Quotes about Desire

A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.

Steal a chicken if you get a chance, Huck, because if you don't want it, someone else does and a good deed ain't never forgotten.

There is no such thing as material covetousness. All covetousness is spiritual. ...Any so-called material thing that you want is merely a symbol: you want it not for itself, but because it will content your spirit for the moment.

in order to make a man or boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain.

He had a dream and it shot him.

He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it—namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is OBLIGED to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. And

He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it—namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is OBLIGED to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.

All who call on God in true faith, earnestly from the heart, will certainly be heard, and will receive what they have asked and desired.

Now, Jack, is there anything you would like? The youth pondered for a moment. I'd like a shillin', said he. Nothing you would like better? I'd like two shillin' better, the prodigy answered after some thought.

Hope is the confusion of the desire for a thing with its probability.

That I could clamber to the frozen moon. And draw the ladder after me.

Human life must be some kind of mistake. The truth of this will be sufficiently obvious if we only remember that man is a compound of needs and necessities hard to satisfy; and that even when they are satisfied, all he obtains is a state of painlessness, where nothing remains to him but abandonment to boredom.