Wistfulness Quotes

“She was a very pretty woman. She had dark red hair and her eyes -- her eyes are just like mine, Harry thought, edging a little closer to the glass. Bright green -- exactly the same shape, but then he noticed that she was crying; smiling, but crying at the same time. The tall, thin, black-haired man standing next to her put his arm around her. He wore glasses, and his hair was very untidy. It stuck up at the back, just like Harry's did.

Harry was so close to the mirror now that his nose was nearly touching that of his reflection.

"Mum?" he whispered. "Dad?"

They just looked at him, smiling. And slowly, Harry looked into the faces of the other people in the mirror and saw other pairs of green eyes like his, other noses like his, even a little old man who looked as though he had Harry's knobbly knees -- Harry was looking at his family, for the first time in his life.

The Potters smiled and waved at Harry and he stared hungrily back at them, his hands pressed flat against the glass as though he was hoping to fall right through it and reach them. He had a powerful kind of ache inside of him, half joy, half terrible sadness.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

“We should have taken our chances back then, when we were young and beautiful and didn't even know it.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Diplomatic Immunity

“But there is a fatality, a feeling so irresistible and inevitable that it has the force of doom, which almost invariably compels human beings to linger around and haunt, ghost-like, the spot where some great and marked event has given the colour to their lifetime; and, still the more irresistibly, the darker the tinge that saddens it.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

“Personally, I think she liked living there, between the pages with him. Always adding little bits of memory but never closing the door.”
― Rebecca Yarros, The Things We Leave Unfinished

“This memory was both happy and sad: happy because it was so pleasant, and sad because it made Penelope think about how much she missed Swanburne--the girls, the teachers, Miss Mortimer. Or perhaps it was her own much younger self, that pint-sized person whom she could never be again, whom she missed. It was hard to say.”
― Maryrose Wood, The Mysterious Howling

“harke
n. a painful memory that you look back upon with unexpected fondness, even though you remember having dreaded it at the time; a tough experience that has since been overridden by the pride of having endured it, the camaraderie of those you shared it with, or the satisfaction of having a good story to tell.

From hark back, a command spoken to hunting dogs to retrace their course so they can pick up a lost scent. Pronounced "hahrk.”
― John Koenig, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

“Tears flashed into her eyes. "That's very dear of you. It's sweet to be remembered when one is away." In her voice there was the heart-breaking sweetness one sometimes hears in lovely, gentle old songs.”
― Willa Cather, A Lost Lady

“These aren't still shots; the camera is always moving. And the scene is always just slipping out of sight, as if in spite of myself I were always descending a hill, rounding a corner, stepping into the street with a companion who urges me on, while I look back over my shoulder at the sight which recedes, vanishes. The present of my consciousness is itself a mystery which is also always just rounding a bend like a floating branch borne by a flood. Where am I? But I'm not. "I will overturn, overturn, overturn, it: and it shall be no more. . . .”
― Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

“They wept with joy, happy to see him alive. A smile crept across Fritz while being smothered in their affection, but all he could think about, and what he never forgot, were those mountains.”
― Dylan Callens, Operation Cosmic Teapot

“He glanced back at his ship, and a sigh escaped his lips, his heart fraught with the appreciation and melancholy that understanding his own situation must evince. His place as Captain of such a crew was as evanescent as the rest of life, and while they were all collected together now, being of the same character, the same mind, having the same predilections and ambitions, there was no saying when it might be over. He might be called away on urgent business, or his crew might grow anxious for a more settled life, Rannig might wish to return home, or the Director of the Marridon Academy might finally rot, calling Bartleby back to Marridon for the promotion he so richly deserved. He exhaled, reveling in the pining sigh of impermanence which living in such uncertainty must produce.”
― Michelle Franklin, The Leaf Flute - A Marridon Novella

“What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that...

On the way downtown I stopped at a bar and had a couple of double Scotches. They didn’t do me any good. All they did was make me think of Silver-Wig, and I never saw her again.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep

“Angus turned to Domenica. "This view always makes me feel sad. I don't know why, but it does." He drew in his breath, savouring the freshness of the air. Freshly mown grass was upon it, and the smell of lavender, too, from Elspeth's kitchen garden. "Well, perhaps not sad--more wistful, perhaps, which is one notch below actual sadness.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Love in the Time of Bertie

“I wish I could run free with the horses and never again be the daughter of dropped miracles.”
― Tiffany McDaniel, On the Savage Side