Hungering Quotes & Sayings

Teach me, Lord Jesus,... not to be hungering for the 'strange and peculiar' when the common, ordinary, and regular, rightly taken, will suffice to feed and satisfy the soul. — Jim Eliot

There is as much in our Lord's pantry as will satisfy all his children and as much wine in his cellar as will quench all their thirst. Hunger on, for there is meat in hungering for Christ; go never from him, but seek him who is yet pleased with the importunity of hungry souls until he fills you; if he delays, yet do not go away, even if you faint at his feet. — Samuel Rutherford

If one destroyed in museums and libraries, if one hurled down on the flagstones before the churches all the works and all the monuments of art that religions have inspired, what would remain of the great dreams of humanity? To give to men that portion of hope and illusion without which they cannot live, such is the reason for the existence of gods, heroes, and poets. During fifty years science appeared to undertake this task. But science has been compromised in hearts hungering after the ideal, because it does not dare to be lavish enough of promises, because it cannot lie — Gustave Le Bon

If thou canst wait for Christ, and be patient in the hope of having fellowship with him at some distant season, thou wilt never have fellowship at all; for the heart that is fitted for communion is a hungering and a thirsting heart. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

No joy for which thy hungering heart has panted, No hope it cherishes through waiting years, But if thou dost deserve it, shall be granted For with each passionate wish the blessing nears. Tune up the fine, strong instrument of thy being To chord with thy dear hope, and do not tire. When both in key and rhythm are agreeing, Lo! thou shalt kiss the lips of thy desire. The thing thou cravest so waits in the distance, Wrapt in the silences, unseen and dumb: Essential to thy soul and thy existence
Live worthy of it
call, and it shall come. — Ella Wheeler Wilcox

She is not old, she is not young, The Woman with the Serpent's Tongue. The haggard cheek, the hungering eye, The poisoned words that wildly fly, The famished face, the fevered hand, Who slights the worthiest in the land, Sneers at the just, contemns the brave, And blackens goodness in its grave ... — William Watson

The concept of nutriment depends (a) upon association and (a) upon impermanence and (c) upon hunger. Hunger, seeking for satisfaction, devours x, which is associated with y that gives it satisfaction; but the satisfaction given is impermanent and thereby renews the hunger. "I" hungering for satisfaction, devour (x) food (eye object, taste, smell, touch object), the contact of which is associated with (y) pleasant feeling that gives satisfaction; but the satisfaction given by pleasant feeling is impermanent and by changing renews the pain of hunger. — Nanamoli Thera

Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.' Not only do the followers of Jesus renounce their rights, they renounce their own righteousness too. They get no praise for their achievements or sacrifices. They cannot have righteousness except by hungering and thirsting for it (this applies equally to their own righteousness and to the righteousness of God on Earth), always they look forward to the future righteousness of God, but they cannot establish it for themselves. Those who follow Jesus grow hungry and thirsty on the way. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

James Russell Lowell wrote: It's not what we give but what we share, For the gift without the giver is bare. Who gives of himself of his alms feeds three, Himself, his hungering neighbor, and me. — John Wooden

Because most people are not sufficiently employed in themselves, they run about loose, hungering for employment, and satisfy themselves in various supererogatory occupations. The easiest of these occupations, which have all to do with making things already made, is the making of people: it is called the art of friendship. — Laura Riding

It was the upward-reaching and fathomlessly hungering, heart-breaking love for the beauty of the world at its most beautiful, and, beyond that, for that beauty east of the sun and west of the moon which is past the reach of all but our most desperate desiring and is finally the beauty of Beauty itself, of Being itself and what lies at the heart of Being. — Frederick Buechner

About a week after they had come back, a load of mail came to the island. They were the first letters the men had received in several weeks, and for a night it relieved the changeless pattern of their lives. One of the infrequent rations of beer was given out the same night, and the men finished their three cans quickly, and sat about without saying very much. The beer had been far too inadequate to make them drunk; it made them only moody and reflective, it opened the gate to all their memories, and left them sad, hungering for things they could not name. — Norman Mailer

