quotations about 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
Notice: Undefined variable: id in /hermes/walnacweb03/walnacweb03ak/b2149/pow.notablequote/htdocs/d/includes/quoter_subj.php on line 37
The Art of Optimism
There's a wall between you and what you want and you got to leap it.
BOB DYLAN
"Groom's Still Waiting at the Altar"
Thoughts are to the Desires as Scouts and Spies, to range abroad, and find the way to the things Desired.
THOMAS HOBBES
Leviathan
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
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"
Desire is oft the morning star of Love,
And Love the Hesper of fulfilled Desire.
RICHARD GARNETT
De Flagello Myrtes
When I can no more stir my soul to move,
And life is but the ashes of a fire;
When I can but remember that my heart
Once used to live and love, long and aspire--
Oh, be thou then the first, the one thou art;
Be thou the calling, before all answering love,
And in me wake hope, fear, boundless desire.
GEORGE MACDONALD
Diary of an Old Soul
Temptation, break the vow
Cut flesh from the sacred cow
Unchain the tiger, kiss the flame, feel your desire
DEF LEPPARD
"Pearl of Euphoria", Slang
The very urge to get rid of desire is still desire, is it not?
JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI
Think on These Things
He is fortunate who wants the things he knows he can have.
LEWIS F. KORNS
Thoughts
A single spark of occasion discharges the child of passions into a thousand crackers of desire.
JOHANN CASPAR LAVATER
Aphorisms on Man
She's the dollars
She's my protection
Yeah, she's the promise
In the year of election
Ah, sister, I can't let you go
I'm like a preacher stealing hearts in a traveling show
For the love or money, money
Desire
Desire
U2
"Desire", Rattle and Hum
I am still concerned with primitive desire, as it exists in man, but in the form in which man shows his affinity to his animal ancestors.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
The Analysis of Mind
I've wandered over many lands, and reaped withal no fruit,
I've laid my pride of rank aside, and pressed my baffled suit,
At stranger boards, like shameless crow, I've eaten bitter bread,
But fierce Desire, that raging fire, still clamours to be fed.
BHARTRHARI
"Against the Desire of Worldly Things"
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"
The strongest of all psychic forces in the world is unsatisfied desire.
JOHN COWPER POWYS
A Glastonbury Romance
When I desire you a part of me is gone.
ANNE CARSON
Eros the Bittersweet
Sex ... or lack thereof ... is at the center of everyone's identity, and once you've cracked someone's desires, you understand them in full.
ARIANNE COHEN
Marie Claire Magazine, March 2008
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