Ached Quotes & Sayings

He tasted like white wine and pine needles. He tasted like two years of waiting. I wanted to breathe for him, I wanted to swallow him whole. I ached with a sudden, pulsing need, an overwhelming desire I'd never felt before. — Viv Daniels

Sylvia possessed a deeply conditioned respect for authority. She wanted desperately to live up to the expectations of a society that viewed her as a bright, charming, enormously talented disciple of bourgeois conformity. On the other hand, she ached to experience life in all its grim and beautiful complexity. The poetic eye was always at work examining the nuance and measuring obscure detail, turning conversation into ultimatum (Steiner) — Elizabeth Winder

I don't understand, Blue said. Something in her ached, though, like she did understand, but couldn't put words to it, wrap her thoughts around it. She felt like she was a part of a dream this place was having, or it was a part of a dream of hers. — Maggie Stiefvater

We're both drunk,"
"This isn't right," he said.
"I want you."
"I need you to say it," he said.
"I'll say whatever you want."
"Then say that you belong to me. Say that you'll take me back. I won't do this unless we're together."
"We've never really been apart, have we?"
"I need to hear you say it. I need to know you're mine."
"I've been yours since the second we met."
"Say it again,"he said.
"I'm yours," I breathed. Every nerve, inside and out ached for more. "I don't ever want to be apart from you again."
"Promise me,"
"I love you. I'll love you forever. — Jamie McGuire

I put my hand on a bishop, my would be assassin, and thought of my father's heights when he won, how he galloped around. The depths of his despair at losing, I expected, would be equal to the peaks. He'd mope about, his face fallen and miserable, his posture stooped as if his back ached. I took my hand from the piece and leaned back in deliberation. — Rion Amilcar Scott

It was too late to tell Dally. Would he have listened? I doubted it. Suddenly it wasn't only a personal thing to me. I could picture hundreds and hundreds of boys living on the wrong sides of cities, boys with black eyes who jumped at their own shadows. Hundreds of boys who maybe watched sunsets and looked at stars and ached for something better. I could see boys going under street lights because they were mean and tough and hated the world, and it was too late to tell them that there was still good in it, and they wouldn't believe you if you did. It was too much of a problem to be just a personal thing. — S.E. Hinton

Have you ever wanted something that you knew was bad for you? Something that you ached for so much you could think of nothing else? [Wren] — Sherrilyn Kenyon

And if he ached more than I was aching, then he was in agony. — V.C. Andrews

It was weird to hear Grace this way. It was weird to be here, sitting in my car with her best friend when Grace was home, needing me for once. It was weird to want to tell her that we didn't need to go to the studio until things calmed down. But I couldn't tell her no. I physically couldn't say it to her. Hearing her like this ... she was a different thing than I'd ever seen her be, and I felt some dangerous and lovely future whispering secrets in my ear. I said, "I wish it were Sunday, too."
"I don't want to be alone tonight," Grace said.
Something in my heart twinged. I closed my eyes for a moment and opened them again. I thought about sneaking over myself; I thought about telling her to sneak out. I imagined lying in my bedroom beneath my paper cranes, with the warm shape of her tucked against me, not having to worry about hiding in the morning, just having her with me on our terms, and I ached and ached some more with the force of wanting it. I echoed, "I miss you, too. — Maggie Stiefvater

The loneliness became more and more unbearable. I ached to be touched. I feared I was disappearing and I'd cease to exist if someone didn't touch me. — Leslie Feinberg

I wonder why when I told him that my chest still ached even though I had finally told him how I felt, he said, "So you finally realize how I've felt these past three years?" and laughed. — Kou Yoneda

We wanted more. We knocked the butt ends of our forks against the table, tapped our spoons against our empty bowls; we were hungry. We wanted more volume, more riots. We turned up the knob on the TV until our ears ached with the shouts of angry men. We wanted more music on the radio; we wanted beats; we wanted rock. We wanted muscles on our skinny arms. We had bird bones, hollow and light, and we wanted more density, more weight. We were six snatching hands, six stomping feet; we were brothers, boys, three little kings locked in a feud for more. — Justin Torres

Maybe it was the converse of the way amputees feel pain in a missing limb. He really was there all those years, a flesh-and-blood presence streaming off the wallpaper, digging up the dogwoods, polishing the finials... smelling of sawdust and sweat and designer cologne. But I ached as if he were already gone. — Alison Bechdel

