quotations about desire
It is only by frequent deaths of ourselves and our self-centered desires that we can come to live more fully.
MOTHER TERESA
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A Gift for God
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
It belongs to the imperfection of everything human that man can only attain his desire by passing through its opposite.
SOREN KIERKEGAARD
The Journals of Soren Kierkegaard
How long can you suppress your own desires? Until you understand that in doing so will destroy yourself.
IVAN KLIMA
Waiting for the Dark
Natural desires are within bounds; but unnatural lust is infinite.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
It is of the nature of desire not to be satisfied, and most men live only for the gratification of it.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
Whenever we confront an unbridled desire we are surely in the presence of a tragedy-in-the-making.
QUENTIN CRISP
Manners from Heaven
The curtailing of one's desires is the beginning of wisdom; their entire mastery its consumption.
JAMES ALLEN
Byways of Blessedness
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
Wants, like birds, flutter till they have found a place of rest.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
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
It is the thing that is most remote from the world in which we ourselves live that attracts us most. We are under the spell of what is distant from us. It is not our nature to desire passionately what is near at hand.
ALEC WAUGH
On Doing What One Likes
Yeah
Lover I'm off the streets
Gonna go where the bright lights
And the big city meet
With a red guitar, on fire
Desire
U2
"Desire", Rattle and Hum
If we go down into ourselves we find that we possess exactly what we desire.
SIMONE WEIL
Gravity and Grace
As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Overruled
It is a miserable state of mind to have few things to desire and many things to fear.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
Venus, queen of soft desire,
Leading Hymen's happy choir.
ANACREON
"Ode XVIII", Odes
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
Plunge into the world, and then, after a time, when you have suffered and enjoyed all that is in it, will renunciation come; then will calmness come. So fulfill your desire for power and everything else, and after you have fulfilled the desire, will come the time when you will know that they are all very little things; but until you have fulfilled this desire, until you have passed through that activity, it is impossible for you to come to the state of calmness, serenity, and self-surrender.
VIVEKANANDA
The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda
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