DESIRE QUOTES X

quotations about desire

Natural desires are within bounds; but unnatural lust is infinite.

BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE

Moral and Religious Aphorisms


The busy mint
Of our laborious thoughts is ever going,
And coining new desires; desires not knowing
Where next to pitch; but, like the boundless ocean,
Gain, and gain ground, and grow more strong by motion.

FRANCIS QUARLES

Emblems


If I cross the line
If I run this red light
I can't help myself
Gotta satisfy my desire

HOLLY VALANCE

"Desire", State of Mind


We cannot be free of nagging desires through suppression. This is like trying to keep a rubber boat beneath the water. But we remove compulsive desires altogether by understanding their nature.

VERNON HOWARD

attributed, Treasury of Spiritual Wisdom


When we have the means to pay for what we desire, what we get is not so much what is best, as what is costliest.

CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE

Intuitions and Summaries of Thought


Very often one “pushes away” the very thing that one most wants to grab, like a lover. This is a common, although distressing, psychological mechanism, having to do (in my opinion) with the fact that what is presented is not presented “purely”, that there is a little canker or grim place in it somewhere.

DONALD BARTHELME

"Rebecca"


A state of constant fruition would be, according to our present notions, a state truly lamentable, since it would preclude, in a great degree, the pleasing emotions that spring from hope and expectation, and thus extinguish the lights that principally serve to cheer our path through life. Were all our desires satiated at their birth, or were we always satisfied with our present condition, in either case, as there would be nothing to draw forth our active energies, life would stagnate.

WILLIAM MATHEWS

Hints on Success in Life


Desire is the ingredient that changes the hot water of mediocrity to the steam of outstanding success.

ZIG ZIGLAR

See You at the Top


Plant the seed of desire in your mind and it forms a nucleus with power to attract to itself everything needed for its fulfillment.

ROBERT J. COLLIER

attributed, Wisdom for the Soul


It would be helpful if the universe would give us one big clue, or a giant compass, if you will, pointing to the direction we should be taking. In fact, the compass is there. To find it, you need only look inside yourself to discover your soul's purest desire, its dream for your life.

DEEPAK CHOPRA

The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire


God has given you these desires ... He gives us carnal love for a purpose, for mutual delight, to produce children, and the sanctification of the soul. Cast yourself headlong on God's love, begging His grace to help you in the perfection of the nature He gave you. To love another so deeply that we seek union with the beloved, by that to bring an immortal soul into this world and care for and shape it ... that is to imitate God Himself in His splendor!

S. M. STIRLING

The Sunrise Lands


The desire that is satisfied is not a great desire, nor has the shoulder used all its might that an unbreakable gate has never strained.

WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

"Anima Hominis", Per Amica Silentia Lunae


If you want a thing--truly want it, want it so badly that you need it as you need air to breathe, then unless you die, you will have it. Why not? It has you. There is no escape. What a cruel and terrible thing escape would be if escape were possible.

OCTAVIA E. BUTLER

Parable of the Talents


The first set of facts to be adduced against the common sense view of desire are those studied by psycho-analysis. In all human beings, but most markedly in those suffering from hysteria and certain forms of insanity, we find what are called "unconscious" desires, which are commonly regarded as showing self-deception. Most psycho-analysts pay little attention to the analysis of desire, being interested in discovering by observation what it is that people desire, rather than in discovering what actually constitutes desire. I think the strangeness of what they report would be greatly diminished if it were expressed in the language of a behaviourist theory of desire, rather than in the language of every-day beliefs. The general description of the sort of phenomena that bear on our present question is as follows: A person states that his desires are so-and-so, and that it is these desires that inspire his actions; but the outside observer perceives that his actions are such as to realize quite different ends from those which he avows, and that these different ends are such as he might be expected to desire. Generally they are less virtuous than his professed desires, and are therefore less agreeable to profess than these are. It is accordingly supposed that they really exist as desires for ends, but in a subconscious part of the mind, which the patient refuses to admit into consciousness for fear of having to think ill of himself. There are no doubt many cases to which such a supposition is applicable without obvious artificiality. But the deeper the Freudians delve into the underground regions of instinct, the further they travel from anything resembling conscious desire, and the less possible it becomes to believe that only positive self-deception conceals from us that we really wish for things which are abhorrent to our explicit life.

BERTRAND RUSSELL

The Analysis of Mind


There is a strange feeling of longing that I have always had, always a desire to be someplace better than where I am. But the world I want to enter is always disappearing before I get there.

LINDSAY AHL

Desire


The best joke of all is to give someone just what they've wanted.

TONY BALLANTYNE

Recursion


It is easy for desire to be caught like a bird in a net, its wings fouled and twisted, no longer free to cross back and forth between silence and word. Desire may also find itself so amputated by tradition and community that it wanders in a void with nothing to orient it, to shape or discipline it. Desire must find ways to navigate its bitter and sweet paradox: it moves toward but also always through and beyond every object.

WENDY FARLEY

The Wounding and Healing of Desire


It is of the nature of desire not to be satisfied, and most men live only for the gratification of it.

ARISTOTLE

Politics


Venus, queen of soft desire,
Leading Hymen's happy choir.

ANACREON

"Ode XVIII", Odes


If you desire many things, many things will seem but a few.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

Poor Richard's Almanack, 1736