c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
I have a request to make,my lord."He held her gaze; she could see him trying to decide what she might ask, but eventually he surrendered."And that is?""Take me to your bed.
— Stephanie Laurens, The Taming of Ryder Cavanaugh
In the end one loves one's desire and not what is desired.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
Do you want me because you love me or because I provide you normality drag?
— Thomm Quackenbush, Danse Macabre (Night's Dream, #2)
But somehow, I feel sure that if I lived in the country for six months, I should become so unsophisticated that no one would take the slightest notice of me.
— Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance
Her beauty was enough to get her into most any situation she desired and her tongue—sharp and venomous—was enough to get her out again.
— Thomm Quackenbush, Danse Macabre (Night's Dream, #2)
You're going to want me, Simon, as much as I want you...and before you can have me...you're going to have to deserve me.
— Gayle Eden, A Taste of Temptation
If you want to be mine;be of the divine,be of yourself.
— SIDhartha
When people don't do what they want, they don't know what to do.
— Marty Rubin
His hands fell to my hips, and his fingers dug through my rain-drenched clothes.
— Shannon A. Thompson, Seconds Before Sunrise
Desire is naughty and doesn't conform to our ideals, which is why we have such a need of them. Desire mocks all human endeavour and makes it worthwhile. Desire is the original anarchist and undercover agent – no wonder people want it arrested and kept in a safe place. And just when we think we've got desire under control it lets us down or fills us with hope. Desire makes me laugh because it makes fools of us all.
— Hanif Kureishi, Intimacy: das Buch zum Film von Patrice Chéreau
To achieve the impossible, you must attempt the absurd
— Jon R. Michaelsen
There is a difference between desire and desperation.
— Tyra Banks
What does freedom mean if we accept the fundamental premise that humans are social beings, raised in certain social and historical contexts and belonging to particular communities that shape their desires and understandings of the world?
— Lila Abu-Lughod, Do Muslim Women Need Saving?
The greatest satisfaction comes not from chasing pleasure and avoiding pain, but from the radical acceptance of life as it is, without fighting and clinging to passing desires.
— Noah Levine, Against the Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries
Be careful what you wish for. Especially out loud.
— Nenia Campbell, Touched with Sight
As they sang the hobbit felt in love of beautiful things made by hands and by cunning and by magic moving through him, a fierce and a jealous love, the desire of the hearts of dwarves.
— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit: or There and Back Again
The thing about music was that you never knew the shape of anyone’s desire.
— Richard Powers, Orfeo
Freedom looks beautiful and inspiring to those who desire & seek it
—  but Freedom looks like rebellion to those who have become complacent in hiding.
She leans over the desk to write and even though I feel bad for doing it, I watch her body as she does. Her shirt lifts just a little as she’s bending over and whether she’s aware of it or not, her lower back is exposed. I’ve spent the last eight years ignoring this girl, but one small view of her back and it’s putting my body into overdrive. I’ve never wanted to kiss someone there so much in my life.
— Melyssa Winchester, Count on Me
It's like all technology: either not powerful enough or too powerful. It will never do exactly what you want it to do.
— Charles Yu, Sorry Please Thank You: Stories
My heart feels strong for you, my desire isn’t just to marry you and let this be our moment, Kiersten. I want to marry you and create a million moments every single day.
— Rachel Van Dyken, Fearless
But the insane need to do it was stronger than the sense of whether it was a wrong or right thing to do.
— Jess C. Scott, Playmates
All our desires are desires of the soul, ultimately, Though they look like desires mental or sensory;- 39 -
— Munindra Misra, Devi Mahatmayam in English Rhyme
The whole idea of revenge and punishment is a childish day-dream. Properly speaking, there is no such thing as revenge. Revenge is an act which you want to commit when you are powerless and because you are powerless: as soon as the sense of impotence is removed, the desire evaporates also.
— George Orwell
I desired always to stretch the night and fill it fuller and fuller with dreams.
— Virginia Woolf, The Waves
It is easy to identify a shallow person by the attention he gives to what will do him absolutely no good.
— Michael Bassey Johnson
[Dream] I do not want a grape.[Desire] I could make you want one.
— Neil Gaiman, Season of Mists
His proximity, that damn smile, just makes me hot in all the right places, but also pissed as hell. I don’t know if I should knee him in the balls or hump his leg like a bitch in heat.
— Ghiselle St. James, South Row
He wanted to live life to the extreme, but without any mess or complications. He wanted to live life in such a way that if a photograph were taken at random, it would be a cool photograph. Things should look right. Fun; there should be a lot of fun and no more sadness than absolutely necessary.
— David Nicholls, One Day
I want to be loved so badly, it verges on mild insanity.
— Gary Shteyngart, Little Failure
When one's mind dwells on the objects of Senses, fondness for them grows on him, from fondness comes desire, from desire anger. Anger leads to bewilderment, bewilderment to loss of memory of true Self, and by that intelligence is destroyed, and with the destruction of intelligence he perishes.
