18 uses
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Definition
have a strong desire — often for something difficult or impossible to have
- It was not surprising that he felt a deep sympathy with the Greek who had devised a new technique to express the yearnings of his soul.87-88 — Chapters 87-88 (76% in)
- He would willingly have made the service more ornate than had been usual in the low-church parish of Blackstable, and in his secret soul he yearned for processions and lighted candles.7-8 — Chapters 7-8 (56% in)
- He yearned for freedom.19-20 — Chapters 19-20 (52% in)
- He was also a good deal in debt: it was difficult to live in London like a gentleman on three hundred a year; and his heart yearned for the Venice and Florence which John Ruskin had so magically described.25-26 — Chapters 25-26 (80% in)
- He yearned above all things for experience and felt himself ridiculous because at his age he had not enjoyed that which all fiction taught him was the most important thing in life; but he had the unfortunate gift of seeing things as they were, and the reality which was offered him differed too terribly from the ideal of his dreams.29-30 — Chapters 29-30 (21% in)
- Hayward's poetic allusions troubled his imagination, and his soul yearned for romance.29-30 — Chapters 29-30 (31% in)
- He began to think of Paris as before he had thought of London, but he had no fear of a second disillusion; he yearned for romance and beauty and love, and Paris seemed to offer them all.37-38 — Chapters 37-38 (74% in)
- My soul yearns for the love of chamber-maids and the conversation of bishops.'45-46 — Chapters 45-46 (12% in)
- He yearned for her.57-58 — Chapters 57-58 (41% in)
- He had thought of love as a rapture which seized one so that all the world seemed spring-like, he had looked forward to an ecstatic happiness; but this was not happiness; it was a hunger of the soul, it was a painful yearning, it was a bitter anguish, he had never known before.57-58 — Chapters 57-58 (42% in)
- I've yearned for you.59-60 — Chapters 59-60 (86% in)
- Though he yearned for Mildred so madly he despised her.61-62 — Chapters 61-62 (57% in)
- But when all was said the important thing was to love rather than to be loved; and he yearned for Mildred with his whole soul.69-70 — Chapters 69-70 (69% in)
- Now he was seized with a desire to do horrible, sordid things; he wanted to roll himself in gutters; his whole being yearned for beastliness; he wanted to grovel.77-78 — Chapters 77-78 (31% in)
- He grew haggard in shut-in spaces, and the soul he knew not he possessed struggled like a sparrow held in the hand, with little frightened gasps and a quick palpitation of the heart: he yearned for the broad skies and the open, desolate places among which his childhood had been spent; and he walked off one day, without a word to anybody, between one lecture and another; and the next thing his friends heard was that he had thrown up medicine and was working on a farm.79-80 — Chapters 79-80 (69% in)
- I yearn for it; and when I drink it I savour every drop, and afterwards I feel my soul swimming in ineffable happiness.81-82 — Chapters 81-82 (93% in)
- Life was passionate and manifold, and because it offered so much they felt a restless yearning for something more; because they were human they were unsatisfied; and they threw this eager vitality of theirs into a vehement striving after the ineffable.87-88 — Chapters 87-88 (89% in)
- But as he walked home something struck him; he stopped under a lamp-post and read the letter again; the handwriting had no longer the business-like firmness which had characterised it; it was larger and wavering: perhaps the illness had shaken him more than he was willing to confess, and he sought in that formal note to express a yearning to see the only relationhe had in the world.107-108 — Chapters 107-108 (44% in)
There are no more uses of "yearn" in Of Human Bondage.
Typical Usage
(best examples)