Quotes About Desire

What he had yearned to embrace was not the flesh but a downy spirit, a spark, the impalpable angel that inhabits the flesh.

What makes the desert beautiful,' said the little prince, 'is that somewhere it hides a well...

If you want to build a ship, don't herd people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.

The more refined one is, the more unhappy.

The thirst for powerful sensations takes the upper hand both over fear and over compassion for the grief of others.

If…if I had his education, Kantaylis thought, surprised at the sudden intensity of the desire. If I could I'd study this business, read up on it, read all there is to be read about it.

We live not in order to eat, but in order not to know what we feel like eating.

There is something beautiful, touching and poetic when one person loves more than the other, and the other is indifferent.

The person who wants nothing, hopes for nothing, and fears nothing can never be an artist.

When one longs for a drink, it seems as though one could drink a whole oceanthat is faith; but when one begins to drink, one can only drink altogether two glassesthat is science.

He who desires nothing, hopes for nothing, and is afraid of nothing, cannot be an artist.

difícilmente los tontos son del todo buenos. Y lo peor es que los inteligentes difícilmente lo quieren ser».

It lies in humanity's infinite capacity for self-deception where some perceived (and in this case long-desired) advantage is at stake

It's not by pursuing but by abandoning our desires that real satisfaction can be found.

Could we react as Seneca tried to do? 'I force my mind to pay attention to itself and not to be distracted by anything external. It does not matter what is making a noise outside, so long as there is no turmoil inside – as long as there is no wrangling between desire and fear, as long as greed is not at odds with self-indulgence, one carping at the other. … Only as the mind develops into excellence do we achieve any real tranquillity.

Knowledge of precepts and understanding appropriate action can help us to live ethically. But even more important is cultivating what could be called 'calm emotions'. For the Stoics, these were joy, wishing and caution. These are supposed to be a rational alternative to ordinary kinds of emotions: joy replaces pleasure, wishing replaces desire and caution replaces fear.

But what does he want my heart for?" the little queen asked. "He just wants to own it," replied the sea lion. "That is enough. He wants to look on its beauty and know that his hands alone can touch it.

Part of her - unreasonable Anna- still loved him. Maybe she would never stop loving him.

Bueno, es una lastima ¿no?, que no puedas hacer cosas que disfrutarías sólo porque tienes que ser rebelde.

Llévame bailando a través de las cortinas que nuestros besos han desgastado. Ahora levanta una tienda de refugio aunque cada hilo este desgastado. Llévame bailando hasta el fin del amor. Llévame bailando hasta tu belleza con un violín ardiente.

Dance me through th curtains that our kisses have out worm. Raise a ent of shelter now, though every thread is torn. Dance me to the end of love. Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin.

No tienes un poco de calor para mí? Este hogar es todo lo que tengo, ya ves. No hay carbón, no hay llamas en él, mis sueños son todo lo que siempre he encendido.

Madame Bovary, c'est moi. Emma Bovary. She was the first. The first to thrash around in the space between a packaged wonder and reality, trying to reconcile the two in her enormous, inarticulate heart. Madame Bovary, c'est toi, perhaps, dear reader. Madame Bovary, c'est tout le monde.

Admittedly or not, conscious or unconscious, the poetic state, a transcendent experience of life, is what the public is fundamentally seeking through love, crime, drugs, war, or insurrection.