Desires - Quotes

A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others. - Ayn Rand

A desire arises in the mind. It is satisfied immediately another comes. In the interval which separates two desires a perfect calm reigns in the mind. It is at this moment freed from all thought, love or hate. Complete peace equally reigns between two mental waves. - Swami Sivananda

A desire scorned and neglected is an enemy lying in wait with bared dagger. - Abraham Miller

A desire to be observed, considered, esteemed, praised, beloved, and admired by his fellows is one of the earliest as well as the keenest dispositions discovered in the heart of man. - John Adams

All human activity is prompted by desire. - Bertrand Russell

All movement, of every creature, comes from the desire after something better. - Charles Buxton

Before we passionately desire a thing, we should examine the happiness of its possessor. - Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Concentrate all your thoughts on the great desire in your life. This concentration must be continuous, unceasing – every minute; every hour; every day; every week. - Charles E. Popplestone

Desire animates the world. It is present in the baby crying for milk, the girl struggling to solve a math problem, the woman running to meet her lover, and later deciding to have children, and the old woman, hunched over her walker, moving down the hall of the nursing home at a glacial pace to pick up her mail. Banish desire from the world, and you get a world of frozen beings who have no reason to live and no reason to die. - William Braxton Irvine

Desire builds new victory out of temporary defeat. - Unknown

Desire is a teacher: When we immerse ourselves in it without guilt, shame, or clinging, it can show us something special about our own minds that allows us to embrace life fully. - Mark Epstein

Desire is the creator; desire is the destroyer. - Hari Da Baba

Desire is the ingredient that changes the hot water of mediocrity to the steam of outstanding success. - Zig Ziglar 

Desire is the source of our most noble aspirations and our deepest sorrows. The pleasure and the pain go together; indeed, they emanate from the same region in our hearts. We cannot live without the yearning, and yet the yearning sets us up for disappointment – sometimes deep and devastating disappointment. - John Eldredge

Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything. - Napoleon Hill

Desire is this absurdity that holds open the infinity of possibility. Ever optimistic, ever resourceful, desire tells us what it sees as it speeds ahead on its divine wings. What we cannot see, desire describes, and then it goads us to travel on until we have given birth to Joy. - Wendy Farley

Desire is neither good nor bad. It initiates greatness as well as undermining it. Desire is like water for it seeks the lowest point in man. Control it like a dam controls a mighty river and you can harness enough power to change the world. - Stephen Maniscalco

Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything. - Napoleon Hill

Desire is the very essence of man. - Benedict de Spinoza

Desire is what leads you through life until the time comes when you desire a higher life. So do not be ashamed that you want so much, yet at the same time do not fool yourself into thinking that what you want today will be enough tomorrow. - Deepak Chopra

Desire, like the atom, is explosive with creative force. - Paul Vernon Buser

Desire: the starting point of all achievement. - Napoleon Hill

Desires are central to the soul's unfolding and should not be dismissed before giving them careful attention. - Thomas Moore

Do not desire what you can't acquire. - Ken Alstad

Do not indulge in dreams of having what you have not, but reckon up the chief of the blessings you do possess, and then thankfully remember how you would crave for them if they were not yours. - Marcus Aurelius

Everything that is in agreement with our personal desires seems true; everything that is not puts us in a rage. - Andre Maurois

Forbid us something, and that thing we desire; but press it on us hard, and we will flee. - Geoffrey Chaucer

He is fortunate who wants the things he knows he can have. - Lewis F. Korns

He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence. - William Blake

He who destroyed craving has overcome all sorrow. Conquer your desires or they will conquer you. - Unknown

How is the anxious soul of man befool'd in his desire, that thinks a hectic fever may be cool'd in flames of fire? - Francis Quarles

I see nothing wrong with the human trait to desire. In fact, I consider it integral to our success mechanism. Becoming attached to what we desire is what causes the trouble. If you must have it in order to be happy, then you are denying the happiness of the here and now. - Peter Mcwilliams

If men could regard the events of their lives with more open minds, they would frequently discover that they did not really desire the things they failed to obtain. - Andre Maurois

Ignore what a man desires and you ignore the very source of his power. - Walter Lippmann 

In all your desires, let reason go before you, and do not set your hopes beyond the bounds of probability; so shall success attend all your undertakings, and your heart will not be vexed with disappointments. - Unknown

In the end there is no desire so deep as the simple desire for companionship. - Graham Greene

It is not poverty which produces sorrow, but desire. - Epictetus

It is of the nature of desire not to be satisfied, and most men live only for the gratification of it. - Aristotle

It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them. How can we ever be satisfied without them until our feelings are deadened? - George Eliot 

It sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents. - Eric Hoffer

It will not do, my friend, to grant an easy indulgence to natural appetite and desire, for they ever seek to be our masters. - T. S. Arthur

Man is the only animal whose desires increase as they are fed; the only animal that is never satisfied. - Henry George

Man's many desires are like the small metal coins he carries about in his pocket. The more he has the more they weight him down. - Satya Sai Baba

Many a talented individual failed because they lacked desire. Many victories have been snatched by the underdog because they wanted it more. So if you desire ‘intensely’ and you act upon it, then everything stands within your reach. - Unknown

Men go to far greater lengths to avoid what they fear than to obtain what they desire. - Dan Brown

Men quickly find a theory that adapts itself to their desires. - Lewis F. Korns

Naked I seek the camp of those who desire nothing. - Horace

Natural desires are within bounds; but unnatural lust is infinite. - Benjamin Whichcote

