Quotes About Desire

Lie #1: Having more and more of something (love, sex, fame, drugs, etc.) will make you happy. Unfortunately, if you are not careful, the more pleasure you get, the more you will need in the future to continue making you happy, something called hedonic adaptation.

Lie #1: Having more and more of something (love, sex, fame, drugs, etc.) will make you happy.

From craving is born grief, from craving is born fear. For one freed from craving, there's no grief—so how fear? —Buddha

Indeed, thinking about the future can be so pleasurable that sometimes we'd rather think about it than get there.

Our desire to control is so powerful, and the feeling of being in control so rewarding, that people often act as though they can control the uncontrollable.

human beings come into the world with a passion for control, they go out of the world the same way

All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.12 Feeling

Our brain accepts what the eyes see and our eye looks for whatever our brain wants.

When we are in the grip of craving or fury, head-over-heals in love our recoiling in dread, it is the limbic system that has us in its grip.

Why reach for something you can never fully attain? But it's also a source of allure. Why not reach for it? The joy is in the pursuit more than the realization. In the end, mastery attracts precisely because mastery eludes.

The most successful people, the evidence shows, often aren't directly pursuing conventional notions of success. They're working hard and persisting through difficulties because of their internal desire to control their lives, learn about their world, and accomplish something that endures.

1) Autonomy—the desire to direct our own lives (2) Mastery—the urge to make progress and get better at something that matters (3) Purpose—the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves.

The opposite of autonomy is control. And since they sit at different poles of the behavioral compass, they point us toward different destinations. Control leads to compliance; autonomy leads to engagement. And this distinction leads to the second element of Type I behavior: mastery—the desire to get better and better at something that matters.

They're working hard and persisting through difficulties because of their internal desire to control their lives, learn about their world, and accomplish something that endures.

Ferlazzo makes a distinction between "irritation" and "agitation." Irritation, he says, is "challenging people to do something that we want them to do." By contrast, "agitation is challenging them to do something that they want to do.

actions and addictive behavior—have in common, perhaps more than anything else, is that they're entirely short-term.

Addicts want the quick fix regardless of the eventual harm. Cheaters want the quick win—regardless of the lasting consequences.

In addition, a study of 11,000 industrial scientists and engineers working at companies in the United States found that the desire for intellectual challenge—that is, the urge to master something new and engaging—was the best predictor of productivity. Scientists motivated by this intrinsic desire filed significantly more patents than those whose main motivation was money, even controlling for the amount of effort each group expended.

You are designed to want something that will hurt you. And you cannot help wanting it. You cannot stop wanting it. It is in your design. And when you finally find it, this thing will burn you up. This thing will destroy you.

Because you are designed to want something that will hurt you. And you cannot help wanting it. You cannot stop wanting it. It is in your design. And when you finally find it, this thing will burn you up. This thing will destroy you.

Because you are designed to want something that will hurt you. And you cannot help it...cannot stop wanting it. It is in your design. And when you finally find it, this thing will burn you up. This thing will destroy you.

The thing with your heart's desire is that your heart doesn't even know what it desires until it turns up.

I'd ruin any day, all my days, for those long nights with you, and I did.

The thing with your heart's desire is that your heart doesn't even know what it desires until it turns up. Like a tie at a tag sale, some perfect thing in a crate of nothing, you were just there, uninvited, and now suddenly the party was over and you were all I wanted. I hadn't even been looking, not for you, and now you were my heart's desire.