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Desire Quotes

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Desire Quotes

“No, I have no desire for riches. Honest poverty and a conscience, torpid through virtuous inaction, are more to me than corner lots and praise.”

Desire Poverty Honest Conscience Praise Prosperity Corners Riches Virtuous Inaction

Book:Tales, Speeches, Essays, and Sketches

Source: Tales, Speeches, Essays, and Sketches

“I can at once become happy anywhere, for he is happy who has found himself a happy lot. In a word, happiness lies all in the functions of reason, in warrantable desires and virtuous practice.”

I Can Reason Happiness Lying Desire Found Practice Function Virtuous

Book:Meditations

Source: Meditations

“Men that are free, well-born, well-bred, and conversant in honest companies, have naturally an instinct and spur that prompteth them unto virtuous actions, and withdraws them from vice, which is called honour. Those same men, when by base subjection and constraint they are brought under and kept down, turn aside from that noble disposition, by which they formerly were inclined to virtue, to shake off and break that bond of servitude, wherein they are so tyrannously enslaved; for it is agreeable with the nature of man to long after things forbidden, and to desire what is denied us.”

“If thou desire to see thy child virtuous, let him not see his father's vices: thou canst not rebuke that in them, that they behold practised in thee; till reason be ripe, examples direct more than precepts: such as thy behaviour is before thy children's faces, such commonly is theirs behind their parents' backs.”

Ifs Children Reason Faces Desire Father Parent Behinds Example Direct Vices Thee Virtuous Behaviour Ripe Rebuke

Author:Francis Quarles

“It is not by change of place that we can come nearer to Him who is in every place, but by the cultivation of pure desires and virtuous habits.”

Desire Habit Pure Virtuous Cultivation

Book:On Christian Doctrine

Source: On Christian Doctrine

“Philosophers are not honest enough in their work, although they make a lot of virtuous noise when the problem of truthfulness is touched even remotely. They all pose as if they had discovered and reached their real opinions through the self-development of a cold, pure, divinely unconcerned dialectic...; while at bottom it is an assumption, a hunch, indeed a kind of "inspiration" most often a desire of the heart that has been filtered and made abstract that they defend with reasons they have sought after the fact.”

“Every virtuous woman desires a husband to whom she can look for guidance and protection through this world. God has placed this desire in woman's nature. It should be respected by the stronger sex. Any man who takes advantage of this, and humbles a daughter of Eve to rob her of her virtue, and cast her off dishonored and defiled, is her destroyer, and is responsible to God for the deed.”

Men World Should Looks Desire Sex Virtue This World Husband Daughter Advantage Stronger Responsible Casts Deeds Protection Guidance Virtuous Destroyers Virtuous Woman

Book:Journal of Discourses

Source: Journal of Discourses

“To one who has led a virtuous life, to sin is the easiest thing in the world. No experience of unpleasant consequences grits that smooth sliding fall, no recollection of disillusionment blurs that pure desire.”

World Desire Fall Sin Pure Consequence Virtuous Smooth Recollection Grit Disillusionment Blur Virtuous Life

Book:Selected stories of Sylvia Townsend Warner

Source: Selected stories of Sylvia Townsend Warner

“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.”