Quotes About Desire

no man will ever be willing to live a half-life when he has once seen that it is a half-life.

The trouble with us is that we generally want more to make us happy than we deserve, and we are not grateful enough for the many things that are ours to enjoy.

it is always what we want, not what we have, that claims our attention.

Who is the richest of men? asked Socrates. He who is content with the least, for contentment is nature's riches.

But when it comes to human beings, the only type of cause that matters is final cause, the purpose. What a person had in mind. Once you understand what people really want, you can't hate them anymore. You can fear them, but you can't hate them, because you can always find the same desires in your own heart.

As he thought of it, though, he could not imagine what "just living" might actually be. He had never done it in his life. But he wanted to do it anyway.

If desire did not dim the brain, nobody would ever get married, drunk, or fat.

She remembered the story from her childhood, about Adam and Eve in the garden, and the talking snake. Even as a little girl she had said - to the consternation of her family - What kind of idiot was Eve, to believe a snake? But now she understood, for she had heard the voice of the snake and had watched as a wise and powerful man had fallen under its spell. Eat the fruit and you can have the desires of your heart. It's not evil, it's noble and good. You'll be praised for it. And it's delicious.

The ways of love are strange and hard: The love you want is always barred; The love you have you want to change. The ways of love are hard and strange.

I knew her so well that I loved her, or maybe I loved her so well that I knew her. I didn't want to fight her anymore. I wanted to quit. I wanted to go home. So I blew up her planet.

What I want, he said softly, is to stand in this meadow and walk in the light of the sun.

We have discussed your definition, analyzed its ramifications to a reasonable depth, and accept it, said the expendable. Meaning I gave you what you wanted? Ambition and desire are human traits. You gave us what we lacked.

Sometime or other everybody wishes everybody would go away. Sometimes I'll wish you would go away. What I'm telling you now is that even at those times, even if I tell you to go away, you don't have to go away.

Once you realize that power will always end up with the sort of people who crave it, I think that there are worse people who could have it than Peter.

Mine mine mine. That was the curse and power of human beings—that what they saw and loved they had to have. They could share it with other people but only if they conceived of those people as being somehow their own. What we own is ours. What you own should also be ours. In fact, you own nothing, if we want it. Because you are nothing. We are the real people, you are only posing as people in order to try to deprive us of what God means us to have.

it made him want to sing hymns he'd never even heard before

To stop a human being from doing something, you must find a way to make the person stop wanting to do it.

Ah, Vitaly, we all come from Eros. ~Sel Menach

She longed for death now, not because she hadn't loved life, but because death was now unavoidable, and what cannot be shunned must be embraced

They prayed for it, they want it, but when they got it, they complained.

You care. Not the cares of the body. But you have the caring of the soul. It's a different kind of desire, but you all have it, and it never goes away.

Power will always end up with the sort of people who crave it.

But when it comes to human beings, the only type of cause that matters is final cause, the purpose. What a person had in mind. Once you understand what people really want, you can't hate them anymore. You can fear them, but you can't hate them, because you can always find the same desires in your own heart.

You don't understand," he said. "Yes I do." "No you don't. I don't want to beat Peter." "Then what do you want?" "I want him to love me." She had no answer. As far as she knew, Peter didn't love anybody. Ender said nothing more. Just lay there.