searching of a soul for its mate. That sorrow might come to others in the search he scarcely heeded; was he to blame that fair promises would bud and lead him on, and fail of fruition? ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland

... presentiments come sometimes upon us with all the force of a certain conviction, and my conscience will never be easy until I, make some effort to find out, beyond the shadow of doubt, whether my sister's child is wandering upon the earth, yearning for kindred and home, or is gathered to the home which is brighter than any this world can afford. What first awakened these thoughts within me, was the sight of a gipsy woman to-day. She stopped me in the street to beg a few pennies, and ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith

... it again as from the face of a stranger. That glance of an instant struck Magdalen to the heart. She stood rooted to the ground after Norah had passed by. A horror of the vile disguise that concealed her; a yearning to burst its trammels and hide her shameful painted face on Norah's bosom, took possession of her, body and soul. She turned and ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... this boundless devotion, the trusty arm, the blind slave, the silent tool, the wealth—for henceforth all I possess is mine only as a trust—which lay at your disposal; unknown to you, the heart waiting to receive your confidence, and yearning to replace all that your life (I know it well) has lacked —the liberal ancestress, so ready to meet your needs, a father to whom you could look for protection in every difficulty, a friend, a brother. The secret of your isolation is no secret to me! If I am bold, ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac

... then hear of fewer attempts to abduct slaves from the slave-holding states; and abolitionists would be content to allow slaves to remain under the care and protection of their masters. Even though at heart sympathizing with the oppressed and task-worn negro, and yearning towards him with all the love of the professed philanthropist, he would still be permitted to toil and bleed; for now that the route to Canada has been closed, there is no alternative but to take them ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams

... naturally criminals, that they are swept into crime by the misdirection of energies which, if directed along happier lines, might have been praiseworthy. Macbeth, vigorous and imaginative, has a poet's or conqueror's yearning toward a larger fullness of life, experience, joy. It is the woeful misdirection of this splendid energy through unlawful channels which makes him a murderer, not the callous, animal indifference of the born criminal. Similarly, his wife is a woman of great executive ability, reaching out instinctively ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken

... this, indeed, actually came to pass. Although my admission to this society had no great effect upon my later life, because it was dissolved at the death of its founder, and I did not keep up my acquaintance with the other members afterwards, yet it awakened that yearning towards higher scientific knowledge which now began to make itself forcibly ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel

... on all-fours, passing several windows that were dark and shut. We reached one, the last in the row, where the light streamed through. Notwithstanding our perilous situation, I resolved to look in. There was an impulse upon me which I could not resist. I was yearning for some clue to the mystery that hung ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid

... in her mind, slew the grief in her heart. She had believed she could not live if her husband were to be taken away from her; but she found herself often glad that he was dead,—glad that he was spared the sight and the knowledge of the things which happened; and even the yearning tenderness with which her imagination pictured him among the saints, was often turned into a fierce wondering whether indignation did not fill his soul, even in heaven, at the way things were going in the land for ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson

... last word," and you equally, by intimating with your usual unanswerable and clear-sighted gift of logic that no further allowance of taels will be sent for this one's dispersal, diplomatically impose upon an ever-yearning son the most feverish anxiety once more to behold your large ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah

... I left my chamber and looked forth upon this smiling, shining sea, I longed to fling myself on its bosom with a yearning which I cannot express. To satisfy this desire, I made all haste to be gone. I did not even wait for a regular breakfast, but was content with a piece of bread and a bowl of milk, which I obtained from the pantry, and having hurriedly swallowed these, I ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid

... 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

... must die. In the wild western desert it is the thirst that kills. No wonder I was filled with despair. I believed myself to be about the middle of the Jornada. I knew that I could never reach the other side without water. The yearning had already begun. My throat and tongue ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid

... and were mainly centred upon their pensioners amongst the poor. Their friends were of their own generation. Thus in the past Claudia had not felt any eager yearning for the house in St. John's Wood, where the sisters dwelt at peace. But it was otherwise now, because Claudia had new ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various