— Lord Krishna, Srimad Bhagavad Gita
When their eyes connected she tilted her head slightly…paused, and smiled. It was as if she needed to see him at a different angle to insure that her instant desire wasn’t a vanishing mirage
— Carl Henegan, Darkness Left Undone
He cannot think. He can scarcely breathe. But he has no desire to either, he simply wants to keep kissing her.
— Sara Sheridan, Secret of the Sands
Regrets, Blacksmith, make poor currency. You can't but back with them what you most desire.
— John Connolly, The Infernals
Sickness occurs when we desire what we need and what’s desirable with equal intensity, suffering our lack of perfection as if we were suffering for lack of bread.
— Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
Every act of will is an act of self-limitation. To desire action is to desire limitation. In that sense, every act is an act of self-sacrifice. When you choose anything, you reject everything else.
— G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
In America, the distance between wanting something and having it delivered to your living room is not terribly great.
— Gary Shteyngart, Little Failure
A wish becomes a greatest desire at the very moment when a person's belief in the seemingly impossible is stronger than any doubt.-Kevin McNamara
— S.L. Whyte, Stelladaur: Finding Tir Na Nog
People want to be told what to do so badly that they'll listen to anyone.[Written by Andre and Maria Jacquemetton]
— Don Draper from 'Mad Men'
Nothing won't change, until the choice is placed first. And until when choice is given a chance.
— Anthony Liccione
As our means increase, so do our desires;and we ever stand midway between the two.
— Jerome K. Jerome, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow
When you want something badly enough it’s amazing what you’ll ignore.
— Sara Sheridan, The Pleasure Express
Wellsted will remember this moment for the rest of his life. It is the first time he desires something for himself that is not dedicated to his own advancement. It is the moment he falls in love.
— Sara Sheridan, London Calling
Known for leaving, she asked me who I would consider sticking around for. I said, "The one who asked me to and meant it.
— Donna Lynn Hope
You are a door to an existence she does not desire, but even if the room beyond is repugnant, that door has won a portion of her affection.
— Mohsin Hamid, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia
A possession considered of little value up to now suddenly becomes precious to a person if another person desires it, don't you think?
— Christa Wolf, Medea
For him, she was the evil one; the antagonist to his life story. The reason he was married at an early age.And to her, he would always be her infatuation gone horribly wrong.
— Alyssa Urbano, The Billion-Dollar Marriage Contract
There are people who feel they should be with you, but something is preventing them from coming close. Please can you just lower the frequency of your stern looking face and smile...and they will make you their habit.
— Michael Bassey Johnson
False love, desire, and beauty frail, adieu! Dead is the root whence all these fancies grew.
— Walter Raleigh
While waiting for Brenna to prepare the drink he did as directed and worked through their conversation. It would've gone faster had he not kept getting distracted by the sight of her moving with feminine efficiency mere meters away. The sway of her hips were-"Don't I ever want to lick a woman all up?" She squeaked, then swivelled to face him, bracing her hands on the counter behind her. "Not quite how I would've put it." Her tone was higher than normal."But yeah." "You," he said quietly, no longer able to lie, "You tempt me." "Oh." Her breasts rose up as she took a deep, shuddering breath. "You've never let on."Yes, he had. If she ever saw the way he watched her when she wasn't looking, she'd be in no doubt as to the strength of his unacceptable reaction to her.
— Nalini Singh, Caressed by Ice
Emotion arise from Desire, hence an Illusion.
— Gautama Buddha
My God, Sweetness beyond words, make bitter all the carnal comfort that draws me from love of the eternal and lures me to its evil self by the sight of some delightful good in the present. Let it not overcome me, my God. Let not flesh and blood conquer me. Let not the world and its brief glory deceive me, nor the devil trip me by his craftiness. Give me courage to resist, patience to endure, and constancy to persevere. Give me the soothing unction of Your spirit rather than all the consolations of the world, and in place of carnal love, infuse into me the love of Your name.
— Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ
Mathematics as an expression of the human mind reflects the active will, the contemplative reason, and the desire for aesthetic perfection. Its basic elements are logic and intuition, analysis and construction, generality and individuality. Though different traditions may emphasize different aspects, it is only the interplay of these antithetic forces and the struggle for their synthesis that constitute the life, usefulness, and supreme value of mathematical science.
— Richard Courant, What Is Mathematics?: An Elementary Approach to Ideas and Methods
Maura looks stunned, as though she's been slapped. "What about me? Don't you trust me?" She gives a hysterical little laugh. Tears are gathering in her blue eyes. "Let me guess: you think I'm reckless. 'Too easily ruled by my emotions,' Elena said. As though feeling things too deeply -- wanting more for myself and girls like us -- is so terrible!
— Jessica Spotswood, Star Cursed
We are bodies, sometimes with dreams and always with desires.
— Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna
Don't you know there's another bubble as well? An expectations bubble. Bigger houses, private planes, yachts... stupid salaries and bonuses. People come to desire these things and expect them. But the expectations bubble will burst as well, as all bubbles do.
— Edward Rutherfurd, New York
The decision as to whether to risk one’s actual life or to surrender the ideal self-conception is a decision about who one is.(from The structure of desire and recognition)
— Robert B. Brandom
put out the candles with your fire—I’m on fire
— John Geddes
All employees have an innate desire to contribute to something bigger than themselves.
— Jag Randhawa, The Bright Idea Box: A Proven System to Drive Employee Engagement and Innovation
Appetite knows what it craves, without cerebral embellishment. It tends not to waste any time laying hold of its tools. That was the thing I had recognised here: appetite. I recognised it precisely because, in a context like this, it was so unfamiliar. It had forced me to rule out everything else. And there was a second reason for my recognition, which because unprecedented was not recognition at all, but astounding discovery: Martha's face told me. I saw appetite there...
— Susan Choi, My Education
Can we ever see the truth when desire blinds us? Or do we call it the truth because it is what we wish to see?
— Kate Elliott, Cold Steel
I am a bed of sparks you breathe upon and kindle
— John Geddes
I will not exorcise you—I’d miss your fragrance, the soft tread of your step on the stair
— John Geddes
A fancy comes to me--that desire can never attain its object--it need never attain it.
— Rabindranath Tagore, The King of the Dark Chamber
Some days in late August at home are like this, the air thin and eager like this, with something in it sad and nostalgic and familiar. Man the sum of his climatic experiences Father said. Man the sum of what have you. A problem in impure properties carried tediously to an unvarying nil: stalemate of dust and desire.
— William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
She wanted to get some personal profit out of things, and she rejected as useless all that did not contribute to the immediate desires of her heart, being of a temperament more sentimental than artistic, looking for emotions, not landscapes.
— Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary
To live in the shadow of another person...to desire to be adored as that person is....is the weakest ambition of all. Find yourself. Be loved as yourself.
— Faye Hall
Do you know what pains me the mostabout you? Do you?Having all of thatbottled up insideof your soulall of those dark secretsthat you will notlet escape your heart.Love is the only thing that will heal you. Let me LOVE you. Please.
— Zuky rose Leigh
you are the mysterious fire at my finger tips
— John Geddes
burnt by the sunof your mouth, I’m unable to speak or paint you with words
— John Geddes
Your heart desire will come, but when it comes, you desire for another, and when it comes again, you still aspire for another, that shows your level of ingratitude.
— Michael Bassey Johnson
You might say that S. has only himself to blame, that it is entirely his choice to fight this fight, to live a life of vigilant somnolence or somnolent vigilantism, to allow himself to be satisfied with Sola in the margins of his manuscripts instead of in his arms, and you might be right. But you ought to understand, too, that there's an attrition that takes place inside, one in which options and choices and even desires are ground ever smaller until finally their existence can no longer be confirmed by observation or weight or displacement but only by faith. Until desire is a ghost.
— Doug Dorst, S.
There is no more destructive force in human affairs -- not greed, not hatred -- than the desire to have been right. Non-attachment to possessions is trivial when compared with non-attachment to opinions.
— Mark A.R. Kleiman
Fox Jung...I dunno why I get so hungry whenever I see you. Just once...if I could swallow you up in one bite, just once...I'd never need anything else.""Now, I'm really scared...that one day, I'll open my eyes and find myself inside your stomach.
— Hajin Yoo, Totally Captivated, Volume 5
But often, in the world's most crowded streets,But often, in the din of strife,There rises an unspeakable desireAfter the knowledge of our buried life;A thirst to spend our fire and restless forceIn tracking out our true, original course.
— Matthew Arnold
As Raimon and Desire listened, Aimeric sang of Carenza's beauty. He sang of the oaths he had given to his lord, the count Bertran, and of another oath, one that he had sworn to Countess Carenza in his heart. He would keep her at the forefront of his thoughts, he would cherish her forever. They would never satisfy their desire, never even kiss one another, but he would be faithful to her until he died.
— Lisa Goldstein, The Sandman: Book of Dreams
I think there are lovely sunsets in hell—and that’s where my desire for you is sending me
— John Geddes
All that pent up longing,” he says, “all that desire to flail and flap around. Them wings have needs.
— Justin Torres, Wilde Stories 2012: The Year’s Best Gay Speculative Fiction
Raimon was amused to see that the countess Carenza grew more beautiful by the day: her expression has softened and the pouches under her eyes had disappeared. She carried herself confidently, secure in the knowledge that she was fascinating to one pair of eyes at least.
— Lisa Goldstein, The Sandman: Book of Dreams
A pure love is a selfless love, but can desire ever be selfless?
— John Dufresne, Love Warps the Mind a Little
Beso me without desire so I may hear her coo, that grew in you
— Sean Thomas Dougherty, Sasha Sings the Laundry on the Line
If you must chase make certain its with passion so you may reap a worthy reward.
— Eyob M. A.
When a man desires a thing too much, he at once becomes ill at ease. A proud and avaricious man never rests, whereas he who is poor and humble of heart lives in a world of peace. An unmortified man is quickly tempted and overcome in small, trifling evils; his spirit is weak, in a measure carnal and inclined to sensual things; he can hardly abstain from earthly desires. Hence it makes him sad to forego them; he is quick to anger if reproved. Yet if he satisfies his desires, remorse of conscience overwhelms him because he followed his passions and they did not lead to the peace he sought.
— Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ
Only those who are in-charge are tackled and criticized by others so criticism is something desirable and should not be resented.