Two classes of people make up the world: those who have found God, and those who are looking for Him - thirsting, hungering, seeking! And the great sinners came closer to Him than the proud intellectuals! Pride swells and inflates the ego; gross sinners are depressed, deflated and empty. They, therefore, have room for God. God prefers a loving sinner to a loveless 'saint'. Love can be trained; pride cannot. The man who thinks that he knows will rarely find truth; the man who knows he is a miserable, unhappy sinner, like the woman at the well, is closer to peace, joy and salvation than he knows. — Fulton J. Sheen

Testimony requires the nurturing by the prayer of faith, the hungering for the word of God in the scriptures, and the obedience to the truth. — Henry B. Eyring

Now women in comedy is a trendy topic, and people are hungering for women's voices in a way that they haven't before. — Rachel Bloom

One of his palms slipped into the open back of her gown, seeking the skin above the edge of her corset, and a sigh escaped him as he felt her downy softness. "Not yet," he said in a rough whisper, though whether he was talking to himself or to her was unclear. He clasped the vulnerable curve of her neck in one strong hand, and bent to feast on her parted lips, her chin, the front of her throat. "You're so sweet," he said raggedly.
She couldn't help but grin, even in the flush of desire. "Am I?"
Marcus sought her mouth with another hungering kiss. "Very sweet," he confirmed huskily. "Though if I were a lesser man, you'd have torn my head off by now."
The words drew a low laugh from her. "Now I understand the attraction between us. We're a danger to everyone but each other. Like a pair of ill-tempered hedgehogs."
-Marcus & Lillian — Lisa Kleypas

Wanting to fall in love and being totally unable to trust, hungering for connection and always finding it claustrophobic. — Eve Ensler

Most of us have become Ecozombies, desensitized, environmental deadheads. On average, society conditions us to spend over 95% of our time and 99.9% of our thinking disconnected from nature. Nature's extreme absence in our lives leaves us abandoned and wanting. We feel we never have enough. We greedily, destructively, consume and, can't stop. Nature's loss in our psyche produces a hurt, hungering, void within us that bullies us into our dilemmas. — Michael J. Cohen

He was hungering for the fight they had never had. The one she owed him, but could never give him. — Sonali Dev

Sometimes I think we Americans are the loneliest people in the world. To be sure, we hunger for the power of affection, the self-acceptance that gives life. It is the oldest and strongest hunger in the world. But hungering is not enough. — Sherwood Anderson

I'm pretty busy in my life and I'm very aware of what it takes to direct a movie. It takes a lot out of you; it takes a lot out of the rest of your life, from other people in your life. I don't lie around hungering for that consumption very often. — Edward Norton

So many people go through life without love. Wanting love. Hoping for love. Hungering for more of it than they have. Missing love when it was gone. — John Scalzi

following Christ wasn't about religion; it was an intimacy with his Creator that had him constantly hungering for more. — Lisa Harris

'Freedom.' He pauses a moment to reflect on the F-word. 'Sometimes I think it's an idea that enslaves us. We're never free from hungering for the notion that we can even have freedom. When perhaps it's the very idea of it that causes us to suffer. — Rachel Cohn

Experiences are the gifts from God, but we never seek those directly. You and I are to be seeking. You and I are to be hungering and thirsting after righteousness and then the experiences are the gifts. — Brian Richardson

We who claim to love peace and justice must always be careful that we do not use our righteousness to provoke the violent, and in this way bring about the conflict for which we, too, like other men, are hungering in secret, and with suppressed barbarity. — Thomas Merton

Three-fourths of the people you will ever meet are hungering and thirsting for sympathy. Give it to them, and they will love you. — Dale Carnegie

We do not pray to inform God of our needs, because He knows what we need before we ask.

What is prayer like for you?

Is it a religious ritual that you perform out of habit?

Is it a spiritual discipline that you practice because you want to be the best Christian you possibly can be?

Is it a mechanism by which you can bring your "shopping list" to God in order to have your needs met?

Or are you running to meet your Lover, to commune with Him, hungering to find your joy in Him, and to be fulfilled in His presence? — Bill Mills

Universal education has created an immense class of what I may call the New Stupid, hungering for certainty yet unable to find it in the traditional myths and their rationalizations. — Aldous Huxley

This is what history is: all those centuries of bodies, moving over these canals, twisting and blooming into life in these houses, these streets; all that flesh hungering, coming together, separating, continuing, accumulating, relinquishing, aging and breaking down. Bodies as tulips bent to the demands of light, colored into blossom, spent. — Mark Doty

There will come a time when people hungering for the truth will seek it where it is supposedly disseminated, such as books and churches, but they will not hear the Word of the Lord. Instead of receiving a message to satisfy their spiritual longings, they will hear a sermon on some current political or social problem, or a sermonette on art and literature. And so they wander from one place to another, going from hope to despair, and eventually giving up. — Billy Graham

I now understand that I would never have been able to become a plausible critic of the absurdities of modern consciousness until I myself had experienced them. I did not become an orthodox believer or theologian until after I tried out most of the errors long rejected by Christianity. If my first forty years were spent hungering for meaning in life, the last forty have been spent in being fed. If the first forty were prodigal, the last forty have been a homecoming. — Thomas C. Oden

I pushed his hair away from his eyes and took a closer look at his cheek. Maybe there really had been a boy in the street, but I also wouldn't put it past Cole to make one appear,if he had that power.
Jack's eyes opened fully,and he looked at me with half a grin. "You remember the first time I told you I loved you?" His words slurred together.
"Shhhhh.Don't talk.The paramedics are on their way."
"Do you?"
I touched his cheek and he winced. I could almost taste his pain,as if it were a tangible element in the air.I could feel my body hungering for the hurt.It was the first time since I'd Returned that I craved someone else's energy.Even at my lowest point,those last moments in the Everneath,I'd never felt a need for it.Until now.Until I was faced with emotions this strong.
He tilted his head toward me,and I jerked back. The taste in the air became bitter and sweet,a mixture of pain and longing.
"Tell me you remember," he said. "Please. — Brodi Ashton

Our innate imbalances are further aggravated by practical demands. Our jobs make relentless calls on a narrow band of our faculties, reducing our chances of achieving rounded personalities and leaving us to suspect (often in the gathering darkness of a Sunday evening) that much of who we are, or could be, has gone unexplored. Society ends up containing a range of unbalanced groups, each hungering to sate its particular psychological deficiency, forming the backdrop against which our frequently heated conflicts about what is beautiful plays themselves out. — Alain De Botton

The Internet is the global brain, the cyberspacially connected, telepathic, collective domain that we've all been hungering for. — Terence McKenna

I was, as the prophet said, hungering and thirsting for righteousness. I found it at the eternal and material core of Christianity: body, blood, bread, wine, poured out freely, shared by all. — Sara Miles

Actually, they where the Simple-Lifers, hungering after a life, which to those who lived it had probably appeared not so Simple, and who had not been, therefore, Simple-Lifers themselves. — Isaac Asimov

People are hungering for property - for a secure, permanent and independent link with spaceship earth that ownership represents and which only ownership can protect or defend. It is humiliating to possess nothing, to own nothing, and hence to produce nothing and to count for nothing. — Louis O. Kelso

Hot, salty, crunchy, and portable, the previously awful-sounding collection of greasy delights can become a Garden of Eden of heart-clogging goodness when you're in a drunken stupor, hungering for fried snacks. At that precise moment, nothing could taste better. — Anthony Bourdain

Kizzy wanted it all so bad her soul leaned half out of her body hungering after it, and that was what drove the goblins wild, her soul hanging out there like an untucked shirt. — Laini Taylor

