It must be soöPlato, thou reason'st well!ö Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire, This longing after immortality? Or whence this secret dread, and inward horror, Of falling into naught? Why shrinks the soul Back on herself, and startles at destruction 'Tis the divinity that stirs within us; 'Tis heaven itself, that points out an hereafter, And intimates eternity to man. Eternity! thou pleasing, dreadful thought!

-Addison,Joseph
  Cato, act 5, sc.1, l.1^10.

   Come to me in my dreams, and then By day I shall be well again! For then the night will more than pay The hopeless longing of the day.

-Arnold, Matthew
  Empedocles on Etna and Other Poems,'Longing' (later published as 'Faded Leaves' in Poems: Second Series,1855).

La parole humaine est comme un chaudron fe"  le¤   o  u' nous battons des me¤  lodies a'   faire danser les ours, quand on voudrait attendrir les e¤  toiles. Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, when all the time we are longing to move the stars to pity.

-Flaubert, Gustave
  Madame Bovary, pt.1, ch.12.