|
Desires |
|
| “What you intuitively desire, that is
possible for you.” |
| -- D. H. Lawrence |
|
| "There are two tragedies in life. One is
not to get your heart's desire. The other is to get it." |
| -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950) |
|
| "We do not wish ardently for what we
desire only through reason." |
| -- Rochefoucauld |
|
|
"He who desires, but acts not,
breeds pestilence." |
| -- William
Blake (1757-1827), British poet, artist |
|
| “What is a man but his passion?” |
| -- Robert Penn Warren |
|
| "Passion, though a bad regulator, is a
powerful spring.” |
| -- R.W. Emerson |
|
| “Hope is the belief, more or less strong, that
joy will come; desire is the wish it may come.” |
| -- Sydney Smith |
|
| "He who desires nothing, hopes for nothing, and is afraid of
nothing, cannot be an artist." |
| -- Anton
Pavlovich Chekhov (1860-1904), Russian author, playwright |
|
| "An intense anticipation itself transforms
possibility into reality; our desires being often but precursors of
the things which we are capable of performing." |
| -- Samuel Smiles (1812-1904), |
|
| "Millions long for immortality who do not
know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon." |
| -- Susan Ertz (1894-1985), English writer,
author |
|
| "The greatest wealth is a poverty of
desires." |
| -- Lucius
Annaeus Seneca (4BC?-AD 65), Roman Stoic philosopher, writer |
|
| "Of all the worldly passions, lust is the
most intense. All other worldly passions seem to follow in its
train." |
| -- Buddha (563?-483? BC), [Siddhartha Gautama]
Indian mystic, founder of Buddhism |
|
| "Desire and hope will push us on toward
the future." |
| -- Michel de Montaigne |
|
| "If men could regard the events of their
own lives with more open minds, they would frequently discover that
they did not really desire the things they failed to obtain." |
| -- André Maurois (1885-1967), [Émile Herzog]
French writer |
|
| " The bit of truth behind all this-- one
so eagerly denied-- is that men are not gentle, friendly creatures
wishing for love, who simply defend themselves if they are attacked,
but that a powerful measure of desire for aggression has to be
reckoned as a part of their instinctual endowment." |
| -- Sigmund Freud |
|
| "Desires are designed to be held at bay
until their strength is so formidable that they break their bounds
and run free into new territory. Catch them, reel them in, sequester
them again, but do not overly fetter them. They may be the best of
you." |
| -- Alfred Emerson Unaterra (1952-2002),
American writer |
|
| "Whatsoever that be within us that feels, thinks, desires,
and animates, is something celestial, divine, and, consequently,
imperishable." |
| -- Aristotle (384-322 BC), Greek
philosopher |
|
| "The contemplation of truth and beauty is the proper object
for which we were created, which calls forth the most intense desires of
the soul, and of which it never tires." |
| -- William Hazlitt (1778-1830),
British essayist |
|
| "Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from
the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires." |
| -- Sigmund
Freud (1856-1939), Austrian physician, founder of psychoanalysis |
|
| "Whoever, in middle age, attempts to realize the wishes and
hopes of his early youth, invariably deceives himself. Each ten years of a
man's life has its own fortunes, its own hopes, its own desires." |
| -- Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), German writer, scientist |
|
| “Tis very certain the desire of life prolongs
it.” |
| -- Lord Byron |
|
| The true lover of learning then must his earliest youth, as
far as in him lies, desire all truth. . .He whose desires are drawn toward
knowledge in every form will be absorbed in the pleasures of the soul, and
will hardly feel bodily pleasures-- I mean, if he be a true philosopher
and not a sham one. . .Then how can he who has the magnificence of mind
and is the spectator of all times and all existence, think much of human
life? He cannot." |
| -- Plato (427?-347? BC), Greek
philosopher |
|
| "One must not lose desires. They are
mighty stimulants to creativeness, to love and to long life." |
| -- Alexander A. Bogomoletz, Russian
physiologist |
|
| "A human being is part of a whole, called by us the
"Universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences
himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the
rest--a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a
kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to
affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves
from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all
living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty." |
| -- Albert Einstein (1875-1955),
German-born American theoretical physicist |
|
| "The way to gain a good reputation is to
endeavor to be what you desire to appear." |
| -- Socrates (470?-399 BC), Greek philosopher |
|
| "The judgements of value made by mankind
are immediately determined by their desires for happiness." |
| -- Sigmund Freud |
|
| "The ideal life is in our blood and never
will be still. Sad will be the day for any man when he becomes
contented with the thoughts he is thinking and the deeds he is doing
-- where there is not forever beating at the doors of his soul some
great desire to do something larger, which he knows that he was
meant and made to do." |
| -- Phillips Brooks (1835-93), American
Episcopal bishop |
|
| " For better or worse, we are the
collection and priority of our desires. Everything else is
contrived, whether a senseless interlude, a response to a stimulus,
a purposeful discipline, or similar diversion. If we do not give in
to our truest desires, we will never know who or why we are. The
secret is giving in to the right desires, the ones we know to be
milestones on our personal path to individuation." |
| -- Albert Emerson Unaterra (1952-2002) |
|
|
"Fire
and Ice
Some say the world will end in fire,
some say ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice."
|
| -- Robert
Frost, American poet |
|
