quotations about desire
Paired opposites define your longings and those longings imprison you.
FRANK HERBERT
Chapterhouse: Dune
For prudence is of the mind, but desire is of the soul, and while his brain of to-day whispered wariness, voices in his heart of long ago shouted commands that he knew he must obey with joy.
ALGERNON BLACKWOOD
Pan's Garden
Human psychology has a near universal tendency to let belief be coloured by desire.
RICHARD DAWKINS
The God Delusion
Men over-estimate what they desire
Through ignorance of it: credulous Pursuit
Thinks his betrothed, Possession, is divine;
But finds she is a mortal like himself.
HENRY ABBEY
"Karagwe"
Through their proper knowledge
Creatures of Discernment forsake that Desire
Through which lustful creatures
Go to misfortune.
GAUTAMA BUDDHA
Iti-Vuttaka
Disdain to warm thee at lust's smoky fires,
Scorn, scorn to feed on thy old bloat desires:
Come, come, my soul, hoist up thy higher sails,
The wind blows fair; shall we still creep like snails,
That glide their ways with their own native slimes?
FRANCIS QUARLES
Emblems
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"
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 creator; desire is the destroyer.
HARI DAS BABA
attributed, Be Here Now
You had better return home and make a net, than go down to the river and desire to get the fishes.
CHINESE PROVERB
That's the funny thing about knowing you can't have something. It makes you desperate.
STEPHENIE MEYER
Breaking Dawn
Two hearts fading like a flower
And all this waiting for the power
For some answer to this fire
Sinking slowly
The water is higher
Desire
RYAN ADAMS
"Desire", Demolition
Even when we get what we wish, it is not ours.
PUBLILIUS SYRUS
The Moral Sayings of Publilius Syrus
What desire can be contrary to nature, since it was given to man by nature itself?
MICHEL FOUCAULT
Madness & Civilization
Forbid us something, and that thing we desire; but press it on us hard, and we will flee.
GEOFFREY CHAUCER
The Canterbury Tales
Man is a creation of desire, not a creation of need.
GASTON BACHéLARD
The Psychoanalysis of Fire
Desire is this absurdity that holds open the infinity of possibility. Ever optimistic, ever resourceful, desire tells us what it sees as it speeds ahead on its divine wings. What we cannot see, desire describes, and then it goads us to travel on until we have given birth to Joy.
WENDY FARLEY
The Wounding and Healing of Desire
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
To desire is to obtain; to aspire is to, achieve. Shall man's basest desires receive the fullest measure of gratification, and his purest aspirations starve for lack of sustenance? Such is not the Law: such a condition of things can never obtain: "ask and receive."
JAMES ALLEN
As a Man Thinketh
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