Our desires may undo us. [ Proverb ]
Love never desires a partner. [ Proverb ]
A small heart hath small desires. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
The fewer desires, the more peace. [ Thomas Wilson ]
Humble hearts have humble desires. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
Desires are the pulse of the soul. [ Manton ]
Constraint is the mother of desires. [ D'Argens ]
An ill father desires not an ill son. [ Proverb ]
What a husband forbids, a wife desires. [ Proverb ]
What woman desires is written in heaven. [ La Chaussee ]
He begins to die that quits his desires. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
While man's desires and aspirations stir,
He can not choose but err. [ Goethe ]
He who desires naught will always be free. [ Lefebvre-Laboulaye ]
He is richest who is poorest in his desires. [ Seneca ]
The heart that sighs has not what it desires. [ Proverb ]
Youth dreams a bliss on this side death.
It dreams a rest, if not more deep.
More grateful than this marble sleep;
It hears a voice within it tell:
Calm's not life's crown, though calm is well.
'Tis all perhaps which man acquires,
But 'tis not what our youth desires. [ Matthew Arnold ]
Though absent, present in desires they be;
Our souls much further than our eyes can see. [ Drayton ]
He that desires but little has no need of much. [ Proverb ]
All men have desires, but all men have not love.
She who desires to see, desires also to be seen. [ Cervantes ]
No man is born without ambitious worldly desires. [ Carlyle ]
The desires of man increase with his acquisitions. [ Dr. Samuel Johnson ]
It is as wise to moderate our belief as our desires. [ Landor ]
The Alphabet Of Success
Attend carefully to details.
Be prompt in all things.
Consider well, then decide positively.
Dare to do right, fear to do wrong.
Endure trials patiently.
Fight life's battles bravely.
Go not into the society of the vicious.
Hold your integrity sacred.
Injure not another's reputation.
Join hands only with the virtuous.
Keep your mind free from evil thoughts.
Lie not for any consideration.
Make few special acquaintances.
Never try to appear what you are not.
Observe good manners.
Pay your debts promptly.
Question not the verity of a friend.
Respect the desires of your parents.
Sacrifice money rather than principle.
Touch not, taste not, handle not intoxicating drinks.
Use your leisure for improvement.
Venture not upon the threshold of wrong.
Watch carefully over your passions.
Xtend to everyone a kindly greeting.
Yield not to discouragement.
Zealously labor for the right, and success is certain. [ Ladies Home Journal ]
He is miserable that dies not before he desires to die. [ Proverb ]
Delays increase desires, and sometimes extinguish them. [ Proverb ]
He must mingle with the world that desires to be useful. [ Johnson ]
Sweet babe, in thy face Soft desires I can trace.
Secret joys and secret smiles. Little pretty infant wiles. [ William Blake ]
Every plan desires to live long; but, no man would be old. [ Swift ]
Retrench your desires, instead of increasing your substance. [ Proverb ]
He will never get to heaven that desires to go thither alone. [ Proverb ]
How many deaths must he die, that lives till he desires to die! [ Proverb ]
If your desires be endless, your cares and fears will be so too. [ Proverb ]
There is no mother so bad but she desires to have good children. [ Veneroni ]
Discontents generally arise from our desires more than our wants. [ Proverb ]
He is a king who fears nothing; he is a king who desires nothing. [ Seneca ]
Receive your thoughts as guests, and treat your desires as children. [ Chinese Proverb ]
The smallness of our desires may contribute reasonably to our wealth. [ Cobbett ]
Fame has eagle wings, and yet she mounts not so high as man's desires. [ Beaconsfield ]
A man who desires to get married should know either everything or nothing. [ Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest ]
He is a truly good man who desires always to bear the inspection of good men. [ La Rochefoucauld ]
Time, which enfeebles criminal desires, leads us back to legitimate affection. [ Mme. de Stael ]
He who has less than he desires should know that he has more than he deserves. [ Lichtenberg ]
To educate the intelligence is to enlarge the horizon of its desires and wants. [ Lowell ]
Our duty is to be useful, not according to our desires but according to our powers. [ Amiel ]
Women have the same desires as men, but do not have the same right to express them. [ J. J. Rousseau ]
The attainment of our greatest desires is often the source of our greatest sorrows.
