Conflicting Desires Quotes & Sayings

I'd spent my life searching for something I couldn't name.
And as I drowned in the torrential flow of conflicting desires, caught in the relentless roar of water, earth, blood, and war, I reached out - wildly, desperately - and found it with him. — Emma Raveling

To rise above the conflicting desires of others, there must be no conflict about your own. — Stephen Richards

The Conscious mind is a maelstrom of fleeting thoughts , images, sensations, feelings , conflicting desires , and doubts ; barely able to confine its attention to a single clear objective for a microsecond before secondary thoughts begin to adulterate it and provoke yet further trains of mental discourse. If you do not believe this, then attempt to confine your conscious attention to the dot at the end of this sentence without involving yourself in any other form of thinking, including thinking about the dot. — Peter J. Carroll

I hated him, loved him, wanted him, and yet I wished him away. So many conflicting emotions of wants and needs. So much fear. Not because of him, but because of myself - of how deep my feelings and desires were running, and how much I would fall if I happened to lose my grip. — J.C. Reed

Man is a mixture of desires that extend beyond his knowledge and often result in action conflicting with rationality. — Charles Lindbergh

Fairy tales begin with conflict because we all begin our lives with conflict. We are all misfit for the world, and somehow we must fit in, fit in with other people, and thus we must invent or find the means through communication to satisfy as well as resolve conflicting desires and instincts. — Jack D. Zipes

Even if we were very good at making everything outside of ourselves be just the way we ourselves want it to be (a ludicrous thought, you must admit), we could fundamentally never get everything perfect: because our desires are always changing, because they are often conflicting, and because the changes of the environment can never keep up with the pace of the wanting mind. The satisfaction of desire as a strategy for happiness will always be a doomed enterprise. — Andrew Olendzki

There are always two figures in a marriage, two votes, two conflicting sets of decisions, desires and limitations. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Like Teresa [of Avila], each of us is a mix of unseen strengths and conflicting desires. While it is easy to understand our suffering in terms of external difficulties, most of us aren't aware of the significant role we play in our own difficult dramas. Like Job, we rail against the heavens for sending us trials at times, while in actuality, our own [inner] shadow is our most formidable opponent. One of the keys to living deeply is to learn how to befriend our shadows instead of demonizing them. — Helen LaKelly Hunt

I feel an ache in my throat, but I manage to smile. Two conflicting desires go through me at the same time, each as sharp as a razorblade: I want to see you grow up and Don't ever change. — Lauren Oliver

Textbooks in American history stand in sharp contrast to other teaching materials. Why are history textbooks so bad? Nationalism is one of the culprits. Textbooks are often muddled by the conflicting desires to promote inquiry and to indoctrinate blind patriotism. "Take a look in your history book, and you'll see why we should be proud" goes an anthem often sung by high school glee clubs. But we need not even look inside. — James W. Loewen

Desires collide; the wish to eat bumping up against the wish to be thin, the desire to indulge conflicting with the injunction to restrain. Small wonder food makes a woman nervous. — Caroline Knapp