It is usually described with regard to individuals as a consciousness, a sense of ultimate things, a moral conscience, a compass of right and wrong, a longing for immortality.
Longing for retribution is longing for retribution.
What's wrong with wanting to win, with longing to be good at something?
If Palestine cries out, or if Afghanistan calls out, If Kosovo is wronged, or Assam or Pattani is wronged, My heart stretches out to them, longing to help those in need.
When you ask her what's wrong, she says that she, too, is longing for Stella.
Instead, she selected recordings from the early jazz singer Annette Hanshaw, whose voice, poised between heartbreak and soigné resignation, sets a mood of longing for this multilayered tale of love gone wrong.
The intriguing promise of the setup is not quite sustained in the third act, but this heady, sensual picture captures something of the aching, longing and confusion of growing up in the wrong body.
There's nothing intrinsically wrong with resolving to be a better person, or with occasionally longing – as Voltaire's Candide put it – just to cultivate your own garden for a bit, and stop worrying about other people's.
Until he does, one must shake one's head in sadness at a fine mind longing for the Cold War, or for a new villain to justify a wrong-headed empirial militancy in the Middle East, or who knows what.
