Desire quotes
4.5K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside desire — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"There is no greater sin than desire, No greater curse than discontent, No greater misfortune than wanting something for oneself. Therefore he who knows that enough is enough will always have enough."
"I have an unsatisfied desire to shoot well with a bow."
"But the only measure that he knows is desire desire for power and so he judges all hearts. Into his heart the thought will not enter that any will refuse it that having the Ring we may seek to destroy it. If we seek this we shall put him out of reckoning."
"Thought, backed by strong desire, has a tendency to transmute itself into its physical equivalent."
"The essence of what I desire is simply this: to sleep away life."
"LADY BRACKNELL Algernon is an extremely, I may almost say an ostentatiously, eligible young man. He has nothing, but he looks everything. What more can one desire?"
"We always strive after what is forbidden, and desire the things refused us."
"Perhaps one of the more noteworthy trends of our time is the occupation of buildings accompanied by the taking of hostages. The perpetrators of these deeds are generally motivated by political grievance, social injustice, and the deeply felt desire to see how they look on TV."
"The tiny, initial clue ... by allowing us to imagine what we do not know, stimulates a desire for knowledge."
"There can be no peace of mind in love, since the advantage one has secured is never anything but a fresh starting-point for future desires."
"When I started out, I didn't have any desire to be an actress or to learn how to act. I just wanted to be famous."
"Man's spirit grows hungry for art in the same way his stomach growls for food."
"Ladies in bunches always filled me with vague apprehension and a firm desire to be elsewhere."
"When we free ourselves of desire, we will know serenity and freedom."
"If desires are not uprooted, sorrows grow again in you."
"Sit Rest Work. Alone with yourself, Never weary. On the edge of the forest Live joyfully, Without desire."
"Do not vainly lament, but do wonder at the rule of transiency and learn from it the emptiness of human life. Do not cherish to unworthy desire that the changeable might become unchanging."
"Truth is always truth, untruth is always untruth. This is what matters, this is right desire."
"Let reason govern desire."
"In history an additional result is commonly produced by human actions beyond that which they aim at and obtain -- that which they immediately recognize and desire. They gratify their own interest; but something further is thereby accomplished, latent in the actions in question, though not present to their consciousness, and not included in their design."
