Longing For Happiness Quotes & Sayings

She had long since found peace. And Frederick, from her passionately loved bridegroom, from her worshipped young husband, had become second only to God on her list of duties and forbearances. There he hung, the second in importance, a bloodless thing bled white by her prayers. For years she had been able to be happy only by forgetting happiness. She wanted to stay like that. She wanted to shut out everything that would remind her of beautiful things, that might set her off again longing, desiring... — Elizabeth Von Armin

And therein lies the whole of man's plight. Human time does not turn in a circle; it runs ahead in a straight line. That is why man cannot be happy: happiness is the longing for repetition. — Milan Kundera

Each one of us is longing only for health and happiness, in search of a way of living in the world that will let us appreciate our bodies, make good use of our minds, and fulfill our spirits. To treat my patients well, I needed to treat them as souls rather than symptoms. I needed to help them learn how to live and live well. — Woodson Merrell

They will try to ascribe a purpose to my death, as though it were a punishment, but don't you do so, in order that I continue to live in all the shadows of your longing. I will always be in your sleep and your wakefulness. I will be with you praying, propitiating and yearning for you, in sadness, in sorrow, in dismay and in the most profound happiness. — Mohamed Latiff Mohamed

And yet Carter was spot-on when he told the American people, In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we've discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We've learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose. . . . This is not a message of happiness or reassurance, but it is the truth and it is a warning.40 — James A. Roberts

The artist's life cannot be otherwise than full of conflicts, for two forces are at war within him; on the one hand, the common human longing for happiness, satisfaction and security in life and on the other, a ruthless passion for creation which may go so far as to override every personal desire ... there are hardly any exceptions to the rule that a person must pay dearly for the divine gift of creative fire. — C. G. Jung

I was not meant for this world. I don't know. All I know is, I love, and I am not loved. I do not know happiness. I know despair, loneliness, and longing. — Candy Darling

The slow arrow of beauty. The most noble kind of beauty is that which does not carry us away suddenly, whose attacks are not violent or intoxicating (this kind easily awakens disgust), but rather the kind of beauty which infiltrates slowly, which we carry along with us almost unnoticed, and meet up with again in dreams; finally, after it has for a long time lain modestly in our heart, it takes complete possession of us, filling our eyes with tears, our hearts with longing. What do we long for when we see beauty? To be beautiful. We think much happiness must be connected with it. But that is an error. — Friedrich Nietzsche

You only know there is love and
you feel beloved when you share,
when you're gasping for air.
You only know you are living
and every moment you were longing for air. — Debasish Mridha

Sometimes, one yearns for something.For the ultimate in happiness. I yearn for it,and don't know where to look for it any longer. And I don't know if I would recognize it if I found it. And the longer I look, the more selfish I grow.For I think only of my own happiness. i think I have lost the ability to make someone else happy. If I ever had it. And I suppose we can never be happy unless we can also give happiness. — Mary Balogh

Rhys absorbed that with chagrin. "No one has ever accused me of being a romantic," he said ruefully.
"If you were, how would you propose?"
He thought for a moment. "I would begin by teaching you a Welsh word. Hiraeth There's no equivalent in English."
"Hiraeth," she repeated, trying to pronounce it with a tapped R, as he had.
"Aye. It's a longing for something that was lost, or never existed. You feel it for a person or a place, or a time in your life ... it's a sadness of the soul. Hiraeth calls to a Welshman even when he's closest to happiness, reminding him that he's incomplete."
Her brow knit with concern. "Do you feel that way?"
"Since the day I was born." He looked down into her small, lovely face. "But not when I'm with you. That's why I want to marry you. — Lisa Kleypas

When I am looking for you, then in silence, your every atom is longing for me. — Debasish Mridha

I say, I can not identify that thing which is called happiness, that thing whose token is a laugh, or a smile, or a silent serenity on the lip. I may have been happy, but it is not in my conscious memory now. Nor do I feel a longing for it, as though I had never had it; my spirit seeks different food from happiness, for I think I have a suspicion of what it is. I have suffered wretchedness, but not because of the absence of happiness, and without praying for happiness. I pray for peace
for motionlessness
for the feeling of myself, as of some plant, absorbing life without seeking it, and existing without individual sensation. I feel that there can be no perfect peace in individualness. Therefore, I hope one day to feel myself drank up into the pervading spirit animating all things. I feel I am an exile here. I still go straying. — Herman Melville

