Desire quotes

Desire

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Desire quotes (page 22 of 225)

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Bill Murray Actor, Comedian
Desire

"I'm over the Oscar thing. I feel that if you really want an Oscar, you're in trouble. It's like wanting to be married - you'll take anybody. If you want the Oscar really badly, it becomes a naked desire and ambition. It becomes very unattractive. I've seen it."

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Blaise Pascal Mathematician, Physicist, Philosopher
Desire

"St. Augustine teaches us that there is in each man a Serpent, an Eve, and an Adam. Our senses and natural propensities are the Serpent; the excitable desire is the Eve; and reason is the Adam. Our nature tempts us perpetually; criminal desire is often excited; but sin is not completed till reason consents."

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Alan Watts Philosopher, Writer
Desire

"We are at war between consciousness and nature, between the desire for permanence and the fact of flux. It is ourself against ourselves."

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Albert Camus Philosopher, Writer
Desire

"I was tormented by my desire for a woman ... I thought so much about a woman, about women, about all the ones I had known, about all the circumstances in which I had enjoyed them, that my cell would be filled with their faces and crowded with my desires."

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Andre Gide Novelist
Desire

"One should want only one thing and want it constantly. Then one is sure of getting it. But I desire everything, and consequently get nothing."

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Alicia Keys Singer, Songwriter, Actress
Desire

"The desire to play has always been in me. I remember my first experience at about four or five of really dying to sing and dying to play that came from no one telling me to do so."

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Saint Augustine Theologian, Philosopher
Desire

"It is not by change of place that we can come nearer to Him who is in every place, but by the cultivation of pure desires and virtuous habits."

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Swami Vivekananda Spiritual Leader, Philosopher
Desire

"It is the witness alone that can work without any desire, without any idea of going to heaven, without any idea of blame, without any idea of praise. The witness alone enjoys, and none else."

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Swami Vivekananda Spiritual Leader, Philosopher
Desire

"Renunciation - non-resistance - non-destructiveness - are the ideals to be attained through less and less worldliness, less and less resistance, less and less destructiveness. Keep the ideal in view and work towards it. None can live in the world without resistance, without destruction, without desire. The world has not come to that state yet when the ideal can be realised in society."

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Rumi Poet, Philosopher
Desire

"Paradise is surrounded by what we dislike; the fires of hell are surrounded by what we desire."

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Rumi Poet, Philosopher
Desire

"Whatever posessions and objects of its desires the lower self may obtain, it hangs on to them, refusing to let them go out of greed for more, or out of fear of poverty and need."

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Desire

"What inspires me today is a desire to get closer to an understanding of what my artistic capacities are with the hope of organically sharing my gifts with an audience in the most heightened way I possibly can."

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