136 Inspiring Quotes On Desire

In the ever-evolving journey of life, desire acts as both a compass and a driving force, guiding our ambitions and fueling our dreams. It's the inner spark that propels us forward, transforms visions into reality, and pushes us to explore the uncharted territories of our potential. Whether you're seeking motivation to embark on a new venture, reignite a forgotten goal, or simply find inspiration in the everyday, the wisdom of others can be a powerful catalyst. In this collection, we delve into 136 inspiring quotes on desire, each offering a unique perspective on the passion that propels us toward greatness. Let these words of wisdom ignite your passion and inspire you to pursue your dreams with unwavering determination.

1. “My desire and wish is that the things I start with should be so obvious that you wonder why I spend my time stating them. This is what I aim at because the point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.” - Bertrand Russell

2. “Profound desire, true desire is the desire to be close to someone.” - Paulo Coelho

3. “The Fremen were supreme in that quality the ancients called "spannungsbogen" -- which is the self-imposed delay between desire for a thing and the act of reaching out to grasp that thing.” - Frank Herbert

4. “free from desire, you realize the mysterycaught in the desire, you see only the manifestations.” - Lao Tzu

5. “sex is the consolation you have when you can't have love” - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

6. “Immense wealth, and its lavish expenditure, fill the great house with all that can please the eye, or tempt the taste. Here, appetite, not food, is the great desideratum.” - Frederick Douglass

7. “Everything you want is just outside your comfort zone.” - Robert G. Allen

8. “He wants the minute and secret reflection between them, the depth of field minimal, their foreignness intimate like two pages of a closed book.” - Michael Ondaatje

9. “It was the only thing I ever really wanted. And that’s the sin that can’t be forgiven--that I hadn’t done what I wanted. It feels so dirty and pointless and monstrous, as one feels about insanity, because there’s no sense to it, no dignity, nothing but pain--and wasted pain...why do they always teach us that it’s easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves? It’s the hardest thing in the world--to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage.” - Ayn Rand

10. “Never, never underestimate the power of desire. If you want to live badly enough, you can live. The great question, at least for me, was: How do I decide I want to live?” - Marya Hornbacher

11. “Believe me, for certain men at least, not taking what one doesn't desire is the hardest thing in the world.” - Albert Camus

12. “Her cheeks were flushed. She caught hold of the Savage's arm and pressed it, limp, against her side. He looked down at her for a moment, pale, pained, desiring, and ashamed of his desire. He was not worthy, not... Their eyes for a moment met. What treasures hers promised! A queen's ransom of temperament. Hastily he looked away, disengaged his imprisoned arm. He was obscurely terrified lest she should cease to be something he could feel himself unworthy of.” - Aldous Huxley

13. “Youngsters want to change world. Elders want to enjoy their works.The entrepreneur sells anything needed by both to win their desires.” - Toba Beta

14. “As if one could do what one wanted with one's own body!” - Louis Aragon

15. “[novan]: bassists are very good with their fingers[novan]: and some of us sing backup vocals, so that means we're good with our mouths too...(~ IM chat with Novan Chang, 18, bassist)” - Jess C. Scott

16. “The world is always greater than your desires; plenty is never enough.” - Aleksandar Hemon

17. “When we kill our desires we stink like any corpse.” - Harold Norse

18. “I want to take you until you are boneless. I want to drain you of strength. I want to fill you and take my fill of you. My dear, Ivy, I want to devour you. I want your juices on my toung, flooding my mouth. I want your wetness on my face, your scent covering me. I want your blood in my veins.” - Kathryn Smith

19. “I'll always want him. Until every sun goes dark in every sky, until I am nothing more than long-forgotten cosmic dust, I will want him. And even then I suspect my particles will long for his.” - Ann Aguirre

20. “For love is no part of the dreamworld. Love belongs to Desire, and Desire is always cruel.” - Neil Gaiman

21. “The swallow that hibernates underwater is a creature called yearning.” - David Quammen