You were asking about the happy people: Well, they don't live on our planet, you see; we'll just have to wait, my boy! On this one human beings are not human beings. They are seamen and farmers and miners and lumberjacks; they are tramps and preachers and professors; they are this and that and the other. And happiness departed from them when they left off being human beings and became this other; for then strife began. — O.E. Rolvaag, Boat Of Longing

Eve was happy for her bestie. She just wished she had a guy who would look at her the way Seth looked at her friend, eyes all starry.
No, that wasn't it. Or it wasn't completely it. Eve knew there were guys at school who liked her and would give her the Seth-look if she gave them the opportunity. But she didn't want the look from any of those guys. She wanted the look she could give the look back to. She wanted to find a guy she could all-out love who would all-out love her back. — Amy Meredith

I love you as a river loves the sea;
my every cell longing for you not me. — Debasish Mridha

In my heart, a live fire
Like the morning sun
Burning my mind, to purify the soul
That is my love.

In my dream a burning desire
Like the lights from a diamond
Make my life ever precious
That is my love.

my mind an ever longing
As the moon longing for night
Make the night dreams of desire
That is my love. — Debasish Mridha

Everyone is longing for love, everyone is suffering from the needs and wants, so be loving, kind, and compassionate to everyone. — Debasish Mridha

As Christians, we needn't be at all ashamed of some impatience, longing, opposition to what is unnatural, and our full share of desire for freedom, earthly happiness, and opportunity for effective work. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Young People! Do not gloat about your youth, because you have a long and treacherous path to negotiate before you reach the truly lovely part of your life. Your fisrt decades are one long, tiring, demeaning struggle for at least a short turn at the control level. Every day you get savaged by your own wishes. When you finally calm down and accept your lot, you are middle-aged, and happiness most definitely lies more closely ahead, but you still have a few years to go, passing through most arduous longing and regret. — Irene Dische

Tim turned around, and took a few steps away from her. It was as though a lever had been pulled that activated several mixtures of emotions that left him in a bizarre land searching through a wide forest for a particular tree that had an emergency shade of peace. He turned back around, and stood with his hands in his pockets. An empty bucket of happiness had been dumped out on the road of his burst bubble, and left him longing for the substance of a smile. — Calvin W. Allison

Oh, my beauty!
Oh, my reflection of life!
Oh, my unmet desires!
I am longing for you
tor now and forever! — Debasish Mridha

Janus found himself drawn to the edge of the rink, staring fixedly at Candace as she approached: grinning, puffing steam, her cheeks flushed, her brown hair peeking out from under a knitted cap, her hazel eyes sparkling green and gold in the bright winter sun. She wore a wool riding coat, brilliant red trimmed with black, which stood out amid the ice like a ruby on white gold. Janus thought she had never looked more beautiful than she did in that moment, with all her cares and duties laid aside for the pure joy of living. Janus wanted to freeze the moment in his memory and carry it forever: This is what happiness looks like. I never knew. — Chris Lester

This is not written for the young or the light of heart, not for the tranquil species of men whose souls are content with the simple pleasures of family, church, or profession. Rather, I write to those beings like myself whose existence is compounded by a lurid intermingling of the dark and the
light; who can judge rationally and think with reason, yet who feel too keenly and churn with too great a passion; who have an incessant longing for happiness and yet are
shadowed by a deep and persistent melancholy - those who grasp gratification where they may, but find no lasting comfort for the soul. — B.E. Scully

My purpose of life is sweet indeed.
I like to help people when in need.
I am longing for happiness.
I am expressing my kindness.
I am expressing my love every day.
I am compassionate all the way. — Debasish Mridha

It need only be remembered that all pleasure is negative, and that pain is positive in its nature, in order to see that the passions can never be a source of happiness, and that age is not the less to be envied on the ground that many pleasures are denied it. For every sort of pleasure is never anything more than the quietive of some need or longing; and that pleasure should come to an end as soon as the need ceases, is no more a subject of complaint than that a man cannot go on eating after he has had his dinner, or fall asleep again after a good night's rest. So — Arthur Schopenhauer

