All, all is theft, all is unceasing and rigorous competition in nature; the desire to make off with the substance of others is the foremost - the most legitimate - passion nature has bred into us and, without doubt, the most agreeable one.
Marquis de Sade

I hope that I may always desire more than I can accomplish.
Michelangelo

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

Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of readiness to die.
Gilbert K. Chesterton

The vulgar man is always the most distinguished, for the very desire to be distinguished is vulgar.
Gilbert K. Chesterton

Time and memory are true artists; they remould reality nearer to the heart's desire.
John Dewey

If you real desire is to be good, there is no need to wait for the money before you do it; you can do it now, this very moment, and just where you are.
James Allen

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

You will become as small as your controlling desire; as great as you dominant aspiration.
James Allen

If you start by promising what you don't even have yet, you'll lose your desire to work towards getting it.
Paulo Coelho

Let us train our minds to desire what the situation demands.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Curiosity, n. An objectionable quality of the female mind. The desire to know whether or not a woman is cursed with curiosity is one of the most active and insatiable passions of the masculine soul.
Ambrose Bierce

Ambition. An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while living and made ridiculous by friends when dead.
Ambrose Bierce

Duty - that which sternly impels us in the direction of profit, along the line of desire.
Ambrose Bierce

Out of need springs desire, and out of desire springs the energy and the will to win.
Denis Waitley

We are motivated by a keen desire for praise, and the better a man is the more he is inspired by glory. The very philosophers themselves, even in those books which they write in contempt of glory, inscribe their names.
Marcus Tullius Cicero

I had no desire to be an film actress, to always play somebody else, to be always beautiful with somebody constantly straightening out your every eyelash. It was always a big bother to me.
Marlene Dietrich

Take from the philosopher the pleasure of being heard and his desire for knowledge ceases.
Jean Jacques Rousseau

I marvel at the resilience of the Jewish people. Their best characteristic is their desire to remember. No other people has such an obsession with memory.
Elie Wiesel

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