- Whatsoever misfortunes there are
- Here in this world or in the next,
- They all have their root in Ignorance
- And in the accumulation of Longing and Desire.
GAUTAMA BUDDHA, Iti-Vuttaka
Natural desires are within bounds; but unnatural lust is infinite.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE, Moral and Religious Aphorisms
- How is the anxious soul of man befool'd in his desire,
- That thinks an hectic fever may be cool'd in flames of fire?
Wants, like birds, flutter till they have found a place of rest.
- That is the worst moment, when you feel you have lost
- The desires for all that was most desirable,
- Before you are contented with what you can desire;
- Before you know what is left to be desired;
- And you go on wishing that you could desire
- What desire has left behind. But you cannot understand.
- How could you understand what it is to feel old?
T. S. ELIOT, The Cocktail Party
- Through their proper knowledge
- Creatures of Discernment forsake that Desire
- Through which lustful creatures
- Go to misfortune.
GAUTAMA BUDDHA, Iti-Vuttaka
- My wants are many, and, if told,
- Would muster many a score;
- And were each wish a mint of gold,
- I still would want for more.
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, The Quincy Patriot, Sep. 25, 1841
You had better return home and make a net, than go down to the river and desire to get the fishes.
Desire's wind blasts the thorntree but after it becomes from a bramblebush to be a rose upon the rood of time.
The grave is sooner cloy'd than men's desire.
- By the destruction of his Cravings,
- This monk hath extinguished Hunger, and hath attained Nirvana.
GAUTAMA BUDDHA, Iti-Vuttaka
There is no natural desire of what is unnatural.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE, Moral and Religious Aphorisms
If wishes were fishes we'd all cast nets.
- To the soul's desires
- The body listens
- What the flesh requires
- Keeps the heart imprisoned
DEPECHE MODE, "When the Body Speaks"
Longing alone is singer to the lute.
EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY, "Sonnet II"
Human psychology has a near universal tendency to let belief be coloured by desire.
RICHARD DAWKINS, The God Delusion
Women believe -- or at least often pretend to believe -- that all our tenderness for them springs from desire; that we love them when we have not for a time enjoyed them, and dismiss them when we are sated, or to express it more precisely, exhausted. There is no truth in this idea, though it may be made to appear true. When we are rigid with desire, we are apt to pretend a great tenderness in the hope of satisfying that desire; but at no other time are we in fact so liable to treat women brutally, and so unlikely to feel any deep emotion but one.
GENE WOLFE, The Claw of the Conciliator
Paired opposites define your longings and those longings imprison you.
FRANK HERBERT, Chapterhouse: Dune
- Disdain to warm thee at lust's smoky fires,
- Scorn, scorn to feed on thy old bloat desires:
- Come, come, my soul, hoist up thy higher sails,
- The wind blows fair; shall we still creep like snails,
- That glide their ways with their own native slimes?
How long can you suppress your own desires? Until you understand that in doing so will destroy yourself.
IVAN KLIMA, Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light
- The strong desires of man's insatiate breast may stand possess'd
- Of all that earth can give; but earth can give no rest.
- She's the candle burnin' in my room
- Yeah, I'm like the needle
- The needle and spoon
- Over the counter, with a shotgun
- Pretty soon, everybody's got one
- I'm in a fever, when I'm beside her
- Desire
- Desire
- The busy mint
- Of our laborious thoughts is ever going,
- And coining new desires; desires not knowing
- Where next to pitch; but, like the boundless ocean,
- Gain, and gain ground, and grow more strong by motion.
- I surrender all control
- To the desire that consumes me whole
- And leads me by the hand to infinity
- That lies in wait at the heart of me
DEPECHE MODE, "Higher Love"
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