Absence

Quotes regarding Absence.

Quotes

• They say absence makes the heart grow fungus.
  • Barenaked Ladies, "Blame It on Me", Gordon (1992)

• Absence makes the heart grow fonder.
  • Thomas Haynes Bayly, Isle of Beauty

• No friend to Love like a long voyage at sea.
  • Aphra Behn, The Rover, Part I, Act I, sc. ii (1677).

• 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 Peculiarly exposed to the tooth of detraction; vilifed; hopelessly in the wrong; superseded in the consideration and affection of another.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 Cynic's Dictionary (1906); republished as The Devil's Dictionary (1911).

• The heart may think it knows better: the senses know that absence blots people out. We have really no absent friends.
  • Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart (1938).

• Wives in their husband's absences grow subtler,
  And daughters sometimes run off with the butler.
  • Lord Byron, Don Juan (1824), Canto III, St. 22.

• Absence! is not the soul torn by it
     From more than light, or life, or breath?
  'Tis Lethe's gloom, but not its quiet,—
     The pain without the peace of death!
  • Thomas Campbell, "Absence", The poetical works of Thomas Campbell (1837).

• Friends, though absent, are still present.
  • Cicero, De Amicitia ("On Friendship") (44 B.C.), Chapter 7.

• It takes time for the absent to assume their true shape in our thoughts. After death they take on a firmer outline and then cease to change.
  • Colette, The Captain, Earthly Paradise (1966).

• The absent are never without fault, nor the present without excuse.
  • Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack July 1736.

• Where'er I roam, whatever realms to see,
  My heart untravelled, fondly turns to thee;
  Still to my brother turns, with ceaseless pain,
  And drags at each remove a lengthening chain.
  • Oliver Goldsmith, The Traveller (1764), line 7.

• Achilles absent, was Achilles still.
  • Homer, The Iliad (tr. Alexander Pope), Book XX, Line 415.

• In the hope to meet
  Shortly again, and make our absence sweet.
  • Ben Jonson, Underwoods (1640), Miscellaneous Poems. LIX.

• Absence, the highest form of presence.
  • James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)

• Cum autem sublatus fuerit ab oculis, etiam cito transit a mente.
  • [To-day man is, and to-morrow he will be seen no more.] But when he (man) shall have been taken from sight, he quickly goes also out of mind.
  • Thomas à Kempis, Imitation of Christ (c .1418), Book I, Chapter XXIII. 1.

• Sometimes, when one person is missing, the whole world seems depopulated.
  • Alphonse de Lamartine, Premieres Meditations Poetiques (1820).

• Your absence of mind we have borne, till your presence of body came to be called in question by it.
  • Charles Lamb, "Amicus Redivivus", Last Essays of Elia (1833).

• … absence is
  The moonlight of affection;
  • Letitia Elizabeth Landon, The Fate of Adelaide (1821), title poem, Canto II, II

• Absence and death are the same—only that in death there is no suffering.
  • Walter Savage Landor, letter to Robert Browning. Walter Savage Landor: Last Days, Letters and Conversations (1934), ed. Harry Christopher Minchin, p. 48.

• With what a deep devotedness of woe
  I wept thy absence—o'er and o'er again
  Thinking of thee, still thee, till thought grew pain,
  And memory, like a drop that, night and day,
  Falls cold and ceaseless, wore my heart away!
  • Thomas Moore, Lalla Rookh (1817), The Veiled Prophet of Khorassan.

• Absent in body, but present in spirit.
  • Paul, 1 Corinthians 5:3 (KJV).

• Absentes tinnitu aurium præsentire sermones de se receptum est.
  • It is generally admitted that the absent are warned by a ringing in the ears, when they are being talked about.
  • Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia (c. 77–79), Book 28, Section 5.

• Semper in absentes felicior aestus amantes.
  • Absence makes the heart grow fonder.
  • Propertius Elegies II, xxxiii, 43.

• Say, is not absence death to those who love?
  • Alexander Pope, Pastorals: Autumn.

• Condemned whole years in absence to deplore,
  And image charms he must behold no more.
  • Alexander Pope, Eloise to Abelard (1717), line 361.

• Absenti nemo ne nocuisse velit.
  • Let no one be willing to speak ill of the absent.
  • Sextus Propertius, Elegiæ (Elegies) (c. 24 B.C.), II, xix, 32. Reported by Chilo in Life by Diogenes Laertius (modified by Thucydides, II, 45).

