In this world, there is a kind of painful progress. Longing for what we've left behind, and dreaming ahead. — Tony Kushner
Elysian beauty, melancholy grace, Brought from a pensive though a happy place. — William Wordsworth
I am hopelessly in love with a memory. An echo from another time, another place. — Michel Foucault
The sea always filled her with longing, though for what she was never sure. — Cornelia Funke
If only. Those must be the two saddest words in the world. — Mercedes Lackey
One cannot look at the sea without wishing for the wings of a swallow. — Richard Francis Burton
the smell of lilacs crept poignantly into the room like a remembered spring. — Margaret Millar
We would often be sorry if our wishes were gratified. — Aesop
I suspected, however, that I wasn't homesick for anything I would find at home when I returned. The longing was for what I wouldn't find: the past and all the people and places there were lost to me. — Alice Steinbach
Nothing is more wistful than the scent of lilac, nor more robust than its woody stalk, for we must remember that it is a tree as well as a flower, we must try not to forget this. — Stevie Smith
We are torn between nostalgia for the familiar and an urge for the foreign and strange. As often as not, we are homesick most for the places we have never known. — Carson Mccullers
September: it was the most beautiful of words, he’d always felt, evoking orange-flowers, swallows, and regret. — Alexander Theroux
The origin of sorrow is this: to wish for something that does not come to pass. — Epictetus
Nothing's so dainty sweet as lovely melancholy. — Francis Beaumont
Short Wistful Quotes
That vision of a common culture is now simply a remote wistfulness. — Dennis Potter
Seth told us good night and left. I watched him go wistfully. “Anyone else here feel like swooning? — Richelle Mead
For thousands of years, father and son have stretched wistful hands across the canyon of time. — Alan Valentine
In my garden, care stops at the gate and gazes at me wistfully through the bars. — Alexander Smith
Debbie Reynolds is as wistful as an iron foundry. — Oscar Levant
I want a horse and plough, Chickens too, Just one cow, With a wistful moo. — Noel Coward
Dance music is great, but it's not a time to be reflective or particularly wistful. — Sophie Ellis Bextor
A good man is hard to find," she said wistfully. "Not everyone is as lucky as you are. — Nicholas Sparks
It’s sad to see them staring wistfully through the window when the door isn’t locked. — Isaac Marion
It was funny, she thought, but her smile turned wistful because she had nobody to tell. — Laini Taylor
Wistful Image Quotes
Being Wistful Quotes
We are wistful about the golden days of the past and dream of a distant future unclouded by necessity. But I suspect that if our inner souls were asked what in life they really missed, the answer would be primal danger and stress. — Robert Grudin
Compassionate the mountains rise
Dim with the wistful dimness of old eyes
That, having looked on life time out of mind,
Know that the simple gift of being kind
Is greater than all the wisdom of the wise. — DuBose Heyward
Being a writer means I sit in a dark (and pretty dank) room off my garage for many hours a day, and in my wallowing moments I can feel as if I'm already on the outside of society, peering wistfully in. — Lauren Groff
It takes so little to make a child happy, that it is a pity in a world full of sunshine and pleasant things, that there should be any wistful faces, empty hands, or lonely little hearts. — Louisa May Alcott
I wrap my heart in yours, placing divulged faith in the whole of your being, wistfully awaiting the trumpet you return. — Isabel Yosito
That you can look back fondly or even wistfully on pieces of your life and hound yourself with endless what-ifs, but nothing will change. The present will still be the present. The future will still unfold as it's meant to. — Allison Winn Scotch
So often we have a kind of vague, wistful longing that the promises of Jesus should be true. The only way really to enter into them is to believe them with the clutching intensity of a drowning man. — William Barclay
Many in Hollywood viewed the public persona of the young Debbie Reynolds as demure and vulnerable to be a complete facade. Pianist Oscar Levant once quipped, "She's as wistful as an iron factory." — Elizabeth Taylor
Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. — Steve Jobs
Optimists and pessimists die the exact same death, but they live very different lives! — Shimon Peres
If everyone is thinking alike, then no one is thinking. — Benjamin Franklin
My message to women: Do what makes you feel good, because there'll always be someone who thinks you should do it differently. Whether your choices are hits or misses, at least they're your own. — Michelle Obama
The greatest evil of American slavery was not involuntary servitude but rather the narrative of racial differences we created to legitimate slavery. Because we never dealt with that evil, I don't think slavery ended in 1865, it just evolved. — Bryan Stevenson
We can speak and think only of what exists. And what exists is uncreated and imperishable for it is whole and unchanging and complete. It was not or nor shall be different since it is now, all at once, one and continuous. — Parmenides
If we continue to think and live as if we belong only to different cultures and different religions, with separate missions and goals, we will always be in self-defeating competition with each other. Once we realize we are all members of humanity, we will want to compete in the spirit of love. — Muhammad Ali
In anything I do I try to stay true to myself because I think that's what matters most, and then the challenge is getting all these different sides of my personality to fit together in one box. It isn't an easy task. But that's basically what the end result represents. — G-Eazy
Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life - think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success. — Swami Vivekananda
The way to happiness: Keep your heart free from hate, your mind from worry. Live simply, expect little, give much. Scatter sunshine, forget self, think of others. Try this for a week and you will be surprised. — Norman Vincent Peale
The way I think I should stay out of trouble is by stayin' busy. With idle time comes a lot of biz, so the more my work load is heavy, I'll have no time to get into any trouble or makin' dis tracks or get into conversation about any other rappers. — Gucci Mane
We do not think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking. — Richard Rohr
You cannot change the way you feel until you change the way you think because your thoughts will determine the way you feel. — Tony Evans
I Don't Think There's A Good Excuse For Being Unhappy. I'm Not Particularly Unhappy, But I Know What Pain Is. I think That Life Is Characterized By Pain, Partly. Part Of The Way You Can Tell You're Alive Is By How Much Pain You're Experiencing, Or How Little. — Jerry Garcia
The white man has succeeded in subduing the world by forcing everybody to think his way....The white man's propaganda has made him the master of the world, and all those who have come in contact with it and accepted it have become his slaves. — Marcus Garvey
It’s time to put away our fairytales, all of them, and assume our responsibilities, the adult responsibilities that begin with adult knowledge. Our planet needs us. She needs us to think like healers and act like warriors. And if you think that’s a contradiction, then get out of the way. — Lierre Keith
I’m a big fan of parrots - I think they’re fascinating creatures. Many of them live for longer than us humans and it's interesting to me the way they learn to mimic human voices even though they don't really comprehend what they're saying. — Derren Brown
For animals that are overworked, underfed, and cruelly treated; for all wistful creatures in captivity that beat their wings against bars; for any that are hunted or lost or deserted or frightened or hungry; for all that must be put to death...and for those who deal with them we ask a heart of compassion and gentle hands and kindly words. — Albert Schweitzer
Sometimes I find myself thinking, rather wistfully, about Lao Tzu's famous dictum: 'Govern a great nation as you would cook a small fish.' All around me I see something very different, let us say - a number of angry dwarfs trying to grill a whale. — William Carlos Williams
I sometimes look into the face of my dog Stan and see a wistful sadness and existential angst, when all he is actually doing is slowly scanning the ceiling for flies. — Merrill Markoe
The dance grew into a colorful flower bouquet which caught and contained the glow of sun-happy summer days, the secret of star-studded nights, and the wistful sweetness of overcast and rainy hours. — Mary Wigman
Soon or late, every dog's master's memory becomes a graveyard; peopled by wistful little furry ghosts that creep back unbidden, at times, to a semblance of their olden lives. — Albert Payson Terhune
For thousands of years, father and son have stretched wistful hands across the canyon of time, each eager to help the other to his side, but neither quite able to desert the loyalties of his contemporaries. The relationship is always changing and hence always fragile; nothing endures except the sense of difference. — Alan Valentine
I just sit here and tell the story as though I can't help it. There's always something in the day that reminds me, that sets me off all hot and guilty and scared and rambling and wistful, like I am now. — Tim Winton
Intelligent and alert, wistful but enthusiastic, frank yet tactful, assured without conceit and tender without sentimentality. — Cecil Beaton
I had not thought of violets of late,
The wild, shy kind that springs beneath you feet
In wistful April days. — Alice Dunbar Nelson
I never saw a man who looked with such a wistful eye upon that little tent of blue which prisoners call the sky. — Oscar Wilde
We felt that the public, and especially the children, like animals that are cute and little. I think we are rather indebted to Charlie Chaplin for the idea. We wanted something appealing, and we thought of a tiny bit of a mouse that would have something of the wistfulness of Chaplin - a little fellow trying to do the best he could. — Walt Disney
For two summers not a blue wing, not a blue warble. I seemed to miss something kindred and precious from my environment--the visible embodiment of the tender sky and wistful soil. What a loss, I said, to coming generations of dwellers in the country--no bluebird in spring! — John Burroughs
February, when the days of winter seem endless and no amount of wistful recollecting can bring back any air of summer. — Shirley Jackson
Women are like dogs really. They love like dogs, a little insistently. And they like to fetch and carry and come back wistfully after hard words, and learn rather easily to carry a basket. — Mary Roberts Rinehart
Hail the day that sees Him rise,
Ravished from our wistful eyes!
