Quotations: Desire

You desire to know the art of living, my friend? It is contained in one phrase: make use of suffering.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel

I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self.
Aristotle

Those who restrain their desires, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.
William Blake

He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence.
William Blake

One must not lose desires. They are mighty stimulants to creativeness, to love, and to long life.
Alexander A Bogomoletz

Some prices are just too high, no matter how much you may want the prize. The one thing you can't trade for your heart's desire is your heart.
Lois McMaster Bujold

I hope that I may always desire more than I can accomplish.
Michelangelo Buonarroti

All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.
Samuel Butler

Fashion is the science of appearances, and it inspires one with the desire to seem rather than to be.
Edwin Hubbel Chapin

You don't need fancy highbrow traditions or money to really learn. You just need people with the desire to better themselves.
Adam Cooper

Failure doesn't kill you. . . it increases your desire to make something happen.
Kevin Costner

One must desire something to be alive.
Margaret Deland

Everything is perfect in the universe -- even your desire to improve it.
Wayne Dyer

I desire no future that will break the ties with the past.
George Eliot

If you greatly desire something, have the guts to stake everything on obtaining it.
Brendan Francis

If you desire many things, many things will seem few.
Benjamin Franklin

Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.
Robert Frost

All that spirits desire, spirits attain.
Khalil Gibran

Desire creates the power.
Raymond Holliwell

First rule of Economics: our desires are insatiable. Second rule: we can stomach only three Big Macs at a time.
Doug Horton

When you relinquish the desire to control your future, you can have more happiness.
Nicole Kidman

What makes the engine go? Desire, desire, desire.
Stanley Kunitz

All joy emphasises our pilgrim status; always reminds, beckons, awakens desire. Our best havings are wantings.
C S Lewis

Ignore what a man desires and you ignore the very source of his power.
Walter Lippmann

Desire, ask, believe, receive.
Stella Terill Mann

If you desire ease, forsake learning. / If you desire learning, forsake ease.
Siddha Nagarjuna

Experience, as a desire for experience, does not come off. We must not study ourselves while having an experience.
Friedrich Nietzsche

The desire to take medicine is perhaps the greatest feature which distinguishes man from animals.
William Osler

How helpless we are, like netted birds, when we are caught by desire!
Belva Plain

Dwell not upon thy weariness, thy strength shall be according to the measure of thy desire.
Arab Proverb

If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have paradise in a few years.
Bertrand Russell

Drink provokes the desire but takes away the performance.
William Shakespeare

Hereafter in a better world than this,/ I shall desire more love and knowledge of you.
William Shakespeare

There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart's desire. The other is to get it.
George B Shaw

Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.
George B Shaw

Desire is the most important factor in the success of any athlete.
Willie Shoemaker

Boredom: the desire for desires.
Leo Tolstoy

A human being has a natural desire to have more of a good thing than he needs.
Mark Twain

I came to the conclusion many years ago that almost all crime is due to the repressed desire for aesthetic expression.
Evelyn Waugh

Life ought to be a struggle of desire toward adventures whose nobility will fertilize the soul.
Rebecca West

It's the soul's duty to be loyal to its own desires. It must abandon itself to its master passion.
Rebecca West

I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.
E B White

The habit of giving only enhances the desire to give.
Walt Whitman

Seize the moment of excited curiosity on any subject to solve your doubts; for if you let it pass, the desire may never return, and you may remain in ignorance.
William Wirt

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