Quotes About Desire

The feeling that everyone feels, of a life not lived.

Mma Ramotswe sighed. 'We are all tempted, Mma. We are all tempted when it comes to cake.' That is true,' said Mma Potokwane sadly. 'There are many temptations in this life, but cake is probably one of the biggest of them.

But is eternity an alternative to life? Isn't it, on the contrary, the case that it is when one wants everything to be eternal that one most loves life and the world.

Give me again my hollow tree,A crust of bread, and liberty.

I've often wish'd that I had clear,For life, six hundred pounds a year;A handsome house to lodge a friend,A river at my garden's end,A terrace walk, and half a roodOf land set out to plant a wood.

Fair tresses man's imperial race ensnare,And beauty draws us with a single hair.

Pride is still aiming at the best houses: Men would be angels, angels would be gods. Aspiring to be gods, if angels fell aspiring to be angels men rebel.

Beauty draws us with a single hair.

Men, some to business, some to pleasure take;But ev'ry woman is at heart a rake.

And die of nothing but a rage to live

Man never thinks himself happy, but when he enjoys those things which others want or desire.

For when success a lover's toil attends, Few ask, if fraud or force attain'd his ends

No, fly me, fly me, far as pole from pole; Rise Alps between us! and whole oceans roll! Ah, come not, write not, think not once of me, Nor share one pang of all I felt for thee. Thy oaths I quit, thy memory resign; Forget, renounce me, hate whate'er was mine. Fair eyes, and tempting looks (which yet I view!) Long lov'd, ador'd ideas, all adieu!

The ruling passion, be it what it will, the ruling passion conquers reason still.

For who can move when fair Belinda fails?   Not half so fix'd the Trojan could remain, 5   While Anna begg'd and Dido rag'd in vain.   Then grave Clarissa graceful wav'd her fan;   Silence ensu'd, and thus the nymph began.

Some less refined, beneath the moon's pale light Pursue the stars that shoot athwart the night

What Reason weaves, by Passion is undone.

You purchase pain with all that joy can give and die of nothing but a rage to live.

I have outlasted all desire, My dreams and I have grown apart; My grief alone is left entire, The gleamings of an empty heart. The storms of ruthless dispensation Have struck my flowery garland numb, I live in lonely desolation And wonder when my end will come. Thus on a naked tree-limb, blasted By tardy winter's whistling chill, A single leaf which has outlasted Its season will be trembling still.

If you but knew the flames that burn in me which I attempt to beat down with my reason.

People are so like their first mother Eve: what they are given doesn't take their fancy. The serpent is forever enticing them to come to him, to the tree of mystery. They must have the forbidden fruit, or paradise will not be paradise for them.

The less we love her when we woo her, The more we draw a woman in

O kiss me into faintness sweet and dim!

I regret that I am not fire.