The Taellywood treasure beckoned us. All of us ached for God's wisdom. We had so many questions. We wanted to know why things happened the way they did. We needed to know. We desired the truth and we yearned for answers to many of life's questions. — Pat Patrick

By five A.M., her eyes were gritty and her head ached. The single hour's sleep she had managed to tuck in between sex and murder was beginning to wear on her. — J.D. Robb

I could not bear the deep freeze settling around my bones at the thought that yet another attempt to get out of my life alive would end in disappointment. Time became palpable and viscous. Every minute, every second, every nanosecond, wrapped around my spine so that my nerves tightened and ached. I faded into abstraction. A self-generated narcosis created a painful blank where my mind used to be. — Elizabeth Wurtzel

When I was about 7 years old, I had been labeled dyslexic. I'd try to concentrate on what I was reading, then I'd get to the end of the page and have very little memory of anything I'd read. I would go blank, feel anxious, nervous, bored, frustrated, dumb. I would get angry. My legs would actually hurt when I was studying. My head ached. All through school and well into my career, I felt like I had a secret. When I'd go to a new school, I wouldn't want the other kids to know about my learning disability, but then I'd be sent off to remedial reading. — Tom Cruise

Never had I been so conscious of the earth of the toughness and fragility and flowing life of it.
I realised for the first time that the stones were not dead, nor the dust devoid of life, nor the waters vacuous.
Our earth lived.
It lived and breathed and sang and flowed and ached, in ever tiny part.
And it's singing called to me - whispered, hummed, through the skin of my feet, through my whole self, until with all my being I was attuned to it. — Sherryl Jordan

Was going to drown. Woo had attached him to the drain at the bottom of the pool with his own handcuffs. He looked up. The moon was shining down on him through a filter of water. He stretched his free arm up and out of the water. Hell, the pool was only one meter deep here! Harry crouched and tried to stand up, stretched with all his might. The handcuff cut into his thumb, but still his mouth was twenty centimeters below the surface. He noticed the shadow at the edge of the pool moving away. Shit! Don't panic, he thought. Panic uses up oxygen. He sank to the bottom and examined the grille with his fingers. It was made of steel and was totally immovable, it didn't budge even when he grabbed it with both hands and pulled. How long could he hold his breath? One minute? Two? All his muscles ached, his temples throbbed and red stars were dancing in front of his eyes. He tried to jerk himself loose. His mouth was dry with fear, his brain had started producing — Jo Nesbo

Things must be done, life must go on. Life would go on, even if every breath she took hurt, even if her joints ached when she moved. Sorry and loneliness were an insidious evil, for they lived in the mind. One could not take a tonic and see them dissipate. — Kristen Callihan

My chest ached, my body speaking a language my head didn't quite understand.
I waited.
But Grace, the only person in the world I wanted to know me, just ran a wanting finger over the cover of one of the new hardcovers and walked out of the store without ever realising I was there, right within reach. — Maggie Stiefvater

When they began their ascent, Froi heard the beauty of the Priestking's voice across the land, and the song inside Froi that he refused to sing, ached to be let loose. What had frightened him most about Rafuel of Sebastabol was that his stories had made Froi's blood dance. They had given him a restlessness. A need to be elsewhere to search for a part of himself that was lost. But what he feared was that the search to find answers would take him away from this land of light. That once he left, he would never find his way back home. — Melina Marchetta

I know when I get real with myself, and I actually look at the world I'm growing up in, I want a savior. I'm sure of that. On most days I could not tell you what coffee I want, what train I want to take, or the jacket I want to wear, but I've always ached for a savior. The kind who gets right up close to your face and says, "Babycakes, this ain't your battle. Stand back, I'm here now. — Hannah Brencher

He could tell her he loved her. He ached to shout it out loud for the gods and everyone to hear. Little good it would do. Better to trust in the moon's promises than in the word of the Thief of Eddis. He was famous in three countries for his lies. — Megan Whalen Turner

When he saw her, he wanted to be with her; when he was with her, he ached to touch her; when he touched even her hand, he wanted to embrace her. — Cassandra Clare

