quotations about desire
Wishes people the world.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Wants, like birds, flutter till they have found a place of rest.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
The strongest of all psychic forces in the world is unsatisfied desire.
JOHN COWPER POWYS
A Glastonbury Romance
He is fortunate who wants the things he knows he can have.
LEWIS F. KORNS
Thoughts
Whatsoever misfortunes there are
Here in this world or in the next,
They all have their root in Ignorance
And in the accumulation of Longing and Desire.
GAUTAMA BUDDHA
Iti-Vuttaka
When I desire you a part of me is gone.
ANNE CARSON
Eros the Bittersweet
The playing field of life is not level, and for you to compete in the game of life, you need an equalizer of some kind. In the old West, the equalizer was the six-shooter. It enabled a little guy to chop a bigger man down to size. Desire is also an equalizer--and nowadays is highly encouraged over a six-shooter!
ZIG ZIGLAR
Born to Win: Find Your Success Code
The grave is sooner cloy'd than men's desire.
FRANCIS QUARLES
Emblems
Obsession is so extreme and so hard to imagine with the rational mind that it has a science-fiction-like quality to it--it's almost as if the obsessed one has been taken over by a replica, a pod, a facsimile of the rational person. When one is in the grip of an obsession, everything else--children, regular meals, sleep, work--is swept away. The entire being is one yearning, frothing bath of desire. It's the dirty trick of obsession that getting its way--spending time with the object of desire, having sex with the object of desire--doesn't lessen the obsession, but increases it. Although an addict, while obsessed, truly believes that being with the object of the obsession will cure the obsession, the opposite is true. When an alcoholic promises that all he needs is one last bender to achieve satisfaction, he's chasing a chimera.
SUSAN CHEEVER
Desire: Where Sex Meets Addiction
Longing alone is singer to the lute.
EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY
"Sonnet II"
The man of desire needs the promise of reward to urge him to action. He is as a child working for the possession of a toy.
JAMES ALLEN
Byways of Blessedness
Desire rules over men, those half-gods vain,
And is the tyrant of their heart and brain.
FERNAND GREGH
"Desire"
Unsatisfied desire is the characteristic feature of human life. That is the common fact out of which both pessimism and optimism are constructed. Dwell on the impossibility of ever getting a state of complete and permanent satisfaction with what you have, and you become a pessimist. Dwell on the opportunity for endless growth and conquest which this same fact makes possible, and you become an optimist.
WILLIAM DEWITT HYDE
The Art of Optimism
A human soul devoid of longing was a soul deformed, deprived of its highest good, sick unto death.
SAUL BELLOW
Ravelstein
Desire is insatiable not because the goods of the world are too few, too uniform, or too bland. Desire burns through the goods of the world, even though these goods are not false or intrinsically unsatisfactory.... Desire shatters the economy of things; it disputes the tyranny of objects. IT longs for the great emptiness, which is beauty and love without limitation.
WENDY FARLEY
The Wounding and Healing of Desire
The real trouble comes from not knowing what we really want in the first place.
CHARLES DE LINT
"Where Desert Spirits Crowd the Night", The Ivory and the Horn
Large natures have usually large desires, and only the small are satisfied with the small.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
To burn with desire and keep quiet about it is the greatest punishment we can bring on ourselves.
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
Blood Wedding
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
The curtailing of one's desires is the beginning of wisdom; their entire mastery its consumption.
JAMES ALLEN
Byways of Blessedness