Literary Quotes on Longing & Transcendent Yearning

"The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing — to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from."

Lewis, who frequently explored Sehnsucht, describes it as a yearning for a divine or ultimate source of beauty.

"He had begun to feel that the love of his father and mother, and also the love of his friend Govinda, would not always make him happy, give him peace, satisfy and suffice him. He had begun to suspect that his worthy father and his other teachers, the wise Brahmins, had already passed on to him the bulk and best of their wisdom but that his soul was not at peace."

This reflects Siddhartha's restless longing for a deeper truth beyond worldly attachments.

"Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love." 

 Rilke's words evoke a longing to connect with the deeper, transformative essence of existence. 

 "He stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and, far as I was from him, I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward — and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away."

Gatsby's yearning for the green light symbolizes an unattainable dream, a classic expression of Sehnsucht.

 "Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: / The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, / Hath had elsewhere its setting, / And cometh from afar."

Wordsworth captures the soul's longing for a lost, pre-existent divine state.

 "What is the meaning of life? That was all — a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years. The great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come."

Woolf expresses a yearning for ultimate meaning that remains elusive.

"Two souls, alas, dwell in my breast, / And each seeks to break free from the other."

Faust's inner conflict reflects a longing for transcendence and unity beyond earthly limitations.

"The Soul selects her own Society — / Then — shuts the Door — / To her divine Majority — / Present no more —"

Dickinson's introspective tone conveys a soul's longing for a sacred, unattainable connection.

 "The only true voyage of discovery, the only fountain of Eternal Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to behold the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others."

Proust captures the longing to transcend one's perspective and experience the infinite.

 "We shall not cease from exploration / And the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time."

Eliot's words evoke a yearning to rediscover a deeper, almost forgotten truth.

 "I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, / And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made."

Yeats expresses a nostalgic longing for an idealized, peaceful place that feels just out of reach.

 "He was shaken by the overwhelming revelation that the headlong race between his misfortunes and his dreams was at that moment reaching the finish line."

This reflects a poignant yearning for dreams that slip away despite relentless pursuit.