Do you regret it, amira?"
"Regret . . . what?"
"Meeting me. Knowing me." He searched my face. "Loving me."
Everything seemed to stop at the word; it hung in the air between us, tangible and real. "No," I said at last. "No."
"But you fear you will someday. That's why you hold back. That's why you want to know you can change things before you commit." He let go of my hand and stood. The distance between us ached like the cold of a winter sea. "You watched your father chase your mother for years, and you wished he didn't love her. What will you do to my memory when I'm gone? Will you chase it like a dragon? Or will you banish it like smoke? — Heidi Heilig

We walked into the arena together with him reaching out his arm and wrapping it around my waist. He pulled me into him, smelling the aroma around him. The scent was familiar like I was with him before. Although I was positive that I'd never seen this man, something still ached at me. Was it a longing of a piece of my past starting to take effect? — Millicent Ashby

Yet his feeling of wrongness now ached in his skull. — Steven Erikson

Just the word beautiful was seductive - but what did it really mean? Beauty was a soft word that ached with possibility, pliant as dough. You could not presume to define it, she realized, because the very idea of beauty and all it represented was a subjective thing - in the eye of the beholder - but that wasn't really true anymore. — Elizabeth Brundage

There were people whom you positively ached to please. If you failed with such people they would put you into a category in their minds where they could kee you and have contempt for you forever. — Alice Munro

Not dancing well, I never danced at all
and how grievously has my heart ached when others where in the full enjoyment of that conversation which I had no right even to partake. — Walter Savage Landor

Abigail ... His heart ached for his little girl, and the loss of his family drove like a blade through his heart. His head jerked up as the creak of a timber echoed overhead. If only they hadn't come to this god-forsaken place. — Caroline Mitchell

Even as he mentally went over the details of the major events of 1920s United States history for a quiz, he had plenty of leftover brainpower to consider how his back ached from leaning over the engine, the grease he could feel in his ear, the frustration of this rusted head stud, the proximity of his court date, and the presence of others here on the ley line. — Maggie Stiefvater

Who was the Thief that she would love him? A youth, just a boy with hardly a beard and no sense at all ... A liar, she thought, an enemy, a threat. He was brave, a voice inside her said, he was loyal ... A fool, she answered back. A fool and a dead one. She ached with emptiness. — Megan Whalen Turner

I love hard work. 'One Man, Two Guvnors' was so physically tiring I ached all the time, but I took a massive amount of pride in the fact that I only ever missed two shows. — James Corden

I want to tell you something." He placed her palm against her cheek, rough with stubble. "In my life, I've been with women I didn't care about and women I cared a great deal about. But I've never been with a woman who makes me feel the way you do." He lowered his head and whispered against her lips, "Sometimes when I look at you, it's hard to breath. When you touch me, I don't care about breathing." He kissed her slow and sweet, and with each press of his lips and touch of his tongue, her heart swelled and ached. It was wonderful and awful and brand-new. Then he pulled back to say, "I don't know how this is all going to work out, but I want to be with you. You are important to me. — Rachel Gibson

Her arms were pressed against his chest, and he wished she would put her head against him, so much his chest ached. — Melanie Dickerson

I ached with loss that I'd never allowed myself to feel. As if I was leaving something important behind. And that something was me. — A. Lynn

What's it like to be in love?" May asked.
Part of me ached. Why hadn't she ever asked me? Then I remembered, as far as May knew, I'd never been in love.
Lucy's smile was sad. "It's the most wonderful and terrible thing that can ever happen to you," she said simply. "You know that you've found something amazing, and you want to hold on to it forever; and every second after you have it, you fear the moment you might lose it."
I sighed softly. She was absolutely right.
Love is beautiful fear. — Kiera Cass

Guy's own erection was so hard it ached, as if it were an angry dog begging to be let out and pawing at the door. — Edmund White

A single gunshot was heard throughout the Donald's house by all who was there. Mason smiled inwardly, but his heart ached for his family. The fact that his father had taken a cowardly approach to the situation didn't set right with him. He also knew he would have to take his father's secret to the grave. — Keke Chanel

I flicked on the light beside my bed, waiting for my breathing to slow, veins full of adrenaline from the realistic dream.
A new dream, but in essence so much the same as the many others that had plagued me in the past months.
No, not a dream. Surely a memory.
I could still feel the heat of Jared's lips on mine. My hands reached out without my permission, searching across the rumpled sheets, looking for something they didn't find. My heart ached when they gave up, falling to the bed limp and empty. — Stephenie Meyer

My arms ached for a cuddle, my whole body felt empty. I was desperate for that one bit of physical contact with her, the daughter I'd carried around in my body, the one I'd talked to in the womb, the precious person I'd fallen in love with the moment she arrived. The one I'd worried over, cried over, sung to and clung to — Tressa Middleton

But here there were houses full of *stuff*, fancy sheets woven with silk floss as soft as a baby's bum; fancy washstands carved of dark wood that glowed like cherries where the light hit it; curtains the shade of the summer sky, heavy and glossy and smooth to the touch. The velvet-flocked wallpaper was so soft beneath her fingertips that had her eyes been closed, she might have thought she was brushing the belly of a rabbit.
And the stool in the corner! One wouldn't imagine you'd get too fancy with such a piece, but this stool was covered with embroidery so fine that her knuckles ached just looking at the stitches. Unbelievable. The rich even spoiled their arses! — Meredith Duran

Incidentally her head ached and her shoulders ached and her lungs ached and the ankle-bones of both feet ached quite excruciatingly. But nothing of her felt permanently incapacitated except her noble expression. Like a strip of lip-colored lead suspended from her poor little nose by two tugging wire-gray wrinkles her persistently conscientious sickroom smile seemed to be whanging aimlessly against her front teeth. The sensation certainly was very unpleasant. — Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

Always hoping that, if I got drunk enough or stoned enough, I could numb that part of my soul that ached for Fliss as well. — Sibylla Matilde

They were completely happy. They couldn't stop smiling at each other, beaming like fools till their cheeks ached. — Louisa Young

She had only been able to imagine what Kane was like. And she realised just how limited her imagination had been as he consumed every inch of her, thrusting into her with such controlled force that every part of her ached. — Lindsay J. Pryor

The tiny body was slippery, and he held her tightly, afraid she'd slither out of his grip. He rotated the infant face-up, holding her about ten inches away from his face. The top of her head had a slight cone shape. Her blue-tinged hands pinked. The baby's eyes were open, alert and seemingly amazed.
They connected with his.
A jolt of intense feeling, of recognition, flowed between them. As he gazed on the scrunched features of the infant, love surged through him. He'd never felt such a feeling before, and his chest ached with the joyful pressure. Caleb wanted to curl her to his chest and keep her safe. He pressed a kiss to her forehead, inhaling a scent that surprised him with its sweetness.
"My baby?" Maggie asked.
The infant broke eye contact with Caleb and turned her face toward the sound of her mother's voice. He blinked back moisture from his eyes and grinned. "You have a beautiful daughter. — Debra Holland

Everyone warned me against continuing my investigation,"Gobi continued. "They said the people I was going up against were too powerful. I did not care. They said I would die. Again, I did not care. I knew that my life would mean nothing if I did not come back to avenge my sister's honor. But by the time I was able to pinpoint who had taken her here, it was too late. She had died."
I tried to say something, but my throat was too dry. For a second I couldn't even swallow. My chest felt so tight that it ached, and I thought if I didn't say something, or at least try to, I was going to explode. — Joe Schreiber

He ached to touch her, to kiss her, but she hadn't asked him to do either - yet.
He'd rather eat his own balls than ruin this for her. — Pamela Clare

Even lawyers have hearts, and mine ached a little as I took leave of her. The — Wilkie Collins

I love you, Olivia," he whispered, and my heart ached as if it would break in half. "You think we'll die if we stay together, but I've been dying slowly for the last six years. I'm taking my life back, Liv. Our life together. And this time, I'm not going to let you go. — Rachel Vincent

The picture had no flourishes, but she liked its lowness of tone and the atmosphere of summer twilight that pervaded it. It spoke of the kind of personal issue that touched her most nearly; of the choice between objects, subjects, contacts - what might she call them? - of a thin and those of a rich association; of a lonely, studious life in a lovely land; of an old sorrow that sometimes ached to-day; of a feeling of pride that was perhaps exaggerated, but that had an element of nobleness; of a care for beauty and perfection so natural and so cultivated together that the career appeared to stretch beneath it in the disposed vistas and with the ranges of steps and terraces and fountains of a formal Italian garden - allowing only for arid places freshened by the natural dews of a quaint half-anxious, half-helpless fatherhood. — Henry James

