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Desire Quotes

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Desire Quotes

“We desire nothing so much as what we ought not to have.”

Author:Publilius Syrus

“It is true that so far as wealth gives time for ideal ends and exercise to ideal energies, wealth is better than poverty and ought to be chosen. But wealth does this in only a portion of the actual cases. Elsewhere the desire to gain wealth and the fear to lose it are our chief breeders of cowardice and propagators of corruption. There must be thousands of conjunctures in which a wealth-bound man must be a slave, whilst a man for whom poverty has no terrors becomes a freeman.”

Source: The Varieties of Religious Experience

“What ought to be done is neglected, what ought not to be done is done; the desires of unruly, thoughtless people are always increasing.”

People Done Desire Ought Neglect Neglected Unruly

Book:Sacred Books of the East: Including Selections from the Vedic Hymns, Zend-Avesta, Dhammapada, Upanishads, the Koran, and the Life of Buddha

Source: Sacred Books of the East: Including Selections from the Vedic Hymns, Zend-Avesta, Dhammapada, Upanishads, the Koran, and the Life of Buddha

“Generally there is in man a divinity which strives to push him onward and upward. We believe that this power within him is the spirit that comes from God. Man lived before he came to this earth, and he is here now to strive to perfect the spirit within. At sometime in his life, every man is conscious of a desire to come in touch with the Infinite. His spirit reaches out for God. This sense of feeling is universal, and all men ought to be, in deepest truth, engaged in the same great work—the search for and the development of spiritual peace and freedom.”

“I am suspicious without a motive, and jealous without love; although I feel I ought to love since I desire to be loved.”

Feels Desire Ought Motive Jealous Suspicious Without Love

Book:The Spanish Drama. Lope de Vega and Calderon

Source: The Spanish Drama. Lope de Vega and Calderon

“It ought to be the first endeavour of a writer to distinguish nature from custom; or that which is established because it is right, from that which is right only because it is established; that he may neither violate essential principles by a desire of novelty, nor debar himself from the attainment of beauties within his view, by a needless fear of breaking rules which no literary dictator had authority to enact.”

Writing Firsts May Desire Views Principles Ought Essentials Authority Customs Dictator Novelty Attainment Endeavour Breaking Rules Beauty Within

Book:Samuel Johnson: Selected Writings

Source: Samuel Johnson: Selected Writings

“Without effort and change, human life cannot remain good. It is not a finished Utopia that we ought to desire, but a world where imagination and hope are alive and active.”

World Humans Desire Imagination Effort Alive Ought Active Finished Human Life Utopia

Book:Political Ideals

Source: Political Ideals

“Whatever we, as prospective participants unaware of our specific features, would desire society to be like is what, morally speaking, we ought to institute.”

Desire Ought Features Institute Participants

Author:Thomas Pogge

“Vain men delight in telling what Honours have been done them, what great Company they have kept, and the like; by which they plainly confess, that these Honours were more than their Due, and such as their Friends would not believe if they had not been told: Whereas a Man truly proud, thinks the greatest Honours below his Merit, and consequently scorns to boast. I therefore deliver it as a Maxim that whoever desires the Character of a proud Man, ought to conceal his Vanity.”

Source: The Works of Jonathan Swift ...: Containing Interesting and Valuable Papers, Not Hitherto Published ... With Memoir of the Author

“Our continual desire for praise ought to convince us of our mortality, if nothing else will.”

Ifs Desire Ought Praise Convince Mortality Convince Us

Author:Josh Billings

“Our credulity is a part of the imperfection of our natures. It is inherent in us to desire to generalize, when we ought, on the contrary, to guard ourselves very carefully from this tendency.”

Desire Ought Contrary Tendencies Imperfection Inherent Credulity

Author:Napoleon Bonaparte