... addresses, and appointing dummies, and establishing foolscap guarantees against his poor fallible and flexible self—as he had the effrontery to call it—with all the gravity, grand benevolence, confidence in mankind (as fools), immensity of yearning for universal good, and intensity of planning for his own, which have hoodwinked the zanies in every age, and never more than in the present age and country. And if France licked the dust, she could plead more than we can—it ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... was eager to return home direct. The yearning to see my parents and brothers and sisters again was stronger than I could repress I felt sure, also, that Captain Dean and Mary, to whom I had given my father's address, would have communicated with him, and that I should receive some news ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston

... babies, who had been lying on his knees, receiving contentedly and happily the good things he gave him, but never looking up to find the eyes of him from whom the good gifts came. And now the heart of the old man, touched by the motion of the child's heart—yearning after her Father in heaven, and yet scarcely believing that he could be so good as her father on earth—began to stir uneasily within him. And he went down on his knees and hid his face in ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... said, with her roguish, indolent smile. "While I don't object to helping the great cause along, I am not yearning to become a polite entertainer. I'd probably be a most impolite one before the end of a week, if I had to rush freshies as a steady task. I am afraid few of them would turn out to be as amiable, beautiful, jolly, delightful, agreeable ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester

... his yearning, however, entirely on the side and within those hours consecrated to the law. In his wife's society he yearned not at all. In her company he carefully kept his thoughts and his language inside the innermost circle ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train

... plunge him into the depths of self were it not for that Imagination in him whose power never fails to bear him beyond himself; and is finally in him a need, a trust, a yearning after God; whom, even when he is most lost, he feels is always acting on him, and at every point of ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke

... simple human Boys,— All, to a boy, for Culture yearning,— No pedagogues with idle noise Impede upon the path of Learning:— Released from books and teachers both, No intellectual pastures feed 'em; And, if they lose in mental growth, Think how they gain ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley

... thought with yearning anguish of his sofa. He scanned the lady viciously, felt her masculine tenor thumping on his eardrums, ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... they may enjoy the pleasures of intemperance, and courageous from fear of danger. Whereas the philosopher is seeking after wisdom and not after pleasure, whether near or distant: he is the mystic, the initiated, who has learnt to despise the body and is yearning all his life long for a truth which will hereafter be revealed to him. In the Republic the pleasures of knowledge are affirmed to be superior to other pleasures, because the philosopher so estimates them; and he alone has had experience of both kinds. (Compare a similar argument urged ...
— Philebus • Plato

... philosophers would get at the secret by reason, contemning emotion; whereas the poet knows that creation implies fatherhood, and fatherhood implies emotion, even passionate emotion. It is (take it as a cold fact) only on the impulse of yearning, on the cry of Abba, that the creature can leap to any real understanding ...
— Poetry • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... to Baird's satisfaction, and the cameras ground. Merton Gill gave the best that was in him. His glad look at first beholding the old lady, the yearning of his eyes when his arms opened to enfold her, the tenderness of his embrace as he murmured soothing words, the lingering touch of his hand as he left her, the manly determination of the last look in which he showed a fresh resolve to release ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson

... to settle the matter. He had paid the visit to see how much he really cared for her, and quick departure, without so much as an explicit farewell, was the sequel to this enquiry, the answer to which had created within him a deep yearning. When he wrote her from Clarens he noted that he owed her an explanation (more than three months after!) for not having told her what ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James

... as only the first flush of young life. 'I commenced sowing my wild oats at quite as early an age,' I have heard him say. 'He'll cool off, and do well enough. Never fear.' But his mother was in a state of painful alarm from the beginning. Her truer instincts, made doubly acute by her yearning love, perceived the imminent danger, and in all possible ways did she seek to lure him from the path in which he was moving at so rapid a pace. Willy was always very much attached to his mother, and her influence over ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur

... the Sixteenth or the Front, and he could not bring himself to acknowledge the leadership of Foxy Ross, for all his bull's-eyes and liquorice. Not but what Hughie yearned for bull's-eyes and liquorice with great yearning, but these could not atone to him for the loss out of his life of the stir and rush and daring of the old fighting days. And it galled him that the boys of the Sixteenth could flout the boys of the Twentieth in all places and on all ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor

... waiting and striving for new ones. It is a time suggestive of the birth of new religions. Man cannot live as yet without faith, without some sort of religion. The heart of the world today is strained with yearning for new and living faiths to replace the old faiths which are dead. Were some persuasive fanatic to arise proclaiming himself to be a new Messiah, and preaching the religion of action, the creation of a new ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... of pity, the yearning of rekindled love, the struggle of silenced memories passed from his face and left a shining calm—foretaste of the perpetual Light ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade

... hard to be alone even when you are happy, and the more Maya went through, the greater became her yearning for companionship and love. She was no longer so very young; she had grown into a strong, superb creature with sound, bright wings, a sharp, dangerous sting, and a highly developed sense of both the pleasures ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels

... Sea, that, in thy prison here, Dost struggle and complain; Through the slow centuries yearning to be near To that fair ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant

... with the blacksmith about the wonders of the country of the Red River, and they had come from Fort William. She saw again the bustle and activity of Grand Portage, the comfortable house of the Baptistes. Once more she felt the old yearning for the unknown. ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe

... upholds the tall pillars which keep earth and sky asunder. His daughter it is that holds the hapless man in sorrow: and ever with soft and guileful tales she is wooing him to forgetfulness of Ithaca. But Odysseus yearning to see if it were but the smoke leap upwards from his own land, hath a desire to die. As for thee, thine heart regardeth it not at all, Olympian! What! did not Odysseus by the ships of the Argives make thee free offering of sacrifice in the wide Trojan ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.

... 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 ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

... thought, or deed. Yet will I humble myself, if you are indeed wroth with me. Have I appeared indifferent or cold? oh! Paul, believe it not. If I have not expressed the whole of my deep tenderness which is poured out all, all on thee alone—my yearning and continued love, that counts the minutes when thou art not near me; it is not that I cease ever to think of thee, to adore thee, but that it were unmaidenly and overbold to tell thee of it. See, now, if ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... ready to turn their faces bedward, we drove slowly down the winding lane to the dust-covered bridge, past the small cemetery where mother was sleeping, back to where the broad-roofed old house was waiting for us like some huge, faithful creature yearning to receive us once again beneath its wings. It was commonplace to our neighbors and without special significance to the world, but to my children it was noble and beautiful ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... had been brought by early association into touch with the agricultural population knew only too well how deep and just was the discontent of the villages, and how keen the yearning for better chances. To secure the vote for the agricultural labourer seemed to be the first step towards the improvement of his lot. The General Election of 1880 was, as nearly as our constitutional forms admit, a plebiscite on foreign policy; but to many a man who was then beginning ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell

... far more than she supposed. She had bared a yearning, struggling heart to Luther's gaze, a soul seeking a right path where there seemed no sure ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger

... first—he never left any papers scattered on the table, and he was never absent from the room at any special times and seasons that could be previously calculated upon. I began to despair, and to feel in my lonely moments a yearning to renew that childish experiment of crying, which I have already adverted to, in the way of confession. Moralists will be glad to hear that I really suffered acute mental misery at this time of my life. My state of depression would have gratified the most exacting of Methodists; and my ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins

... hungering lips of priests, Smites dead the slaying and ravening hands of kings; Turns dark the lamp's hot light, And turns the darkness bright As with the shadow of dawn's reverberate wings; And far before its way Heaven, yearning toward the day, Shines with its thunder and round its lightning rings; And never hand yet earlier played With that keen sword whose hilt is cloud, ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... and the older woman's passionate words seemed to ring the stronger. They looked at each other defiantly. At last Miss Hitchcock pulled her wrap about her, and rose to go. A final wave of regret, of yearning not to be thrust out in this way from ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... speechless before the unseen power which snatches from our caresses all that we most cherish, all that makes our life there worth living. There is no solution of the mystery, no voice, no return, no message, only a blankness of doubt, misgiving and desperate yearning in those who must continue. There is indeed with those on Earth a partial confidence by reason of religious faith, but strong as that seems to be, the endless succession of centuries, each crowding the viewless habitations of the dead with the still more ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap

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

... the high-minded sons of Pandu and the noble Draupadi Roamed onward, fasting, with their faces toward the east; their hearts Yearning for union with the Infinite, bent on ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... which requires a most expensive setting of simplicity. And that was why Isabel opened her coat. If Captain Hyde had admired her in her Chilmark muslin, what would he think of flounce and fold of rose-point of Alencon under Yvonne's perfumed furs? And then she blushed again because the yearning in his eyes made her wonder if he cared after all whether she wore lace or cotton. ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde

... those papers! What love and longing: what generous faith and manly devotion—what watchful nights and lonely fevers might they tell of! She tied them up like so much grocery, and sate down and made tea afterwards with a perfectly placid and contented heart: while Pen was yearning after her ten miles off: and hugging her ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... between Lutheran and Catholic, but settled it in a way not at all to his mind; for it was the safeguard of princely interests against his plans for an imperial unity. Weary of the losing strife, yearning for ease, ordered by his physicians to withdraw from active life, Charles in the course of 1555 and 1556 resigned all his great lordships and titles, leaving Philip his son to succeed him in Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain, and his brother Ferdinand ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... the colour of ultramarine, Blue as the stainless sky unflecked with white. I view her with yearning eyes, and she seems to me A moon of the summer set in ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous

... down into the abyss. For one moment my fingers clutched convulsively upon their hold, while, with the movement, the faintest possible idea of ultimate escape wandered, like a shadow, through my mind—in the next my whole soul was pervaded with a longing to fall; a desire, a yearning, a passion utterly uncontrollable. I let go at once my grasp upon the peg, and, turning half round from the precipice, remained tottering for an instant against its naked face. But now there came a spinning of the brain; a shrill-sounding and phantom ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... gesture for him to leave her, but did not unclose her eyes. She could not look upon him, find know it was the last, last time, but she offered no remonstrance when he left, upon her lips a kiss so full of hopeless and yearning tenderness that it burned there many a day after he was gone. She heard him turn away, heard him cross the floor, knew he paused upon the threshold, and still her eye-lids never opened, though the hot tears rained over her face ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes

... explanation, for ingenuities of argument, which, unsatisfactory as they seemed to himself, might yet, he thought, help her to the reconciliation he knew she desired. He was scarcely less anxious for it. For Beatrice he would never know that limitless passion, that infinite yearning alike of spirit and of sense, which had been his love for Emily; but she was very dear to him, and with all his heart he desired to make her happiness. He imaged her beauty and her talent with pride which made his veins warmer. Her husband, he would ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing

... him to be a genuine feeling in the voice that uttered those beautiful words of scripture. They clung to his heart, and the minister himself became transfigured for an instant into some other being,—stern of countenance, yet loveliness in the depths of his soul, spiritually far away, yet heart yearning with nearness of love. Chester came fully to himself only when Elder Malby took his arm and together they paced a few turns around ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson

... promenade on foot, we encountered the whole Ninth Territorial Regiment—not under arms but au repos. The men were seated in front of the barracks reading the papers or idly smoking their pipes, and all yearning for "something to do." Their wish, I fear, has ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard

... as a dramatic author more highly than as a novelist, and was always yearning for some great triumph on the stage. In this respect he was like Bulwer Lytton, who once said to me, "I think more of my poems and 'The Lady of Lyons' and 'Richelieu' than of all my novels, from 'Pelham' to 'What will he do with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various

... of youth's joyous joy in living. You must not mind if your wife occasionally treats you as though you were a dear big baby, requiring maternal care and petting. You are such a veritable boy sometimes, and it soothes the yearning for a little son of yours to cuddle in her arms, when she plays that her big boy is ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay

... his own gaze cleared he noticed two marked differences in her appearance. One of her pale cheeks was streaked with crimson, and the dark eyes were wide not with dread alone. They gazed down at him heavy with the anguish of mingled grief and yearning. He knew that he was looking into the girl's ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet

... afterwards, humbly and sadly he re-urged a former suit, did Lucille shut her heart to its prayer? Did her pride remember its wound; did she revert to his desertion; did she reply to the whisper of her yearning love, "Thou hast been before forsaken"? That voice and those darkened eyes pleaded to her with a pathos not to be resisted. "I am once more necessary to him," was all her thought; "if I reject him who will tend him?" In that thought was the motive ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... miracle he would draw it out with his eyes or with his breath. And the poor Poet cries out, "Pump! the water is gaining on us, and our shop is going to ruin. Pump!" Whereupon the lazy, absent-minded one resumes pumping, while yearning all the while for the plashing stone-rollers and the purling eaves of his home in Baalbek. And once in a pinch,—they are labouring under a peltering rain,—he stops as is his wont to remind Shakib of the Arabic saying, "From the ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... while Mr. Badger had been afraid lest his wife refuse to forgive him, and receive him. From afar he had taken to watching the humble cottage home in which his dear ones dwelt, and doubtless each day saw his yearning to embrace them ...
— Jack Winters' Baseball Team - Or, The Rivals of the Diamond • Mark Overton

... and Discipline;' meaning, by the last, the desire of equity and wholesome restraint, 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 possibly be ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin

... the rocks again. And in his steps the maiden stole, While softer, holier grew the strain, Till rapture thrilled her yearning soul! ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various

... 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

... like to see her. I believe she is a great idol with her father. I wish," added Katherine, after a pause, "he were not so unreasonably prejudiced against me. You may think me weak, Rachel, but I have a sort of yearning for ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander

... precipice. And I have climbed many lofty peaks, but never one without passing these places with the fearful possibilities of destruction. Always the novice has looked with the same unspeakable fear into the yawning depths, with the same unspeakable yearning towards the jewel-crowned heights beyond. This, or something of this, was in the startled attitude of the trembling figure, whose eyes met mine without flinching ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut

... across the gulf of space astral women, with eyes that are to the eyes of English women as diamonds are to boot-buttons, astral women, with hearts vast and warm and sympathetic, were regarding Butterick's with envy, Peter Robinson's with jealousy, and Whiteley's with insatiable yearning, and slowly and surely maturing their plans for a grand ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas

... quitting the rugged gorges of high mountains for a valley of the Southern Alps—still, pensive, beautiful, and coloured with reflections from an evening sky. Perugino knew exactly how to represent a certain mood of religious sentiment, blending meek acquiescence with a prayerful yearning of the impassioned soul. His Madonnas worshipping the infant Jesus in a tranquil Umbrian landscape, his angels ministrant, his pathetic martyrs with upturned holy faces, his sexless S. Sebastians and immaculate S. Michaels, display the perfection of art ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds

... only too glad to accommodate you, my dear, if you'd provide the gee-gee. I can tell you I'm just yearning for ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil

... in the end. Transmute it into its finest possible form, let it be as subtle and civilized as you please, as yearning and noble, as enlightened, it still sets itself over against the wholeness of things; its role is that of the part at war with the whole. Milton's Lucifer had the mind of a ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.

... he was producing from his pocket the little stout black-bound Bible, which, by a dent in one of the lids, bore witness of having been with him in his campaigns; and perhaps half-diplomatically, as well as with a yearning for oneness of spirit, she gratified him by requesting him to ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge

... sunshine, and man cannot live without love. Would not the child's heart break in despair when 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, immeasurable love, a deep well which ...
— Memories • Max Muller

... thought Black Sheep. Aunty Rosa had credited him in the past with petty cunning and stratagem that had never entered into his head. By the light of the sordid knowledge that she had revealed to him he paid her back full tale. In a household where the most innocent of his motives, his natural yearning for a little affection, had been interpreted into a desire for more bread and jam or to ingratiate himself with strangers and so put Harry into the background, his work was easy. Aunty Rosa could penetrate certain kinds of hypocrisy, but not all. ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling

... and heaps and pyramids of silver and metal and linen? What was this Inn that she had conceived as a project so unimaginably fine? Who were these shadow people that came and went there? Who was she? Why with all her vitality and all her hungry yearning for life and adventure couldn't she even believe in her own substantiality and focus? Wasn't life even real enough for a creature such as she to ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley

... enforced to the vicissitudes of outdoor life. The joy of my grandfather in this career was strong as the love of woman. It lasted him through youth and manhood, it burned strong in age, and at the approach of death his last yearning was to renew these loved experiences. What he felt himself he continued to attribute to all around him. And to this supposed sentiment in others I find him continually, almost ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... gone, and she can walk ten miles. I was the one that was sick. You see, I wanted to get Pa into the church again, and get him to stop drinking, so I got a boy to write a letter to him, in a female hand, and sign the name of a choir singer Pa was mashed on, and tell him she was yearning for him to come back to the church, and that the church seemed a blank without his smiling face, and benevolent heart, and to please come back for her sake. Pa got the letters Saturday night and he seemed tickled, but I guess he dreamed about it ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck

... appearance of having been out all night, and of not knowing what to do with himself, now that what passed for daylight had come. All of a sudden there flashed into the brain of this young man standing by the French window a yearning to get away from this dark and dismal town—there came before him a vision of clear air, of wind-swept waves, with an after-church promenade of fashionable folk in which he might recognize the welcome face of many a friend. ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black

... expression. Even in the heyday of absolute music, in the instrumental compositions of Sebastian Bach, we may notice this tendency, though here it is rather the dance than poetry with which it strives to ally itself; while in Beethoven's symphonies the yearning for human community and human fellowship is noticeable from the first, and in the final work it breaks its bonds and ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight

... leaderless, struggling to restrain themselves. As I stood there, almost unconscious of their presence, still staring down at that upturned face, now appearing manly and patrician in the strange dignity of its death mask, a mad burst of anger swept me, a fierce yearning for revenge—a feeling that this was no less a murder because Nature had struck the blow. With hot words of reproach upon my lips I gazed across toward where Kirby had been standing a moment before. The gambler was no longer ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish

... deserving of the honor,—whose spirits, I feel certain, would linger a little while about Poets' Corner for the sake of witnessing their own apotheosis among their kindred. They have had a strong natural yearning, not so much for applause as sympathy, which the cold fortune of their lifetime did but scantily supply; so that this unsatisfied appetite may make itself felt upon sensibilities at once so delicate and retentive, even a step or two beyond the grave. Leigh Hunt, for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... years—swept over Alice Strowbridge, late artist, and now woman. There sat upon her soul a sense of unpreparedness for this new Public, this lone man from a mysterious land called Heart's Desire—a place where men, actual men, earnest men, were living, vaguely yearning for that which was not theirs. She felt them gazing into her soul, asking how she had guarded the talents, how she had prized the jewels given her, what she had done for the heart of humanity. Halfway across the floor she stopped, her ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough

... of every soul that views Them in that Land; but she heeds not the skies, Or glorious splendor of her home; her eyes Have that far look of spirits viewing men On earth, from the invisible mane, That erstwhile rests upon the mortal eye,— A longing for that home beyond the sky; A yearning for that bliss that love imparts, Where pain and sorrow ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous

... him in a strange place, among strangers ... he leaned upon the rail in a sudden excess of yearning for those whom he loved, summoned the spirits of those who loved him. They came to him through the night—Susan fretting, Ellis affectionately gruff, Enrico boisterously cheerful, Father Jennings ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson

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

... seriousness of Revolutionary times, out of which came her father and mother, was no doubt reflected in her own serious disposition. As I have said, her happiness was always shaded, never in a strong light; and the sadness which motherhood, and the care of a large family, and a yearning heart beget was upon her. I see myself in her perpetually. A longing which nothing can satisfy I share with her. Whatever is most valuable in my books comes from her—the background of feeling, of pity, of love ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus

... week or more the stricken financier confined himself mostly to his rooms, where he sat smoking cigarettes, gazing at Japanese prints, and trying not to think about "props" and "rehl." Then, gradually, the almost maternal yearning to see his brain-child once more, which can never be wholly crushed out of a young dramatist, returned to him—faintly at first, then getting stronger by degrees till it could no longer be resisted. True, he knew that when he beheld ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse

... shifting haloes,—admitted faults spoken of as peculiarities of sacred origin,—and the world given to understand that no common rule or measure could apply to such an undoubtedly divine production; and so the hearts of men were to be wrung with pity for his sorrows as the yearning pain of a god, and with anger at his injuries as sacrilege on the sacredness of genius, till they were ready to cast themselves at his feet, ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... danger which overhung them, their past trials, their half-starved bodies, their recent sufferings. These things were thrust behind them, they were of the past. Their present was an insatiable hunger for finds such as had been thrust before their yearning eyes less than ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum

... is there of the strangeness and yearning of the poor human soul in this earthly pilgrimage. The poetical "Life of St. Patrick," too, is full of fine, wild, natural imagery. The boy is described as a shepherd on the hills of Down, and there is a legend, well told, of the angel Victor ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude

... paper and looked up. In the face so close to hers, she saw all the yearning tenderness, the over-mastering love that had convulsed his nature, and before the pleading magnetic eyes that essayed to ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... this note of feeling slid down into something much softer and sadder. She became conscious of herself, and her personal life; and little by little her exultation passed into yearning; her eyes grew wet. For she had no one beside her with whom to share these secret thoughts and passions—these fresh contacts with life and nature. Was it always to be so? There was in her a longing, a "sehnsucht," for she ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... the virgins at midnight yearning, To behold the face of the Groom. Their lamps are all trimmed and burning, As they peer ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris

... in you was all my yearning, The prayer for this poor heart I wore so long. Now love heaps roses where the wounds were burning; What need have I ...
— The Dreamers - And Other Poems • Theodosia Garrison

... child! He pondered on this. It was like an accusation. The admission of it—when admission came—was the point of departure in his heart of a new conscious yearning. ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King

... full of passionate yearning. He laughed, trying to appear at ease. Some sort of an understanding must be had with Diana sooner or later, and she might as well realize at this present interview that the old relations could not be restored. His nature was not brutal and ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne

... dancer, atread without breath, Majestic and yearning and brooding as death, Oh, passion of my heart, oh, enchanted despair That glides before God like a bird from a snare, Return, then, return to me, clothe me with care!— But the beautiful dancer has vanished ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet

... a peculiar vulgar odour which at first filled the invalid with annoyance; but as it pervaded the place it somehow began to have a decided effect upon the boy's olfactory nerves and excited within him a strange yearning which drove ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn

... along effortless! Even as he knelt, in conscious hypocrisy, the emotion of all these worshippers sometimes swayed him in magnetic sympathy, and the crowds of holiday-makers in the streets, festively garbed, stirred him to yearning reconciliation. And now that he was to tear himself away, how dear was each familiar haunt—the woods and waters, the pleasant hills strewn with grazing cattle! How caressingly the blue sky bent over ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... victims of our national propensity, to be led away by trivialties? We tickle ourselves with straws, when we should be arming for the great contests of national minds. We are ready to be amused with the twang of the Jew's harp, when we should be yearning for the blast of the trumpet. You remind me, and I remind myself, of the scene at one of our country-wakes. It is the true portrait of our fruitless mixture of levity and sorrow. We come to mourn, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various

... the dead old man. But our own hearts grew tender with thoughts of this life finished at fourscore years with its longing of almost half a century unfulfilled. "Philip Nolan" we often called the old man, who sometimes said to us, with yearning, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various