Once upon a time, when I was a child reading fairy tales, I'd ached to have my own adventures. Not that I'd wanted to be some dippy heroine languishing in a tower, awaiting rescue. No, I'd wanted to be the knight, charging into battle against overwhelming odds, or the plucky country lass who gets taken on as an apprentice to a great wizard. As I got older, I'd found out the hard way that adventures are rarely anything like the books say. Half the time you are scared out of your mind, and the rest you're bored and your feet hurt. I was beginning to believe that maybe I wasn't the adventurous type. — Karen Chance

She ached: oh, how she ached. Her soul was like one big bruise. — Alison Croggon

Bond closed his eyes and mentally explored his body. The worst pain was in his wrists and ankles and in his right hand where the Russian had cut him. In the centre of the body there was no feeling. He assumed that he had been given a local anaesthetic. The rest of his body ached dully as if he had been beaten all over. He could feel the pressure of bandages everywhere and his unshaven neck and chin prickled against the sheets. From the feel of the bristles he knew that he must have been at least three days without shaving. That meant two days since the morning of the torture. — Ian Fleming

But instead of delight his soul was filled with such gloom, and his heart ached with such anguish, as he had never known in his life before ... "I am base" he whispered to himself. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Svengal lay groaning on the turf. His thighs were sheer agony. His buttocks ached. His calf muscles were on fire. Now, afterhe had tumbled off the small pony he was riding and thudded heavily to the turf on the point of his shoulder, the shoulder would hurt too. He concentrated on trying to find one part of his body that wasn't a giant source of pain and failed miserably. He opened his eyes. The first thing he saw was the face of the elderly pony that he had been riding peered down at him.
Now what made you do a strange thing like that? The creature seemed to be asking. — John Flanagan

Mabel looked up and saw his windburned hands and frayed cuffs, the crow's feet that spread at the corners of his downturned eyes. She couldn't remember the last time she had touched that skin, and the thought ached like loneliness in her chest. Then she spotted a few strands of silver in his reddish-brown beard. When had they appeared? So he, too, was graying. Each of them fading away without the other's notice. She — Eowyn Ivey

Words raced thru his mind and his fingers ached to capture them all on paper. — Eveli Acosta

One helped him through the window. Every inch of his body ached and his muscles were rubber, but somehow he managed to make it on his own, falling to the floor of the cockpit in a heap. Alec sat hunched over the controls, his face slack and his eyes empty. Trina sat in the corner, Deedee huddled in her lap. Both of them looked at him, but their expressions were unreadable. "Flat Trans," Mark blurted out. Sparkles and flashes of light continued to cross his field of vision, and he could barely contain the unstable emotions that churned within him. "Bruce said the PFC had a Flat Trans in Asheville. We have to find it." Alec's head snapped up and he glared at Mark. But then something softened in his gaze. "I think I know where to — James Dashner

She'd burst if she didn't tell him, die painfully if he let her go. Emotion clogged her throat. Helplessness ached in her stomach. — Kelly Moran

And then she is kissing me, right here on the sidewalk on a foggy summer night. Violet is kissing me, and everything is perfect. The kiss doesn't end. We are not two girls on a polite first date, bestowing a customary good-night peck.
No.
We are kissing like girls who have ached for each other for years who never even spoke but somehow exchanged I love yous anyway. — Nina LaCour

He didn't know how to say good-bye. His throat ached from the strain of holding back his emotions. "I don't want to leave you," he said humbly, reaching for her cold, stiff hands.
Emma lowered her head, her tears falling freely. "I'll never see you again, will I?"
He shook his head. "Not in this lifetime," he said hoarsely.
She pulled her hands away and wrapped her arms around his neck. He felt her wet lashes brush his cheek. "Then I'll wait a hundred years," she whispered. "Or a thousand, if I must. Remember that, Nikki. I'll be waiting for you to come to me. — Lisa Kleypas

If you give me the five hundred dollars right now, I'll let you do
whatever you want to me," she whimpered.
"Why are you being such a hard ass, Jeni?" he said with a wry
smile. He took her hand and slid it down the front of his bare torso. His
abdominal muscles rippled under her hand. Then he slid her hand over
his erection. His cock twitched at the feel of her hand. "You know you
want me to fuck you."
"Then cough up the money, Hamilton!" Though her voice regained
its edge, her body was seconds away from crumbling. She wanted nothing
more than him buried deep inside her. She ached for him. — Jessica Jayne

He sagged to his knees. He ached all over. It wasn't just that his brain was writing cheques that his body couldn't cash. It had gone beyond that. Now his feet were borrowing money that his legs hadn't got, and his back muscles were looking for loose change under the sofa cushions. — Terry Pratchett

I wanted so badly for there to be more. I ached for there to be more than my crappy little life.' He shakes his head. 'And there was more. I just couldn't see it. — Patrick Ness

We had one of those Friday dates that turned into an entire weekend, and by the end of it, I loved him so much my larynx ached. Vulnerable love, incorrigible love. Love in which he was both the nausea and the sodium bicarbonate. — Kathleen Rooney

She had not had a question like that in her mind before. It had made her feel lonely. She wanted to be alone, but not lonely. That was very different; that was something that ached and hurt dreadfully right inside one. It was what one dreaded most. It was what made one go to so many parties; and lately even the parties had seemed once or twice not to be a perfectly certain protection. Was it possible that loneliness had nothing to do with circumstances, but only with the way one met them? Perhaps, she had thought, she had better go to bed. She couldn't be very well. She — Elizabeth Von Arnim

A city of squalls, foggy mornings, intervals of blue and white so immaculate the eyes ached. A city of readers, coffee drinkers, kissers on sidewalks, sad faces at wet windows. A city of umbrellas, woolen scarves, raincoats, cigarettes, wineglasses, cognac. — Keith Miller

As soon as he had left the room and walked into the air, he knew that he would never return and for the first time his fears lifted. It was a spring morning, and when he walked into Severndale Park he felt the breeze bringing back memories of a much earlier life, and he was at peace. He sat beneath a tree and looked up at its leaves in amazement - where once he might have gazed at them and sensed there only the confusion of his own thoughts, now each leaf was so clear and distinct that he could see the lightly coloured veins which carried moisture and life. And he looked down at his own hand, which seemed translucent beside the bright grass. His head no longer ached, and as he lay upon the earth he could feel its warmth beneath him. — Peter Ackroyd

Dear God. She ached, wanting something that she knew was a sin.
Wanting a man who was sin itself. — Elizabeth Hoyt

She banged her knuckles until they ached to get the attention of the living flesh behind the glass, and would have smashed her fist through the window just to touch him, feel his heat, the only thing that could protect her from a smothering death of dry roses. — Toni Morrison

Across her face there seemed to pass many feelings and reflections: it was as if she ached to touch and gather in and make whole those scattered years of change. But how can time be gathered in and kissed? There is only flesh. — John McGahern

Dressed in new jeans, a light blue dress shirt and a red patterned tie, he stood at Heather's grave with his eyes closed. Although I didn't hear him, his lips were moving like he was praying. In the faint breeze, Mother Nature ran her fingers through his dark hair like I wanted to. He looked tall and strong, the way he used to, but somewhere along the way, without me, he'd stepped into the shoes of a man. And a part of me ached for those missing years. — Jordan Dane

You need a boyfriend. Well sure, who doesn't need a boyfriend? But ealistically, those exotic creatures are hard to come by. At least a quality one. I go to an all- girls school, and meaning no disrespect to my sapphic sisters, but I have no interest in nding a romantic companion there. The rare boy creatures I do meet who aren't either related to me or who aren't gay are usually too at ached to their Xboxes to notice me, or their idea of how a teenage girl should look and act comes directly from the pages of Maxim magazine or from the tarty look of a video game character. — Rachel Cohn

Most of my actor friends don't believe it's possible to let go of it and be happy, and for a while that was true for me. For the first two years I ached, every day. And I had such bad dreams. But then I made the decision to start working on my little shop and all that went away. — Genie Francis

But Mary had not come into the world to be sad or to help another to be sad. Sorrowful we may often have to be, but to indulge in sorrow is either not to know or to deny God our Saviour. True, her heart ached for Letty; and the ache immediately laid itself as close to Letty's ache as it could lie; but that was only the advance-guard of her army of salvation, the light cavalry of sympathy: the next division was help; and behind that lay patience, and strength, and hope, and faith,and joy. This last, modern teachers, having failed to regard it as a virtue, may well decline to regard as a duty; but he is a poor Christian indeed in whom joy has not at least a growing share, and Mary was not a poor Christian--at least, for the time she had been learning, and as Christians go in the present aeon of their history. — George MacDonald

Her throat and eyes ached. No, everything was not all right. I don't want to be a monster. — Wendy Knight

The trying to change what they think, the attempt to explain, the hope they'll come to see your side of things, it was exhausting because it never made a dent and afterward you only ached unbearably. — Marisha Pessl

He rubbed the spot over his chest that ached for Jessica. And her regard will never alter or diminish. She knows the worst there is to know about me, yet she loves me in spite of my mistakes. No ... I would say perhaps she loves me because of them; because of how they've shaped me. — Sylvia Day

Hester, recently married herself, and knowing the depth and the sweep of love, ached for Callandra that she sacrificed so much. And yet loving her husband as she did, for all his faults and vulnerabilities, Hester, too, would rather have been alone than accept anyone else. — Anne Perry

She had never heard the word 'intellectual' used as a noun before she went to Barnard, and she took it to heart. It was a brave noun, a proud noun, a noun suggesting lifelong dedication to lofty things and a cool disdain for the commonplace. An intellectual might lose her virginity to a soldier in the park, but she could learn to look back on it with wry, amused detachment. An intellectual might have a mother who showed her underpants when drunk, but she wouldn't let it bother her. And Emily Grimes might not be an intellectual yet, but if she took copious notes in even the dullest of her classes, and if she read every night until her eyes ached, it was only a question of time. — Richard Yates

Ann: How my heart has ached. How empty I have felt. How I've ached to hold my two babies. — K. Howard Joslin

He wrote you a poem?" Evelyn looped her hand around Georgiana's arm and led the way to the chairs lining one side of the room.
"He did." Grateful to see Luxley select one of the debutantes as his next victim, Georgiana accepted a glass of Madeira from one of the footman. After three hours of quadrilles, waltzes, and country dances, her feet ached. "And you know what rhymes with Georgiana, don't you?"
Evelyn wrinkled her brow, her gray eyes twinkling. "No, what?"
"Nothing. He just put 'iana' after every ending word. In iambic trimeter, yet. 'Oh, Georgiana, your beauty is my sunlightiana, your hair is finer than goldiana, your - ' "
Lucinda made a choking sound. — Suzanne Enoch

Every kiss that I give my child heals one that I had ached for but was not given - indeed, it has turned out to be the only thing that ever could. — Hope Jahren

Her beauty was classic, timeless. Just the line of her neck, the curve of her cheek, the way the dress draped her hips, was enough to stop the room. When she'd turned away to look at something on the table and he'd seen the back of the dress, he thought he might have to sit down. The smooth skin of her back looked impossibly soft and he ached to reach out, just for a moment, and splay his hand against it. — Mary Jane Hathaway

I ached for him, my stomach twisting painfully. He looked so desolate standing there alone facing a mad queen and several thousand angry fey. His voice was flat and resigned, as if he'd been pushed into a corner and had given up, not caring what happened next. — Julie Kagawa

Many a night that summer she left Dr. Archie's office with a desire to run and run about those quiet streets until she wore out her shoes, or wore out the streets themselves; when her chest ached and it seemed as if her heart were spreading all over the desert. When she went home, it was not to go to sleep. She used to drag her mattress beside her low window and lie awake for a long while, vibrating with excitement, as a machine vibrates from speed. Life rushed in upon her through that window
or so it seemed. In reality, of course, life rushes from within, not from without. There is no work of art so big or so beautiful that it was not once all contained in some youthful body, like this one which lay on the floor in the moonlight, pulsing with ardor and anticipation. It was on such nights that Thea Kronborg learned the thing that old Dumas meant when he told the Romanticists that to make a drama he needed but one passion and four walls. — Willa Cather

Max had to think about these new developments. He hadn't liked getting hit by a rock
his stomach still ached from then rock Judith had thrown
but then again, when his team had used rocks on Alexander, it had caused him to surrender. Now the Bad Guys only had three soldiers left, which would make victory for Max's team more likely. So now it made perfect sense. He was wrong to ban rocks, or even animals. The key was to use all the weapons at one's disposal, but to just make sure you won when you used them. — Dave Eggers

