Quotes About Desire

He wanted to be seen. He wished to drown me in his need.

What do we want in this country, above all? People want to be happy, isn't that right? Haven't you heard it all your life? I want to be happy, people say. Well, aren't they? Don't we keep them moving, don't we give them fun? That's all we live for, isn't it? For pleasure, for titillation? And you must admit our culture provides plenty of these.

So it was the hand that started it all... His hands had been infected, and soon it would be his arms. He could feel the poison working up his wrists and into his elbows and his shoulders, and then the jump-over from shoulder-blade to shoulder-blade like a spark leaping a gap. His hands were ravenous. And his eyes were beginning to feel hunger, as if they must look at something, anything, everything.

And his eyes were beginning to feel hunger, as if they must look at something, anything, everything

Why are some people all grasshopper fiddlings, scrapings, all antennae shivering, one big ganglion eternally knotting, slip-knotting, square-knotting themselves? They stoke a furnace all their lives, sweat their lips, shine their eyes and start it all in the crib. Caesar's lean and hungry friends. They eat the dark, who only stand and breathe.

Aha! Mine all mine. My life savings. Look at all that snow there. Very comforting. I've got enough here to buy everything I want in the world, but I'm not going to because I'd sooner have the money.

That's the man who never followed his bliss. You may have a success in life, but then just think of it - what kind of life was it? What good was it - you've never done the thing you wanted to do in all your life. I always tell my students, go where your body and soul want tot go. When you have the feeling, then stay with it, and don't let anyone throw you off. p147

what destroys reason is passion.

He hated all this, and somehow he couldn't get away.

I saw him open his mouth wide. . . as though he had wanted to swallow all the air, all the earth, all the men before him.

He was ruined in every way, but a man possessed of passion is not a bankrupt in life.

She had said he had been driven away from her by a dream...

Are not our lives too short for that full utterance which through all our stammerings is of course our only and abiding intention? I have given up expecting those last words, whose ring, if they could only be pronounced, would shake both heaven and earth. There is never time to say our last word - the last word of our love, of our desire, faith, remorse, submission, revolt. The heaven and earth must not be shaken. I suppose - at least, not by us who know so many truths about either.

No fear can stand up to hunger, no patience can wear it out, disgust simply does not exist where hunger is; and as to superstition, beliefs, and what you may call principles, they are less than chaff in a breeze.

The word 'ivory' rang in the air, was whispered, was sighed. You would think they were praying to it. A taint of imbecile rapacity blew through it all, like a whiff from some corpse.

The word 'ivory' rang in the air, was whispered, was sighed. You would think they were praying to it.

On jest romantykiem, tak romantykiem. A to bardzo ?le... Bardzo ?le... Ale i bardzo dobrze.

I don't want to excuse myself; but I would like to explain—I would like somebody to understand—somebody—one person at least! You! Why not you?

To tear treasure out of the bowels of the land was their desire, with no more moral purpose at the back of it than there is in burglars breaking into a safe.

I've seen the devil of violence, and the devil of greed, and the devil of hot desire; but, by all the stars! these were strong, lusty, red-eyed devils, that swayed and drove men—men, I tell you. But as I stood on this hillside, I foresaw that in the blinding sunshine of that land I would become acquainted with a flabby, pretending, weak-eyed devil of a rapacious and pitiless folly. How insidious he could be, too, I was only to find out several months later and a thousand miles farther.

It was unreal as everything else--as the philanthropic pretense of the whole concern, as their talk, as their government, as their show of work. The only real feeling was a desire to get appointed to a trading post where ivory was to be had, so that they could earn percentages.

Sometimes he was contemptibly childish. He desired to have kings meet him at railway-stations on his return from some ghastly Nowhere, where he intended to accomplish great things.

I saw the devil of violence, and the devil of greed, and the devil of hot lust...

And Heyst, the son, read: Of the stratagems of life the most cruel is the consolation of love—the most subtle, too; for the desire is the bed of dreams.