Absence Quotes

Quotes regarding Absence

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

Absence diminishes little passions and increases great ones, as wind extinguishes candles and fans a fire.
o François, duc de la Rochefoucauld, Maxims (1665)

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

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

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

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.
o Colette, The Captain, Earthly Paradise (1966)

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

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

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

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

To-day man is, and to-morrow he will be seen no more. And being removed out of sight, quickly also he is out of mind.
o Thomas à Kempis, Imitation of Christ (c.1418) Book I, ch. 23Attributed

Absence and death are the same–only that in death there is no suffering.
o Walter Savage Landor

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

The absent shall not be made heir.
o Latin proverb

They are good that are away.
o Scottish proverb