Quotes on Desire

Like other men, I have sought honours and preferment, and often have obtained them beyond my wishes or hopes. Yet never have I found in them that content which I had figured beforehand in my mind. A strong reason, if we well consider it, why we should disencumber ourselves of vain desires.

No tendency is quite so strong in human nature as the desire to lay down rules of conduct for other people.

Love is when the desire to be desired takes you so badly, that you feel you could die of it!

Every man desires to live long, but no man wishes to be old.

Great ambition, the desire of real superiority, of leading and directing, seems to be altogether peculiar to man, and speech is the great instrument of ambition.

The desire to write grows with writing.

If you desire to be good, begin by believing that you are wicked.

There is no greater impediment to progress in the sciences than the desire to see it take place too quickly.

An exact poetic duplication of a man is for the poet a negation of the earth, an impossibility of being, even though his greatest desire is to speak to many men, to unite with them by means of harmonious verses about the truths of the mind or of things.

I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death.

Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one's self?

The desire for symmetry, for balance, for rhythm in form as well as in sound, is one of the most inveterate of human instincts.

The desire of gold is not for gold. It is not the love of much wheat, and wool and household stuff. It is the means of freedom and benefit.

The deepest hunger in human beings is the desire to be appreciated.

The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao The name that can be named is not the eternal Name. The unnamable is the eternally real. Naming is the origin of all particular things. Free from desire, you realize the mystery. Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations. Yet mystery and manifestations arise from the same source. This source is called darkness. Darkness within darkness. The gateway to all understanding.

And whereas this House desires to obtain a full knowledge of all the facts which go to establish whether the particular spot of soil which the blood of our citizens was so shed was, or was not, our own soil.

I am in competition with no one. I have no desire to play the game of being better than anyone. I am simply trying to be better than the person I was yesterday.

It is quite normal to fear what one most desires. We desire to transcend the Story of the World that has come to enslave us, that indeed is killing the planet. We fear what the end of that story will bring: the demise of much that is familiar.Fear it or not, it is happening already.

We want to know not how we should pray if we were perfect but how we should pray being as we now are ... It is no use to ask God with factitious earnestness for A when our whole mind is in reality filled with the desire for B. We must lay before Him what is in us, not what ought to be in us.

May the God of peace arouse in all an authentic desire for dialogue and reconciliation. Violence cannot be overcome with violence. Violence is overcome with peace.

Of course you want to be rich and famous. It's natural. Wealth and fame are what every man desires. The question is: What are you willing to trade for it?