Quotes about absence

Absence and death are the same -- only that in death there is no suffering.

— Walter Savage Landor

Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.

— Edna St. Vincent Millay

The longest absence is less perilous to love than the terrible trials of incessant proximity.

— Ouida

A short absence is the safest.

— Ovid

Let me tell you I am better acquainted with you for a long absence, as men are with themselves for a long affliction: absence does but hold off a friend, to make one see him the truer.

— Alexander Pope

Never find fault with the absent.

— Proverb

Absence and a friendly neighbor washes away love.

— Proverb

Failing to be there when a man wants her is a woman's greatest sin, except to be there when he doesn't want her.

— Helen Rowland

Parting is such sweet sorrow.

— William Shakespeare

When delicate and feeling souls are separated, there is not a feature in the sky, not a movement of the elements, not an aspiration of the breeze, but hints some cause for a lover's apprehension.

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Greater things are believed of those who are absent.

— Publius Cornelius Tacitus

Absence does not make the heart grow fonder, but it sure heats up the blood.

— Elizabeth Ashley

Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

— Thomas Haynes Bayly

I was court-martial in my absence, and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence.

— Brendan F. Behan

Separation penetrates the disappearing person like a pigment and steeps him in gentle radiance.

— Walter Benjamin

Woman absent is woman dead.

— Ambrose Bierce

The heart may think it knows better: the senses know that absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends. The friend becomes a traitor by breaking, however unwillingly or sadly, out of our own zone: a hard judgment is passed on him, for all the pleas of the heart.

— Elizabeth Bowen

Absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends.

— Elizabeth Bowen

No man is so perfect, so necessary to his friends, as to give them no cause to miss him less.

— Jean De La Bruyere

No more we meet in yonder bowers Absence has made me prone to roving; But older, firmer hearts than ours, Have found monotony in loving.

— Lord Byron

Absence -- that common cure of love.

— Miguel De Cervantes

Our hours in love have wings; in absence, crutches.

— Colley Cibber

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.

— Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

Absence from whom we love is worse than death, and frustrates hope severer than despair.

— William Cowper

Absence of proof is not proof of absence.

— William Cowper

The absent are never without fault. Nor the present without excuse.

— Benjamin Franklin

Absence sharpens love, presence strengthens it.

— Thomas Fuller

The people who are absent are the ideal; those who are present seem to be quite commonplace.

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Talk well of the absent whenever you have the opportunity.

— Sir Matthew Hale

Achilles absent was Achilles still!

— Homer

Separated lovers cheat absence by a thousand fancies which have their own reality. They are prevented from seeing one another and they cannot write; nevertheless they find countless mysterious ways of corresponding, by sending each other the song of birds, the scent of flowers, the laughter of children, the light of the sun, the sighing of the wind, and the gleam of the stars --all the beauties of creation.

— Victor Hugo

When a man is out of sight, it is not too long before he is out of mind.

— Thomas Kempis

Absence diminishes little passions and increases great ones, as wind extinguishes candles and fans a fire.

— Francois De La Rochefoucauld

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