I often think I can see it in myself and in other young writers, this desperate desire to please coupled with a kind of hostility to the reader.
David Foster Wallace

Good means not merely not to do wrong, but rather not to desire to do wrong.
Democritus

Let not a man do what his sense of right bids him not to do, nor desire what it forbids him to desire. This is sufficient. The skillful artist will not alter his measures for the sake of a stupid workman.
Mencius

If one wants another only for some self-satisfaction, usually in the form of sensual pleasure, that wrong desire takes the form of lust rather than love.
Mortimer Adler

The majority of the senior class of Vassar does not desire my company and I must confess, having read specimens of their thought and sentiments, that I do not desire the company of the majority of the senior class of Vassar.
William F. Buckley, Jr.

I used to desire many, many things, but now I have just one desire, and that's to get rid of all my other desires.
John Cleese

Dedicate yourself to the good you deserve and desire for yourself. Give yourself peace of mind. You deserve to be happy. You deserve delight.
Hannah Arendt

The ultimate end of human acts is eudaimonia, happiness in the sense of living well, which all men desire; all acts are but different means chosen to arrive at it.
Hannah Arendt

The strategic adversary is fascism... the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behavior, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us.
Michel Foucault

The work of the political activist inevitably involves a certain tension between the requirement that position be taken on current issues as they arise and the desire that one's contributions will somehow survive the ravages of time.
Angela Davis

An original is a creation motivated by desire. Any reproduction of an originals motivated be necessity. It is marvelous that we are the only species that creates gratuitous forms. To create is divine, to reproduce is human.
Man Ray

All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.
Samuel Butler

I am not solicitous to examine particularly everything here, which indeed could not be done in fifty years, because my desire is to make all possible discoveries, and return to your Highnesses, if it please our Lord, in April.
Christopher Columbus

It is one of my sources of happiness never to desire a knowledge of other people's business.
Dolley Madison

Love is simply the name for the desire and the pursuit of the whole.
Aristophanes

Everything a writer learns about the art or craft of fiction takes just a little away from his need or desire to write at all. In the end he knows all the tricks and has nothing to say.
Raymond Chandler

An argument fatal to the communist theory, is suggested by the fact, that a desire for property is one of the elements of our nature.
Herbert Spencer

I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.
E. B. White

I can score 20 points if I want to, but that's not my desire.
Dennis Rodman

For myself, therefore, I desire to declare that the principle that will govern me in the high duty to which my country calls me is a strict adherence to the letter and spirit of the Constitution as it was designed by those who framed it.
Martin Van Buren