The most intense joy lies not in the having but in the desiring. Shadowlands ***** 1993 starring Anthony Hopkins & Debra Winger & Edward Hardwicke & Joseph Mazzello & John Wood & Michael Denison et al, director Richard Attenborough, Jack’s tutorial with students
Let people hold on to these:
Manifest plainness,
Embrace simplicity,
Reduce selfishness,
Have few desires. Lao Tzu, Tao-te Ching
She was at that modulating point between indifference and love, at the stage called having a fancy for. It occurs once in the history of the most gigantic passions, and it is a period when they are in the hands of the weakest will. Thomas Hardy, The Return of the Native
Out of its secret hiding-place had crept his Soul, and Desire had come to meet it on the way. Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Our capacity for disgust, let me observe, is in proportion to our desires; that is in proportion to the intensity of our attachment to the things of this world. Thomas Mann, The Confessions of Felix Krull, 1954
Man is insatiable for power; he is infantile in his desires and, always discontented with what he has, loves only what he has not. People complain of the despotism of princes; they ought to complain of the despotism of man. Joseph de Maistre
Why do we desire, above all other things, that which has the greatest power to destroy us? Margaret Rogerson, An Enchantment of Ravens
I think in all probability Wilma Flintstone is the most desirable woman who ever lived. Red Dwarf s3e1: Backwards, Cat to Lister, BBC 1989
Few things are brought to a successful issue by impetuous desire, but most by calm and prudent forethought. Thucydides