Quotes · Skopia

19 quotes

SortEditorial Year Length

Topic·Desire✕clear

Play · History (play)

Thy wish was father…to that thought.

William Shakespeare

Henry IV, Part 2 · 1597

★ 1.1

Philosophical literature · Religious literature

People of this world are deluded. They're always longing for something-always, in a word, seeking.

528 BC

★ 1.2

The world is little, people are little, human life is little. There is only one big thing-desire.

The Song of the Lark · 1915

★ 1.9

The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews. Not to be born is the best for man.

1937

★ 1.9

Scripture · Religious literature

When in recollection he withdraws all his senses from the attractions of the pleasures of sense, even as a tortoise withdraws all his limbs, then his is a serene wisdom.

Bhagavad Gita

200 BC

★ 2.0

Film · Science fiction (film) · Action (film) · Science fiction · Action

To deny our own impulses is to deny the very thing that makes us human.

The Matrix · 1999

★ 2.0

Biography · Historical literature

How strongly does this bear out the truth of Plato's maxim, that he who wishes to be really rich ought to lessen his desires rather than increase his property, because if a man places no bounds to his covetousness, he never will be free from want and misery.

Plutarch's Lives

★ 2.0

Political literature · Philosophical literature

It is the nature of desire not to be satisfied, and most men live only for the gratification of it. The beginning of reform is not so much to equalize property as to train the noble sort of natures not to desire more, and to prevent the lower from getting more.

Politics · 350 BC

★ 2.2

A human being has a natural desire to have more of a good thing than he needs.

Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World · 1897

★ 2.2

It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.

65

★ 3.7

Play · Comedy (play)

Can one desire too much of a good thing?

William Shakespeare

As You Like It · 1616

★ 3.7

Abstinence sows sand all over The ruddy limbs and flaming hair, But Desire gratified Plants fruits of life and beauty there.

1792

★ 3.7

Desire makes everything blossom; possession makes everything wither and fade.

1896

★ 3.7

Political literature · Philosophical literature

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

Leviathan · 1651

★ 3.9

Longing, we say, because desire is full of endless distances.

1979

★ 4.4

Imagine that human existence is defined by an Ache: the Ache of our not being, each of us, the center of the universe; of our desires forever outnumbering our means of satisfying them.

Jonathan Franzen

1996

★ 5.1

Longing on a large scale is what makes history.

1997

★ 5.2

Scripture · Religious literature

By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth.

Song of Solomon 3:1

965 BC

★ 5.3

Novel · Modernist literature

I desire to press in my arms the loveliness which has not yet come into the world.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man · 1915

★ 5.4