wistfulness

• “We are in the realm not of logic but of wistfulness, and I must maintain that wistfulness is a respectable, serious condition.”

  Joseph O’Neill on Wistfulness and ‘we’re-all-going-to-die Sex

• “This wistfulness is charming but self-deceptive: Schlesinger might have written not just more books but better ones (as we know from the quality of The Age of Jackson and The Disuniting of America) if he had not squandered so much time and energy being a compulsive socialite and an insecure valet du pouvoir.”

  The Courtier

• “Caril Ann in particular, with her extraordinary diction and painful wistfulness, is a marvel of a character.”

  Reader reviews of Outside Valentine by Liza Ward.

• “I want to know if no else has understood that all this wistfulness is due to the fact that the whole island is a butterfly that longs for its wings.”

  The Wonderful Adventures of Nils

• “He was several years younger than his partner, not more than twenty-six, and there was a certain wistfulness in his face that comes into the faces of men when they yearn vainly for the things they have been long denied.”

  The Faith of Men

• “Such a habit may be described as wistfulness of mind, the feeling that there is "so much to [251] know," rather as a longing after what is unattainable, than as a hope to apprehend.”

  Miscellaneous Studies; a series of essays

• “He let her go, then worked at convincing himself that what he saw in her eyes in that brief moment was simply the same kind of wistfulness he was feeling.”

  Simon & Schuster: Risk No Secrets

• “He watched her, a puppy at play, her face relaxed and unconcerned, and he was filled with an odd joy that was tinged with the kind of wistfulness one feels on the first crisp day of autumn.”

  The White Ninja

• “There was a kind of wistfulness in his poise, and his calm, pure eyes were lifted toward the open sky.”

  Aladdin O'Brien

• “It had a noble kind of wistfulness, and a serenity that entirely redeemed it.”

  The Project Gutenberg Complete Works of Gilbert Parker

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