• The absent are like children; they are helpless to defend themselves.
  • Charles Reade, Foul Play (1869) ch. 44.

• L'absence diminue les médiocres passions et augmente les grandes, comme le vent éteint les bougies et allume le feu.
  • Absence diminishes little passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans a fire.
  • François de La Rochefoucauld, Maximes (1665), #276.

• I dote on his very absence, and I wish them a fair departure.
  • William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice (late 1590s), Act I, scene 2, line 120.

• As 'tis ever common
  That men are merriest when they are from home.
  • William Shakespeare, Henry V (1599), Act I, Sc. ii, line 271.

• Absences are a good influence in love and keep it bright and delicate.
  • Robert Louis Stevenson, Virginibus Puerisque (1881).

• Greater things are believed of those who are absent.
  • Tacitus, Histories (A.D. 104-109).

• Conspicuous by his absence.
  • Tacitus, Annals (117), Book III, 76.

• 'Tis said that absence conquers love;
     But oh believe it not!
  I've tried, alas! its power to prove,
     But thou art not forgot.
  • Frederick William Thomas, Absence Conquers Love (1838).

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 2-3.

• Absent in body, but present in spirit.
  • I Corinthians, V, 3.

• Ever absent, ever near;
  Still I see thee, still I hear;
  Yet I cannot reach thee, dear!
  • Francis Kazinczy, Separation.

• What shall I do with all the days and hours
  That must be counted ere I see thy face?
  How shall I charm the interval that lowers
  Between this time and that sweet time of grace?
  • Frances Anne Kemble, Absence.

• For with G. D., to be absent from the body is sometimes (not to speak it profanely) to be present with the Lord.
  • Charles Lamb, Oxford in the Vacation.

• Oft in the tranquil hour of night,
  When stars illume the sky,
  I gaze upon each orb of light,
  And wish that thou wert by.
  • George Linley, Song.

• Thou art gone from my gaze like a beautiful dream,
  And I seek thee in vain by the meadow and stream.
  • George Linley, Thou Art Gone.

• For there's nae luck about the house;
  There's nae luck at aw;
  There's little pleasure in the house
  When our gudeman's awa.
  • Attributed to W. J. Mickle, There's Nae Luck Aboot the House, Ballad of Cumnor Hall. Claimed for Jean Adam. Evidence in favor of Mickle. Claimed also for MacPherson. Manuscript copy found among his papers after his death.

• Days of absence, sad and dreary,
  Clothed in sorrow's dark array,—
  Days of absence, I am weary;
  She I love is far away.
  • Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Days of Absence.

• Among the defects of the bill [Lord Derby's] which are numerous, one provision is conspicuous by its presence and another by its absence.
  • Lord John Russell, Address to the Electors of the City of London (April 6, 1859). Phrase used by Lord Brougham. Quoted by Chenier in one of his tragedies. Idea used by Henry Labouchère in Truth, Feb. 11. 1886, and by Earl Granville, Feb. 21, 1873. Lady Brownlow, Reminiscences of a Septuagenarian.

• All days are nights to see till I see thee,
  And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me.
  • William Shakespeare, Sonnet XLIII.

• 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.

• The absence of lost things is felt most painfully when the things you possess stop providing satisfaction.
  • Sanu Sharma, Lockdown

• Præfulgebant Cassius atque
  Brutus eo ipso, quod effigies eorum non videbantur.
  • Cassius and Brutus were the more distinguished for that very circumstance that their portraits were absent.
  • Tacitus, Annals, Book III, Chapter 76; from the funeral of Junia, wife of Cassius and sister to Brutus, when the insignia of twenty illustrious families were carried in the procession.

• Since you have waned from us,
  Fairest of women!
  I am a darkened cage
  Songs cannot hymn in.
  My songs have followed you,
  Like birds the summer;
  Ah! bring them back to me,
  Swiftly, dear comer!
  Seraphim,
  Her to hymn,
  Might leave their portals;
  And at my feet learn
  The harping of mortals!
  • Francis Thompson, A Carrier Song.

Proverbs

• The absent are always in the wrong.
  • English proverb recorded in George Herbert's Jacula Prudentum (1651).

• The absent shall not be made heir.
  • Latin proverb^{[citation needed]}

• They are good that are away.
  • Scottish proverb^{[citation needed]}