... goes beyond present experience. It is the yearning for full redemption. It is the last which is answered. But there lies in it a not indistinct prophecy of that great and blessed time when we shall be like Him, and delivered ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... see it myself sometimes—when you get that restless, anxious look—there it is now! Helen, I must have it away. I think it would trouble me in my grave if I left you unhappy," added the earl, regarding her with that expression of yearning tenderness which she had been so used to all her days that she rarely noticed it until the days came when she saw ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... Madame, giving to her no other title or surname. It had always seemed to set her apart, and at a distance, as a foreigner, and so quiet had she been, so homely and domesticated, that she had remained a stranger, keeping her old habits of life and thought, and often yearning for the old pastor's ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton

... a stimulus to our inquiry and a prize set before our longing. In some respects it is only a challenge to search, and the horizons of knowledge forever widen before the explorer. At other points the veil never lifts, but all longing, aspiration, unsatisfied hunger, inarticulate yearning, "groanings which cannot be uttered," reach out to and lay hold on this realm of mystery. It is not an adamantine wall that encircles us, it is the tender mystery of the sunset or the ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam

... more honoured in the breach than the observance. The long-lipped, witch-burner would draw blood with his knuckles; but he drew the line at the sword. The state of public feeling upon duelling Roland very well knew; and as he thought of Aster, with her sunny hair and glorious, yearning eyes, and the exile that lay before him, a numb feeling of despair began to gather about his heart. He was able to persuade himself that she would look upon the unfortunate affair as necessary for the assertion of his honour; but how could he hope for any further happiness, a criminal in the ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins

... the more lonesome and desolate. No wonder the Swiss are a homesick race, or that Napoleon, on his distant campaigns, prohibited, from fear of desertion, the playing of their national airs. Smoky cities could be recalled, even in this land of desolation, without yearning or regret, but I could never think of the sunlit Alps or leafy boulevards without an irresistible longing to throw reputation to the winds ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt

... whase clavering aunty Wad match her wi' Jamie, the laird; And learns the young fouk to be vaunty, But neither to spin nor to caird. And Andrew, whase granny is yearning To see him a clerical blade, Was sent to the college for learning, And cam' back ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... concerning angels. In his least logical arguments there were still amazing observations as to the powers of man, which gave his words that color of truth without which nothing can be done in any art. The romantic end he foresaw as the destiny of man was calculated to flatter the yearning which tempts blameless imaginations to give themselves up to beliefs. Is it not during the youth of a nation that its dogmas and idols are conceived? And are not the supernatural beings before whom the people tremble the personification of their ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac

... sparkling, thrilling accompaniment into a wild human chant, his face the while triumphant and passionate, but blind with such utter blindness that he seemed like the symbol of Man's life rather than a man; a great song of heart-yearning sung to the stars and to the Infinite rather than the singer ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham

... viewless windows to the same, same looming figures on the dusky walls, they hadn't even the consolation of knowing that just this attitude and movement, set off by their peaked coifs, their falling sleeves and heavily-twisted trains, would sow the seed of yearning envy—of sorts—on the part of ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James

... delusion which are the most sane constituents of a lifetime. As it was, late in the night, as I lay awake and sore in spirit, and wild with all things and almost with the Lord, sleepless and with much yearning grown upon me, I heard the voice calling out in the night up to the stars and the mystery of quiet for love and all that had been near and dear to this one clouded mind; and I turned my face to the wall. And I was like Ishmael indeed when I remembered, while that voice threw ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various

... English love so heartily their rural life, and why every object peculiar to it has brought forth a picture or a poem. I can imagine how many a man, who has never known what poetry was at home, has wept with yearning inexpressible, when sitting among burning sands and under the palms of the East, for such scenes ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland

... it gave him no small delight, to such effect that he burned for the lady no less vehemently than she for him. Wherefore, until such time as he might, upon some worthy occasion, have his grandfather's leave to go to Tunis, yearning beyond measure to see her, he charged every friend of his, that went thither, to give her to know, as best he might, his great and secret love for her, and to bring him tidings of her. Which office one of the said friends discharged with no small address; for, having ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio

... could dwell within her breast; How sad to see her worth untimely die! Yet who may wail the needful rest? Her willing hand, her tireless step, her active brain, Rear'd lofty landmarks on the busy way; The haunts that knew her long'd with yearning vain, The reaper's scythe ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts



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



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