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Desire Quotes

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Desire Quotes

“The history of society is the history of the inventive labors that man alter man, alter his desires, habits, outlook, relationships both to other men and to physical nature, with which man is in perpetual physical and technological metabolism.”

Men Desire Habit Labor Perpetual Technological Outlook Metabolism

Book:Karl Marx: His Life and Environment

Source: Karl Marx: His Life and Environment

“So that in the first place, I put for a general inclination of all mankind a perpetual and restless desire of Power after power, that ceaseth only in Death. And the cause of this is not always that a man hopes for a more intensive delight than he has already attained to, or that he cannot be content with a moderate power: but because he cannot assure the power and means to live well, which he hath present, without the acquisition of more.”

Men Firsts Wells Mean Desire Causes Mankind Delight Perpetual Restless Inclination Moderates Acquisition Live Well

Author:Thomas Hobbes

“Every culture, if its natural development is not too much affected by political restrictions, experiences a perpetual renewal of the formative urge, and out of that comes an ever growing diversity of creative activity. Every successful piece of work stirs the desire for greater perfection and deeper inspiration; each new form becomes the herald of new possibilities of development.”

Source: Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice

“A better principle than this, that "the majority shall rule," is this other, that justice shall rule. "Justice," says the code of Justinian, "is the constant and perpetual desire to render every man his due.”

Men Desire Justice Principles Majority Constant Dues Every Man Code Perpetual Justinian

Book:Intuitions and Summaries of Thought

Source: Intuitions and Summaries of Thought

“In proportion as the people are accustomed to manage their affairs by their own active intervention, instead of leaving them to the government, their desires will turn to repelling tyranny, rather than to tyrannizing: while in proportion as all ready initiative and direction resides in the government, and individuals habitually feel and act as under its perpetual tutelage, popular institutions develop in them not the desire of freedom, but an unmeasured appetite for place and power.”

“a novelist's chief desire is to be as unconscious as possible. He has to induce in himself a state of perpetual lethargy. He wants life to proceed with the utmost quiet and regularity. He wants to see the same faces, to read the same books, to do the same things day after day, month after month, while he is writing, so that nothing may break the illusion in which he is living - so that nothing may disturb or disquiet the mysterious nosings about, feelings around, darts, dashes, and sudden discoveries of that very shy and illusive spirit, the imagination.”

Source: Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)

“But the desire of obtaining the advantages, and of escaping the burthens, of political society, is a perpetual and inexhaustible source of discord; nor can it reasonably be presumed that the restoration of British freedom was exempt from tumult and faction. The pre-eminence of birth and fortune must have been frequently violated by bold and popular citizens; and the haughty nobles, who complained that they were become the subjects of their own servants, would sometimes regret the reign of an arbitrary monarch.”

Source: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

“. . . this life is a perpetual chequer-work of good and evil, pleasure and pain. When in possession of what we desire, we are only so much the nearer losing it; and when at a distance from it, we live in expectation of enjoying it again.”

Pain Life Is Desire Evil Enjoy Pleasure Losing Expectations Distance Possession This Life Good And Evil Perpetual Pain And Pleasure

Author:Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de Sevigne

“I will have a care of being a slave to myself, for it is a perpetual, a shameful, and the heaviest of all servitudes; and this may be done by moderate desires.”

May Done Care Desire Slave Perpetual Moderates Shameful Servitude

Author:Seneca the Younger