Great Throughts Treasury

"The abstinent run away from what they desire but carry their desires with them." - Bhagavad Gītā, simply known as Gita NULL

"The goal of wisdom and the goal of service are the same. The ignorant one fails to see that knowledge and action are one." - Bhagavad Gītā, simply known as Gita NULL

"He know peace who has forgotten desire." - Bhagavad Gītā, simply known as Gita NULL

"Water flows continually in the ocean but the ocean is never disturbed: desire flows into the mind of the seer but he is never disturbed. The seer knows peace: the man who stirs up his own lusts can never know peace. He knows peace who has forgotten desire. He lives without craving: free from ego, free from pride." - Bhagavad Gītā, simply known as Gita NULL

"Everything on earth gives cause for fear, and the only freedom from fear is to be found in the renunciation of all desire." - Bhartrihari NULL

"Custom should be followed only because it is custom, and not because it is reasonable or just. But people follow it for this sole reason, that they think it just. Otherwise they would follow it no longer, although it were the custom; for they will only submit to reason or justice. Custom without this would pass for tyranny; but the sovereignty of reason and justice is no more tyrannical than that of desire. They are principles natural to man." - Blaise Pascal

"We desire truth, and find within ourselves only uncertainty. We seek happiness, and find only misery and death." - Blaise Pascal

"We know truth, not only by reason, but also by the heart, and it is from this last that we know first principles; and reason, which has nothing to do with it, tries in vain to combat them. The skeptics who desire truth alone labor in vain." - Blaise Pascal

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

"Our nature tempts us perpetually; criminal desire is often excited; but sin is not completed till reason consents." - Blaise Pascal

"The wisdom of God says, “I alone can make you understand who you are.” God has willed to make Himself quite recognizable to those who seek Him with all their heart, and to be hidden from those who flee from Him with all their heart. There is enough light for those who only desire to see, and enough obscurity for those who have a contrary disposition." - Blaise Pascal

"To pity the unhappy is not contrary to selfish desire; on the other hand, we are glad of the occupation to thus testify friendship and attract to ourselves the reputation of tenderness, without giving anything." - Blaise Pascal

"We desire the truth, but find within ourselves nothing but uncertainty. We seek happiness, but find mainly misery. We are incapable of suppressing the desire for truth and happiness, and yet are incapable of knowing truth and happiness. These frustrated desires remind us how far we have fallen from our true state." - Blaise Pascal

"A real teacher can never run dry because he continually learns from each and every experience, not filled with likes and dislikes, bur desire through learning to evolute whatever he touches. A correct teacher of Yoga is not one who discusses it, but who is it." - Blanche DeVries Bernard

"I love you for what you are, but I love you yet more for what you are going to be. I love you not so much for your realities as for your ideals. I pray for your desires that they may be great , rather than for your satisfactions, which may be so hazardously little. A satisfied flower is one whose petals are about to fall. The most beautiful rose is one hardly more than a bud wherein the pangs and ecstasies of desire are working for larger and finer growth." - Carl Sandburg

"The consideration of the small addition often made by wealth to the happiness of the possessor may check the desire and prevent the insatiability which sometimes attends it... Gross and vulgar minds will always pay a higher respect to wealth than to talent; for wealth, although it be a far less efficient source of power than talent, happens to be far more intelligible." - Charles Caleb Colton

"Time, the cradle of hope, but the grave of ambition, is the stern corrector of fools, but the salutary counselor of the wise, bringing all they dread to the one, and all they desire to the other; it warns us with a voice tht even the sagest discredit too long, and the silliest believe too late. Wisdom walks before it, opportunity with it, and repentance behind it; he that has made it his friend will have little to fear from his enemies, but he that has made it his enemy will have little to hope from his friends." - Charles Caleb Colton

"When we feel a strong desire to thrust our advice upon others, it is usually because we suspect their weakness; but we ought rather to suspect our own." - Charles Caleb Colton

"Desire to have things done quickly prevents their being done thoroughly." - Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL

"The desire to have things done quickly prevents their being done thoroughly." - Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL

"The desire of glory is the last infirmity cast off even by the wise." - Tacitus, fully Publius (or Gaius) Cornelius Tacitus NULL

"The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise." - Tacitus, fully Publius (or Gaius) Cornelius Tacitus NULL

"All I desire is dominion over myself - dominion over my thoughts; dominion over my fears; dominion over my mind and over my spirit. And the wonderful thing is that I know that I can attain this dominion to an astonishing degree, any time I want to, by merely controlling my actions - which in turn control my reactions." - Dale Carnegie, originally spelled Dale Carnegey

"To think of learning as a preparation for something beyond learning is a defeat of the process. The most important attitude that can be formed is that of desire to go on learning." - Daniel Bell

"The supreme desire of everything, and that first given by nature, is to return to its source; and since God is the source of our souls and Maker of them… to him this soul desires above all to return." - Dante, full name Durante degli Alighieri, aka Dante Alighieri NULL

"If you do not desire much, little will seem much to you, for small wants give poverty the power of wealth." - Democritus NULL

"Before we passionately desire anything which another enjoys, we should examine into the happiness of its possessor." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

"Generally we praise only to be praised... Refusal of praise is a desire to be praised twice." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

"It is much easier to suppress a first desire than to satisfy those that follow." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

"Nothing so much prevents our being natural as the desire to seem so." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

"The contempt of riches in the philosophers was a concealed desire of revenging on fortune the injustice done to their merit, by despising the good she denied them." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

"The desire of appearing clever often prevents our becoming so." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

"The gratitude of most men is but a secret desire of receiving greater benefits." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

"The love of glory, the fear of disgrace, the incentive to succeed, the desire to live in comfort, and the instinct to humiliate others are often the cause of that courage so renowned among men." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

"There are different kinds of curiosity - one of interest, which causes us to learn that which would be useful to us, and the other of pride which springs from desire to know that of which others are ignorant." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

"We never desire earnestly what we desire in reason." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

"We refuse praise from a desire to be praised twice." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

"The urgent consideration of the public safety may undoubtedly authorize the violation of every positive law. How far that or any other consideration may operate to dissolve the natural obligations of humanity and justice, is a doctrine of which I still desire to remain ignorant." - Edward Gibbon

"Freedom is obtained not by the enjoyment of what is desired but by controlling desire itself." - Epictetus "the Stoic" NULL

"Nothing great is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig. I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen." - Epictetus "the Stoic" NULL

"A mass movement attracts and holds a following not because it can satisfy the desire for self-advancement, but because it can satisfy the passion for self-renunciation." - Eric Hoffer

"It sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents." - Eric Hoffer

"We are told that talent creates its own opportunities. But it sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but is own talents." - Eric Hoffer

"The less satisfaction we derive from being ourselves, the greater our desire to be like others." - Eric Hoffer

"Goodness answers to the theological virtue charity, and admits no excess but error. The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall. But in charity there is no excess; neither can angel or man come in danger by it." - Francis Bacon

"The desire of power in excess caused angels to fall; the desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall; but in charity is no excess, neither can man nor angels come into danger by it." - Francis Bacon

"The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge caused man to fall." - Francis Bacon

"It is a strange desire to seek power and lose liberty." - Francis Bacon

"The Occasion of the imagined Difficulty in conceiving disinterested Desires, has probably been from the attempting to define this simple Idea, Desire. It is called an uneasy Sensation in the absence of Good. Whereas Desire is as distinct from any Sensation, as the Will is from the Understanding or Senses. This every one must acknowledge, who speaks of desiring to remove Uneasiness or Pain." - Francis Hutcheson

"It is the nature of man to long after things forbidden and to desire what is denied us." - François Rabelais