Ardently Quotes & Sayings

You seek for knowledge and wisdom, as I once did; and I ardently hope that the gratification of your wishes may not be a serpent to sting you, as mine has been. - Victor Frankenstein. — Mary Shelley

In her, as an Alexandrian, licence was in a curious way a form of self-abnegation, a travesty of freedom; and if I saw her as an exemplar of the city it was not of Alexandria, or Plotinus that I was forced to think, but of the sad thirtieth child of Valentinus who fell, 'not like Lucifer by rebelling against God, but by desiring too ardently to be united to him'.* — Lawrence Durrell

Submit to Islam and be safe. Or agree to the payment of the Jizya (tax), and you and your people will be under our protection, else you will have only yourself to blame for the consequences, for I bring the men who desire death as ardently as you desire life. — Khalid Ibn Al-Walid

God is infinite and without end, but the soul's desire is an abyss which cannot be filled except by a Good which is infinite; and the more ardently the soul longeth after God, the more she wills to long after him; for God is a Good without drawback, and a well of living water without bottom, and the soul is made in the image of God, and therefore it is created to know and love God. — Johannes Tauler

Participation in the dance was entirely voluntary, a mental vow to worship the Mystery in this manner being expressed by a man ardently desiring the recovery of a sick relative; or surrounded by an enemy with escape apparently impossible; or, it might be, dying of hunger ... since some inscrutable power had swept all game from forest and prairie. Others joined in the ceremony in the hope and firm belief that the Mystery ... would grant them successes against the enemy and consequent eminence at home. — Edward S. Curtis

What is faithfulness, anyway? Can you be unfaithful to your own feelings and faithful to someone else? Is it faithful to lie in bed night after night with someone you love but no longer desire while ardently dreaming of someone else? — Mary Gaitskill

The woman who too easily and ardently yielded her devotion will find that its vitality, like a bright fire, soon consumes itself. — Antoine Rivarol

Whatever you ardently and passionately desire, that you obtain. — Napoleon Bonaparte

But this is a thing more ardently to be wished than seriously to be expected. — Alexander Hamilton

For me to help him," said Dorothea, ardently. "You have quite made up your mind, I see. Well, my dear, the fact is, I have a letter for you in my pocket." Mr. Brooke handed the letter to Dorothea, but as she rose to go away, he added, "There is not too much — George Eliot

A great many people go after success simply for the shiny prizes it brings ... And nowhere is it pursued more ardently than in the city of New York. — Stephen Birmingham

The poet in prose or verse - the creator - can only stamp his images forcibly on the page in proportion as he has forcibly felt, ardently nursed, and long brooded over them. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

I write a few lines in haste to say that I am safe - and well advanced on my voyage. This letter will reach England by a merchantman now on its homeward voyage from Archangel; more fortunate than I, who may not see my native land, perhaps, for many years. I am, however, in good spirits: my men are bold and apparently firm of purpose, nor do the floating sheets of ice that continually pass us, indicating the dangers of the region towards which we are advancing, appear to dismay them. We have already reached a very high latitude; but it is the height of summer, and although not so warm as in England, the southern gales, which blow us speedily towards those shores which I so ardently desire to attain, breathe a degree of renovating warmth which I had not expected. — Mary Shelley

Whatever you vividly imagine, ardently desire, sincerely believe, and enthusiastically act upon ... must inevitably come to pass! — Paul J. Meyer

Is there a person in this world who is full of good virtues and is at the same time powerful, grateful, truthful, determined and also compassionate? Is there a person who displays exemplary conduct, ardently wishes and works for the good of all, is wise, competent beyond doubt and good-looking? Is there a person who is self-satisfied, who has control over his anger, whose beauty casts a spell over everyone, who is free from envy and whose courage never fails him? — Shubha Vilas

He was experimenting with being ardently sympathetic with everybody he met. He thought that might make the world a slightly more pleasant place to live in. He called Billy's mother 'dear' He was experimenting with calling everybody dear. — Kurt Vonnegut

Those of us who can remember our childhoods will recall how ardently we relished the moment of the bedtime story, when our mother or father would sit down beside us in the semi-dark and read from a book of fairy tales. — Paul Auster

That's the one thing a politician mustn't have - political opinions or principles. He can have prejudices - indeed he must have prejudices and share all the popular political superstitions of the moment as ardently as he can. But he must not have principles. He must never let the people suspect that they cannot eat their cake and have it. He must promise them a defense program and a higher standard of living. He must never use that dreadful little word or. — Helen McCloy

Men's economic privilege, their social value, the prestige of marriage, the usefulness of masculine support - all these encourage women to ardently want to please men. They are on the whole still in a state of serfdom. It follows that woman knows and chooses herself not as she exists for herself but as man defines her. She thus has to be described first as men dream of her since her being-for-men is one of the essential factors of her concrete condition. — Simone De Beauvoir

Something of the severe hath always been appertaining to order and to grace; and the beauty that is not too liberal is sought the most ardently, and loved the longest. — Walter Savage Landor

Clarity of mind means clarity of passion, too; this is why a great and clear mind loves ardently and sees distinctly what it loves. — Blaise Pascal

Dr. King organized the Poor People's Campaign in 1968 to shut down Washington, D.C. and force legislators to tackle poverty. His efforts to shift focus from civil to silver rights were interrupted by his untimely death. He fought ardently for Black rights, but he also recognized financial literacy as the key to an America that was truly free for all people. — John Hope Bryant

She wept over the vanity of her desires, which had so ardently flown to the blossoming flesh that now had already withered forever. — Marcel Proust

When the journey from means to end is not too long, the means themselves are enjoyed if the end is ardently desired. — Bertrand Russell

It is dangerous it seems to me for a civilization when there is a complete abyss betewen people in general and the artists. Or is it always so? The poets who are most ardently on the people's side write in such a way that the people cannot see rhyme nor reason to their work. — May Sarton

Opportunity rarely knocks on your door. Knock rather on opportunity's door if you ardently wish to enter. — B.C. Forbes

He seemed delighted to hear that she was fine. He was experimenting with being ardently sympathetic with everybody he met. He thought that might make the world a slightly more pleasant place to live in. — Kurt Vonnegut

Others hide from being real by filling the air with words; the more words they throw out, the less actual communication happens and they are left with only an illusion of connection. This is the intimacy they so ardently seek but with these coping skills find so elusive. — David W. Earle

The natural tendency of the state is inflation. This statement will shock those accustomed to viewing the state as a committee of the whole nation ardently dispensing the general welfare, but I think it nonetheless true. — Murray Rothbard

So small footprint yet the shovelling jealous sea has not erased it.
You were for me the necessary exemplary figure of dedication and endurance. Whatever your inner life truly was it was ardently pursued. You observed with acute imagination. When you spoke you drove to the heart of things though sometimes through wry indirection. You manifested the value of the life dedicated to an art. Whatever terrors you underwent they may have been very great you did not evince them. You were never indecent.
Of course in making this thing about you or around you I am talking about my youth and homesick for it. But that is not the point. The point is that at one time in one place I met someone who became to me a living conscience. — Lachlan MacKinnon

Unless we ardently and prayerfully devote ourselves to Christ's righteousness we do not only faithlessly revolt from our Creator, but we also abjure him as our Savior. — John Calvin

Few governments in the world, for example, praise human rights more ardently than does the government of France, and few have a worse record of supporting tyrants and killers. — Richard Perle

Putting thoughts into words is vastly different from putting truth into words. For words are not truth. As ardently as writers sort and select and polish their words, at the end of the day they are still words. They are not, in themselves, truth. However carefully we choose our words, no matter how eloquently we compile and conjoin and convey them, they remain just words, merely signposts that point to the truth, as Eckhart Tolle put it. Just as preachers, politicians, PR spin masters and the media can't create truth by writing or speaking words they say are true, authors can't validate truth by putting it into print. And the rest of us can't know it by simply hearing or reading the words. We can only find our way to truth by following the signposts and ultimately believing. It all comes down to believing, to faith, for there is no proof this side of the big dirt nap. — Lionel Fisher

Sorry am I to say, I have often observed that I have performed worst when I most ardently wished to do better than ever. — Sarah Siddons

If Art does not enlarge men's sympathies, it does nothing morally," Eliot once wrote. "The only effect I ardently long to produce by my writings, is that those who read them should be better able to imagine and to feel the pains and the joys of those who differ from themselves in everything but the broad fact of being struggling erring human creatures. — Rebecca Mead

Christians should seek after holiness - without which no man shall see the Lord. Let us seek ardently the kind of life that reflects the beauty of Jesus and marks us as being what saints ought to be! — Billy Graham

Though their bodies lie cold and dormant, the grave cannot contain the influence these seven men have had on today's world. They generated philosophies that have been ardently grasped by masses of people but are erroneous and antiscriptural. As we continue to unknowingly subscribe to their philosophies we keep the grave open for: Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Julius Wellhausen, John Dewey, Sigmund Freud, John Maynard Keyes, Soren Kierkegaard. — David Breese

The tragedy is that in the name of resisting the internal deterioration of faith and the corruption of the world around them, many Christians - and Christian conservatives most significantly - unwittingly embrace some of the most corrosive aspects of the cultural disintegration they decry. By nurturing its resentments, sustaining them through a discourse of negation toward outsiders, and in cases, pursuing their will to power, they become functional Nietzscheans, participating in the very cultural breakdown they so ardently strive to resist. — James Davison Hunter

ANYAELE SAM CHIYSON'S LAW OF PASSION: You must have a longing to succeed in accordance with your desires: Your intense, high-wrought emotion that compels you to action must be high-powered to get you fervent and excited to do what is required by the terms so as to make your desires a success. Get ready to follow through your innovations. Create your structures! Do things right to a turn and ardently carry your strategies to a successful completion and accomplish your desires. — Anyaele Sam Chiyson

All the best and worse things in us are bound up in the legacy of our family. As children we ardently trust in the stability or, in some cases, the instability we were born into. No matter which...we embraced what was decent while simultaneously suppressing what was deficient yet both traits weaved roots of faithfulness and consternation into the very fabric of who we've become. This now plays significantly into how we nurture our own families and how we relate to others. Our love, our fears, our insecurities, and our loyalties all draw from how we were raised as well as our inherent desire to shift its paradigm to optimistically better the life of not just our children...but our children's children. That's the gift and or the curse of a legacy. Which will you leave behind? — Jason Versey

I am not sure what to make of my admittedly anecdotal observation that many of those who most ardently oppose the taking of embryonic life also seem to be more than usually enthusiastic about taking adult life. — Richard Dawkins

I agreed sincerely and ardently — Ann Brashares

We labour at our daily work more ardently and thoughtlessly than is necessary to sustain our life because it is even more necessary not to have leisure to stop and think. Haste is universal because everyone is in flight from himself. — Friedrich Nietzsche

The demands of acceptance require us to maintain a relationship of honor and respect with those with whom we may ardently disagree. We accept the fact that our convictions on this matter differ, and those with whom we differ hold their convictions, as we do, unto the Lord. Inasmuch as this is not easy for us to do, we commit ourselves to bearing it as part of the disciple's cross. We don't agree to disagree by diminishing the importance of the question or by insisting that people care less about the issue. — Ken Wilson

Whatever you do, do it ardently. — P.T. Barnum

The liberal state has no view on whether witchcraft is more valuable than all-in wrestling. Like a tactful publican, it has as few opinions as possible. Many liberals suspect passionate convictions are latently authoritarian. But liberalism should surely be a passionate conviction. Liberals are not necessarily lukewarm. Only the more macho leftist suspects that they have no balls. You can be ardently neutral, and fiercely indifferent. — Terry Eagleton

In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you. — Jane Austen

Jean smirked and raised an eyebrow at Leor. "Would you like to fly through the Louvre?"
Leor couldn't perceive how that would even be possible. But Jean would inevitably find a way. "No, no!" Leor ardently replied. "Let's just land there and take a walk. Look at some statues, get some air."
"Ah, but do we not have plenty of air, flowing around up here in the skies?" Jean asked, diving down towards the Seine, and then sharply pulling up along one of the slopes.
"Would you like me to vomit again?" Leor asked, with a hand near his mouth. — Zechariah Barrett

Unlike Tolstoy, Dostoevsky was ardently persuaded of Christ's divinity, but that divinity moved his soul and solicited his intelligence most forcefully through its human aspect. — George Steiner

