“When you’re away I feel like I’m only wearing one shoe.” Alta Gerrey’s playful quotation captures the sweet ache of longing. These reflections on absence remind us how distance shapes love and sometimes even brings unexpected peace. ✨

My life will be sour grapes and ashes without you. ~ Daisy Ashford

Imagination is nostalgia for the past, the absent; it is the liquid solution in which art develops the snapshot of reality. ~ Cyril Connolly

Absence may or may not make the heart grow fonder, but it certainly freshens the eye. ~ Stephen King

Absence becomes the greatest Presence. ~ May Sarton

How long time is when one is sad! Is it three years or three days since you went away? ~ Eugénie de Guérin

It takes time for the absent to assume their true shape in our thoughts. ~ Colette

Absence is one of the most useful ingredients of family life, and to dose it rightly is an art like any other. ~ Freya Stark

Be generous with kindly words, especially about those who are absent. ~ Johann von Goethe

Don't confuse good taste with the absence of taste. ~ William Bernbach

Fond as we are of our loved ones, there comes at times during their absence an unexplained peace. ~ Anne Shaw

Friends, though absent, are still present. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

Greater things are believed of those who are absent. ~ Tacitus

In an age of synthetic images and synthetic emotions, the chances of an accidental encounter with reality are remote indeed. ~ Serge Daney

It's the nasty and the accident that form the foundation for elegance that comes later. ~ Nick Bantock