Nothing stops the man who desires to achieve. Every obstacle is simply a course to develop his achievement muscle. It’s a strengthening of his powers of accomplishment. - Eric Butterworth

Our desires cut across one another, and in this confused existence it is rare for happiness to coincide with the desire that clamoured for it. - Marcel Proust

Our desires always disappoint us; for though we meet with something that gives us satisfaction, yet it never thoroughly answers our expectation. - Elbert Hubbard

Our Desires snort and press forward like giddy stallions, but our Means creep sulkily along like snails. - Abraham Miller

People are distracted by objects of desire, and afterwards repent of the lust they've indulged, because they have indulged with a phantom and are left even farther from Reality than before. Your desire for the illusory is a wing, by means of which a seeker might ascend to Reality. When you have indulged a lust, your wing drops off; you become lame and that fantasy flees. Preserve the wing and don't indulge such lust, so that the wing of desire may bear you to Paradise. People fancy they are enjoying themselves, but they are really tearing out their wings for the sake of an illusion. - Jalaluddin Rumi

Plunge into the world, and then, after a time, when you have suffered and enjoyed all that is in it, will renunciation come; then will calmness come. So, fulfil your desire for power and everything else, and after you have fulfilled the desire, will come the time when you will know that they are all very little things; but until you have fulfilled this desire, until you have passed through that activity, it is impossible for you to come to the state of calmness, serenity, and self-surrender. - Vivekananda

Some desire is necessary to keep life in motion, and he whose real wants are supplied must admit those of fancy. - Samuel Johnson

That's the funny thing about knowing you can't have something. It makes you desperate. - Stephenie Meyer

The central fire is desire, and all the powers of our being are given us to see, to fight for, and to win the object of our desire. Quench that fire and man turns to ashes. - Basil W. Maturin

The desire that is satisfied is not a great desire, nor has the shoulder used all its might that an unbreakable gate has never strained. - William Butler Yeats

The intensity of your desire governs the power with which the force is directed. - John McDonald

The natural wants are few, and easily gratified: it is only those which are artificial that perplex us by their multiplicity. - Christian Nestell Bovee

The starting point of all achievement is desire. Keep this constantly in mind. Weak desires bring weak results, just as small amount of fire makes a small amount of heat. - Napoleon Hill

The strongest of all psychic forces in the world is unsatisfied desire. - John Cowper Powys

The very urge to get rid of desire is still desire, is it not? - Jiddu Krishnamurti

There are two tragedies in life. One is not get your heart’s desire. The other is to get it. - George Bernard Shaw

There is in every one of us, even those who seem to be most moderate, a type of desire that is terrible, wild, and lawless. - Plato

There is no fulfilment that is not made sweeter for the prolonging of desire. - Jacqueline Carey

Things desired are oftentimes of less value than our present possessions. - Edward Counsel

Those who restrain desire do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained. - William Blake

'Tis easier to suppress the first Desire, than to satisfy all that follow it. - Benjamin Franklin

'Tis much easier to suppress a first desire, than to satisfy all those that follow it. - Francois de La Rochefoucauld

To be desired by those who are themselves highly desirable is in itself an aphrodisiac. - Tobsha Learner

To burn with desire and keep quiet about it is the greatest punishment we can bring on ourselves. - Federico García Lorca

We are desire. It is the essence of the human soul, the secret of our existence. Absolutely nothing of human greatness is ever accomplished without it. Not a symphony has been written, a mountain climbed, an injustice fought, or a love sustained apart from desire. Desire fuels our search for the life we prize. Our desire, if we will listen to it, will save us from committing soul-suicide, the sacrifice of our hearts on the altar of ‘getting by.’ The same old thing is not enough. It never will be. - John Eldredge

We cannot be free of nagging desires through suppression. This is like trying to keep a rubber boat beneath the water. But we remove compulsive desires altogether by understanding their nature. - Vernon Howard

We do not succeed in changing things according to our desire, but gradually our desire changes. - Marcel Proust

We should not desire the impossible. - Leonardo da Vinci

We trifle when we assign limits to our desires, since nature hath set none. - Christian Bovee

When it comes to desiring, we are all experts. If there were an Olympics of desiring, we would all make the team. - William Braxton Irvine

When the desire is too much to bear, we often bury it beneath frenzied thoughts and activities or escape it by dulling our immediate consciousness of living. It is possible to run away from the desire for years, even decades, at a time, but we cannot eradicate it entirely. It keeps touching us in little glimpses and hints in our dreams, our hopes, our unguarded moments. - Gerald G. May

When we have the means to pay for what we desire, what we get is not so much what is best, as what is costliest. - Christian Nestell Bovee

Where perception is, there also are pain and pleasure, and where these are, there, of necessity, is desire. - Aristotle

While we desire, we do not enjoy; and with enjoyment desire ceases. - William Hazlitt

You are currently experiencing desire; otherwise, you wouldn't be reading these words. Even if you are reading them at the behest of someone else, you are motivated by your desire to please that person. And if you stop reading, you will not do so because you have stopped desiring but because your desires have changed. - William Braxton Irvine

You had better return home and make a net, than go down to the river and desire to get the fishes. - Chinese Proverb

On another note ...

Desires are egotistic cravings. - Shui-ch'ing Tzu

He who desires is always poor. - Claudius

To have more, desire less. - Unknown