Just love, just feel the love, longing for love, nothing else matters. — Debasish Mridha

Love is a longing for giving and receiving. — Debasish Mridha

They that have beauty, let them be thankful for it, and make a good use of it, let them console themselves, and do the best they can without it: certainly, though liable to be over-estimated, it is a gift of God, and not to be despised. Many will feel this who have felt that they could love, and whose hearts tell them that they are worthy to be loved again; while yet they are debarred, by the lack of this or some such seeming trifle, from giving and receiving that happiness they seem almost made to feel and to impart. As well might the humble glowworm despise that power of giving light without which the roving fly might pass her and repass her a thousand times, and never rest beside her: she might hear her winged darling buzzing over and around her; he vainly seeking her, she longing to be found, but with no power to make her presence known, no voice to call him, no wings to follow his flight;
the fly must seek another mate, the worm must live and die alone. — Anne Bronte

Oh my love! You are the light of love in the darkness. I am longing for you, you are my flower and freshness. — Debasish Mridha

Man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world. — Albert Camus

There is a third dimension to traveling, the longing for what is beyond. — Jan Myrdal

The inexorable search for a stanza of meaning hangs like a thundercloud over the troposphere of humankind's prosaic existence. A dithering sense of loss engulfs us. Humankind's unattainable desire to achieve a slice of perfection generates a suspenseful haze of doom. A lingering stab of incompleteness coupled with the tantalizing riddles of fate are inalterably interlinked and imbued in all thinking people's tormented soul. This cross coalescence of unattainable longing melds with the mystic tinged edges of uncertainty, spawned by the unanswerable questions posed by fate, fomenting a dialectical dissonance that distinguishes and ultimately exemplifies the arc of humankind's plaintive subsistence. — Kilroy J. Oldster

In our deepest longings we hear echoes of God's longing for us. And the more we can follow these deep-down desires, those that God places within us for our happiness, the more joyful we will find ourselves. — James Martin

What you love is longing for you. — Debasish Mridha

There is no perfect lover or perfect love, only longing for love and be beloved. — Debasish Mridha

what despair to see a woman one loves longing for those thousand nothings from which women compose their happiness, and to be unable to give her those thousand nothings. — Alexandre Dumas

We never are too old for this, my dear, because it is a play we are playing all the time in one way or another. Out burdens are here, our road is before us, and the longing for goodness and happiness is the guide that leads us through many troubles and mistakes to the peace which is a true Celestial City. Now, my little pilgrims, suppose you begin again, not in play, but in earnest, and see how far on you can get before Father comes home. — Louisa May Alcott

You are the light of love in darkness. I am longing for you, oh my love! — Debasish Mridha

Over the years I have written many a letter for the wedding of one of the brothers and preached many a wedding sermon. The chief characteristic of such occasions essentially rested in the fact that, in the face of the "last" times (I do not mean this to sound quite so apocalyptic), someone dares to take a step of such affirmation of the earth and its future. It was then always very clear to me that a person could take this step as a Christian truly only from within a very strong faith and on the basis of grace. For here in the midst of the final destruction of all things, one desires to build; in the midst of a life lived from hour to hour and from day to day, one desires a future; in the midst of being driven out from the earth, one desires a bit of space; in the midst of the widespread misery, one desires some happiness. And the overwhelming thing is that God says yes to this strange longing, that here God consents to our will, whereas it usually meant to be just the opposite. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Happiness would come, Harry thought, but at the moment it was muffled by exhaustion, and the pain of losing Fred and Lupin and Tonks pierced him like a physical wound every few steps. Most of all he felt the most stupendous relief, and a longing to sleep. But first he owed an explanation to Ron and Hermione, who had stuck with him for so long, and who deserved the truth. Painstakingly he recounted what he had seen in the Pensieve and what had happened in the forest, and they had not even begun to express all their shock and amazement what at last they arrived at the place to which they had been walking, though none of them had mentioned their destination. — J.K. Rowling

Of all the emotional relationships in life, is there any more delicate, more noble, and more intense than a boy's deep and yet so totally bashful love for another boy? The kind of love that never speaks, never dares give way to a caress, a glance, or a word, the kind of vigilant love that bitterly grieves over every shortcoming or imperfection in the one who is loved, a love which is longing and admiration and negation of self, and which is pride and humility and calmly breathing happiness. — Jens Peter Jacobsen

