Home / Topics / Desire Quotes

Desire Quotes

Browse 12306 quotes about Desire.

Desire Quotes

“One essential to success is that your desire be an all-obsessing one, your thoughts and aim be coordinated, and your energy be concentrated and applied without letup.”

Desire Energy Essentials Aim Obsessing

Book:Mindset StackingTM Inspirational Journal VolumeSS02

Source: Mindset StackingTM Inspirational Journal VolumeSS02

“aim, n. The task we set our wishes to.”

Desire Wish Tasks Aim

Book:Delphi Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated)

Source: Delphi Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated)

“If sophistication is a matter of being in control of our primary reactions, we may now be sophisticated. At least we shall be fairly confident of ourselves and may, with any luck, be confident of others. Our object will be to enjoy our selves. But to make sure that our names are permanently on the cast list, it will be advisable to be of interest to others. This aim must never be confused with the desire to be popular.”

Ifs May Self Matter Desire Names Enjoy Interest Objects Aim Luck Casts Lists Reactions Primaries Confused Sophisticated Sophistication Be Confident Advisable

Author:Quentin Crisp

“The First thing that strikes a traveler in the United States is the innumerable multitude of those who seek to emerge from their original condition; and the second is the rarity of lofty ambition to be observed in the midst of the universally ambitious stir of society. No Americans are devoid of a yearning desire to rise, but hardly any appear to entertain hopes of great magnitude or to pursue very lofty aims. All are constantly seeking to acquire property, power, and reputation.”

“Everyone wants rather to be pleasing to women and that desire is not altogether, though it is very largely, a manifestation of vanity. But one cannot aim to be pleasing to women any more than one can aim to have taste, or beauty of expression, or happiness; for these things are not specific aims which one may learn to attain; they are descriptions of the adequacy of one's living. To try to be happy is to try to build a machine with no other specification than that it shall run noiselessly.”

Want Trying May Running Desire Expression Taste Machines Aim Vanity Manifestation Description Specifications Adequacy Trying To Be Happy

Author:J. Robert Oppenheimer

“The modern world is reversing the old virtues of authority. They aimed deliberately to make men unworldly. They did not aim to found society on a full use of the earth's resources; they did not aim to use the whole nature of man; they did not intend him to think out the full expression of his desires. Democracy is a turning point upon those ideals in a pursuit, at first unconsciously, of the richest life that men can devise for themselves.”

Thinking Men World Firsts Whole Use Earth Desire Found Virtue Democracy Modern Expression Authority Resources Ideals Aim Pursuit Modern World Turning Points Nature Of Man

Author:Walter Lippmann

“The error of the ignorant goes so far as to say that God's power is insufficient, because he has given to this Universe the properties which they imagine cause these great evils, and which do not help all evil-disposed persons to obtain the evil which they seek, and to bring their evil souls to the aim of their desires, though these, as we have shown, are really without limit.”

Persons Soul Helping Desire Universe Evil Given Causes Imagine Limits Aim Property Errors Ignorant Insufficient

Book:The Guide for the Perplexed

Source: The Guide for the Perplexed

“We should aim rather at leveling down our desires than leveling up our means.”

Should Mean Desire Aim

Author:Aristotle

“Never yet did there exist a full faith in the Divine Word (by whom light as well as immortality was brought into the world) which did not expand the intellect, while it purified the heart--which did not multiply the aims and objects of the understanding, while it fixed and simplified those of the desires and passions.”

World Wells Heart Light Desire Faith Passion Understanding Objects Divine Aim Intellect Immortality Fixed

Book:The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Poetry, Plays, Literary Essays, Lectures, Autobiography and Letters (Classic Illustrated Edition): The Entire Opus of the English poet, literary critic and philosopher, including The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan, Christabel, Lyrical Ballads, Conversation Poems and Biographia Literaria

Source: The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Poetry, Plays, Literary Essays, Lectures, Autobiography and Letters (Classic Illustrated Edition): The Entire Opus of the English poet, literary critic and philosopher, including The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan, Christabel, Lyrical Ballads, Conversation Poems and Biographia Literaria

“An improper art aims at exciting in the way of comedy the feeling of desire but the feeling which is proper to comic art is the feeling of joy.”

Way Art Feelings Joy Desire Comedy Art Is Exciting Aim Comic Aesthetics Comic Art

Book:Occasional, Critical, and Political Writing

Source: Occasional, Critical, and Political Writing

“Here is one of the fundamental defects of American fiction--perhaps the one character that sets it off sharply from all other known kinds of contemporary fiction. It habitually exhibits, not a man of delicate organization in revolt against the inexplicable tragedy of existence, but a man of low sensibilities and elemental desires yielding himself gladly to his environment, and so achieving what, under a third-rate civilization, passes for success. To get on: this is the aim. To weigh and reflect, to doubt and rebel: this is the thing to be avoided.”

Source: H.L. Mencken: Prejudices: First, Second, and Third Series