quotations about desire
Desire's wind blasts the thorntree but after it becomes from a bramblebush to be a rose upon the rood of time.
JAMES JOYCE
Ulysses
The moth unwitting rushes on the fire,
Through ignorance the fish devours the bait,
We men know well the foes that lie in wait,
Yet cannot shun the meshes of desire.
BHARTRHARI
"Against the Love of Beauty"
To desire is to obtain; to aspire is to, achieve. Shall man's basest desires receive the fullest measure of gratification, and his purest aspirations starve for lack of sustenance? Such is not the Law: such a condition of things can never obtain: "ask and receive."
JAMES ALLEN
As a Man Thinketh
Disdain to warm thee at lust's smoky fires,
Scorn, scorn to feed on thy old bloat desires:
Come, come, my soul, hoist up thy higher sails,
The wind blows fair; shall we still creep like snails,
That glide their ways with their own native slimes?
FRANCIS QUARLES
Emblems
What is it men in women to require?
The lineaments of gratified desire.
What is it women do in men require?
The lineaments of gratified desire.
WILLIAM BLAKE
Gnomic Verses
Human psychology has a near universal tendency to let belief be coloured by desire.
RICHARD DAWKINS
The God Delusion
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
I surrender all control
To the desire that consumes me whole
And leads me by the hand to infinity
That lies in wait at the heart of me
DEPECHE MODE
"Higher Love"
We become decrepit with age, but not so Desire.
Infirmity assails us, the skin wrinkles,
The hair whitens, the body becomes crooked,
Old age comes on.
Desire alone grows younger every day.
BHARTRHARI
"Verses on Renunciation"
God plants no yearning in the human soul that he does not intend to satisfy.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Desire is oft the morning star of Love,
And Love the Hesper of fulfilled Desire.
RICHARD GARNETT
De Flagello Myrtes
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
Desire is a pain which seeks easement through possession.
JACK LONDON
The Kempton-Wace Letters
We are puppets of our subconscious desires.
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON
The Shadow of the Wind
That's the funny thing about knowing you can't have something. It makes you desperate.
STEPHENIE MEYER
Breaking Dawn
But how long before this desperate wickedness overruns the qualms of good people? Before the desire for the smell of cooking meat, the softness of flesh, breaks us all?
CHRIS ABANI
Hands Washing Water
People think they know what they want but they generally don't. Sometimes if they're lucky they'll get it anyways.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
No Country for Old Men
There is in every one of us, even those who seem to be most moderate, a type of desire that is terrible, wild, and lawless.
PLATO
The Republic
The strongest of all psychic forces in the world is unsatisfied desire.
JOHN COWPER POWYS
A Glastonbury Romance
To burn with desire and keep quiet about it is the greatest punishment we can bring on ourselves.
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
Blood Wedding