quotations about desire
The more wild and incredible your desire, the more willing and prompt God is in fulfilling it, if you will have it so.
COVENTRY PATMORE
The Rod
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
There is no natural desire of what is unnatural.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
I am tired, Beloved, of chafing my heart against
The want of you
AMY LOWELL
"The Letter", Pictures of the Floating World
Thoughts are to the Desires as Scouts and Spies, to range abroad, and find the way to the things Desired.
THOMAS HOBBES
Leviathan
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
Desire is a pain which seeks easement through possession.
JACK LONDON
The Kempton-Wace Letters
It is a miserable state of mind to have few things to desire and many things to fear.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
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
Wants, like birds, flutter till they have found a place of rest.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
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
When I desire you a part of me is gone.
ANNE CARSON
Eros the Bittersweet
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
Desire is oft the morning star of Love,
And Love the Hesper of fulfilled Desire.
RICHARD GARNETT
De Flagello Myrtes
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
Desire rules over men, those half-gods vain,
And is the tyrant of their heart and brain.
FERNAND GREGH
"Desire"
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"
Everything desires not like but unlike: for example, the dry desires the moist, the cold the hot, the bitter the sweet, the sharp the blunt, the void the full, the full the void, and so of all other things; for the opposite is the food of the opposite, whereas like receives like receives nothing from like.
PLATO
Lysis
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
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