To have the same desires and the same aversion is assuredly a firm bond of friendship. [ Sallust ]
Limited in his nature, infinite in his desires, man is a fallen god who remembers heaven. [ Lamartine ]
Old men who preserve the desires of youth lose in consideration what they gain in ridicule. [ Napoleon I ]
Christ bounds and terminates the vast desires of the soul; He is the very Sabbath of the soul. [ John Flavel ]
It is to be doubted whether he will ever find the way to heaven who desires to go thither alone. [ Feltham ]
Blessedness consists in the accomplishment of our desires, and in our having only regular desires. [ St. Augustine ]
At eighteen, one adores at once; at twenty, one loves; at thirty, one desires; at forty, one reflects. [ P. de Kock ]
Give me flattery - flattery, the food of courts, that I may rock him, and lull him in the down of his desires. [ Beaumont ]
In eternal cares we spend our years, ever agitated by new desires: we look forward to living, and yet never live. [ Fontanelle ]
No man talks of that which he is desirous to conceal, and every man desires to conceal that of which he is ashamed. [ Johnson ]
Thought is the first faculty of man: to express it is one of his first desires; to spread it, his dearest privilege. [ Raynal ]
The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes. [ Swift ]
The despotism of will in ideas is styled plan, project, character, obstinacy: its despotism in desires is called passion. [ Rivarol ]
No great truth is allowed by Nature to be demonstrable to any person who, foreseeing its consequences, desires to refuse it. [ John Ruskin ]
To write much, and to write rapidly, are empty boasts. The world desires to know what you have done, and not how you did it. [ George Henry Lewes ]
Whatsoever that be within us that feels, thinks, desires, and animates, is something celestial, divine, and consequently imperishable. [ Aristotle ]
To remain virtuous, a man has only to combat his own desires: a woman must resist her own inclinations, and the continual attack of man. [ Latena ]
God should be the object of all our desires, the end of all our actions, the principle of all our affections, and the governing power of our whole souls. [ Massillon ]
No man is poor who does not think himself so. But if in a full fortune with impatience he desires more, he proclaims his wants and his beggarly condition. [ Jeremy Taylor ]
God takes men's hearty desires and will, instead of the deed, where they have not power to fulfill it; but he never took the bare deed instead of the will. [ Richard Baxter ]
Aspiration, worthy ambition, desires for higher good for good ends, - all these indicate a soul that recognizes the beckoning hand of the good Father, who would call us homeward toward Himself. [ J. G. Holland ]
He who allows his happiness to depend too much on reason, who submits his pleasures to examination, and desires enjoyments only of the most refined nature, too often ends by not having any at all. [ Chamfort ]
That constant desire of pleasing, which is the peculiar quality of some, may be called the happiest of all desires in this, that it scarcely ever fails of attaining its ends, when not disgraced by affectation. [ Fielding ]
When a woman's heart is touched, when it is moved by love, then the electric spark is communicated and the fire of inspiration kindled: but even then she desires no more than to suffer or to die for what she loves. [ Countess Hahn-Hahn ]
He that gives all, though but little, gives much; because God looks not to the quantity of the gift, but to the quality of the givers; he that desires to give more than he can hath equaled his gift to his desire, and hath given more than he hath. [ Quarles ]
Superstition is related to this life, religion to the next; superstition allies itself to fatality, religion to virtue; it is by the vitality of earthly desires we become superstitious, and by the sacrifice of these desires that we become religious. [ Mme. de Staël ]
Was man made to disdain the gifts of nature? Was he placed on earth but to gather bitter fruits? For whom are the flowers the gods cause to bloom at the feet of mortals? It pleases Providence when we abandon ourselves to the different inclinations that He has given us: our duties come from His laws, and our desires from His inspirations.