22. “And still the brain continues to yearn, continues to burn, foolishly, with desire. My old man's brain is mocked by a body that still longs to stretch in the sun and form a beautiful shape in someone else's gaze, to lie under a blue sky and dream of helpless, selfless love, to behold itself, illuminated, in the golden light of another's eyes.” - Meg Rosoff

23. “He expected pages and pages of bright pictures of pancakes of every variety shown in plain stacks, or built into castles or bridges or igloos, or shaped like airplanes or rowboats or fire engines. And pitchers of syrup to choose from -- partridge berry syrup, thimbleberry syrup, huckleberry syrup, bosenberry syrup, and raspberry syrup. Then there would be cheese plates and cheeses a la carte. Creamy cheeses, crumbly cheeses, and peculiar little cheeses in peculiar little clay pots.” - Michael Hoeye

24. “Like magic, she felt him getting nearer, felt it like a pull in the pit of her stomach. It felt like hunger but deeper, heavier. Like the best kind of expectation. Ice cream expectation. Chocolate expectation.” - Sarah Addison Allen

25. “À l'aurore, armés d'une ardente patience, nous entrerons aux splendides Villes. (In the dawn, armed with a burning patience, we shall enter the splendid Cities.)” - Arthur Rimbaud

26. “And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds, And binding with briars, my joys & desires.” - William Blake

27. “We who are like senseless children shrink from suffering, but love its causes. We hurt ourselves; our pain is self-inflicted! Why should others be the object of our anger?” - Shantideva

28. “Faith is not Desire. Faith is Will. Desires are things that need to be satisfied, whereas Will is a force. Will changes the space around us,...” - Paulo Coelho

29. “What will be left of all the fearing and wanting associated with your problematic life situation that every day takes up most of your attention? A dash, one or two inches long, between the date of birth and date of death on your gravestone.” - Eckhart Tolle

30. “Desire overwhelmed me once she had gone. But it was not a desire for Homer. I had to return to the library. I could already smell the books' muskiness and in my mind turned over pages with as many differing textures as a forest; pages that were brittle and fragile which had to be coaxed to turn; pages that were soft and scented, presenting their words as if the were a gift in the palm of a hand, and pages that fell open heavily of their own accord as if weighted by the importance of their message. But more than anything else I was compelled by their mystery, by all the stories they had yet to tell me.'I have to go to the library, Homer. I have to be with the books.” - Christine Aziz

31. “Angst is not the human condition, it’s the purgatory between what we have and what we want but can’t get.” - Miguel Syjuco

32. “The will has no overall purpose, aims at no highest good, and can never be satisfied. Although it is our essence, it strikes us as an alien agency within, striving for life and procreation blindly, mediated only secondarily by consciousness. Instinctive sexuality is at our core, interfering constantly with the life of the intellect. To be an individual expression of this will is to lead a life of continual desire, deficiency, and suffering. Pleasure or satisfaction exists only relative to a felt lack; it is negative, merely the cessation of an episode of striving or suffering, and has no value of itself. Nothing we can achieve by conscious act of will alters the will to life within us. There is no free will. Human actions, as part of the natural order, are determined [....] As individual parts of the empirical world we are ineluctably pushed through life by a force inside us which is not of our choosing, which gives rise to needs and desires we can never fully satisfy, and is without ultimate purpose. Schopenhauer concludes that it would have been better not to exist—and that the world itself is something whose existence we should deplore rather than celebrate.” - Christopher Janaway

33. “Desire makes life happen. Makes it matter. Makes everything worth it. Desire is life. Hunger to see the next sunrise or sunset, to touch the one you love, to try again. 'Hell would be waking up and wanting nothing,' he agrees.” - Karen Marie Moning

34. “She wanted to be the rain, to cover him with moisture, to bring life to his seed.” - Caris Roane

35. “I spin worlds where we could be together. I dream you. For me, imagination and desire are very close.” - Jeanette Winterson

36. “I desire to be with you. I miss you. I feel lonely when I can't see you. I am obsessed with you, fascinated by you, infatuated with you. I hunger for your taste, your smell, the feel of your soul touching mine.” - Jack Llawayllynn

37. “He was raw and sharp and rich and throbbing with life. He was sweet blood after a long hunt. How could she have mistaken Aiden's kisses for this? They had been delicious and smooth like the brief comfort of chocolate, but they had never been enough.” - Annette Curtis Klause

38. “I do not mind when you tell me what you want and put that first instead of last.” - John Scalzi

39. “Adrian had always found it amusing that a guy could be drilling Stacia up her ass while she considered herself to be a virgin. Her intent had been to present herself as such when she found "Mr. Right.” - Jess C. Scott

40. “I think our last kiss was meant to be quick and chaste, but after the first touch of his lips fire leaped up and roared through my belly. My fingers yanked him close, digging into his back, and his arms crushed me to him as if wanting to meld us together. I knotted my fingers in his hair and bit down on his bottom lip, making him groan. His lips parted, and my tongue swept in to dance with his. There was nothing sweet or gentle in our last kiss; it was filled with sorrow and desperation, of the bitter knowledge that we could've had something perfect, but it just wasn't meant to be.” - Julie Kagawa

41. “I spent an hour looking at pots and carpets in the museums the other day, until the desire to describe them became like the desire for the lusts of the flesh.” - Virginia Woolf

42. “He that has satisfied his thirst turns his back on the well.” - Baltasar Gracian

43. “A fit, healthy body—that is the best fashion statement” - Jess C. Scott

44. “Let me know when you're ready to talk." She stopped and glanced at them both over her shoulder. "Maybe then I'd be ready to discuss your sexual twists and my own little abnormal desires. You never know what we all might learn that we haven't already."With that, she turned and moved back into the house, closing the door behind her and disappearing out of sight. And Cam found his back slammed against the side of Ian's Hummer, his brother in his face.Lust and irritation flared in his brother's eyes. "You better start talking," he grated. "Because you know what she just did?""She just dared us, Cam. And I don't know about you, but the thought of 'abnormal desires' dancing through her mind is going to drive me fucking crazy. Now, fix it.” - Lora Leigh

45. “One must count ones riches by the means one has to satisfy his desires.” - L'Abbé Prévost

46. “Peter Wessel and Peter Van Daan have grown into one Peter, who is beloved and good, and for whom I long desperately.” - Anne Frank

47. “Did my moral upbrining somehow turn against itself? If looking at someone with desire was as bad as satisfying the desire, if having an active fantasy was as bad as the act you were fantasizing- then why not the satisfaction and the act itself? As the days went on, I discovered that I couldn't stop thinking sinful thoughts. In which case I also wanted the sin itself.” - Bernhard Schlink

48. “Chris: I don't know why it is, but every time I reach out for something I want, I have to pull back because other people will suffer.” - Arthur Miller

49. “There is a yearning that is as spiritual as it is sensual. Even when it degenerates into addiction, there is something salvageable from the original impulse that can only be described as sacred. Something in the person (dare we call it a soul?) wants to be free, and it seeks its freedom any way it can. ... There is a drive for transcendence that is implicit in even the most sensual of desires.” - Mark Epstein

50. “Que ton désir soit de l'amour, et que ta possession soit amoureuse.” - Andre Gide

51. “It's precisely in despair that you find the most intense pleasure, especially if you are already powerfully conscious of the hopelessness of your predicament.” - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

52. “A man’s desire is for the woman, but the woman’s desire is rarely other than for the desire of the man.” - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

53. “I am dead because I lack desire,I lack desire because I think I possess,I think I possess because I do not try to give,In trying to give, you see that you have nothing,Seeing that you have nothing, you try to give of yourself,Trying to give of yourself, you see that you are nothing,Seeing that you are nothing, you desire to become,In desiring to become, you begin to live.” - Rene Daumal

54. “Needs cause motivation. Deep-rooted desires for esteem, affection, belonging, achievement, self-actualization, power, and control motivate us to push for what we want and need in our lives.” - Lorii Myers

55. “To burn with desire and keep quiet about it is the greatest punishment we can bring on ourselves.” - Federico García-Lorca

56. “It is of the nature of desire not to be satisfied, and most men live only for the gratification of it.” - Aristotle

57. “Whatever you eye falls on - for it will fall on what you love - will lead you to the questions of your life, the questions that are incumbent upon you to answer, because that is how the mind works in concert with the eye. The things of this world draw us where we need to go.” - Mary Rose O'Reilley

58. “I reached for her, pushing back the fall of hair-it was heavy and thick and smooth to the touch-and tilted her chin so that the moonlight shone on her wet face. We married each other that night, there on a bed of fallen pine needles-even today, the scent of pitch-pine stirs me-with Henry's distant flute for a wedding march and the arching white birch boughs for our basilica. At first, she quivered like an aspen, and I was ashamed at my lack of continence, yet I could not let go of her. I felt like Peleus on the beach, clinging to Thetis, only to find that, suddenly, it was she who held me; that same furnace in her nature that had flared up in anger blazed again, in passion.” - Geraldine Brooks

59. “Be very careful what you try with that.  I’m not as strong as I should be.” His breath was ragged, and irregular.  “And you are stronger than you know.” - Tyra Lynn

60. “You asked about love. I don't know about love, Daphne. I just know I don't want anything but you. I don't want to anywhere but with you.” - Brenna Yovanoff

61. “Have you ever thought, thought your heart would break? Wished you could cut open your chest tear it out to stop the pain? Why don´t you riot like everyone else. I don't care, life's too long. You can have any man you want. I want him...except him. Always suspected the world didn't smell of fresh paint and flowers. Smells of piss and human sweat If there could have been more moments like this.” - Sarah Kane

62. “Why so scrawny, cat?Starving for fat fish or mice...Or backyard love?” - Basho

63. “But Ludmilla is always at least one step ahead of you. “I like to know that book exists that I will still be able to read…” she says, sure that existent objects, concrete albeit unknown, must correspond to the strength of her desire. How can you keep up with her, this woman who is always reading another book besides the one before her eyes, a book that does not yet exist, but which, since she wants it, cannot fail to exist?” - Italo Calvino

64. “Nothing makes a person desire improvement like failure” - Chris Stocking

65. “he was conscious of the disastrous fact that love and desire must be expressed in the same way...” - Albert Camus

66. “All the beautiful waitresses existed like eternal responsibilities.” - Spalding Gray

67. “Our duty is to be useful, not according to our desires but according to our powers.” - Henri Frédéric Amiel

68. “Could it be that desire for a good thing has become a bad thing because that desire has become a ruling thing?” - Paul David Tripp

69. “I must keep my head and not give in to desire, for desire is what causes women to drown.” - Alice Hoffman

70. “The thing about the Lexington International Bank ladder was that it was very long, and climbing it was very exhausting, and so Andrew Brown didn't have a lot of time to think about whether he really wanted to get to the top of it—and besides, since so many other people were climbing too, the view from the top must be worth it.So he kept going. He worked hard. He put his heart and mind and soul into it. There was an opening for a position half a rung higher than he already was. With a promotion, he might get two hours a week of a secretary's time. He'd go to more important meetings, with more senior people, and have the opportunity to impress them, and if he did he might be promoted again and then... well, of course eventually he'd be running the whole office. It's important to have a dream: otherwise you might notice where you really are.” - Naomi Alderman

71. “Your desire is your prayer. Picture the fulfillment of your desire now and feel its reality and you will experience the joy of the answered.Dr. Joseph Murphy” - Joseph Murphy

72. “Wars fought over a face like this,” he murmured like he was talking to himself, my heart stopped beating and his thumbs moved lightly across my cheeks. “A man would work himself into the ground for it, go down to his knees to beg to keep it, endure torture to protect it, take a bullet for it,” his eyes came to mine, “poison his brother to possess a face like this.” - Kristen Ashley

73. “He had to feel those lips on him again. Had. To. This wasn’t a mild expression of preference. This was an imperative. His body was insistent. To continue hisexistence on this earth, he now needed the following: food, water, shelter, clothing, and Minerva Highwood’s lips.” - Tessa Dare

74. “How we need that security. How we need another soul to cling to, another body to keep us warm. To rest and trust; to give your soul in confidence: I need this, I need someone to pour myself into.” - Sylvia Plath

75. “Give me the strongest cheese, the one that stinks best;and I want the good wine, the swirl in crystalsurrendering the bruised scent of blackberries,or cherries, the rich spurt in the backof the throat, the holding it there before swallowing.Give me the lover who yanks open the doorof his house and presses me to the wallin the dim hallway, and keeps me there until I’m drenchedand shaking, whose kisses arrive by the boatloadand begin their delicious diasporathrough the cities and small towns of my body.To hell with the saints, with martyrsof my childhood meant to instruct mein the power of endurance and faith,to hell with the next world and its pallid angelsswooning and sighing like Victorian girls.I want this world. I want to walk intothe ocean and feel it trying to drag me alonglike I’m nothing but a broken bit of scratched glass,and I want to resist it. I want to gostaggering and flailing my waythrough the bars and back rooms,through the gleaming hotels and weedylots of abandoned sunflowers and the parkswhere dogs are let off their leashesin spite of the signs, where they sniff eachother and roll together in the grass, I want tolie down somewhere and suffer for love untilit nearly kills me, and then I want to get up againand put on that little black dress and waitfor you, yes you, to come over hereand get down on your knees and tell mejust how fucking good I look.- “For Desire” - Kim Addonizio

76. “I am the woman at the water’s edge,offering you oranges for the peeling,knife glistening in the sun.This is the scent and tasteof my skin: citon and sweet.Touch me and your life will unfoldbefore you, easily as this skirtbillows then sinks,lapping against my legs, my toesfiltering through the rivers silt.Following the current out to sea,I am the kind of womanwho will come back to hauntyour dreams, move through yourhumid nights the way honeyswirls through a cup of hot tea” - Shara McCallum

77. “Behind all art is an element of desire...Love of life, of existence, love of another human being, love of human beings is in some way behind all art — even the most angry, even the darkest, even the most grief-stricken, and even the most embittered art has that element somewhere behind it. Because how could you be so despairing, so embittered, if you had not had something you loved that you lost?” - Adrienne Rich

78. “I’m the thing you most desire, you represent the thing I least desire, death. It’s just the opposite of love.” - Ray Bradbury

79. “We need to make our own miracles, it is a wasted exercise to just wait for miracles to happen; they need a spark of energy and desire to make them come true.” - Steven Redhead

80. “Each of us has immense potential to achieve what we desire, unless you enliven and enlighten your life with inspiration, bring your dreams into reality through the power of desire you will never shine as bright as your potential.” - Steven Redhead

81. “True prayer is only another name for the love of God. Its excellence does not consist in the multitude of our words; for our Father knoweth what things we have need of before we ask Him. The true prayer is that of the heart, and the heart prays only for what it desires. To pray, then is to desire -- but to desire what God would have us desire. He who asks what he does not from the bottom of his heart desire, is mistaken in thinking that he prays.” - Francois Fenelon

82. “Why doesn't hatred kill desire? I would have given anything to sleep. I would have behaved like a schoolboy if I had believed in the possibility of a substitute. But there was a time when I had tried to find a substitute, and it hadn't worked.” - Graham Greene

83. “Stephan was secretive and a liar, but he was a very gentle and expert lover. She was the petted, cherished child, the desired mistress, the worshipped, perfumed goddess. She was all these things to Stephan - or so he made her believe.” - Jean Rhys

84. “She didn't want soft and gentle. She needed his rough possession, claiming her, branding her, taking her in a firestorm of heat and flame that would end the world around them, leaving them nothing but ashes, clean and fierce and forever welded together.” - Christine Feehan

85. “What lurking temptations to forbidden tenderness find their finding-places in a woman's dressing-gown, when she is alone in her room at night!” - Wilkie Collins

86. “Pay attention to what you pray for. Your prayers are not just a reflection of your desires and hopes; they are a guide for personal behavior. PRAY it, BE it, and you will SEE it.” - Steve Maraboli

87. “If somebody never gets enough of you, they will always want more” - Ashly Lorenzana

88. “Desires to which we cling closely can easily prevent us from being what we ought to be and can be; and on the other hand, desires repeatedly mastered for the sake of present duty make us richer.Lack of desire is poverty.” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

89. “What liars poets and everybody were! They made one think one wanted sentiment. When what one supremely wanted was this piercing, consuming, rather awful sensuality.” - D.H. Lawrence

90. “Boredom is the inner conflict we suffer when we lose desire, when we lack a lacking.” - Robert McKee

91. “But sex as a physical act is merely athletics, a momentary relief. What it needs to be powerful is desire, and the strongest element of desire is longing. It's in the work. Desider-, sidus: from the stars. The longing that reaches beyond space and time.” - Rosemary Sullivan

92. “This was what the poets couldn't put in their poetry, she thought dumbly, the rush of desire so fierce and pure it made one shake, all on the force of a word.” - Lauren Willig

93. “Desires are but pain and torment, and enjoyment is sweet because it delivers us from them.” - Giacomo Casanova

94. “In every living thing there is the desire for love.” - D.H. Lawrence

95. “Patience can be bitter but her fruit is always sweet.” - Habeeb Akande

96. “I would be unfair to myself if I said I did not try. I did, even if desultorily. But desire is a curious thing. If it does not exist it does not exist and there is nothing you can do to conjure it up. Worse still, as I discovered, when desire begins to sink, like a capsizing ship it takes down a lot with it. In our case it took down the conversation, the laughter, the sharing, the concern, the dreams and nearly - the most important thing, the most important thing - and nearly the affection too. Soon my sinking desire had taken everything else down with it to the floor of the sea, and only affection remained like the bobbing hand of a drowning man, poised perilously between life and death. More than once she tried to seize the moment and open up the issue. She did it with a hard face and a soft face; she did it when I was idling on the terrace and when I was in the thick of my works; first thing in the morning and last thing at night. We need to talk.Yes.Do you want to talk?Sure.What's happening?I don't know.Is there someone else?No.Is it something I did?Oh no.Then what the hell's happening?I don't know.Is there anything you want to talk to me about?I don't know.What do you mean you don't know?I don't know.What do you mean you don't know?I don't know. That's what I mean - I don't know.Toc toc toc. All the while I tried to save that bobbing hand - of affection - from vanishing. I felt somehow that if it drowned there would not be a single pointer on the wide stormy surface to show me where our great love had once stood. That bobbing hand of affection was a marker, a buoy, holding out the hope that one day we could salvage the sunken ship. If it drowned, our coordinates would be completely lost and we would not know where to even begin looking. Even in my weird state, it was an image of such desolation that it made my heart lurch wildly. *** For a long time, with her immense pride in herself - in us - she did not turn to anyone for help. Not friends, not family. For simply too long she imagined this was a passing phase, but then, as the weeks rolled by, through slow accretion the awful truth began to settle on her. By then she had run through all the plays of a relationship: withdrawal, sulking, anger, seduction, inquisition, affection, threat. Logic, love, lust.Now the epitaph was beginning to creep up on her. Acceptance. ” - Tarun J. Tejpal

97. “Desire wills its perpetuation ad infinitum.” - Susan Sontag

98. “Stupid kissing. Stupid roaming hands. Stupid boys.” - Jessica Park

99. “Our desire to say more grows bigger and what to say about it, except that saying is not always about saying, growing is not always about growing.” - Dejan Stojanovic

100. “Unjustified ambition kills value,Kills someone else's desire to fly, Cuts their wings, sucks their air.If there is nothing else, it eats its own life.” - Dejan Stojanovic

101. “I don't want to be dying. I want to be dead.” - Lisa Cander

102. “But the truth is that there is no more conscious inconsistency between the humility of a Christian and the rapacity of a Christian than there is between the humility of a lover and the rapacity of a lover. The truth is that there are no things for which men will make such herculean efforts as the things of which they know they are unworthy. There never was a man in love who did not declare that, if he strained every nerve to breaking, he was going to have his desire. And there never was a man in love who did not declare also that he ought not to have it.” - G.K. Chesterton

103. “Having begun to feel, people’s desire to feel grew. They wanted to feel more, feel deeper, despite how it sometimes hurt. People became addicted to feeling. They struggled to uncover new emotions.” - Nicole Krauss

104. “Psalm 37:44 Delight thyself also in the LORD: and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.” - LaNina King

105. “The moral, I suppose, would be that the first requirements for a heroic career are the knightly virtues of loyalty, temperance, and courage. The loyalty in this case is of two degrees or commitments: first, to the chosen adventure, but then, also, to the ideals of the order of knighthood. Now, this second commitment seems to put Gawain's way in opposition to the way of the Buddha, who when ordered by the Lord of Duty to perform the social duties proper to his caste, simply ignored the command, and that night achieved illumination as well as release from rebirth. Gawain is a European and, like Odysseus, who remained true to the earth and returned from the Island of the Sun to his marriage with Penelope, he has accepted, as the commitment of his life, not release from but loyalty to the values of life in this world. And yet, as we have just seen, whether following the middle way of the Buddha or the middle way of Gawain, the passage to fulfillment lies between the perils of desire and fear.” - Joseph Campbell

106. “Wealth is not an absolute. It is relative to desire. Every time we yearn for something we cannot afford, we grow poorer, whatever our resources. And every time we feel satisfied with what we have, we can be counted as rich, however little we may actually possess.” - Alain De Botton

107. “So there the two of us were. Frozen in time, living in the moment, focused only on our immediate desires. Which of course included sex. Lots and lots of it.” - Emily Giffin

108. “Their pleasures are fierce and their sleep impenetrable. And they know that the body has a soul in which the soul has no part.” - Albert Camus

109. “You have no concept of fairness, apart from your desire to have your own way. I suggest you put that notion from your head, because despite what you believe, the realms will not cater to your whims, and neither will I.” - Dawn Jayne

110. “The heart of a man is a small thing but it desires great matters. It is not big enough for a dog’s dinner but the whole world is not big enough for it. Man spares nothing that lives; he kills to feed himself, he kills to clothe himself, he kills to adorn himself, he kills to attack, he kills to defend himself, he kills to instruct himself, he kills to amuse himself, he kills for the sake of killing. From the lamb he tears its guts and makes his harp resound; from the wolf his most deadly tooth to polish his pretty works of art; from the elephant his tusks to make a toy for his child.(...)And who will exterminate him who exterminates all others?” - Paul Hoffman

111. “I barely brushed towards her cheek as I moved towards her mouth, her nails tickled my chest, driving me insane. Kissing her became my single reason for breathing.” - Katie McGarry

112. “...Desire, a function central to all human experience, is the desire for nothing nameable. And at the same time this desire lies at the origin of every variety of animation. If being were only what it is, there wouldn’t even be room to talk about it. Being comes into existence as an exact function of this lack.” - Jacques Lacan

113. “And silence. She liked the silence most of all. The silence in which the body, senses, the instincts, are more alert, more powerful, more sensitized, live a more richly perfumed and intoxication life, instead of transmuting into thoughts, words, into exquisite abstractions, mathematics of emotion in place of violent impact, the volcanic eruptions of fever, lust and delight.” - Anais Nin

114. “We are tempted to believe that certain achievements and possessions will give us enduring satisfaction. We are invited to imagine ourselves scaling the steep cliff face of happiness in order to reach a wide, high plateau on which we will live out the rest of our lives; we are not reminded that soon after gaining the summit, we will be called down again into fresh lowlands of anxiety and desire.” - Alain De Botton

115. “She nodded against me. “Do you need me to do anything?” I didn’t need a thing from her, but I wanted everything. I wanted her to leave Tyler, to love me, to want to live here with me for the rest of our lives. I wanted so damn much. ”Just go back to sleep, then enjoy the rest of the day with the girls. I’ll be back tonight.” ”I’ll be waiting her for you.” Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath in and held it. if only she knew what she did to me.” - Molly McAdams

116. “Desire-Aspire-Perspire-Inspire but, don't Expire!” - Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

117. “MINISTER: All he has done is to find some means of bewitching the intelligence. He has only induced a radical suspension of disbelief. As in the early days of the cinema, all the citizens are jumping through the screen to lay their hands on the naked lady in the bathtub!AMBASSADOR: And yet, in fact, their fingers touch flesh.MINISTER: They believe they do. Yet all they touch is substantial shadow.AMBASSADOR: And what a beautiful definition of flesh! You know I am only substantial shadow, Minister, but if you cut me, I bleed. Touch me, I palpitate!” - Angela Carter

118. “She stayed beside me until I slept, waveringly, brilliantly, hooded in diaphanous scarlet, and occasionally she left an imperative written in lipstick on my dusty windowpane. BE AMOROUS! she exhorted one night and, another night, BE MYSTERIOUS! Some nights later, she scribbled: WHEN YOU BEGIN TO THINK, YOU LOSE THE POINT.” - Angela Carter

119. “What is allowed us is disagreeable, what is denied us causes intense desire.” - Jeff Wheeler

120. “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

121. “I want to love every piece of you. I want to be inside you. I want our bodies together, to make the two of us into one. I want it all, and I want it hard, soft, anything that will make you happy. I want to hold you, keep you safe, make you scream... I want to make you gasp and tremble and lose control, like I'm losing control. And tip over the edge. And fall." He kissed her again. "And fall," he whispered against her lips. "I want to make you fall in love with me. The way I'm in love with you." (Noah Kincaid)” - Robyn Carr

122. “Don't canonize me too soon. I'm perfectly capable of fathering a child.” - St. Francis Of Assisi

123. “I seek to be moved, my imagination reborn.Let me feast on poems that feed my hunger.” - Susie Clevenger

124. “I think she is confused by the way I want her, which is like nobody else. I know this deep down. I want her in a new way, a way she's never been told about.” - Louise Erdrich

125. “I don’t understand hospital chaplains that try to rob my patients of their anger. Sometimes anger is a key motivator that gets people to take action. Anger can push a cancer patient to jump out of his hospital bed, walk down to the nurses station and scream, “I am getting the hell out of here!”. There is a misconception that God is simply sweet and passive. Actually, God can be quite cunning, manipulative and relentless with his children. What we consider as negative traits are actually helpful in molding us. He will use a negative emotion if needed to push people to do things that will change them for the better. He will allow people or situations to derail us if there is a chance that those interactions will push us forward. Personally, I don’t want a God that is going to send some church member to my deathbed with a plate of cookies and tell me to have faith. Actually, I rather have a God that screams, “Get the hell off your ass, stop feeling sorry for yourself. Walk down the hall with that Physical Therapist so you can get on with your life!" A little anger in a person can push them to do amazing things.” - Shannon L. Alder

126. “If he took her into his arms, he would keep her. He wouldn't let her suffer the way the other mortals had when he'd left them. He would keep her, with his court's permission or without it. Irial wouldn't take her, and Keenan wouldn't stand between them.” - Melissa Marr

127. “You know you love something if you're willing to die for it, and you know it means nothing if you walk away from that which is dying.” - Anthony Liccione

128. “The greatest forces lie in the region of the uncomprehended.” - George MacDonald

129. “It was that impossible thing: happiness that does not wilt to reveal the thin shoots of some new desire rising from within it.” - George Saunders

130. “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.

131. “Humanity needs heroic leadership from those who see all life as precious.” - Bryant McGill

132. “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

133. “Life is complex in its expression, involving more than percipience, namely desire, emotion, will, and feeling.” - Alfred North Whitehead

134. “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

135. “An aspirational diet will have you dreaming of success; but it’s the attachment of expectations and tangible goals that feeds the desire, persistence, and fortitude required to make the win.” - Lorii Myers

136. “Deep in his heart, every man longs for a battle to fight, an adventure to live, and a beauty to rescue.” - John Eldredge