"Obviously, raw talent is important, but the difference-maker between first and the rest of the pack is usually desire."
Read quote
4 likes
Desire quotes
Desire
4.5K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Topics related to Desire
Browse quotes that often appear alongside desire — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Desire quotes (page 55 of 225)
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"Strong, deeply rooted desire is the starting point of all achievement. Just as the electron is the last unit of matter discernible to the scientist. DESIRE is the seed of all achievement; the starting place, back of which there is nothing, or at least there is nothing of which we have any knowledge."
Read quote
4 likes
"Nothing was ever created by a human being that was not first created in the imagination through desire and then transformed into reality through concentration."
Read quote
4 likes
"People refuse to take chances in business, because they fear the criticism which may follow if they fail. The fear of criticism, in such cases is stronger than the DESIRE for success."
Read quote
4 likes
"A fine world in which man reproaches woman with fulfilling his heart's desire!"
Read quote
4 likes
"I believe in the goodness of fellow human beings. We have a true desire for greatness and genuine good intention to be helpful to others. That's enough. Change is possible."
Read quote
4 likes
"I am a New Yorker. I like New York. And I like cities. And it's not my desire to make New York more suburban. I would personally just like to vet each person."
Read quote
4 likes
"One who, while seeking happiness, oppresses with violence other living beings who also desire happinesss, will not find happiness hereafter."
Read quote
4 likes
"There's not much you can do about time - it just keeps on passing. But experience? Don't tell me that. I'm not proud of it, but I don't have any sexual desire. And what sort of experience can a writer have if she doesn't feel passion? It'd be like a chef without an appetite."
Read quote
4 likes
"We assert then that nothing has been accomplished without interest on the part of the actors; and — if interest be called passion, inasmuch as the whole individuality, to the neglect of all other actual or possible interests and claims, is devoted to an object with every fibre of volition, concentrating all its desires and powers upon it — we may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the World has been accomplished without passion."
Read quote
4 likes
"Before we passionately desire a thing, we should examine the happiness of its possessor."
Read quote
4 likes
"Nothing prevents one from appearing natural as the desire to appear natural."
Read quote
4 likes
"We should scarcely desire things ardently if we were perfectly acquainted with what we desire."
Read quote
4 likes
"We label judges with having the meanest motives, and yet we desire that our reputation and fame should depend upon the judgment of men, who are all, either from their jealousy or preoccupation or want of intelligence, opposed to us - and yet despite their bias, just for the sake of making these men decide in our favor, we peril in so many ways both our peace and our life."
Read quote
4 likes
"I had a strong desire to write and some free time."
Read quote
4 likes
"A true artist is driven by the never-ending desire to create."
Read quote
4 likes
"It happened, as many things do, imperceptibly, in many ways at once. I date it - the slow crumbling of my faith, the pulverization of my fortress - from the time, about a year after I had begun to preach, when I began to read again. I justified this desire by the fact that I was still in school, and I began, fatally, with Dostoyevsky."
Read quote
4 likes
"O painter skilled in anatomy, beware lest the undue prominence of the bones, sinews and muscles cause you to become a wooden painter from the desire to make your nude figures reveal all."
Read quote
4 likes
"One loves ultimately one's desires, not the thing desired."
Read quote
4 likes
"Existence alone had never been enough for him; he had always wanted more. Perhaps it was only from the force of his desires that he had regarded himself as a man to whom more was permitted than to others."
Read quote
4 likes