Americans are hungering to feel proud and patriotic again. — Ronald Reagan

It crouches near the center of creation. There is no night where it waits. Only the riddle of which terrible dream will set it loose. It beheaded mercy to take possession of that place. It feasts on darkness from the minds of men. No one has ever seen its eyeless face. When it sleeps we know a few moments of peace. But when it breathes again we go down in fire and mate with jackals. It knows our fear. It has our number. It waited for our coming and it will abide long after we have become congealed smoke. It has never heard music, and shows its fangs when we panic. It is the beast of our savage past, hungering today, and waiting patiently for the mortal meal of all our golden tomorrows. It lies waiting. — Harlan Ellison

The only trouble at first was that one small, cold-sober part of her mind floated free of the rest of her; it was able to observe how solemn a man could be at times like this, how earnest in his hairy nakedness, and how predictable. You had only to offer up your breasts and there was his hungering mouth on one and then the other of them, drawing the nipples out hard; you had only to open your legs and there was his hand at work on you, tirelessly burrowing. Then you got his mouth again, and then you got the whole of him, boyishly proud of his first penetration, lunging and thrusting and ready to love you forever, if only to prove that he could. — Richard Yates

When people quit talking to God, they quit talking to one another. And people who quit talking to God soon get very lonely and depressed. They are actually lonely for God, hungering for communion with Him, yearning for His close love and nearness; but instead of recognizing these needs as spiritual, they blame their lack of fulfillment on their husbands or wives. — David Wilkerson

Men in fear and hunger destroy their stomachs in the fight to secure certain food, where men hungering for love destroy everything lovable about them ... In the world ruled by tigers with ulcers, rutted by strictured bulls, scavenged by blind jackals ... What can it profit a man to gain the whole world and to come to his property with a gastric ulcer, a blown prostate, and bifocals? — John Steinbeck

After a childhood of hungering to be an adult, my hunger had passed. Unexpected fates had begun to catch my notice. These middle-aged women seemed very tired to me, as if hope had been wrung out of them and replaced with a deathly, walking sort of sleep. — Lorrie Moore

I cannot think of what it was not to love him. To look at him and realise I had found what I had not known I was hungering for. A hunger so deep, so capable of driving me into the night, that it terrified me. — Hannah Kent

If we are to reach real peace in this world and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with children; and if they will grow up in their natural innocence, we won't have to struggle; we won't have to pass fruitless idle resolutions, but we shall go from love to love and peace to peace, until at last all the corners of the world are covered with that peace and love for which consciously or unconsciously the whole world is hungering. — Mahatma Gandhi

Humans in love are terrible. You see them come hungering at one another like prehistoric wolves, you see something struggling for life in between them like a root or a soul and it flares for a moment, then they smash it. The difference between them smashes the bones out. So delicate the bones. — Anne Carson

O wretched slaves of Mammon, you cannot glory in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ while you trust in treasures laid up on earth: you cannot taste and see how gracious the Lord is, while you are hungering for gold. If you have not rejoiced at the thought of His coming, that day will be indeed a day of wrath to you. — Bernard Of Clairvaux

I began to see that creating a healthy family, in which members develop the ability for mutual respect and caring, is a prerequisite for a more peaceful world. For, it is the family that creates the social fabric of our culture, as Mahatma Gandhi so poignantly illustrated, when he said:
If we are to teach real peace on this world ... we shall have to begin with children; and if they will grow up in their own innocence, we won't have to struggle; we won't have to pass fruitless, idle resolutions, but we shall go from love to love and peace to peace, until at last all the corners of the world are covered with that peace and love for which, consciously or unconsciously, the whole world is hungering
Sweeping floors, wiping noses, singing children to sleep ... such is the work of peacemakers. Blessed be the peacemakers. — Shea Darian

For a moment I felt the quiet hungering thing that comes inside when you return to the place of your origins, and then the ache of mis-belonging. — Sue Monk Kidd