Desire quotes

Desire

4.5K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.

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Desire quotes (page 53 of 225)

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Desire

"Clean up a pigsty," she commented one evening, "and if the creatures in it still have pig-minds and pig-desires, soon it will be the same old pigsty again."

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Charles Dickens Novelist
Desire

"The Northern onslaught upon slavery was no more than a piece of specious humbug designed to conceal its desire for economic control of the Southern states."

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Cormac McCarthy Novelist, Screenwriter
Desire

"It may be that the life I desire for her no longer even exists, yet I know what she does not. That there is nothing to lose."

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Bertrand Russell Philosopher, Mathematician
Desire

"Without effort and change, human life cannot remain good. It is not a finished Utopia that we ought to desire, but a world where imagination and hope are alive and active."

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Alan Watts Philosopher, Writer
Desire

"For if you know what you want, and will be content with it, you can be trusted. But if you do not know, your desires are limitless and no one can tell how to deal with you. Nothing satisfies an individual incapable of enjoyment."

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Anne Stevenson Poet, Writer
Desire

"Mind led body to the edge of the precipice. They stared in desire at the naked abyss. If you love me, said mind, take that step into silence. If you love me, said body, turn and exist."

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Ansel Adams Photographer
Desire

"If you have enough craft, you've done your homework and you're practiced. You can then make the photograph you desire."

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Aristotle Philosopher
Desire

"If, then, there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake (everything else being desired for the sake of this), and if we do not choose everything for the sake of something else (for at that rate the process would go on to infinity, so that our desire would be empty and vain), clearly this must be the good and the chief good."

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William Blake Poet, Painter
Desire

"Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained; and the restrainer or reason usurps its place & governs the unwilling. And being restrain'd it by degrees becomes passive till it is only the shadow of desire."

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