Christ, awhile to mortals given,
Re-ascends His native heaven.
There the glorious triumph waits,
Lift your heads, eternal gates!
Wide unfold the radiant scene,
Take the King of glory in! — Charles Wesley
but I felt that Tom would drift on forever seeking, a little wistfully, for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game — F. Scott Fitzgerald
He spoke wistfully of a sudden leaving, a breaking of old ties, a flight into a strange world, ending in this dreary valley, and Ettie listened, her dark eyes gleaming with pity and with sympathy - those two qualities which may turn so rapidly and so naturally to love. — Arthur Conan Doyle
The anger. The terror. The feeling of entrapment. the profound distrust of people.The wistful, plaintive conviction that a window, a thing, was more important than she. These feelings and attitudes, expressed in the course of this hour, were symptoms of some profound disturbance. — Flora Rheta Schreiber
I always have been and will remain someone who loves real, 3D, substantial books. And I don't believe that it's a wistful, nostalgic interest like vinyl collectors. It's not the same thing. — Art Spiegelman
In the rush of complex modern living, we have a tendency to laugh at the 'bring-Papa-his-pipe-and-slippers' approach to marriage - but most men are more than a little wistful at its demise. A man dreams of home as a haven and his wife as a romantic, fragrant creature whose most important goal in life is making him comfortable. — Arlene Dahl
There has long been a bemoaning of the lack of opportunity to make films that are anything but explosions or the ladling on the pea soup or whatever you want to call it. You can hardly make a movie today where somebody isn't a murderer or a rapist or, if it's a "Fried Green Tomatoes" that isn't some wistful thing on this, that or the other thing. — Jack Nicholson
There's a constant conflict, really, within me. As much as I really enjoy what I do at home... I play on my own little soccer team and I've been taking part in the community and living the life of any ordinary guy, I always find myself wistful and enveloped in a feeling I can't really get out of my system. — Robert Plant
When you're alone, it's easier," she said a little wistfully. "You can do what you want. You don't have to go home. — Candace Bushnell
You mostly.” Her hands went still again as her eyes stared off into the past with a look so wistful it made me ache for her. “The boys tended to take care of each other but you were too much for anyone else to handle.” I poked at the ball of yarn avoiding her eyes. “I wasn’t that bad.” She smiled. “You broke Ethan’s arm.” “It was self-defense. He wouldn’t let go of my foot.” “He was helping you tie your shoe. — Rachel Vincent
There are three things that none of the young men of the present generation can do.They can't sit over their wine;they can't play at wist;and they can't pay a lady a compliment. — Wilkie Collins
April 19
And now it is spring. Birds are singing. Wistful notes and jubilant. And bare streets and no need for coats, and skipping ropes and bicycles and a thin new moon. — Elizabeth Smart
Now that I near 80, I realize with wistful pleasure that on many occasions I was 10, 20, 40, even 50 years ahead of my time. — Benoit Mandelbrot
The whole world is an omen and a sign. Why look so wistfully in a corner? Man is the Image of God. Why run after a ghost or a dream? The voice of divination resounds everywhere and runs to waste unheard, unregarded, as the mountains echo with the bleatings of cattle. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Original love never appears in pure form, but in manifold veils and shapes, such as confidence, humility, reverence, serenity, asfaithfulness and modesty, as gratefulness; but primarily as longing and wistful melancholy. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Franz Kafka is dead. He died in a tree from which he wouldn't come down. "Come down!" they cried to him. "Come down! Come down!" Silence filled the night, and the night filled the silence, while they waited for Kafka to speak. "I can't," he finally said, with a note of wistfulness. "Why?" they cried. Stars spilled across the black sky. "Because then you'll stop asking for me." — Nicole Krauss
The word "miss" is so wistful. As is the word "wistful," for that matter. They both have sighs embedded in them, that "iss" sound. Which also sounds like if. — Joan Wickersham
We are these people,
wistful, ironical, wilful,
who have no part in
new-world reconstruction,
in the confederacy of labour. — Hilda Doolittle
By no amount of agile exercising of a wistful imagination could my mother have been called lenient. Generous she was; indulgent never. Kind, yes, permissive, never. In her world, people she accepted paddled their own canoes, pulled their own weight, put their own shoulders to their own plows and pushed like hell. — Maya Angelou
In Conclusion
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