desire

All women's dresses, in every age and country, are merely variations on the eternal struggle between the admitted desire to dress and the unadmitted desire to undress.

—LinYutang

O lyric love half angel and half bird And all a wonder and a wild desire.

—Browning, Robert

   During my tenure of power, myearnest wish has beento impress the people of this country with a belief that the legislature was animated bya sincere desire to frame its legislation upon the principles of equity and justice† Deprive me of power tomorrow, but you can never deprive me of the consciousness that I have exercised the powers committed to me from no corrupt or interested motives, from no desire to gratifyambition, or to attain any personal object.

—Peel, Sir Robert

What istheuse offighting for thevoteif we donot havea country to vote in? With that patriotism that has nerved womento enduretorture inprison for thenational good, we ardently desire that our country shall be victorious.

—Pankhurst, Emmeline ne¤  e  Goulden

Bring me my bow of burning gold! Bring me myarrows of desire! Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold! Bring me my chariot of fire!

—Blake,William

Gie me ae spark o' Nature's fire, That's a'the learning I desire.

—Burns, Robert

All thy brim-filled bowls of fierce desire

—Crashaw, Richard

   A heat full of coldness, a sweet full of bitterness, a pain full of pleasantness, which maketh thoughts have eyes and hearts ears, bred by desire, nursed by delight, weaned by jealousy, killed by dissembling, buried by ingratitude, and this is love. Fair lady, will you any?

—Lyly,John

Sothat finding myself at present inorabout onehundred and twenty degrees off east longitude from England, it bred in me a desire to proceed on the same easterly course till I had ended where I began, and so to have once made one circle round the globe of the earth, which would have been a voyage of voyages.

—Mundy, Peter

Il tournait dans son de¤  sir, comme un prisonnier dans son cachot. He was circling in his desire, like a prisoner in his dungeon.

—Flaubert, Gustave

I came to the conclusion many years ago that almost all crime is due to the repressed desire for aesthetic expression.

—Waugh, Evelyn Arthur StJohn

The human desire for food and sex is relatively equal. If there are armed rapes why should there not be armed hot dog thefts?

—Toole,John Kennedy

Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that gettethunderstanding.For themerchandise of it isbetter than the merchandise of silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold. She is more precious than rubies: and all the thingsthoucanst desirearenottobe compared untoher. Length of days is in her right hand; and in her left hand riches and honour. Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her: and happy is every one that retaineth her.

—Bible (Old Testament)

Hope deferred maketh the heart sick: but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life.

—Bible (Old Testament)

Oh, theyarepolitic: they knowourdesireisincreased by the difficulty of enjoying, whereas satiety is a blunt, weary, and drowsy passion.

—Webster,John

Behold, my desire is, that the Almighty would answer me, and that mine adversary had written a book.

—Bible (Old Testament)

The desire not to be impinged upon, to be left to oneself, has been the markof high civilisation both on the part of individuals and communities.

—Berlin, Sir Isaiah

Palate, the hutch of tasty lust, Desire not to be rinsed with wine: The can must be so sweet, the crust So fresh that come in fasts divine!

—Hopkins, SirAnthony

Of such wisdom, the poetic passion, the desire of beauty, the love of art for its own sake, has most. For art comes to you proposing frankly to give nothing but the highestquality toyourmomentsasthey pass,and simply for those moments'sake.

—Pater,Walter

The principle which prompts to save is the desire of bettering our conditionöa desire which†comes with us from the womb and never leaves us till we go into the grave.

—Smith, Adam

What is commonly called love, namely the desire of satisfying a voracious appetite with a certain quantity of delicate white human flesh.

—Fielding, Henry

Desire paces Eternityas if it had bounds, craving death. The Word climbs upward into Its crown.

—Dunbar,William

Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them; While the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the stars, be not darkened, nor the clouds return after the rain: In the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because theyare few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened, And the doors shall be shut in the streets, when the sound of the grinding is low, and he shall rise up at the voice of the bird, and all the daughters of musick shall be brought low: Also when they shall be afraid of that which is high, and fears shall be in the way, and the almond tree shall flourish, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and mournersgo about the streets: Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern. Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.

—Bible (Old Testament)

Political economy tracesinanabstract way theeffects of the desire to be rich; and nations must nowadays abound in that passion if theyare to have much poweror respect in the world.

—Bagehot,Walter

Finnegans Wake took him seventeen years to write, a length of time that suggests an elaborate hobby rather than a passionate desire to create something.

—Priestley,J(ohn) B(oynton)

These two ignorant and unpolished people had guided themselves so faron in their journey of life, bya religious sense of duty and desire to do right.

—Dickens, CharlesJohn Huffam

Iadmit it ismore funto puntthanto be punted, and that a desire to have all the fun is nine-tenths of the law of chivalry.

—Sayers, Dorothy L(eigh)

Chacun peut e¤  prouver en soi ce double mouvement: de¤ s ir de s'inte¤  grer a'   la socie¤  te¤  , besoin de se re¤  aliser par soi-me"  me en dehors d'elle. We all have this double impulse within ourselves: the desire to integrate into society, and the need to fulfil ourselves outside of it, through our own efforts.

—Sarraute, Nathalie

The scientific attitude of mind involves a sweeping away of all other desires in the interest of the desire to know.

—Russell, Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl

The origin of all science is in the desire to know causes; and the origin of all false science and imposture is in the desire to accept false causes rather than none; or, which 388 is the same thing, in the unwillingness to acknowledge our own ignorance.

—Hazlitt,William

The desire to make money is a symptom of all sorts of emotional disturbancesögreed is only one of them.

—van deWetering,Janwillem

I do not write for money or fame† One writes because one has a burning desire to objectify what it is indispensible to one's happiness to express.

—Moore, Marianne Craig

The desire to take medicine is perhaps the greatest feature which distinguishes man from animals.

—Osler, Sir William

Porque todo es irreal en este cuento. Nada sucedio¤   como se indica. Hechos y sitios se deformaron por el empen‹  o de tocar la verdad mediante una ficcio¤  n, una mentira. Todo irreal, nada sucedio¤   como aqu |¤ se refiere. Pero fue un pobre intento de contribuir a que el gran crimen nunca se repita. For everything in this story is unreal. Nothing happened the way it was suggested. Facts and places were distorted by that persistent desire to touch the truth by means of fiction, a lie. All of it is unreal; nothing happened the way it istold here.It was a poorattempt to help ensure that the great crime is never repeated.

—Pacheco,Jose¤   Emilio

For me, it's about the desire to win. My audience becomes a crowd of wild animals and I have to be the lion-tamer or be eaten.

—Connolly, Billy

La vie est courte et ennuyeuse: elle se passe toute a' de¤ s irer. Life isshort and bothersome: all we do is desire what we do not have.

—La Bruye'  re,Jean de

It is a miserable state of mind to have few things to desire and many things to fear.

—Bacon, Francis,Viscount St Albans

Naked she lay, clasped in my longing arms, I filled with love, and she all over charms, Both equally inspired with eager fire, Melting through kindness, flaming in desire; With arms, legs, lips, close clinging to embrace.

—Rochester,JohnWilmot, 2nd Earl of

To be forced by desire into any unwarrantable belief is a calamity.

—Richards, I(vor) A(rmstrong)

   Free from desire, you realise the mystery. Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.

—Lao-Tzu   6c

Rootless hope and fruitless desire are there; Let them go to the fire, with never a look behind. The world that was ours is a world that is ours no more.

—Binyon, (Robert) Laurence

And king Solomon gave to the queen of Sheba all her desire, whatsoever sheasked, besidethat whichshehad brought unto the king.

—Bible (Old Testament)

A perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.

—Shaw, George Bernard

I reflected how easy it is for a man to reduce women of a certain age to imbecility. All he has to do isgive an impersonation of desire, or better still, of secret knowledge, for a woman to feel herself a source of power.

—Brookner, Anita

The beginning of a plot†is the prompting of desire.

—Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher Charles Herbert

From you, Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, The substance of my dreams took fire. You built cathedrals in my heart, And lit my pinnacled desire.

—Sassoon, Siegfried Louvain

The trouble in modern democracy is that men do not approach to leadership until they have lost the desire to lead anyone.