Our restlessness in this world seems to indicate that we are intended for a better. We have all of us a longing after happiness; and surely the Creator will gratify all the natural desires he has implanted in us. — Robert Southey

Katy, that the whole world can be involved in this madness we call war, and all the while the flowers and the bees and the seasons keep on doing what they must, wise but never weary in their wait for humanity to come to its senses and remember the beauty of life? It is queer, but my love and longing for the world are always deepened by my absence from it; it's wondrous, don't you think, that a person can swing from despair to gleeful hunger, and that even during these dark days there is happiness to be found in the smallest things?) Anyway, — Kate Morton

Increase and widen your desires till nothing but reality can fulfill them. It is not desire that is wrong, but its narrowness and smallness. Desire is devotion. By all means be devoted to the real, the infinite, the eternal heart of being. Transform desire into love. All you want is to be happy. All your desires, whatever they may be are expressions of your longing for happiness. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

It is awareness of both our shared pain and our longing for happiness that links us to other people and helps us to turn toward them with compassion. — Sharon Salzberg

All you want is to be happy. All your desires, whatever they may be, are longing for happiness. Basically, you wish yourself well ... desire by itself is not wrong. It is life itself, the urge to grow in knowledge and experience. It is choices you make that are wrong. To imagine that some little thing-food, sex, power, fame-will make you happy is to decieve oneself. Only something as vast and deep as your real self can make you truly and lastingly happy. — Nisargadatta Maharaj

God and God alone is the final, ultimate goal of our quest. All that God is for us in Jesus is the Object of our quest for joy. When I speak of fighting for joy, I mean joy in God, not joy without reference to God. When I speak of longing for happiness, I mean happiness in all that God is for us in Jesus, not happiness as physical or psychological experience apart from God. — John Piper

Wine is a sign of happiness, love and plenty, how many of our adolescents and young people sense that these are no longer found in their homes? How many women, sad and lonely, wonder when love left, when it slipped away from their lives? How many elderly people feel left out of family celebrations, cast aside and longing each day for a little love? — Pope Francis

Vronsky meanwhile, in spite of the complete fulfilment of what he had so long desired, was not completely happy. He soon felt that the realization of his longing gave him only one grain of the mountain of bliss he had anticipated. That realization showed him the eternal error men make by imagining that happiness consists in the gratification of their wishes. When first he united his life with hers and donned civilian clothes, he felt the delight of freedom in general, such as he had not before known, and also the freedom of love - he was contented then, but not for long. Soon he felt rising in his soul a desire for desires - boredom. Involuntarily he began to snatch at every passing caprice, mistaking it for a desire and a purpose. — Leo Tolstoy

We love certain things because they are longing for us. — Debasish Mridha

The longing for happiness and freedom from suffering
expresses the great natural potential of mind. — Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche

This emotion I'm feeling now, this is love, right?"
"I don't know. Is it a longing? Is it a giddy stupid happiness just because you're with me?"
"Yes," she said.
"That's influenza," said Miro. "Watch for nausea or diarrhea within a few hours. — Orson Scott Card

Never feel ashamed of your longing for happiness. — Sharon Salzberg

All your desires, whatever they may be, are expressions of your longing for happiness. Basically, you wish yourself well. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Our burdens are here, our road is before us, and the longing for goodness and happiness is the guide that leads us through many troubles and mistakes to the peace which is a true Celestial City. — Louisa May Alcott

There's a taste in the air, sweet and vaguely antiseptic, that reminds him of his teenage years in these streets, and of a general state of longing, a hunger for life to begin that from this distance seems like happiness. — Ian McEwan

In the midst of the happiness they brought there was always a lurking shadow. The shadow of incompatibility; of the impossibility of being at once bound and free. The garden breeds a longing for the wild; the wild a homesickness for the garden. — Dorothy Richardson

God limits the happiness and pleasure we have now precisely so we might not become attached to this world or dependent upon it or fearful of leaving it (dying), as well as to stir in our hearts a longing and yearning and holy anticipation for what is yet to come. — Sam Storms

As much longing for worldly happiness (of 5 senses) there is, that much less is the spiritual development. — Dada Bhagwan

Music expresses those thoughts and words, which have no form but have longing for love. — Debasish Mridha

If a little hill of happiness would satisfy Chris, good for him. But
after all these years of striving, hoping, dreaming, longing-I wanted a
mountain high! A hill wasn't enough. — V.C. Andrews

If he has the courage to unearth his dreams, he then faces a second obstacle: love. He now knows what he desires to do, but he thinks he will harm those around him, if he gives everything up to follow his dreams. He does not understand that love is an additional impulse, not something which hinders one from going forward. He does not understand that those who truly wish him well are longing for his happiness, and are ready to accompany him on this adventure. — Paulo Coelho

There is also a false serenity that is not at all Christian. We need feel no shame as Christians about a measure of impatience, longing, protest against what is unnatural, and a strong measure of desire for freedom and earthly happiness and the capacity to effect change. In — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

It is queer, but my love and longing for the world are always deepened by my absence from it; it's wondrous, don't you think, that a person can swing from despair to gleeful hunger, and that even during these dark days there is happiness to be found in the smallest things? — Kate Morton

Through embrace we flow.Wanting,Longing for happiness to flow — Richard Allen Whisenant

[ ... ] we humans, as long as we live, are generally incapable of freeing ourselves from a certain ardent searching and longing, and should not even strive to; that our longing for happiness seems far more beautiful, always far more sensitive, more significant and all in all probably far more desirable than happiness itself, which perhaps need not even exist, since the fervent, gratifying pursuit of happiness and an everlasting, deep desire for it perhaps not only suit perfectly our needs, but satisfy them far better, far more profoundly; that being happy is by no means to be taken casually, unquestioningly as the meaning of the world, the goal and purpose of life, and so on. — Robert Walser

Deep within everyone's heart there always remains a sense of longing for that hour, that summer, that one brief moment of blossoming. For several weeks or months, rarely longer, a beautiful young woman lives outside ordinary life. She is intoxicated. She feels as if she exists beyond time, beyond its laws; she experiences not the monotonous succession of days passing by, but moments of intense, almost desperate happinness. — Irene Nemirovsky

A wish for the irrational is not to be achieved, whether the sacrificial victims are willing or not. But men will not cease to desire the impossible and will not lose their longing to destroy
so long as self-destruction and self-sacrifice are preached to them as the practical means of achieving happiness of the recipients. — Ayn Rand

[ ... ] Everyone tries to make his life a work of art. We want love to last and we know that it does not last; even if, by some miracle, it were to last a whole lifetime, it would still be incomplete. Perhaps, in this insatiable need for perpetuation, we should better understand human suffering, if we knew that it was eternal. It appears that great minds are, sometimes, less horrified by suffering than by the fact that it does not endure. In default of inexhaustible happiness, eternal suffering would at least give us a destiny. But we do not even have that consolation, and our worst agonies come to an end one day. One morning, after many dark nights of despair, an irrepressible longing to live will announce to us the fact that all is finished and that suffering has no more meaning than happiness. — Albert Camus

Where the Flame was burning

By the long grey road
there is ash after a fire gone out
and signs of departure
in dust and heat.

That is all.
But the flame that burned
in the circle of the travellers
whirled only before the eye
in unextinguished longing.

They were travelling for a dream
and could give all,
and must go on in their searchings
and their unease,
and the bonfire burned on
in every edge of sight,
whilst new searchers dug in the ashes
and in the ground under the ashes,
and it is dream
that is happiness
for those journeying. — Tarjei Vesaas

Imagination doesn't always make you long for what you cannot have, but rather thrive in what you do not have. — Criss Jami

Nostalgia is, by its very nature, bittersweet, the happiest memories laced with melancholy. It's that combination, that opposition of forces, that makes it so compelling. People, places, events, times: we miss them, and there's a pleasure in the missing and a sadness in the love.
The feeling is most acute, sometimes cripplingly so, when we find ourselves longing for the moment we're in, the people we're actually with.
That nameless feeling, that sense of excruciating beauty, of pained happiness, is at the core of 4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy). — Robert J. Wiersema

That kiss was amazing; it had all the passion and longing we had been holding onto for so long. That is when the dam finally broke for me and I started crying. I knew right then that Hunter was the only one I wanted. He was my happily ever after. — Megan Smith

Love is the longing for heart and soul. — Debasish Mridha