"There are few things we should keenly desire if we really knew what we wanted."
Read quote
3 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 71 of 225)
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"Men never desire anything very eagerly which they desire only by the dictates of reason."
Read quote
3 likes
"We should desire very few things passionately if we did but perfectly know the nature of the things we desire."
Read quote
3 likes
"The contempt of riches in philosophers was only a hidden desire to avenge their merit upon the injustice of fortune, by despising the very goods of which fortune had deprived them; it was a secret to guard themselves against the degradation of poverty, it was a back way by which to arrive at that distinction which they could not gain by riches."
Read quote
3 likes
"The desire which urges us to deserve praise strengthens our good qualities, and praise given to wit, valour, and beauty, tends to increase them."
Read quote
3 likes
"When you love a teacher very much - as I did Olivier Messiaen - you do have to leave them.One of the things that separated me from Messiaen was my desire to create works with a big structure, a large symphonic sweep. His forms are wonderful, glorious mosaics, but again, I prefer narrative."
Read quote
3 likes
"The dull mind, once arriving at an inference that flatters the desire, is rarely able to retain the impression that the notion from which the inference started was purely problematic."
Read quote
3 likes
"Her future, she thought, was likely to be worse than her past, for after her years of contented renunciation, she had slipped back into desire and longing; she found joyless days of distasteful occupation harder and harder; she found the image of the intense and varied life she yearned for, and despaired of, becoming more and more importunate."
Read quote
3 likes
"Human longings are perversely obstinate; and to the man whose mouth is watering for a peach, it is of no use to offer the largest vegetable marrow."
Read quote
3 likes
"Let thy chief terror be of thine own soul: There, 'mid the throng of hurrying desires That trample o'er the dead to seize their spoil, Lurks vengeance, footless, irresistible As exhaltations laden with slow death, And o'er the fairest troop of captured joys Breathes pallid pestilence."
Read quote
3 likes
"But how little we know what would make paradise for our neighbours! We judge from our own desires, and our neighbours themselves are not always open enough even to throw out a hint of theirs."
Read quote
3 likes
"The relationship between looking and desire is really about the promise of revelation - the hope that the subject of your gaze will reveal something to you - whether or not that revelation is prurient. And that's really what eroticism is - the anticipation of disclosure."
Read quote
3 likes
"In thy discourse, if thou desire to please; All such is courteous, useful, new, or wittie: Usefulness comes by labour, wit byease; Courtesie grows in court; news in the citie."
Read quote
3 likes
"A small heart hath small desires."
Read quote
3 likes
"Hee begins to die, that quits his desires."
Read quote
3 likes
"People have to have a desire within themselves to know who they are and the reason why they are in this body."
Read quote
3 likes
"No Church-yard is so handsom, that a man would desire straight to bee buried there. [No churchyard is so handsome that a man would desire straight to be buried there.]"
Read quote
3 likes
"We are not isolationists except in so far as we seek to isolate ourselves completely from war. Yet we must remember that so long as war exists on earth there will be some danger that even the Nation which most ardently desires peace may be drawn into war."
Read quote
3 likes
"Boredom is desire seeking desire."
Read quote
3 likes
"Meanwhile spring arrived. My old dejection passed away and gave place to the unrest which spring brings with it, full of dreams and vague hopes and desires."
Read quote
3 likes