quotations about desire
There is no natural desire of what is unnatural.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
If any two men desire the same thing, which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies.
THOMAS HOBBES
Leviathan
That's the funny thing about knowing you can't have something. It makes you desperate.
STEPHENIE MEYER
Breaking Dawn
Some desire is necessary to keep life in motion, and he whose real wants are supplied must admit those of fancy.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
The History of Rasselas
All cravings are the mind seeking salvation or fulfillment in external things and in the future as a substitute for the joy of Being.
ECKHARD TOLLE
The Power of Now
A desire scorned and neglected is an enemy lying in wait with bared dagger.
ABRAHAM MILLER
Unmoral Maxims
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
Man is a creation of desire, not a creation of need.
GASTON BACHéLARD
The Psychoanalysis of Fire
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"
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
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
We do not succeed in changing things according to our desire, but gradually our desire changes.
MARCEL PROUST
Remembrance of Things Past
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
The very urge to get rid of desire is still desire, is it not?
JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI
Think on These Things
Before we passionately desire a thing, we should examine the happiness of its possessor.
FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Moral Maxims
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"
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
Thoughts are to the Desires as Scouts and Spies, to range abroad, and find the way to the things Desired.
THOMAS HOBBES
Leviathan
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
God plants no yearning in the human soul that he does not intend to satisfy.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit