Quotes about desire

A desire to be observed, considered, esteemed, praised, beloved, and admired by his fellows is one of the earliest as well as the keenest dispositions discovered in the heart of man.

— John Adams

I desire not to desire, for my will is without value, since I am ignorant in any case. Therefore choose Thou for me what thou knowest to be best and do not put my perdition in what my autonomy and free choice prefer.

— Bayazid Al-Bistami

To desire is to obtain; to aspire is to achieve.

— James Allen

Desire is the key to motivation, but it's the determination and commitment to an unrelenting pursuit of your goal -- a commitment to excellence -- that will enable you to attain the success you seek.

— Mario Andretti

The desire is thy prayers; and if thy desire is without ceasing, thy prayer will also be without ceasing. The continuance of your longing is the continuance of your prayer.

— St. Augustine

Listen to what you know instead of what you fear.

— Richard Bach

Man is a creation of desire, not a creation of need.

— Gaston Bachelard

The desire of excessive power caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge caused men to fall.

— Francis Bacon

Be careful what you set your heart upon -- for it will surely be yours.

— James Baldwin

Those who really desire to attain an independence, have only set their minds upon it, and adopt the proper means, as they do in regard to any other object which they wish to accomplish, and the thing is easily done.

— P.T. Barnum

Dreams do come true, if we only wish hard enough, You can have anything in life if you will sacrifice everything else for it.

— Sir James M. Barrie

Want is one only of five giants on the road of reconstruction; the others are Disease, Ignorance, Squalor, and Idleness.

— Baron William Henry Beveridge

The desire of the lazy kill him; for his hands refuse to labor. [Proverbs 21:25]

— Bible

The desire of our soul is to thy name, and to the remembrance of thee. [Isaiah 26:8]

— Bible

And desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets. [Ecclesiastes 12:5]

— Bible

The desire accomplished is sweet to the soul. [Proverbs 13:19]

— Bible

He who desires but does not act, breeds pestilence.

— William Blake

A man must earnestly want.

— William Frederick Book

We trifle when we assign limits to our desires, since nature hath set none.

— Christian Nevell Bovee

One essential to success is that your desire be an all-obsessing one, your thoughts and aim be coordinated, and your energy be concentrated and applied without letup.

— Claude M. Bristol

If you do not develop the hunger and courage to pursue your goal, you will lose your nerve and you will give up on your dream.

— Les Brown

You gotta be hungry!

— Les Brown

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

— Robert Browning

Desire, like the atom, is explosive with creative force.

— Paul Vernon Buser

Nothing stops the man who desires to achieve. Every obstacle is simply a course to develop his achievement muscle. It's a strengthening of his powers of accomplishment.

— Eric Butterworth

Desire is the thing you want in incipiency.

— Emilie Cady

I honestly believed I would make it. I had the desire. A lot of people have the ability, but they don't put forth the effort.

— Joe Carter

No matter how old you get, if you can keep the desire to be creative, you're keeping the man-child alive.

— John Cassavetes

Almost every desire a poor man has is a punishable offence.

— Louis-Ferdinand Celine

If you really want something you can figure out how to make it happen.

— Cher

It is not the greatness of a man's means that makes him independent, so much as the smallness of his wants.

— William Cobbett

All through nature, you will find the same law. First the need, then the means.

— Robert Collier

Something must be done when you find an opposing set of desires of this kind well to the fore in your category of strong desires. You must set in operation a process of competition, from which one must emerge a victor and the other set be defeated.

— Robert Collier

Very few persons, comparatively, know how to Desire with sufficient intensity. They do not know what it is to feel and manifest that intense, eager, longing, craving, insistent, demanding, ravenous Desire which is akin to the persistent, insistent, ardent, overwhelming desire of the drowning man for a breath of air; of the shipwrecked or desert-lost man for a drink of water; of the famished man for bread and meat

— Robert Collier

The first principle of success is desire -- knowing what you want. Desire is the planting of your seed.

— Robert Collier

Supply always comes on the heels of demand.

— Robert Collier

You can have anything you want -- if you want it badly enough. You can be anything you want to be, have anything you desire, accomplish anything you set out to accomplish -- if you will hold to that desire with singleness of purpose.

— Robert Collier

Plant the seed of desire in your mind and it forms a nucleus with power to attract to itself everything needed for its fulfillment.

— Robert Collier

It sometimes seems that we have only to love a thing greatly to get it.

— Robert Collier

Desire is proof of the availability...

— Robert Collier

First the stalk -- then the roots. First the need -- then the means to satisfy that need. First the nucleus -- then the elements needed for its growth.

— Robert Collier

Whenever we confront an unbridled desire we are surely in the presence of a tragedy-in-the-making.

— Quentin Crisp

It is said that desire is a product of the will, but the converse is in fact true: will is a product of desire.

— Denis Diderot

Anything you really want, you can attain, if you really go after it.

— Wayne Dyer

Some people wanted champagne and caviar when they should have had beer and hot dogs.

— Dwight D. Eisenhower

There is nothing capricious in nature and the implanting of a desire indicates that its gratification is in the constitution of the creature that feel it.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Can anything be so elegant as to have few wants, and to serve them one's self?

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

I never desired to please the rabble. What pleased them, I did not learn; and what I knew was far removed from their understanding.

— Epicurus

It is not from nature, but from education and habits, that our wants are chiefly derived.

— Henry Fielding

Know what you want. Become your real self.

— David Harold Fink

It is much easier to suppress a first desire than to satisfy those that follow.