—Beveridge,William Henry Beveridge, 1st Baron

This is the use of memory: For liberationönot less of love but expanding Of love beyond desire, and so liberation From the future as well as the past.

—Eliot,T(homas) S(tearns)

'Cause some make forfeit of their name, And slave themselves to man's desire; Shall the sex free From guilt, damn'd to the bondage be?

—Habington,William

The man's desire is for the woman; but the woman's desire is rarely other than for the desire of the man.

—Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain.

—Eliot,T(homas) S(tearns)

I tell you naught for your comfort, Yea, naught for your desire, Save that the sky grows darker yet And the sea rises higher.

—Chesterton, G(ilbert) K(eith)

I no longer desire happiness: life is nobler than that.

—Shaw, George Bernard

There is nothing like wealth for dulling desire.

—McGuigan, Barry

Possessing utility, commodities derive their exchangeable value from two sources: from their scarcityand from the labour required to obtain them.By far the greatest part of those goods which are the objects of desire, are procured by labour.

—Ricardo, David

That damnable woman's trick of heaping obligations on a man, of placing yourself so entirelyand helplesslyat his mercy that at last he dare not take a step without running to you for leave. I know a poor wretch whose one desire in life is to run away from his wife. She prevents him by threatening to throw herself in front of the engine of the train he leaves her in. That is what all women do. If we try to go where you do not want us to go there is no law to prevent us; but when we take the first step your breasts are under our foot as it descends: your bodies are under our wheels as we start. No woman shall ever enslave me in that way.

—Shaw, George Bernard

And I replied unto all these things which encompass the door of my flesh,'Ye have told me of my god, that ye are not he: tell me something of him'. And theycried all with a great voice,'He made us'.Myquestioning themwasmy mind's desire, and their Beauty was their answer.

—Bridges, Robert Seymour

There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy's lifewhenhehas a ragingdesiretogosomewhereand dig for hidden treasure.

—Twain, Mark pseudonym of  Samuel Langhorne Clemens

I put for a general inclination of all mankind, a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death.

—Hobbes,Thomas

And if there be any addition to knowledge, it is rather a new knowledge than a greater knowledge; rather a singularity in a desire of proposing something that was not knownat all beforethananimproving, anadvancing, a multiplying of former inceptions; and by that means, no knowledge comes to be perfect.

—Donne,John

   It is a strange desire to seek power and to lose liberty.

—Bacon, Francis,Viscount St Albans

It must be soöPlato, thou reason'st well!ö Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire, This longing after immortality? Or whence this secret dread, and inward horror, Of falling into naught? Why shrinks the soul Back on herself, and startles at destruction 'Tis the divinity that stirs within us; 'Tis heaven itself, that points out an hereafter, And intimates eternity to man. Eternity! thou pleasing, dreadful thought!

—Addison,Joseph

Unsterblichkeit der Individualit a« t verlangen heiÞt eigentlich einen Irrtum ins Unendliche perpetuieren wollen. Denn im Grunde ist doch jede Individualit a« t nur ein spezieller Irrtum, Fehltritt, etwas, das besser nicht w a« re, ja wovon uns zuru«  ckzubringen der eigentliche Zweck des Lebens ist. To desire immortality for theindividual isreally thesame as wanting to perpetuate an error for ever; for at bottom every individuality is really only a special error, a false step, something that it would be better should not be, in fact something from which it isthe real purpose of life to bring us back.

—Schopenhauer, Arthur

When vain desire at last and vain regret Go hand in hand to death, and all is vain, What shall assuage the unforgotten pain And teach the unforgetful to forget?

—Rossetti, Dante Gabriel

Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I've tasted of desire I hold with those who favour fire. But if I had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice.

—Frost, Robert Lee

Ah! Vanitas Vanitatum! Which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?öCome, children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out.

—Thackeray,William Makepeace

Thisgrey spirit yearning in desire To follow knowledge like a sinking star, Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

—Tennyson

Ah, sunflower, weary of time, Who countest the steps of the sun, Seeking after that sweet golden clime Where the traveller's journey is done; Where the youth pined away with desire And the pale virgin shrouded in snow Arise from their graves, and aspire Where my sunflower wishes to go.

—Blake,William