— Emmanuel Moore Abolo
Plants cannot stay safe. Desire for light spools grass out of the ground; desire for a visitor spools red ruffles out of twigs. Desire makes plants very brave, so they can find what they desire; and very tender, so they can feel what they find.
— Amy Leach, Things That Are
The inside of the old Camaro smelled like asphalt and desire, gasoline and dreams.
— Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves
Before you make a decision, ask yourself this question: will you regret the results or rejoice in them?
— Rob Liano
The most fundamental thing about a person is desire. It defines them. Tell me what a person wants, truly wants, and I'll tell you who they are, and how to persuade them.
— Max Barry, Lexicon
We can know what we do wrong even before we do it, but self-knowledge can't affect or change the outcome, can it? Everyone singing his own little song, convinced it's the most wonderful song the world has ever heard. Don't you see? We create our own thorns, and never stop to count the cost. All we can do is suffer the pain, and tell ourselves it was well worth it.
— Colleen McCullough, The Thorn Birds
the abuser's desire to abuse is not created by the child - it is there before the child appears
— Carolyn Ainscough, Breaking Free: Help For Survivors Of Child Sexual Abuse
I saw a dead bird flying through a broken sky. I heard it, and it said, "The world will never understand.
— Nadège Richards, 5 Miles
You want me.”“Want does not begin to describe the way I feel about you,” his low voice promised. “Want is nothing compared with the level of desire I have. With the desperation I feel. With the way I long for you.
— Sarah MacLean, No Good Duke Goes Unpunished
As I grew up I was fervently desirous of becoming acquainted with Nature.
— John James Audubon
Overheard on a Saltmarsh"Nymph, nymph, what are your beads?Green glass, goblin. Why do you stare at them?Give them me.No.Give them me. Give them me.No.Then I will howl all night in the reeds,Lie in the mud and howl for them.Goblin, why do you love them so?They are better than stars or water,Better than voices of winds that sing,Better than any man's fair daughter,Your green glass beads on a silver ring.Hush, I stole them out of the moon.Give me your beads, I want them.No.I will howl in the deep lagoonFor your green glass beads, I love them so.Give them me. Give them.No.
— Harold Monro, Collected Poems
He once had lips as cold as stone and a heart that equally matched, but I had managed to warm him up and now all I could sense was his need for me.
— Jason Lloyd, Salty Aftertaste
The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews.
— W.H. Auden
I have indeed lived and worked to my taste either in art or science. What more could a man desire? Knowledge has always been my goal. There is much that I shall leave behind undone…but something at least I was privileged to leave for the world to use, if it so intends…As the Latin poet said I will leave the table of the living like a guest who has eaten his fill. Yes, if I had another life to spend, I certainly would not waste it. But that cannot be, so why complain?
— Léon Camille Marius Croizat
In Kant’s description, ethical duty functions like a foreign traumatic intruder that from the outside disturbs the subject’s homeostatic balance, its unbearable pressure forcing the subject to act “beyond the pleasure principle,” ignoring the pursuit of pleasures. For Lacan, exactly the same description holds for desire, which is why enjoyment is not something that comes naturally to the subject, as a realization of her inner potential, but is the content of a traumatic superego injunction.
— Slavoj Žižek, In Defense of Lost Causes
You wanted to show everyone you could write about the black heart of a killer. And all the while pretending you don't even have your own dark desires.
— Naoyuki Ochiai, Syndrome 1866 Vol. 4
Actively, we are motivated by the never-ending desires of the self. We are compelled to pursue whatever the self imagines will satisfy its desires. We are convinced that satisfaction of desire is the source of true happiness. Yet the very nature of desire does not permit happiness. Like trying to quench one's thirst by drinking salt water, satisfying desire only stimulates the flow of desire. In the wake of fulfillment, desire once more stirs and reaches out. There is never lasting satisfaction, not even completion.
— Dharma Publishing, Ways of Enlightenment
It is the desire for explanations that are at once systematic and controllable by factual evidence that generates science
—  and it is the organization and classification of knowledge on the basis of explanatory principles that is the distinctive goal of the sciences.
True passion motivates the life forces and brings forth all things good.... desire is the poor cousin to passion, ever hungry and with no real result.
— Gabriel Brunsdon, Azlander: Second Nature
It only needs a desire, not words; to start a conversation.
— Pratik Akkawar
The desire to touch her, to kiss her would end up with her walking away and him hurting again. So why the hell did he reach up and stroke her cheek with the back of his knuckle?
— Leah Braemel, Slow Ride Home
When we pour out our miseries, He hears a melody of us needing and desiring what only He can give.
— Stacey Thacker, Hope For The Weary Mom
She led him to the top of the stairs, where light came straight from the sky because the second-story windows of that house had been placed in the pitched ceiling and not the walls. There were two rooms and she took him into one of them, hoping he wouldn’t mind the fact that she was not prepared; that though she could remember desire, she had forgotten how it worked; the clutch and helplessness that resided in the hands; how blindness was altered so that what leapt to the eye were places to lie down, and all else—doorknobs, straps, hooks, the sadness that crouched in corners, and the passing of time—was interference.
— Toni Morrison, Beloved
The longing for a man, as you know, is a grand escape. It can arch your mental process to extremes so that, like a gymnast or a ballerina, you’re contorted to such outrageous limits – I’m speaking of passion – that nothing else matters. I wanted this. I desired diversion.
— Vicki Covington
Adam was in the dream, too; he traced the tangled pattern of ink with his finger. He said, "Scio quid hoc est." As he traced it further and further down on the bare skin of Ronan's back, Ronan himself disappeared entirely, and the tattoo got smaller and smaller. It was a Celtic knot the size of a wafer, and then Adam, who had become Kavinsky, said "Scio quid estis vos." He put the tattoo in his mouth and swallowed it.Ronan woke with a start, ashamed and euphoric.The euphoria wore off long before the shame did.He was never sleeping again.
— Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves
The desire to criticise becomes less and less as the character is developed. It is the mark of a ﬁne character never to be critical and to mention but rarely the faults of others. A strong character does not resist evil, but uses their strength in building the good. They know that when the light is made strong, the darkness will disappear of itself.
— Christian D. Larson
I want to feel the victory of being desired by someone I once found desirable.
— Rae Carson, The Girl of Fire and Thorns
We did not touch each other. We were both leaning over the abyss.
— Anaïs Nin, Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin
The truth is that this is the only way I can live: in two directions. I need two lives. I am two beings. When I return to Hugo in the evening, to the peace and warmth of the house, I return with deep contentment, as if this was the only condition for me. I bring home to Hugo a whole woman, freed of all 'possessed' fevers, cured of the poison of restlessness and curiosity which used to threaten our marriage, cured through action. Our love lives, because I live. I sustain and feed it. I am loyal to it, in my own way, which cannot be his way. If he ever reads these lines, he must believe me. I am writing calmly, lucidly while waiting for him to come home, as one waits for the chosen lover, the eternal one.
— Anaïs Nin, Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin
The truth is -- we are always highly motivated when something means a great deal to us. If I fell into a deep lake and I didn't know how to swim, I would become highly motivated in an instant. Climbing from the lake would mean more to me than anything else in the world. My effort would be no less than astounding and I would suddenly become one of the most excited and enthusiastic persons imaginable.
— Steve Goodier
All you need in life is to know thyself; to live with the knowledge that it’s just life and that's the way it is. You need a sense of what your life means to you, the appreciation of yourself, your friendships and the love of others. You need a desire to grow as a person, to discover what your gifts in life are to yourself, others, and the world. You are the only you in the world. Embrace who you are....
— James A. Murphy, The Waves of Life Quotes and Daily Meditations
For a guy, nothing is sexier than a girl who craves his little guy and can’t keep her hands off of it… because this is exactly the way he feels about your ladyparts whether he’s groping them like a savage or quietly watching TV next to you.
— Roberto Hogue, Real Secrets of Sex: A Women's Guide on How to Be Good in Bed
The skin is a variety of contingency: in it, through it, with it, the world and my body touch each other, the feeling and the felt, it defines their common edge. Contingency means common tangency: in it the world and the body intersect and caress each other. I do not wish to call the place in which I live a medium, I prefer to say that things mingle with each other and that I am no exception to that. I mix with the world which mixes with me. Skin intervenes between several things in the world and makes them mingle.
— Michel Serres, The Five Senses: A Philosophy of Mingled Bodies
I think I might have secretly wished for you to exist all my life but never knew how to admit it.
— Truth Devour, Wantin
Unspoken words between you and I,Present in the eyes of knowing,Lost in the realm of unforeseen beauty,I am yours.
— Truth Devour, Wantin
The heart knows not of distance, space nor time. It meshes to the fabric of its desire & follows on an immeasurable continuum.
— Truth Devour, Wantin
I felt his hardness and I suddenly understood-an older girl would have understood long before-that this was the currency of desire. He was my betrothed. he desired me. I desired him. All I had to do was tell him the truth.
— Philippa Gregory, The Queen's Fool
All who are not lunatics are agreed about certain things. That it is better to be alive than dead, better to be adequately fed than starved, better to be free than a slave. Many people desire those things only for themselves and their friends; they are quite content that their enemies should suffer. These people can be refuted by science: mankind has become so much one family that we cannot insure our own prosperity except by insuring that of everyone else. If you wish to be happy yourself, you must resign yourself to seeing others also happy.
— Bertrand Russell
When the heart craved something so forcefully, then reason became nothing but helpless observer.
— Cornelia Funke, Fearless
Desire for a person is not the same thing as having that unique appreciation and need for them, nor is affection. Desire waxes and wanes, and affection can be felt without long-standing commitment. But 'You matter to me' means that the long haul is accepted, even willingly taken on: I will carry you, hold you and applaud you, from here on in. Dependability: I will be here to take care of you. And when you are gone, I will be here to remember you.
— Nina Sankovitch, Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading
God seems to be about turning our loves around and using them toward the great love that is their true object.
— Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life
We preoccupy ourselves with what we had — or what we want to have — at the expense of what we have.
— Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Adam stared down at me, his expression thunderous. “It was you. I know it was you.” My head was rocking side to side before I could stop it. “No.” I wrenched my hand free of his. “You’re wrong.”“I’m not!” Anger blazed hot behind his eyes as they burned into me. “Look at me, Kia! Look me in the eye and tell me you’re not her.
— Airicka Phoenix, Finding Kia
We’d all lost ourselves and found something far more significant together. We reached with gaping wounds for a healing we desired so badly, like a blind man picturing the world around him—the lively children skipping rope, green grass, blue sky. It’s like that man standing in his vision, rising from the park bench, arms outstretched, taking the first steps into a world he only hopes exists.
— Christopher Hawke, Unnatural Truth
Every time I opened my mouth, flame licked up my throat. I could have razed vil­lages, kid­napped princesses.
— Leah Raeder, Unteachable
Human nature, at its best, had always been based on a deep heroic restlessness, on wanting something--something else, something more, whether it be true love or a glimpse just beyond the horizon. It was the promise of happiness, not the attainment of it, that had driven the entire engine, the folly and glory of who we are.
— Will Ferguson, Happiness
The key to success is to focus our conscious mind on things we desire not things we fear.
— Brian Tracy
Desire is a great virtue, but expectation is an even greater vice.
— Raheel Farooq
Every negative complex of emotion conceals a conflict, a problem or dilemma made up of contradictory or opposing motives or desires. Self-observation must recover these emotional seeds of the dramatization of life if real control of habits is to occur. Otherwise, mere control of habits will itself become a form of dramatized conflict or warfare with the motives of our lives. Food desires, sex desires, relational desires, desires for experience and acquisition, for rest, for release, for attention, for solitude, for life, for death, the whole pattern of desires must come under the view of consciousness, the aspects of the conflicts must be differentiated, and habits must be controlled to serve well-being or the pleasurable and effective play of Life.This whole process is truly possible only in the midst of the prolonged occasion of spiritual life in practice, since the mere mechanical and analytical attempts at self-liberation and self-healing do not undermine the principal emotion or seat of conflict, which is the intention to identify with a separate self sense and to reject and forget the prior and natural Condition of Unqualified or Divine Consciousness.
— Adi Da Samraj, The Eating Gorilla Comes in Peace: The Transcendental Principle of Life Applied to Diet and the Regenerative Discipline of True Health
I didn't grasp that desire and duty could rival each other, least of all that they most often did.
— Susan Choi, My Education
The ocean of the past, I still hide from so much of it and rely on all that I don't run from. Everything before him, I waited for the nightmare to end, and it did when he accepted me into his arms. It was a new birth, a new life, but it flashed too briefly and left me with only these rabid bits of time that eat me, these memories that haunt me, but he, the ghost I need, remains lost.
— Edward J. Rathke, Ash Cinema
He needs little who desires but little.
— Cleanthes
He says "You are my property" and I feel relieved. After all, no one wishes to shatter what he owns.
— Malak El Halabi
I can discover within me no power of perception which is not glutted with its proper pleasure, yet I do not feel myself delighted. Man has surely some latent sense for which this place affords no gratification, or he has some desires distinct from sense which must be satisfied before he can be happy.
— Samuel Johnson, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia
Transform your desire into love, and limits start to lose their usefulness.
— Eric Micha'el Leventhal
Once you see that your skin and your gift are two sides of the same coin, you can never forget it. It preserves religion from any arrogance and denial.
— Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life
If you're constantly ruminating about what you just did- or what you should have done- or what you would have done if you only had the chance, you will miss your life. Ok, you will fail to connect with it. You will fail to connect with other people.
— Sam Harris
Like a tenacious ivy, your presence clings onto the drab wall of my existence. Cling harder onto me love, like a blood sucking bed-bug who is never satiated.
— Malak El Halabi
You are the Arabian stallion that neighs on the crossroad of my heart ache covering me with the dust of my own ardor.
— Malak El Halabi
I can understand where he's coming from... I too was once secretly in love with you, and I could do nothing but watch from afar. Being close to you while pretending that we're nothing more than friends. The first time I touched you with sexual intention, it was like an electrical current flowing through my fingertips and it paralyzed me. I wanted to make your senses go numb with pleasure. Not only physical pleasure, but desire too, deep inside.
— Yonezou Nekota
I wanted to hear his window open, hear his espadrilles on the balcony, and then the sound of my own window, which was never locked, being pushed open as he'd step into my room after everyone had gone to bed, slip under my covers, undress me without asking, and after making me want him more than I thought I could ever want another living soul, gently, softly, and, with the kindness one Jew extends to another, work his way into my body, gently and softly, after heeding the words I'd been rehearsing for days now, Please, don't hurt me, which meant, Hurt me all you want.
— André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name
Observing desire without acting on it enlarges our freedom to choose how we live.
— Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha
I knew if I started touching you I wouldn't be able to stop.
— Andrea K. Höst, Lab Rat One
I watched you roll off me and step away from the bed in silence, but when the heat of your body was gone, I wanted it back.
— Julio Alexi Genao, When You Were Pixels
Others, I am not the first,Have willed more mischief than they durst:If in the breathless night I tooShiver now, 'tis nothing new.More than I, if truth were told,Have stood and sweated hot and cold,And through their veins in ice and fireFear contended with desire.Agued once like me were they,But I like them shall win my wayLastly to the bed of mouldWhere there's neither heat nor cold.But from my grave across my browPlays no wind of healing now,And fire and ice within me fightBeneath the suffocating night.
— A.E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad
Desire is always followed by boredom. And only love can defeat boredom. Love with a capital L
—  we all dream of it.
There is an awkward silence that overcomes you when cross paths with the person that kisses your heart the second that you meet them. It balances on the edge of unknown but always desired.
— Carl Henegan, Darkness Left Undone
Language, the unconscious, the parents, the symbolic order: these terms in Lacan are not exactly synonymous, but they are intimately allied. They are sometimes spoken of by him as the ‘Other’ — as that which like language is always anterior to us and will always escape us, that which brought us into being as subjects in the first place but which always outruns our grasp. We have seen that for Lacan our unconscious desire is directed towards this Other, in the shape of some ultimately gratifying reality which we can never have; but it is also true for Lacan that our desire is in some way always received from the Other too. We desire what others — our parents, for instance — unconsciously desire for us; and desire can only happen because we are caught up in linguistic, sexual and social relations — the whole field of the ‘Other’ — which generate it.
— Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction
When I came to this city, I would have agreed with anyone who said there was little mystery left in the world. But in you, madam, first in your image, then in your living self, I saw the allure of something far away and as secret as the stars. As I reached towards this unknown, I began to feel like a man who has ridden through a vast desert, never knowing anything but the sand around him and the dry road under him, then comes upon the mirage of a garden and a city, and finds that the mirage is real, and that it is bigger than the desert; that the desert was, after all his walking, only a small part of the mirage”“Then you felt love, which is the state of feeling desire and the fulfillment of desire at the same time,” she said.
— K.J. Bishop, The Etched City
Feel my passion,Taste my desire,Unite and intertwine our emotions,Dare to be one with me,I in return will allow you to touch my soul.
— Truth Devour, Wantin
The desire for sudden change and the thought of their realization by force often appears among men like a disease and gains ground mainly in young brains; only these brains do not think as they should, do not amount to anything in the end and the heads that think thus do not remain long on their shoulders. For it is not human desires that dispose and administer the things of this world. Desire is like a wind, it sifts the dust from one place to another, sometimes darkens the whole horizon, but in the end calms down and leaves the old and eternal picture of the world. Lasting deeds are realized on this earth only by God’s will, and man is only His humble and blind tool.
— Ivo Andrić, The Bridge on the Drina
I wanted to take your hand into mine and kiss it.I never dared.
— Julio Alexi Genao, When You Were Pixels
I'm no great fan of the phallus, and have made my own views known on this subject before, so I do not propose a return to a notion of the phallus as the third term in any and all relations of desire.
— Judith Butler, Undoing Gender
Beauty should never lower its guard around Appetite.
— Shay Caroline, Gemini/Scorpio/Capricorn
An adamant silence overcomes you when cross paths with the person that kisses your heart the second that you meet them. It balances on the edge of an indefinable unknown, unconsciously desired.
— Carl Henegan
We are drawn towards a thing, either because there is some good we are seeking from it, or because we cannot do without it. Sometimes the two motives coincide. Often however they do not. Each is distinct and quite independent. We eat distasteful food, if we have nothing else, because we cannot do otherwise. A moderately greedy man looks out for delicacies, but he can easily do without them. If we have no air we are suffocated, we struggle to get it, not because we expect to get some advantage from it but because we need it. We go in search of sea air without being driven by any necessity, because we like it. In time it often comes about automatically that the second motive takes the place of the first. This is one of the great misfortunes of our race. A man spokes opium in order to attain to a special condition, which he thinks superior; often, as time goes on, the opium reduces him to a miserable condition which he feels to be degrading; but he is no longer able to do without it.
— Simone Weil, Waiting for God
A dead plant is nothing but a sign to plant a new one
— Priyansh Shah
Love is a feeling that is imposed on you. You cannot be lazy
—  it is up to you to make things work and make the best of it.
Desire is inspired by motivation, which gives us hope to believe in ourselves that we can set goals and pursue them successfully.
— Ellen J. Barrier
To succeed in everything we do, we must have a desire to dream of things some would think are impossible.
— Ellen J. Barrier
Tricked by desire, mastered by love, rescued by beloved!What else you want to know about humans?
— Saurabh Sharma
What desire can be contrary to nature since it was given to man by nature itself?
— Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason
To let go means to give up coercing, resisting, or struggling, in exchange for something more powerful and wholesome which comes out of allowing things to be as they are without getting caught up in your attraction to or rejection of them, in the intrinsic stickiness of wanting, of liking and disliking.
— Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life
Sometimes you want to stay with someone, not only because it's magic and it's promising and it feels like home; but sometimes you find someone and you want to stay with him (or her)—because you're the same kind of animal.
— C. JoyBell C.
We all have a sea inside us
—  can you hear it? Can you hear the ocean roaring?
He could have watched her all night. He could watch her for an eternity and still never be able to capture the essence of what it is that makes ‘love’.
— Dianna Hardy, Cry Of The Wolf
You’re driving me crazy, Blaire. Insane, baby. Fucking insane,
— Abbi Glines, Never Too Far
But you don't always get what you want;,you get what you get
— Anne Lamott, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith
Half naked, he drank her in with his eyes, imprinting this moment into his mind. This, he would take to his death – the woman that stirred him to life.
— Dianna Hardy, Cry Of The Wolf
Let temporal things be in the use, eternal things in the desire.
— Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ
Humanity needs heroic leadership from those who see all life as precious.
— Bryant McGill, Voice of Reason
A valise without straps. A hole without a key. She had a German mouth, French ears, Russian ass. Cunt international. When the flag waved it was red all the way back to the throat. You entered on the Boulevard Jules-Ferry and came out at the Porte de la Villette. You droppedyour sweetbreads into the tumbrils – red tumbrils with two wheels, naturally. At the confluence of the Ourcq and Marne, where the water sluices through the dikes and lies like glass under thebridges.
— Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
I am a selfish, conceited, impudent little animal, it is true, but, after all, I am only one grand conglomeration of Wanting…
— Mary MacLane, I, Mary MacLane: A Diary of Human Days
But the thing which had made him fall for her, fall properly, was the way she seemed so calm and so quiet and so sad. Surrounded by noisy bankers showing off, and their variously pushy or beady or anxious or competitive wives, she seemed to be from somewhere else; a place where people carried their own burdens; a grander and realer and more honourable place. Roger didn't know that Matya spent a lot of that evening thinking about home, but he could tell that she was thinking about something, and it was that other thing which, for him, did it.
— John Lanchester, Capital
How can you possibly do everything you want to do in life if you start doing a bunch of things twice?
— Lorii Myers, No Excuses, The Fit Mind-Fit Body Strategy Book
Amuse yourself, torment your desires. Drink when you're thirsty -- that would be very much too simple! If you didn't harbour a temptation eternally in your soul, you'd run the risk of forgetting yourself.
— Jean-Paul Sartre, The Respectable Prostitute/Lucifer and the Lord/In Camera
AttractionThe whites of his eyespull me like moons.He smiles. I believehis face. Alreadymy body slips down in the chair:I recline on my side,offering peeled grapes.I can taste his tonguein my mouthwhenever he speaks.I suspect he lies.But my body oils itself loose.When he gets up to fix a drinkmy legs like derrickshoist me off the seat.I am thirsty, it seams.Already I see the seductionfar off in the distancelike a large treedwarfed by a risein the road.I put away objectionsas quietly as quilts.Already I explain to myselfhow marriages are broken--accidentally, like arms or legs.
— Enid Shomer
To put it in a rather vulgar way, I had been dreaming about love in the firm belief that I could not be loved, but at the final stage I had substituted desire for love and felt a sort of relief. But in the end I had understood that desire itself demanded for its fulfillment that I should forget about the conditions of my existence, and that I should abandon what for me constituted the only barrier to love, namely the belief that I could not be loved. I had always thought of desire as being something clearer than it really is, and I had not realized that it required people to see themselves in a slightly dreamlike, unreal way.
— Yukio Mishima, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion
The trouble with being an angel on Earth was that he was still a man. He got hungry. He thirsted. His lungs clamored without the draw of air. And for this woman, the only one in a thousand years, his body and soul ached. The trick was to will his mind, and ignore the Earthly sensations, as he'd done so many times with pain and trouble. Desire was no different, a call of the flesh. He could divide himself-acknowledge the lust and act on intellect. But see, the trouble with being an angel was that he was still a man.
— Erin Kellison, Fire Kissed
Jelly had no brain per se but was in essence all brain, a shared consciousness programmed for desire. He had an appetite for everything, voraciously absorbing the culture that surrounded him and becoming it, only louder. In other words, he was extremely teenaged.
— Larry Doyle, Go, Mutants!
I looked down, unable to meet the intensity in Nat’s eyes. Tonight, my crush for Nat had moved beyond a crush. The chemistry between us was undeniable, and the more we clashed, the more we wanted each other." - Summer, Perfect Summer
— Kailin Gow, Perfect Summer
You kindled me, heap of ashes that I am, into fire. He had wondered once why love was always phrased in terms of burning. The conflagration in his own veins, now, gave the answer.
— Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Princess
But now it was spring again, and spring was almost unbearable for sensitive hearts. It drove creation to its utmost limits, it wafted its spice-laden breath even into the nostrils of the innocent.
— Knut Hamsun, Dreamers
My will and my desire were turned by love, the love that moves the sun and the other stars.' Dante was trying to explain faith, I think, as an overpowering love, and maybe it's blasphemous, but that's how I think of the way that I love you. You came into my life and suddenly I had one truth to hold on to-that I loved you, and you loved me.
— Cassandra Clare, City of Fallen Angels
Desire urges me on, while fear bridals me.
— Giordano Bruno, The Heroic Enthusiasts - (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem
Don't canonize me too soon. I'm perfectly capable of fathering a child.
— Francis of Assisi