Quotes About Desire

He thought against Napoleon, in both senses of the word. See how fruitful resentment can be, and how it can make one

I maintain that passion and desire are never authentic in the Heideggerean sense. They do not emerge from the depths of our being; we always borrow them from others. Far from seeing conflict as a sign of mastery, as Heidegger does, we must see it as exactly the opposite, a confirmation of the mimetic nature of our desires.

Kahraman, gururun aldat?c? ilah?ndan vazgeçerek kölelikten kurtulur ve sonunda mutsuzlu?un hakikatine eri?ir. Bu vazgeçi?, yarat?c? vazgeçi?ten ay?rt edilemez. Romant?ik bir yazar? gerçek romanc? yapan metafizik arzuyu yenmesidir.

The essence of desire is to have no essential goal. Truly to desire, we must have recourse to people about us; we have to desire their desires.

To maintain peace between human beings, it is essential to define prohibitions in light of this extremely significant fact: our neighbor is the model for our desires. This is what I call mimetic desire.

If the Decalogue devotes its final commandment to prohibiting desire for whatever belongs to the neighbor, it is because it lucidly recognizes in that desire the key to the violence prohibited in the four commandments that precede it. If we ceased to desire the goods of our neighbor, we would never commit murder or adultery or theft or false witness. If we respected the tenth commandment, the four commandments that precede it would be superfluous.

If the desire of children were not mimetic, if they did not of necessity choose for models the human beings who surround them, humanity would have neither language nor culture.

intellectual…and even religious.

A person] will desire any object so long as he is convinced that it is desired by another person whom he admires.

Imitation becomes intensified at the heart of the hostility, but the rivals do all they can to conceal from each other and from themselves the cause of this intensification. Unfortunately, concealment doesn't work. In imitating my rival's desire I give him the impression that he has good reasons to desire what he desires, to possess what he possesses, and so the intensity of his desire keeps increasing.

The mimetic nature of desire accounts for the fragility of human relations. Our social sciences should give due consideration to a phenomenon that must be considered normal, but they persist in seeing conflict as something accidental, and consequently so unforeseeable that researchers cannot and must not take it into account in their study of culture.

The invitation to imitate the desire of Jesus may seem paradoxical, for Jesus does not claim to possess a desire proper, a desire "of his very own." Contrary to what we ourselves claim, he does not claim to "be himself"; he does not flatter himself that he obeys only his own desire. His goal is to become the perfect image of God. There-fore he commits all his powers to imitating his Father. In inviting us to imitate him, he invites us to imitate his own imitation.

The best way of preventing violence does not consist in forbidding objects, or even rivalistic desire, as the tenth commandment does, but in offering to people the model that will protect them from mimetic rivalries rather than involving them in these rivalries.

If individuals are naturally inclined to desire what their neighbors possess, or to desire what their neighbors even simply desire, this means that rivalry exists at the very heart of human social relations.

La dialettica hegeliana si fondava sul coraggio fisico: colui che non ha paura sarà il padrone, colui che ha paura sarà lo schiavo. La dialettica romanzesca si fonda sull'ipocrisia: la violenza, lungi dal servire gli interessi di colui che la esercita, rivela l'intensità del suo desiderio; è dunque un segno di schiavitù.

Markus Müller, "Interview with René Girard," Anthropoetics 2, no. 1 (June 1996): 3–5. 2

Mimetic desire enables us to escape from the animal realm. It is responsible for the best and the worst in us, for what lowers us below the animal level as well as what elevates us above it. Our unending discords are the ransom of our freedom.

Humankind is that creature who lost a part of its animal instinct in order to gain access to "desire," as it is called. Once their natural needs are satisfied, humans desire intensely, but they don't know exactly what they desire, for no instinct guides them. We do not each have our own desire, one really our own. The essence of desire is to have no essential goal. Truly to desire, we must have recourse to people about us; we have to borrow their desires.

Le leggi del desiderio sono universali ma non comportano l'uniformità delle opere romanzesche, nemmeno sui punti di applicazione. La legge fonda la diversità e la rende intelligibile. L'unità romanzesca appare a condizione che smettiamo di considerare il personaggio - il sacrosanto individuo - come una entità perfettamente autonoma e scopriamo le leggi dei rapporti fra tutti i personaggi.

I do not like money, either for itself or for what it can buy, since I want nothing we know about.

Iedereen weet toch dat je alleen maar gelukkig kunt zijn wanneer je nergens naar verlangt?

I'm afraid," she confessed, her voice quiet. "Of what?" "That if the box is opened I might want and want and never be filled." She took a breath. "That you will get tired of filling it." She paused and spoke her deepest fear, turning to his ear. "That you will use me and throw me away.

Are you trying to talk your way into my bed?" she asked, her voice thick with emotion. "No." His voice sounded warm. "I'm trying to talk my way into your heart.

I take a long gulp of the shake and then say to Blake, "Was there ever a generation that had to live without chocolate?" "I don't know. I don't spend time pondering such atrocities.