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


Is there nowhere left a spot
      Where the thought of you is not?
      I have sought it everywhere,
      Woods and waters, field and air...
I have tried to think on Heaven,
      White-clad angels, souls forgiven—
      What are all such holy things?
      Only thoughts of you—with wings!
~Margaret Widdemer (1884–1978), "Thought of You," The Factories, With Other Lyrics, 1915


Kindred hearts no distance parts. ~James Lendall Basford (1845–1915), Seven Seventy Seven Sensations, 1897


It is dismal coming home, when there is nobody to welcome one! ~Ann Radcliffe, The Mysteries of Udolpho, 1794


And the nights grow cold without you
and the world is filled with the anguish of my loneliness
and the stars join me in sorrow while I long without wearying
to hold you once more in my arms,
to embrace you, and kiss you, and love you.
~Morris Hyman, M.D. (b.1908), letter to wife Shirley during World War II, read by Shirley L. Hyman in 2014 video "Shirley and Moe" produced by Brandon Stanton for Humans of New York, www.humansofnewyork.com


Missing you isn't just an empty void — it's what-ifs and questions and endless thoughts and bittersweet memories and runaway feelings and emotions that can't get a hold on anything physical so just slip and slide around my mind, and hide and re-emerge. ~Terri Guillemets


Love is missing someone whenever you're apart, but somehow feeling warm inside because you're close in heart. ~Kay Knudsen


Sometimes, when one person is missing, the whole world seems depopulated. ~Lamartine


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


Can miles truly separate you from friends.... If you want to be with someone you love, aren't you already there? ~Richard Bach


Life flings miles and years between us,
      It is true,—
But brings never to me dearer
      Friends than you!
~Dorothy Scarborough, Humorous Ghost Stories, 1921


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"


Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes. ~Henry David Thoreau


If I had a single flower for every time I think of you, I could walk forever in my garden. ~Claudia Adrienne Grandi


Within you I lose myself...
Without you I find myself
Wanting to be lost again.
~Author Unknown


Gone — flitted away,
Taken the stars from the night and the sun
From the day!
Gone, and a cloud in my heart.
~Alfred Tennyson


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


Thou perchance art thinking now
      As I think of thee,
And our thoughts in heaven above
      Meet invisibly.
~J.J. Britton (1832–1913), "To C.E.S.: A Thought"


What is the opposite of two? A lonely me, a lonely you. ~Richard Wilbur


I am afflicted, afflicted, afflicted!
Sleep has deserted my eyes
Through my longing for Thee...
~Rumi, translated by Edward Henry Whinfield


On rapid pinions Time has wing'd his flight,
      The sweet remembrance now survives alone,
      Like a fair dream with fragrance all its own,
      A sacred legacy of past delight.
      I tasted those sweet hours! oh! well for me
      That my heart strove to reach its lofty goal,
      'Tis thy sweet image floats around my soul...
Thou beamest in the morning's rosy light,
      I see thee in the starry host by night,
      Thy form is mirror'd in the crystal lake;
      The spring's soft splendour breathes of thee alone,
      The fountain murmurs forth thy silvery tone,
      And 'tis thy name the gentle echoes wake.
~Theodor Körner (1791–1813), "Lines from Afar," A Selection from the Poems and Dramatic Works of Theodor Körner, 1850, translated from the German by an unnamed female translator


No distance of place or lapse of time can lessen the friendship of those who are thoroughly persuaded of each other's worth. ~Robert Southey


Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle
Everything I do is stitched with its color.
~W.S. Merwin, "Separation"


Love reckons hours for months, and days for years; and every little absence is an age. ~John Dryden


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


My heart responds most warm with thine
      To pray and hope each day
No heart can feel more deep than mine
      If near—or far away.
~Samuel Woodhull, 1851


Every parting is a form of death, as every reunion is a type of heaven. ~Tryon Edwards


When I go away from you
The world beats dead
Like a slackened drum....
~Amy Lowell, "The Taxi"


Life is so short, so fast the lone hours fly,
We ought to be together, you and I.
~Henry Alford, "You and I" (Thanks, Jenn)


As contraries are known by contraries, so is the delight of presence best known by the torments of absence. ~Alcibiades


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


The reason it hurts so much to separate is because our souls are connected. ~Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook


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


In true love the smallest distance is too great, and the greatest distance can be bridged. ~Hans Nouwens


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


I miss you always and every day
But when I search my heart for you
I find that you never went away
~Terri Guillemets


I keep coming back to you in my head, but you couldn't know that, and I have no carbons. ~Adrienne Rich


I am tired, Beloved,
of chafing my heart against
the want of you;
of squeezing it into little inkdrops,
And posting it.
~Amy Lowell, "The Letter"


I dropped a tear in the ocean. The day you find it is the day I will stop missing you. ~Author Unknown


To die and part is a less evil; but to part and live, there, there is the torment. ~George Lansdowne


Another day, another pang that you are afar. ~Byron Caldwell Smith, letter to Kate Stephens


In the hope to meet
Shortly again, and make our absence sweet.
~Ben Jonson


The joy of meeting pays the pangs of absence; else who could bear it? ~Nicholas Rowe


Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory—
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.
Rose-leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heap'd for the beloved's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.
~Percy Bysshe Shelley


Why can't we get all the people together in the world that we really like and then just stay together? I guess that wouldn't work. Someone would leave. Someone always leaves. Then we would have to say good-bye. I hate good-byes. I know what I need. I need more hellos. ~Charles M. Schulz


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


Missing someone gets easier every day because even though it's one day further from the last time you saw each other, it's one day closer to the next time you will. ~Author Unknown


We only part to meet again. ~John Gay


She went her unremembering way,
She went and left in me
The pang of all the partings gone,
And partings yet to be.
~Francis Thompson


When you are not at hand to kiss away my fears I cannot choose but be wretched. ~Byron Caldwell Smith, letter to Kate Stephens


One kind kiss before we part,
Drop a tear, and bid adieu;
Though we sever, my fond heart
Till we meet shall pant for you.
~Robert Dodsley


As the presence of those we love is as a double life, so absence, in its anxious longing and sense of vacancy, is as a foretaste of death. ~Anna Brownell Jameson


Ye flowers that drop, forsaken by the spring,
Ye birds that, left by summer, cease to sing,
Ye trees that fade, when Autumn heats remove,
Say, is not absence death to those who love?
~Alexander Pope


A goodbye isn't painful unless you're never going to say hello again. ~Author Unknown


Don't be dismayed by good-byes. A farewell is necessary before you can meet again. And meeting again after moments or a lifetime is certain for those who are friends. ~Richard Bach


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


Missing you could turn from pain to pleasure, if I knew you were missing me too. ~Author Unknown


Absence diminishes little passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans a fire. ~François VI de la Rochefoucault, translated from French


The eternal quest of the individual human being is to shatter his loneliness. ~Norman Cousins


Trees quiet without the birds,
My heart quiet without you.
~Terri Guillemets


It is loneliness that makes the loudest noise. This is true of men as of dogs. ~Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition, 1973


I think we dream so we don't have to be apart so long. If we're in each other's dreams, we can play together all night. ~Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes