“The secret of happiness is to admire without desiring.”
Carl Sandburg
“In my experience, there is only one motivation, and that is desire. No reasons or principle contain it or stand against it.”
Jane Smiley
“Wealth and rank are what people desire, but unless they are obtained in the right way they may not be possessed.”
Confucius
“The desire to write grows with writing.”
Desiderius Erasmus
“The desire of the man is for the woman, but the desire of the woman is for the desire of the man.”
Madame de Stael
“Desire is the key to motivation, but it's determination and commitment to an unrelenting pursuit of your goal - a commitment to excellence - that will enable you to attain the success you seek.”
Mario Andretti
“A goal is not the same as a desire, and this is an important distinction to make. You can have a desire you don't intend to act on. But you can't have a goal you don't intend to act on.”
Tom Morris
“I have certainly known more men destroyed by the desire to have a wife and child and to keep them in comfort than I have seen destroyed by drink and harlots”
William Butler Yeats
5 comments:
Some of these I like, some of them I do not. But I find your title the most interesting part of the post - so, open question:
is it easier to focus on a concept (here “hate” and “desire”), than to confront what it/they challenge(s) you to admit about yourself, your actions, etc.?
Good question Sarachka.
I'd say we focus on concepts over concrete challenges in our own lives because of the distance it creates.
Desire is "out there" as a concept, and hating it creates further distance. Instead to think of desire "in here", within, becomes something that I must interact with, is more intrusive and more palpable, and more painful.
It hurts to do that kind of work.
so I think that intellectual discussion are easier than the work of the flesh.
;)
I think that the concept of desire is conflated in these quotes.
The "desire" to provide for you family is not qualitatively the same as the desire for "drink and Harlots"
Although Yeats is consistent in objectifying women in each of his propositions of desire.
nicely worded, Cara; that's pretty much where my thinking was too.
or, to put it differently, upon reading this quote one would assume that Yeats was a fucking idiot.
but yeah, desire. the ever-present enemy of the wise (says the tao), which, like an all-consuming fire, can never be quenched.
Post a Comment