Quotes About Desire

And even in my most carnal desires, orientated always in a particular direction, concentrated round a single dream, I might have recognised as their primary motive an idea, an idea for which I would have laid down my life, at the innermost core of which, as in my day-dreams while I sat reading all afternoon in the garden at Combray, lay the notion of perfection.

Con le donne che non ci amano, come con i "dispersi", sapere di non avere più nulla da sperare non ci impedisce di continuare ad attendere.

Lo primero y lo más íntimo que yo sentía,..., que gobernaba todo lo demás, era mi creencia en la riqueza filosófica y la belleza del libro que estaba leyendo y mi deseo de apropiármelas, de cualquier libro que se tratara

There is nothing like desire for preventing the thing one says from bearing any resemblance to what one has in one's mind.

The laborious process of causation which sooner or later will bring about every possible effect, including (consequently) those which one had believed to be most nearly impossible, naturally slow at times, is rendered slower still by our impatience (which in seeking to accelerate only obstructs it) and by our very existence, and comes to fruition only when we have ceased to desire it—have ceased, possibly, to live.

Kaybetmekten en çok korktu?umuz zenginlikler, kalbimiz taraf?ndan ele geçirilmedikleri için, d???m?zda kalm?? olanlard?r.

But if Mme. Sherbatoff did not look at the audience, remained in shadow, it was to try to forget that there existed a living world which she passionately desired and was unable to know

Acontece que os diversos períodos da nossa vida vêm assim cruzar-se uns com os outros. Por causa de uma coisa que queremos hoje e amanhã nos será indiferente, negamo-nos a ver outra coisa que agora nada nos diz, mas que haveremos de querer mais adiante, e que, se houvéssemos consentido em vê-la, talvez tivéssemos desejado antes, abreviando assim as nossas dores atuais, se bem que na verdade para substituí-las por outras.

He was right: that intonation at any rate did convey a genuine and manifest effect, and should therefore have satisfied my desire to find irrefutable reasons for admiring La Berma. But it did not satisfy it, because of its very transparency

thus, in a wild desire to hurl myself into her arms, it was only at this instant—more than a year after her funeral, on account of the anachronism which so often prevents the calendar of facts from coinciding with that of our feelings—that I had just learned she was dead.

As pessoas mundanas estão de tal modo acostumadas a que as procurem que quem lhes foge parece-lhes uma fênix e domina-lhes por inteiro o pensamento.

Mas, ai! — pois, para o beijo, tão mal colocados estão as nossas narinas e os nossos olhos como malfeitos os lábios —, eis que de súbito os meus olhos cessaram de ver, e o meu nariz, por sua vez , esmagando-se, não sentiu mais nenhum odor, e, sem conhecer mais , por isso, o gosto do rosa desejado, eu soube, por esses detestáveis sinais, que estava enfim beijando as faces de Albertine.

There can be no peace of mind in love, since what one has obtained is never anything but a new starting-point for further desires

Actually, the very notion that it will come within reach—that there is no fulfillment which will be forever denied us, as long as it has ceased to be a fulfillment we desire—is one which, though true, is only partly true. By the time it comes to us, we have become indifferent to it.

We consider it innocent to desire a thing and atrocious that the other person should desire it.

In any case, Swann was blind not only to the gaps in Odette's education, but also to her poverty of mind. Indeed, when she told one of her silly stories, he would listen to her full of an obliging, cheerful, even admiring attentiveness, which could be explained only by his finding her still sexually arousing;

That is how I see her to this day: standing there, her eyes shining under her toque, silhouetted against the backdrop of the sea, and separated from me by the transparent sky-blue stretch of time elapsed since that moment, the first glimpse of her in my memory, a very slight image of a face first desired and pursued, then forgotten, then found again, a face which since then I have often projected into the past, so as to say to myself, of a girl with me in my bedroom, 'That was her!

There can be no peace in mind of love, since what one has obtained is never anything but a new starting-point for further desires.

Regret, like desire, seeks satisfaction and not self-analysis: in the beginning of love, our time is spent not in finding out what love is made of, but in trying to make sure we can see each other tomorrow; and at the end of love, we do not try to ascertain the nature of our sorrow, but only to voice it in what we hope is its tenderest form to her who is the cause of it.

The glutton usually realizes that gout is ever ready to pounce, and that alcohol is bad for him. But possible disaster weighs light in the scale against certain pleasure.

Let but a single real feature—the little that one distinguishes of a woman seen from afar or from behind—enable us to project the form of beauty before our eyes, we imagine that we have seen her before, our heart beats, we hasten in pursuit, and will always remain half-persuaded that it was she, provided that the woman has vanished: it is only if we manage to overtake her that we realise our mistake.

Albertine had thus premeditated her escape for some time. This was the greatest misfortune of my life. And in spite of everything, the suffering which it caused me was perhaps even exceeded by my curiosity to know the causes of this disaster: whom Albertine had desired, for whom she had left me.

In vain I called upon it now. In vain I compressed the whole landscape into my field of vision, draining it with an exhaustive gaze which sought to extract from it a female creature.

Our love of life is no more than an old affair that we do not know how to discontinue. Its strength lies in its permanence. But death, which interrupts it, will cure us of our desire for immortality.