Savannah," he started in a softer voice, "Wait. Please. I - I didn't mean ... I just didn't want you to ... " "I'm going home," she said, rushing from the room before he could say another word. "Savannah!" He shot out of bed, following her through his bedroom door and running down the gallery as fast as his bum leg would allow. While walking or jogging were good for him, he wasn't supposed to sprint on it, and it ached and burned as he got to the top of stairs only to hear the front door slam in her wake. "GOD DAMN IT!" he bellowed, lowering himself to sit on the landing as his leg throbbed with pain. Miss Potts appeared out of nowhere to stand at the base of the stairs with her hands on her hips. She pursed her lips and tsked. "Somehow I don't think peach cobbler is going to fix this one. — Katy Regnery

Sophie dear,' I said. 'Are you in love with him - with this spider-man?'
'Oh, don't call him that - please - we can't any of us help being what we are. His name's Gordon. He's kind to me, David. He's fond of me. You've got to have as little as I have to know how much that means. You've never known loneliness. You can't understand the awful emptiness that's waiting all round us here. I'd have given him babies gladly, if I could ... I - oh, why do they do that to us? Why didn't they kill me? It would have been kinder than this ... '
She sat without a sound. The tears squeezed out from under the closed lids and ran down her face. I took her hand between my own.
I remembered watching. The man with his arm linked in the woman's, the small figure on top of the pack-horse waving back to me as they disappeared into the trees. Myself desolate, a kiss still damp on my
cheek, a lock tied with a yellow ribbon in my hand. I looked at her now, and my heart ached. — John Wyndham

The young mouse's eyes snapped open, clear and bright. He swung the ancient sword high and struck at the giant adder.
He struck for Redwall!
He struck against evil!
He struck for Martin!
He struck for Log-a-Log and his shrews!
He struck for dead Guosim!
He struck as Methuselah would have wanted him to!
He struck against Cluny the Scourge and tyranny!
He struck out against Captain Snow's ridicule!
He struck for the world of light and freedom!
He struck until his paws ached and the sword fell from them! — Brian Jacques

He stepped toward her, and her heart just ached from it. His face was so handsome, and so dear, and so perfectly wonderfully familiar. She knew the slope of his cheeks, and the exact shade of his eys, brownish near the iris, melting into green at the edge.
And his mouth-she knew that mouth, the look of it, the feel of it. She knew his smile, and she knew his frown, and she knew-
she knew far to much. — Julia Quinn

Her absence was still so loud and so heavy, I ached with it, feeling hollow and lost. I didn't know how to forget my mother any more than my father knew how he might comfort me. — Paula McLain

Theon," I said, "are you ... asking me to marry you right now?" When I turned back to him, his eyes met mine with a kind of evenness I hadn't anticipated. There was no fear. No embarrassment. Only honesty. "I am telling you to marry me right now." It felt like it'd been years since we'd seen each other, and I remembered him - everything which had brought us to this point - vividly now. My heart ached, and my throat became tight with joy. "Okay," I whispered. — Bella Forrest

My body grew hot, then cold. I tried to eat the bed sheets. My heart beat madly. Every joint in my body ached. When I took the cure they took it all away from me. — Bela Lugosi

Suddenly we were standing toe to toe. His body took up so much space around me it was hard to breathe. I could feel his heat and we weren't even touching. What had just happened? Kyle saw the overwhelmed look in my eyes and smirked. He brought his mouth down to mine and brushed my lips with a touch so feather-light that I gasped. My body reacted before my head could. I drifted into him as if he was somehow my new center of gravity. My eyes fluttered shut, and I waited for a kiss that never came. His lips were there, brushing back and forth over mine, teasing me cruelly until I ached with a desire so intense I started to shake. Kyle chuckled darkly. You're in over your head with me, Virgin Val. — Kelly Oram

He swore by all that he ever had loved and reverenced that he would try, try with all his might in the short time that might remain to him ... he would forget himself, he would put his own pain and chagrin and disappointment, his own feeling of defeat and uselessness, his own craving for love and intellectual companionship in the background, and he would see if the more than six feet of bone and muscle that contained his being could do any small service that might come his way for God and his fellow man before he went. Maybe if he could accomplish some little thing, something that would ease the ache of even one heart that ached as his was aching at that minute, just maybe that knowledge would be the secret that he might carry in his breast that would set the stamp of an indelible smile on his face, so that even a child could discern the majesty of the impulse and he would not be ashamed when the end came. — Gene Stratton-Porter