quotations about desire
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
If any two men desire the same thing, which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies.
THOMAS HOBBES
Leviathan
Whatsoever is the object of any man's Appetite or Desire; that is it which he for his part calleth Good: and the object of his Hate and Aversion, evil.
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
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
God plants no yearning in the human soul that he does not intend to satisfy.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
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"
A desire scorned and neglected is an enemy lying in wait with bared dagger.
ABRAHAM MILLER
Unmoral Maxims
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
That's the funny thing about knowing you can't have something. It makes you desperate.
STEPHENIE MEYER
Breaking Dawn
Even when we get what we wish, it is not ours.
PUBLILIUS SYRUS
The Moral Sayings of Publilius Syrus
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
Man is a creation of desire, not a creation of need.
GASTON BACHéLARD
The Psychoanalysis of Fire
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
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
We do not succeed in changing things according to our desire, but gradually our desire changes.
MARCEL PROUST
Remembrance of Things Past
Desire is a pain which seeks easement through possession.
JACK LONDON
The Kempton-Wace Letters
Before we passionately desire a thing, we should examine the happiness of its possessor.
FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Moral Maxims
It is said that desire is a product of the will, but the converse is in fact true: will is a product of desire.
DENIS DIDEROT
Elements of Physiology
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