Desire Quotes - Page 21

• Some persons hold that, while it is proper for the lawgiver to encourage and exhort men to virtue on moral grounds, in the expectation that those who have had a virtuous moral upbringing will respond, yet he is bound to impose chastisement and penalties on the disobedient and ill-conditioned, and to banish the incorrigible out of the state altogether. For (they argue) although the virtuous man, who guides his life by moral ideals, will be obedient to reason, the base, whose desires are fixed on pleasure, must be chastised by pain, like a beast of burden.

  Aristotle

  Pain, Men, Law

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• Having fallen from the eternal, the Evil One's desires are endless, insatiable. Having fallen from pure Being, he is driven by the desire to possess, to fill his emptiness. But the problem is insoluble, always. He is compelled to have and to hold, to possess and consume, and nothing else. All he takes, he destroys.

  Denis de Rougemont

  Evil, Investing, Emptiness

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• The more I think about the human suffering in our world and my desire to offer a healing response, the more I realize how crucial it is not to allow myself to become paralyzed by feelings of helplessness and guilt. More important than ever is to be very faithful to my vocation to do well the few things I am called to do and hold on to the joy and peace they bring me. I must resist the temptation to let the forces of darkness pull me into despair and make me one more of their many victims.

  Henri Nouwen

  Healing, Thinking, Our World

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• I mean, that's at least in part why I ingested chemical waste - it was a kind of desire to abbreviate myself. To present the CliffNotes of the emotional me, as opposed to the twelve-column read.

  Carrie Fisher

  Mean, Emotional, Addiction

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• [this element], the seat of the appetites and of desire in general, does in a sense participate in principle, as being amenable and obedient to it

  Aristotle

  Soul, Principles, Doe

  Aristotle (1996). “The Nicomachean Ethics”, p.24, Wordsworth Editions

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• The virtue of a faculty is related to the special function which that faculty performs. Now there are three elements in the soul which control action and the attainment of truth: namely, Sensation, Intellect, and Desire. Of these, Sensation never originates action, as is shown by the fact that animals have sensation but are not capable of action.

  Aristotle

  Animal, Soul, Special

  Aristotle (1996). “The Nicomachean Ethics”, p.146, Wordsworth Editions

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• There is one thing in the world more wicked than the desire to command, and that is the will to obey.

  William Kingdon Clifford

  Thinking, Wicked, World

  William Kingdon Clifford, Leslie Stephen, Frederick Pollock (2011). “Lectures and Essays”, p.35, Cambridge University Press

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• Theres something in human nature that says we need to have at least one symbolic place where chaos and dark desires can live.

  Andrew Pyper

  Dark, Needs, Chaos

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• the greater part of the suffering in the world is caused not by wicked intents and hard hearts, but by the careless desire to shirk unpleasant facts, and the soft-heartedness that will assuage momentary pain at the price of making a life-long cripple, either mentally, morally, or physically.

  Marah Ellis Ryan

  Pain, Heart, Long

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• Desire is boundless, and boundlessness frightens us.

  Martha Roth

  Sex, Boundless

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• From the outset of the war, the Canadian people have clearly shown that it is their desire to help in every way to make Canadas war effort as effective as possible.

  William Lyon Mackenzie King

  War, People, Effort

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• 'A reality shaped around your own desires' - there is something sociopathic in that ambition.

  Zadie Smith

  Ambition, Reality

  "Feel Free: Essays". Book by Zadie Smith, January 29, 2018.

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• I feel... an ardent desire to see knowledge so disseminated through the mass of mankind that it may, at length, reach even the extremes of society: beggars and kings.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Kings, May, Mass

  B. L. Rayner, Thomas Jefferson (1834). “Life of Thomas Jefferson: with selections from the most valuable portions of his voluminious and unrivalled private correspondence : with portrait”, p.292

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• It’s hard to accept yourself as someone you don’t desire / As someone you don’t want to be.

  Laura Marling

  Want, Accepting Yourself, Hard

  Song: Rambling Man, Album: I Speak Because I Can, 2010

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• A man vows, and yet will not east away the means of breaking his vow. Is it that he distinctly means to break it? Not at all; but the desires which tend to break it are at work in him dimly, and make their way into his imagination, and relax his muscles in the very moments when he is telling himself over again the reasons for his vow.

  George Eliot

  Mean, Men, Imagination

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• Ours is one continual struggle against a degradation sought to be inflicted upon us by the Europeans, who desire to degrade us to the level of the raw Kaffir whose occupation is hunting, and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with and, then, pass his life in indolence and nakedness.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Struggle, Ambition, Hunting

  Mahatma Gandhi (1958). “Collected Works”

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• An honest self-portrait is extremely rare because a man who has reached the degree of self-consciousness presupposed by the desire to paint his own portrait has almost always also developed an ego-consciousness which paints himself painting himself, and introduces artificial highlights and dramatic shadows.

  W. H. Auden

  Men, Self, Ego

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• Realism gives me the impression of a mistake. Violence alone escapes the feeling of poverty of those realistic experiences. Only death and desire have the force that oppresses, that takes one's breath away. Only the extremism of desire and death enable one to attain the truth.

  Georges Bataille

  Mistake, Giving, Feelings

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• Though the immediate impression of rebellion may obscure the fact, the task of authentic literature is nevertheless only conceivable in terms of a desire for fundamental communication with the reader.

  Georges Bataille

  Communication, Tasks, Fundamentals

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• Just as a man does not desire food until he is hungry, so does he not desire the salvation of Christ until he knows why he needs Christ.

  Ezra Taft Benson

  Men, Doe, Needs

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• When God works in us, the will, being changed and sweetly breathed upon by the Spirit of God, desires and acts, not from compulsion, but responsively.

  Martin Luther

  Spirit, Changed, Compulsion

  Martin Luther (1823). “Martin Luther on the Bondage of the Will: Written in Answer to the Diatribe of Erasmus on Free-will. First Pub. in the Year of Our Lord 1525”, p.60

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• Yet, every now and then, there would pass a young girl, slender, fair and desirable, arousing in young men a not ignoble desire to possess her, and stirring in old men regrets for ecstasy not seized and now forever past.

  Anatole France

  Girl, Regret, Past

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• While my chosen form of story-writing is obviously a special and perhaps a narrow one, it is none the less a persistent and permanent type of expression, as old as literature itself. There will always be a certain small percentage of persons who feel a burning curiosity about unknown outer space, and a burning desire to escape from the prison-house of the known and the real into those enchanted lands of incredible adventure and infinite possibilities which dreams open up to us, and which things like deep woods, fantastic urban towers, and flaming sunsets momentarily suggest.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Dream, Real, Writing

  H.P. Lovecraft, Digital Papyrus (2014). “H.P. Lovecraft: The Ultimate Collection (160 Works Including Early Writings, Fiction, Collaborations, Poetry, Essays & Bonus Audiobook Links)”, p.1753, eBookIt.com

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• I never get to the end of mortifying sin because sin in my heart, where it's still marauding even though it's no longer dominant, sin in my heart is constantly expressing itself in new disorderly desires.

  J. I. Packer

  Heart, Sin, Ends

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• The fulfillment of every desire only reveals its inadequacy.

  Swami Prabhavananda

  Fulfillment, Inadequacy

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