To comprehend Crowley, one must comprehend what he meant by "Magick" - the "discredited" tradition he swore to "rehabilitate."
Magick, for Crowley, is a way of life that takes in every facet of life. The keys to attainment within the magical tradition lie in the proper training of the human psyche itself - more specifically, in the development of the powers of will and imagination. The training of the will - which Crowley so stressed, thus placing himself squarely within that tradition - is the focusing of one's energy, one's essential being. The imagination provides, as it were, the target for this focus, by its capacity to ardently envision - and hence bring into magical being - possibilities and states beyond those of consensual reality. The will and imagination must work synergistically. For the will, unilluminated by imagination, becomes a barren tool of earthly pursuits. And the imagination, ungoverned by a striving will, lapses into idle dreams and stupor. — Lawrence Sutin

There are certain people who so ardently and passionately desire a thing, that from dread of losing it they leave nothing undone to make them lose it. — Jean De La Bruyere

Denied anything ardently desired, the individual or state will argue and parley just so long - then, if the impelling motive be sufficiently great, will cast aside every rule and break down every acquired inhibition, plunging viciously after the object wished; all the more fantastically savage because of previous repression. — H.P. Lovecraft

From time immemorial artistic insights have been revealed to artists in their sleep and in dreams, so that at all times they ardently desired them. — Paracelsus

I am not frustrated, Luna. How could I possibly be frustrated with the one person who gives my existence meaning? If you begin to understand anything at all, I hope it's that you have given me what every male Canis Lupus longs for, needs, and can never be complete without. You, and only ever you, complete the very core of who I am. No love, I am not frustrated with you, I am wholly, ardently, unabashedly in love with you. — Quinn Loftis

I love you. Most ardently. — Jane Austen

The seeming significance of nature's appearances, their unchanging strangeness to the senses, and the thrilling response which they awaken in the mind of man ... If we could only write near enough to the facts, and yet with no pedestrian calm, but ardently, we might transfer the glamour of reality direct upon our pages. — Robert Louis Stevenson

Sometimes with one I love, I fill myself with rage, for fear I effuse unreturn'd love;
But now I think there is no unreturn'd love - the pay is certain, one way or another;
(I loved a certain person ardently, and my love was not return'd;
Yet out of that, I have written these songs.)
— Walt Whitman

We do not wish ardently for what we desire only through reason. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

In the usual (though certainly not in every) public decision on economic policy, the choice is between courses that are almost equally good or equally bad. It is the narrowest decisions that are most ardently debated. If the world is lucky enough to enjoy peace, it may even one day make the discovery, to the horror of doctrinaire free-enterprisers and doctrinaire planners alike, that what is called capitalism and what is called socialism are both capable of working quite well. — John Kenneth Galbraith

You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.
-Mr. Darcy — Jane Austen

Responding to Wright's critique, Hurston claimed that she had wanted at long last to write a black novel, and "not a treatise on sociology." It is this urge that resonates in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon and Beloved, and in Walker's depiction of Hurston as our prime symbol of "racial health - a sense of black people as complete, complex, undiminished human beings, a sense that is lacking in so much black writing and literature." In a tradition in which male authors have ardently denied black literary paternity, this is a major development, one that heralds the refinement of our notion of tradition: Zora and her daughters are a tradition-within-the-tradition, a black woman's voice. — Zora Neale Hurston

Best way to gain greater credibility, clout and success: involve unexpected allies, ardently united around something specific that you all believe is meaningful. — Kare Anderson

There were people in the South who were ardently opposed to slavery. And maybe, if we get into truth and reconciliation, those will be the people we want to name schools and streets after. — Bryan Stevenson

God passionately desires and ardently yearns for our salvation ... Nothing is greater than this: that the blood of God was poured out for us. — Pope John Paul II

The disappointed man turns his thoughts toward a state of existence where his wiser desires may be fixed with the certainty of faith; the successful man feels that the objects which he has ardently pursued fail to satisfy the cravings of an immortal spirit; the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness, that he may save his soul alive. — Robert Southey

Frightening numbers of people were either easy to deceive or wished ardently to submit to any belief system, no matter how delusional, that reassured them and justified their hatreds. — Dean Koontz

The more ardently I see humanity as a glorious abstract that must conform to my ideal of how the world should be, the harder it is for me to love the person on the other side of the picket line who is holding up progress. I can love the downtrodden in the abstract, but as I shivered under the bridge that night with Jorge, I realized that it's harder to love the illegal immigrant with the bottle-slashed face and the body unwashed for weeks, the workers gathering to eat day-old bread and chicken and rice out of foam containers, the crowd of thousands clamoring for bread and fish and healing, the unclean woman hoping to touch the hem of the Savior's robe. — Alisa Harris

The taste of water, the essential, the pure, the necessary, when you are thirsty, first drunk ardently, and then slowly, is the taste of truth itself. — Patricia Storace

What ardently we wish, we soon believe. — Edward Young

If we are serious about peace, then we must work for it as ardently, seriously, continuously, carefully, and bravely as we have ever prepared for war. — Wendell Berry

The first time he consulted me, I caught a glimpse of my salvation. He made a gift to me of the very thing that I - too corrupted by my bourgeoise blood to renounce it- could not be, merely by tacitly agreeing to be my client, simply by frequenting my waiting room on a regular basis, with his ordinary docile manner of a patient who makes no fuss. Later he gave me another gift, magnanimously, that of his conversation. Worlds hitherto unknown to me suddenly appeared, and the very thing that my flame had always coveted so ardently, and had despaired of ever obtaining, was suddenly mine, thanks to him, vicariously. — Muriel Barbery

The making of miracles to edification was as ardently admired by pious Victorians as it was sternly discouraged by Jesus of Nazareth. Not that the Victorians were unique in this respect. Modern writers also indulge in edifying miracles though they generally prefer to use them to procure unhappy endings, by which piece of thaumaturgy they win the title of realists. — Dorothy L. Sayers

But I can only pray ardently that Fortune walks with you, that you discover hitherto unimagined strength in yourself and encounter unexpected friends along this perilous path that you must now tread. — Sherry Thomas

wondered what had become of Marcus Brutus's wife, Portia. She had ardently espoused the Republican cause and encouraged her husband in the course he had taken. The day after we heard news of my father's funeral, word came of her fate. Often when a man is impelled by honor to take his own life, his wife will do the same. And so Portia did, most painfully, jamming a hot coal down her throat. — Phyllis T. Smith

Between temporal and eternal things there is this difference: a temporal thing is loved more before we have it, and it begins to grow worthless when we gain it, for it does not satisfy the soul, whose true and certain rest is eternity; but the eternal is more ardently loved when it is acquired than when it is merely desired. — Augustine Of Hippo

I read books. Avidly, ardently! As if my life depended upon it. — Joyce Carol Oates

She looked at him bravely now for the first time, at his face, the face from which a child had fled, and drew breath. She rose. Her eyes filled.

She knew.

He took her in his arms and kissed her ardently. Men in their hosts, young and old, innocent and corrupt, had paid her for her favors, but she put her arms about him of her own free will as though to give him what she could in recompense for this, the last gift she guessed, of his manhood. — Glendon Swarthout

Slowly his resistance ebbed. She felt the change in his body, the relaxing of tension, his shoulders curving around her as if he could draw her into himself. Murmuring her name, he brought her hand to his face and nuzzled ardently into her palm, his lips brushing the warm circlet of her gold wedding band. "My love is upon you," he whispered ... and she knew then that she had won. — Lisa Kleypas

Lady," we always call each other, partly a joke, partly in earnest, using still the old word, in its full flavor a kind of exorcism against "saleslady," "old lady," "ladylike." Relishing the anachronism, even the formality a type of aphrodisiac, a contrast to our delight in the horny, the vulgar, the vernacular which we cultivate just as ardently. — Kate Millett

It is usual for a woman, even though she may ardently desire to give herself to a man, to feign reluctance, to simulate alarm or indignation. She must be brought to consent by urgent pleading, by lies, adjurations, and promises. I know that only professional prostitutes are accustomed to answer such an invitation with a perfectly frank assent
prostitutes, or simple-minded, immature girls. — Stefan Zweig