— Benjamin Franklin

If you desire many things, many things will seem few.

— Benjamin Franklin

The significance of a man is not in what he attains, but rather what he longs to attain.

— Kahlil Gibran

While man's desires and aspirations stir he cannot choose but err.

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

People seek within a short span of life to satisfy a thousand desires, each of which is insatiable.

— Oliver Goldsmith

When desire dies, fear is born.

— Baltasar Gracian

You can have anything you want if you want it desperately enough. You must want it with an inner exuberance that erupts through the skin and joins the energy that created the world.

— Sheila Graham

It (racing) is a matter of spirit, not strength. It is a matter of doing your best each little moment. There's never a break. You must have desire, a very intense desire to keep going.

— Janet Guthrie

Just what you want to be, you will be in the end.

— Justin Hayward

A strong passion for any object will ensure success, for the desire of the end will point out the means.

— William Hazlitt

By annihilating the desires, you annihilate the mind. Every man without passions has within him no principle of action, nor motive to act.

— Claude A. Helvetius

The starting point of all achievement is desire. Keep this constantly in mind. Weak desires bring weak results, just as a small amount of fire makes a small amount of heat.

— Napoleon Hill

Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything.

— Napoleon Hill

Through some strange and powerful principle of mental chemistry which she has never divulged, nature wraps up in the impulse of strong desire, that something which recognizes no such word as impossible, and accepts no such reality as failure.

— Napoleon Hill

When your desires are strong enough you will appear to possess superhuman powers to achieve.

— Napoleon Hill

The battle is all over except the shouting when one knows what is wanted and has made up his mind to get it, whatever the price may be.

— Napoleon Hill

Desire creates the power.

— Raymond Holliwell

There are confessable agonies, sufferings of which one can positively be proud. Of bereavement, of parting, of the sense of sin and the fear of death the poets have eloquently spoken. They command the world's sympathy. But there are also discreditable anguishes, no less excruciating than the others, but of which the sufferer dare not, cannot speak. The anguish of thwarted desire, for example.

— Aldous Huxley

Events are influenced by our very great desires.

— William James

If you care enough for a result, you will most certainly attain it.

— William James

I can do whatever I want -- I'm rich, I'm famous, and I'm bigger than you.

— Don Johnson

Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.

— Samuel Johnson

Some desire is necessary to keep life in motion, and he whose real wants are supplied must admit those of fancy.

— Samuel Johnson

You will live your life secure in that you are no longer manipulated by what other people want you to do and be, but are directed by your own inner desires.

— H. Stanley Judd

One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.

— Helen Keller

It belongs to the imperfection of everything human that man can only attain his desire by passing through its opposite.

— Søren Kierkegaard

We never desire strongly, what we desire rationally.

— Francois De La Rochefoucauld

There are ways which lead to everything, and if we have sufficient will we should always have sufficient means.

— Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Limited in his nature, infinite in his desire, man is a fallen god who remembers heaven.

— Alphonse De Lamartine

Manifest plainness, embrace simplicity, reduce selfishness, have few desires.

— Lao-Tzu

Ignore what a man desires and you ignore the very source of his power

— Walter Lippmann

The discipline of desire is the background of character.

— John Locke

Winning isn't everything, but wanting to win is.

— Vince Lombardi

To educate the intelligence is to expand the horizon of its wants and desires.

— James Russell Lowell

The desire for success lubricates secret prostitution's in the soul.

— Norman Mailer

Desires are the pulses of the soul; as physicians judge by the appetite, so may you by desires.

— Manton

If men could regard the events of their own lives with more open minds, they would frequently discover that they did not really desire the things they failed to obtain.

— Andre Maurois

The intensity of your desire governs the power with which the force is directed.

— John Mcdonald

A burning desire is the greatest motivator of every human action. The desire for success implants success consciousness which, in turn, creates a vigorous and ever-increasing habit of success.

— Paul J. Meyer

Lord, grant that I may always desire more than I can accomplish.

— Michelangelo

I was taught that everything is attainable if you are prepared to give up, to sacrifice, to get it. Whatever you want to do, you can do it, if you want it badly enough, and I do believe that. I believe that if I wanted to run a mile is four minutes I could do it. I would have to give up everything else in my life, but I could run a mile in four minutes. I believe that if a man wanted to walk on water and was prepared to give up everything else in life, he could do that.

— Stirling Moss

I know that if I ever go looking for my heart's desire, I'll never go any further than my own back yard. For if it isn't there, I never really lost it. (Dorothy)

— Wizard of Oz Movie

The key that unlocks energy is Desire. It's also the key to a long and interesting life. If we expect to create any drive, any real force within ourselves, we have to get excited.

— Earl Nightingale

We are ever striving after what is forbidden, and coveting what is denied us.

— Ovid

Desire and force between them are responsible for all our actions; desire causes our voluntary acts, force our involuntary.

— Blaise Pascal

The more wild and incredible your desire, the more willing and prompt God is in fulfilling it, if you will have it so.

— Coventry Patmore

There is a vast difference in some instances between what we really need and that which we think we must have, and the realization of this truth will greatly lessen the seeming discomfort in doing without.

— William M. Peck

You can really have everything you want, if you go after it, but you will have to want it. The desire for success must be so strong within you that it is the very breath of your life -- your first though when you awaken in the morning, your last thought when you go to bed at night...

— Charles E. Popplestone

We do not succeed in changing things according to our desire, but gradually our desire changes.

— Marcel Proust

There's nothing like desire to prevent the things one says from having any resemblance to the things in one's mind.

— Marcel Proust