quotations about desire
God plants no yearning in the human soul that he does not intend to satisfy.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Human psychology has a near universal tendency to let belief be coloured by desire.
RICHARD DAWKINS
The God Delusion
What is it men in women to require?
The lineaments of gratified desire.
What is it women do in men require?
The lineaments of gratified desire.
WILLIAM BLAKE
Gnomic Verses
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"
The world is not a burden; we make it a burden by our desires. When the desires are removed, the world is as light as a feather on an elephant's back.
BABA HARI DASS
Ashtanga Yoga Primer
Ignore what a man desires and you ignore the very source of his power.
WALTER LIPPMANN
A Preface to Politics
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
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
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
Desire is oft the morning star of Love,
And Love the Hesper of fulfilled Desire.
RICHARD GARNETT
De Flagello Myrtes
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
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"
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 strongest of all psychic forces in the world is unsatisfied desire.
JOHN COWPER POWYS
A Glastonbury Romance
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
We are puppets of our subconscious desires.
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON
The Shadow of the Wind
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
That's the funny thing about knowing you can't have something. It makes you desperate.
STEPHENIE MEYER
Breaking Dawn
We are the mediocre,
we are the half givers,
we are the half lovers,
we are the savourless salt.
Break the hard crust
of complacency.
Quicken in us
the sharp grace of desire.
CARYLL HOUSELANDER
attributed, Soul Weavings