quotations about desire
Even when we get what we wish, it is not ours.
PUBLILIUS SYRUS
The Moral Sayings of Publilius Syrus
We are encouraged to believe, for example, that there are consensual objects of desire, that every man wants a certain woman. Well, actually, every man doesn't want that certain woman. The really frightening thing about desire is how idiosyncratic it is. We may desire people whom we might not like, or want, or whom other people might not think beautiful. So idiosyncratic is it that we want to pool this feeling, foreclose it, into consensual objects. The culture is encouraging the belief that there's more consensus than there in fact is.
ADAM PHILLIPS
Bomb Magazine, fall 2010
Is it the gods who set this fire in our hearts, or do we each make our fierce desire into a god?
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Lavinia
Ignore what a man desires and you ignore the very source of his power.
WALTER LIPPMANN
A Preface to Politics
The world is not a burden; we make it a burden by our desires. When the desires are removed, the world is as light as a feather on an elephant's back.
BABA HARI DASS
Ashtanga Yoga Primer
Why can I never set my heart on a possible thing?
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Left Hand of Darkness
Desire is what leads you through life until the time comes when you desire a higher life. So do not be ashamed that you want so much, yet at the same time do not fool yourself into thinking that what you want today will be enough tomorrow.
DEEPAK CHOPRA
The Way of the Wizard
The strongest of all psychic forces in the world is unsatisfied desire.
JOHN COWPER POWYS
A Glastonbury Romance
Nothing is more human than for man to desire naturally things impossible to his nature. It is, indeed, the property of a nature which is not closed up in matter like the nature of physical things, but which is intellectual or infinitized by the spirit. It is the property of a metaphysical nature. Such desires reach for the infinite, because the intellect thirsts for being and being is infinite.
JACQUES MARITAIN
Approaches to God
You are currently experiencing desire; otherwise, you wouldn't be reading these words. Even if you are reading them at the behest of someone else, you are motivated by your desire to please that person. And if you stop reading, you will not do so because you have stopped desiring but because your desires have changed.
WILLIAM BRAXTON IRVINE
On Desire
How is the anxious soul of man befool'd in his desire,
That thinks an hectic fever may be cool'd in flames of fire?
FRANCIS QUARLES
Emblems
You had better return home and make a net, than go down to the river and desire to get the fishes.
CHINESE PROVERB
Desire me and want me
That's all I'll ever ask of life
That you will someday come to me
And say that you love me as I love you
SAM COOKE
"Desire Me", The Man Who Invented Soul
Do not indulge in dreams of having what you have not, but reckon up the chief of the blessings you do possess, and then thankfully remember how you would crave for them if they were not yours.
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
We are the mediocre,
we are the half givers,
we are the half lovers,
we are the savourless salt.
Break the hard crust
of complacency.
Quicken in us
the sharp grace of desire.
CARYLL HOUSELANDER
attributed, Soul Weavings
Thoughts are to the Desires as Scouts and Spies, to range abroad, and find the way to the things Desired.
THOMAS HOBBES
Leviathan
Man is a creation of desire, not a creation of need.
GASTON BACHéLARD
The Psychoanalysis of Fire
We are never further from our wishes than when we fancy we possess the object of them.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
After desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.
BIBLE
James 1:15
Human longings are perversely obstinate; and to the man whose mouth is watering for a peach, it is of no use to offer the largest vegetable marrow.
GEORGE ELIOT
Mr. Gilfil's Love Story