ABSENCE QUOTES

quotations about absence

May the Lord keep watch between you and me when we are away from each other.

BIBLE

Genesis 31:49


You can decorate absence however you want--but your still gonna feel what's missing.

SIOBHAN VIVIAN

Same Difference


Life has become the ideology of its own absence.

THEODOR W. ADORNO

Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life


Of course I'll hurt you. Of course you'll hurt me. Of course we will hurt each other. But this is the very condition of existence. To become spring, means accepting the risk of winter. To become presence, means accepting the risk of absence.

ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPÉRY

Manon, Ballerina


But love will long for the absent things,
Ever the old earth over.

J.U. NICOLSON

String Stars for Pearls


Return, while night clatters and mirrors open and everything tears inside because of your absence. Everything wants to get on with the wind, the sky. To register a terrible gesture, some way ofbeing without you.

ALEJANDRA PIZARNIK

The Galloping Hour


Though absent, present to desires they be;
Our soul much further than our eyes can see.

MICHAEL DRAYTON

The Barons' Wars


Ye flowers that droop, forsaken by the spring,
Ye birds that, left by Summer, cease to sing,
Ye trees, that fade when Autumn-heats remove,
Say, is not absence death to those who love?

ALEXANDER POPE

Pastorals: Autumn


Absent in body, but present in spirit.

APOSTLE PAUL

1 Corinthians 5:3


But now, I know, how absence can be present, like a damaged nerve, like a dark bird.

AUDREY NIFFENEGGER

The Time Traveler's Wife


There is a time in life when you expect the world to be always full of new things. And then comes a day when you realise that is not how it will be at all. You see that life will become a thing made of holes. Absences. Losses. Things that were there and are no longer. And you realise, too, that you have to grow around and between the gaps.

HELEN MACDONALD

H is for Hawk


In the absence of affection
We'll take anything and call it love

ROB THOMAS

"Absence of Affection", The Great Unknown


Until she come again
The May is not the May,
And what she calls a week
Is forever and a day!

THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH

Forever and a Day


Absence diminishes little passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans a fire.

FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD

Maxims


How like a winter hath my absence been
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!
What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!
What old December's bareness everywhere.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Sonnet XCVII


Times daily change and we likewise in them;
Things out of sight do straight forgotten die.

WILLIAM ALEXANDER

Aurora


I felt her absence. It was like waking up one day with no teeth in your mouth.

JAMES DASHNER

The Scorch Trials


Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

THOMAS HAYNES BAYLY

Isle of Beauty


The absent party is still faulty.

GEORGE HERBERT

Jacula Prudentum


ABSENT, adj. Peculiarly exposed to the tooth of detraction; vilifed; hopelessly in the wrong; superseded in the consideration and affection of another.

AMBROSE BIERCE

The Devil's Dictionary