Quotes About Desire
You've said nothing, of course, and I ask nothing," he was saying; "but you know that friendship's not what I want: that there's only one happiness in life for me, that word that you dislike so…yes, love!…
~ Leo Tolstoy
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Anna had been preparing herself for this meeting, had thought what she would say to him, but she did not succeed in saying anything of it; his passion mastered her. She tried to calm him, to calm herself, but it was too late. His feeling infected her. Her lips trembled so that for a long while she could say nothing.
~ Leo Tolstoy
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I killed the wife when I first tasted sensual joys without love, and then it was that I killed my wife.
~ Leo Tolstoy
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Yes, I suppose so," answered Anna, as though wondering at the boldness of his question; but the irrepressible, quivering brilliance of her eyes and her smile set him on fire as she said it.
~ Leo Tolstoy
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Here it is. Let's say you're married, you love your wife, but you're attracted by another woman.' 'Excuse me, but I absolutely cannot understand how after eating my fill here I could go past a bakery and steal a roll.
~ Leo Tolstoy
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When an apple has ripened and falls, why does it fall? Because of its attraction to the earth, because its stalk withers, because it is dried by the sun, because it grows heavier, because the wind shakes it, or because the boy standing below wants to eat it?
~ Leo Tolstoy
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Nothing but ambition, nothing but the desire to get on, that's all there is in his soul," she thought; "as for these lofty ideals, love of culture, religion, they are only so many tools for getting on.
~ Leo Tolstoy
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Anna had been preparing herself for this meeting, had thought what she would say to him, but she did not succeed in saying anything of it; his passion mastered her. She tried to calm him, to calm herself, but it was too late. His feeling infected her. Her lips trembled so that for a long while she could say nothing." "Yes, you have conquered me, and I am yours," she said at last, pressing his hands to her bosom. "So it had to be," he said. "So long as we live, it must be so. I know it now.
~ Leo Tolstoy
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Like the majority of irreproachably virtuous women, wearying often of the monotony of a virtuous life, Dolly from a distance excused illicit love, and even envied it a little.
~ Leo Tolstoy
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Himmlisch ist's, wenn ich bezwugen Meine irdische Begier; Aber doch wenn's nicht gelungen, Hatt' ich auch recht huebsch Plaisir!"* *"Splendid if I overcome My earthy passion, But if I succeed not, Still I have known happiness!
~ Leo Tolstoy
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He wanted and needed their love, but felt none towards them. He now had neither love nor humility nor purity
~ Leo Tolstoy
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Boredom is desire seeking desire.
~ Leo Tolstoy
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I must ask what it is you want of me?" "What can I want? All I can want is that you should not desert me, as you think of doing," she said, understanding all he had not uttered. "But that I don't want; that's secondary. I want love, and there is none. So then all is over.
~ Leo Tolstoy
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Her glance, the touch of her hand, set him aflame. He kissed the palm of his hand where she had touched it, and went home, happy in the sense that he had got nearer to the attainment of his aims that evening…
~ Leo Tolstoy
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That's my one desire, to be caught," answered Vronsky, with his serene, good-humored smile. "If I complain of anything it's only that I'm not caught enough, to tell the truth. I begin to lose hope.
~ Leo Tolstoy
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And then all at once love turns up, and you're done for, done for.
~ Leo Tolstoy
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Man's mind cannot grasp the causes of events in their completeness, but the desire to find those causes is implanted in man's soul. And without considering the multiplicity and complexity of the conditions any one of which taken separately may seem to be the cause, he snatches at the first approximation to a cause that seems to him intelligible and says: "This is the cause!
~ Leo Tolstoy
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In order to understand, observe, deduce, man must first be conscious of himself as alive. A living man knows himself not otherwise than as wanting, that is, he is conscious of his will. And his will, which constitutes the essence of his life, man is conscious of and cannot be conscious of otherwise than as free.
~ Leo Tolstoy
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Man survives earthquakes, epidemics, the horrors of disease, and agonies of the soul, but all the time his most tormenting tragedy has been, is, and will always be, the tragedy of the bedroom.
~ Leo Tolstoy
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Women, especially those who have passed through the school of marriage, know very well that conversations upon elevated subjects are only conversations, and that man seeks and desires the body and all that ornaments the body.
~ Leo Tolstoy
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Vronsky meanwhile, despite the full realization of what he had desired for so long, was not fully happy. He soon felt that the realization of his desire had given him only a grain of the mountain of happiness he had expected. It showed him the eternal error people make in imagining that happiness is in the realization of desires.
~ Leo Tolstoy
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He stepped down trying not to look long at her, as though she were the sun, yet he saw her as one sees the sun, without looking.
~ Leo Tolstoy
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If you look for perfection, you will never be satisfied.
~ Leo Tolstoy
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Anna Arkadyevna read and understood, but it was distasteful to her to read, that it, to follow the reflection of other people's lives. She had too great a desire to live herself.
~ Leo Tolstoy
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