We should scarcely desire things ardently if we were perfectly acquainted with what we desire. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Big meetings and big talk are not enough in a world that is hungry for change. Big action - world leaders keeping their promises, and developing countries committing resources while listening ardently to the voice of the small farmer - is needed to bring big results and prosperity to the world's poor. — Sylvia Mathews Burwell

In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you." Elizabeth's astonishment was beyond expression. — Jane Austen

if we want to love Jesus completely, ardently, and perfectly - as did Mother Teresa - then we need his Spirit of Love, and Mary Immaculate brings him to us. — Michael Gaitley

Men ardently pursue truth, assuming it will be angels' bread when found. — William Macneile Dixon

You ardently strive for freedom, and I do wish you were free
but, rather than for your sake, so that government won't be. — Franz Grillparzer

The moments of nature's universal, triumphant silence had come, those minutes when the creative mind works harder, poetic thoughts seethe more ardently, the heart's passion blazes more brightly and its longing aches more painfully, the grain of criminal thought ripens in a cruel soul more imperturbably and powerfully. — Ivan Goncharov

For in the absence of debate unrestricted utterance leads to the degradation of opinion. By a kind of Greshams law the more rational is overcome by the less rational, and the opinions that will prevail will be those which are held most ardently by those with the most passionate will. For that reason the freedom to speak can never be maintained merely by objecting to interference with the liberty of the press, of printing, of broadcasting, of the screen. It can be maintained only by promoting debate. — Walter Lippmann

Much is being said about peace; and no man desires peace more ardently than I. Still I am yet unprepared to give up the Union fora peace which, so achieved, could not be of much duration. — Abraham Lincoln

Some suffering is given in order to chastise and correct a person for wrongful patterns of life (as in the case of Jonah imperiled by the storm), some suffering is given not to correct past wrongs but to prevent future ones (as in the case of Joseph sold into slavery), and some suffering has no purpose other than to lead a person to love God more ardently for himself alone and so discover the ultimate peace and freedom. — Timothy Keller

I have struggled in vain and I can bear it no longer. These past months have been a torment. I love you. Most ardently. — Jane Austen

Jesse squeezed her breasts ardently. "I just love your round parts, Miss Althea. They are just about the best things I ever felt in my life."
He proved his enthusiasm for them by kneading, manipulating, and caressing until Althea was standing on her tiptoes, every muscle in her body straining to give him better access.
"Oh, Miss Althea," he said finally, removing his hands from her body. "This is the most fun I ever had in my life."
He was breathing as if he'd just run up the mountain, pulling Granny Piggott on the skid. — Pamela Morsi

By the fall of 1775 no one in Congress labored more ardently than Adams to hasten the day when America would be separate from Great Britain. — John Ferling

Blue had once intercepted a set of e-mails on her mother's computer; one of Maura's male clients had ardently begged Maura to bring Blue "and whatever else you cannot live without" to his row house in Baltimore. In the reply, Maura had sternly informed him that this was not a possibility, for many reasons, chief of which that she would not leave Henrietta and least of which that she didn't know if he was an ax murderer. He had e-mailed back only a sad-face smiley. Blue always wondered what became of him. — Maggie Stiefvater

...I ardently wished to die — Charlotte Bronte

And I reminded myself that the reproach of intellectualism is often directed at the most sensitive natures, those most ardently alive, those obliged by their frailty or their excess of strength constantly to resort to the arduous disciplines of the mind. — Marguerite Yourcenar

Love tends to union with the object loved. Now Jesus Christ loves a soul that is in a state of grace with immense love; He ardently desires to unite Himself with it. That is what Holy Communion does — Alphonsus Liguori

Our temptation is to look eagerly for the minimum that will be accepted. We are in fact very like honest but reluctant taxpayers. We approve of an income tax in principle. We make our returns truthfully. But we dread a rise in the tax. We are very careful to pay no more than is necessary. And we hope - we very ardently hope - that after we have paid it there will still be enough left to live on. - from "A Slip of the Tongue" (The Weight of Glory) — C.S. Lewis

Not for you," Lila replies ardently, "you're my brilliant friend, you have to be the best of all, boys and girls. — Elena Ferrante

This new art made a deep impression on me, and I began to study it ardently. — Ruggero Leoncavallo