quotations about desire
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
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Lysis
Wishes people the world.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
As all-consuming as a young girl's fancies were ... a woman's desires could be twice as dangerous.
TERESA MEDEIROS
The Vampire Who Loved Me
If men could regard the events of their lives with more open minds, they would frequently discover that they did not really desire the things they failed to obtain.
ANDRÉ MAUROIS
The Art of Living
Before we passionately desire a thing, we should examine the happiness of its possessor.
FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Moral Maxims
After desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.
BIBLE
James 1:15
Desire is the source of our most noble aspirations and our deepest sorrows. The pleasure and the pain go together; indeed, they emanate from the same region in our hearts. We cannot live without the yearning, and yet the yearning sets us up for disappointment--sometimes deep and devastating disappointment.
JOHN ELDREDGE
Desire
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
If wishes were fishes we'd all cast nets.
FRANK HERBERT
Dune
Seen by himself, Desire appears the least well-favoured of the Gods: but when he is in Love's company, the two can hardly be distinguished.
RICHARD GARNETT
De Flagello Myrtes
We are encouraged to believe, for example, that there are consensual objects of desire, that every man wants a certain woman. Well, actually, every man doesn't want that certain woman. The really frightening thing about desire is how idiosyncratic it is. We may desire people whom we might not like, or want, or whom other people might not think beautiful. So idiosyncratic is it that we want to pool this feeling, foreclose it, into consensual objects. The culture is encouraging the belief that there's more consensus than there in fact is.
ADAM PHILLIPS
Bomb Magazine, fall 2010
Desire is what leads you through life until the time comes when you desire a higher life. So do not be ashamed that you want so much, yet at the same time do not fool yourself into thinking that what you want today will be enough tomorrow.
DEEPAK CHOPRA
The Way of the Wizard
Do not indulge in dreams of having what you have not, but reckon up the chief of the blessings you do possess, and then thankfully remember how you would crave for them if they were not yours.
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
If any two men desire the same thing, which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies.
THOMAS HOBBES
Leviathan
There is no natural desire of what is unnatural.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
Through their proper knowledge
Creatures of Discernment forsake that Desire
Through which lustful creatures
Go to misfortune.
GAUTAMA BUDDHA
Iti-Vuttaka
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
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
You had better return home and make a net, than go down to the river and desire to get the fishes.
CHINESE PROVERB
Is it the gods who set this fire in our hearts, or do we each make our fierce desire into a god?
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Lavinia