Without desire, everything is difficult, even the easiest thing.
— Hryhoriy Skovoroda
Wars and revolutions and battles are due simply and solely to the body and its desires.
All wars are undertaken for the acquisition of wealth; and the reason why we have to acquire wealth is the body, because we are slaves in its service.
—Socrates
Like everyone else I am what I am: an individual, unique and different, with a lineal history of ancestral promptings and urgings; a history of dreams, desires, and of special experiences, all of which I am the sum total.
—Charlie Chaplin
There are four powers: memory and intellect, desire and covetousness. The two first are mental and the others sensual. The three senses sight, hearing, and smell cannot well be prevented; touch and taste not at all.
—Leonardo Da Vinci
It is a petty view of our Father’s love and wisdom which demands or expects an answer according to our desires, apart from His wisdom. We see hardly one inch of the narrow lane of time. To our God eternity lies open as a meadow.
—Amy Carmichael
I undertook to conquer myself rather than fortune, and to alter my desires rather than change the order of the world, and to accustom myself to believe that nothing is entirely in our power except our own thoughts.
Truth is no harlot who throws her arms round the neck of him who does not desire her; on the contrary, she is so coy a beauty that even the man who sacrifices everything to her can still not be certain of her favors.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
It would be better if there were nothing. Since there is more pain than pleasure on earth, every satisfaction is only transitory, creating new desires and new distresses, and the agony of the devoured animal is always far greater than the pleasure of the devourer.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
“I pray that the Lord may work in us the steadfast desire to do good on the quiet, by stealth, when no one looks on, when not a single disciple is near.”
This world’s problems can never be solved by those who make this world the object of their desires.
—J. Gresham Machen
Breathe, Wind of God. Forgiving Love, renew us;
Form us and discipline to Thy desire.
O Man of War, great Son of Man, endue us;
O mighty Spirit, kindle with Thy fire!
—Amy Carmichael
Life contains but two tragedies. One is not to get your heart’s desire; the other is to get it.
—Socrates
It is hard to prevent oneself from believing what one so keenly desires, and who can doubt that the interest we have in admitting or denying the reality of the Judgement to come determines the faith of most men in accordance with their hopes and fears.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Thanks be to God, the Spirit helpeth our infirmities, even the mental infirmity of subjection to interruptions when we least desire them.
—Amy Carmichael
Lead your life so that you neither fear death nor desire it.
—Leo Tolstoy
If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. – C.S. Lewis
If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known, that we are at all times ready for War.
—George Washington
“No man ever became holy by chance.
There must be resolve, a desire, a panting after obedience to God, or else we shall never have it.”
— Charles Spurgeon
Wonder is the desire of knowledge.
—Thomas Aquinas
It would be better if there were nothing. Since there is more pain than pleasure on earth, every satisfaction is only transitory, creating new desires and new distresses, and the agony of the devoured animal is always far greater than the pleasure of the devourer.
—Arthur Schopenhauer
I desire to live in peace and to continue the life I have begun under the motto ‘to live well you must live unseen
—René Descartes
Wars and revolutions and battles are due simply and solely to the body and its desires.
All wars are undertaken for the acquisition of wealth; and the reason why we have to acquire wealth is the body, because we are slaves in its service.
—Socrates
Lord, grant that I may always desire more than I can accomplish.
—Michelangelo
It is hard to prevent oneself from believing what one so keenly desires, and who can doubt that the interest we have in admitting or denying the reality of the Judgement to come determines the faith of most men in accordance with their hopes and fears.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Like everyone else I am what I am: an individual, unique and different, with a lineal history of ancestral promptings and urgings; a history of dreams, desires, and of special experiences, all of which I am the sum total.
—Charlie Chaplin
What he desires is non-desire; what he learns is to unlearn.
—Laozi
When there is no desire, all things are at peace.
—Laozi
“Oh, to be found in him! God grant we may be! To be plants in his garden, supposing him to be the gardener, is all the heaven we can desire.”
– Charles Spurgeon
Then only is God praised when the heart is lifted up to God with love, joy, and wonder for what it sees in him and receives from him with a desire of expressing it to him.
—Jonathan Edwards
Hope is the confusion of the desire for a thing with its probability.
—Arthur Schopenhauer