Lack Of Desire Quotes & Sayings

Who shot you?" For a moment he looked annoyed. "I fail to see what that's got to do with anything. Reading assures me that anyone who's ever met me would have reason to shoot me, so I must admit with all candor that I have no idea. Was it you?" "If I'd shot you I wouldn't have missed," she said. "Was that wishful thinking or are you in fact a practiced shot?" "Desire would have made up for lack of expertise. — Anne Stuart

Never before had I imagined leaving home, but that wasn't because of lack of desire, only lack of possibility. — Melanie Benjamin

I am dead because I lack desire,
I lack desire because I think I possess.
I think I possess because I do not try to give.
In trying to give, you see that you have nothing;Seeing that you have nothing, you try to give of yourself;
Trying to give of yourself, you see that you are nothing:Seeing that you are nothing, you desire to become;
In desiring to become, you begin to live. — Rene Daumal

Because we lack a divine Center our need for security has led us into an insane attachment to things. We really must understand that the lust for affluence in contemporary society is psychotic. It is psychotic because it has completely lost touch with reality. We crave things we neither need nor enjoy. 'We buy things we do not want to impress people we do not like'. Where planned obsolescence leaves off, psychological obsolescence takes over. We are made to feel ashamed to wear clothes or drive cars until they are worn out. The mass media have convinced us that to be out of step with fashion is to be out of step with reality. It is time we awaken to the fact that conformity to a sick society is to be sick. Until we see how unbalanced our culture has become at this point, we will not be able to deal with the mammon spirit within ourselves nor will we desire Christian simplicity. — Richard J. Foster

Whoa," Becky said, because the baby kicked her hard in the bladder.

Felix startled, backing up and nearly falling over a chair.

"Sorry, I was whoa-ing because right when you came in, the baby kicked, not because you're Felix Callahan. Oh, you know what it reminded me of ? When Elisabeth's baby kicks just as Mary greets her? Isn't that funny? As if I had some spiritual sign when I saw you."

Annette smiled, her eyebrows raised. Felix glared handsomely. Becky stamped down a desire to squirm.

"No, it's not terribly funny," Felix said, "particularly as I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Elisabeth, wife of Zacharias, cousin to Mary, mother of Jesus? No? Nothing?"

Felix looked at her with a careful lack of amusement.

"Oh, maybe you don't have the Bible in England. See, there's this guy named Jesus and his mother is named Mary, and well, it's a really interesting read if you don't mind parables. — Shannon Hale

Desires are only the lack of something: and those who have the greatest desires are in a worse condition than those who have none, or very slight ones. — Plato

Integrity, or the lack of it, touches almost every facet of our lives-everything we say, every thought and desire. — Nathan Eldon Tanner

The commentaries usually mention nine kinds of internal formations: desire, hatred, pride, ignorance, stubborn views, attachment, doubt, jealousy, and selfishness. Among these, the fundamental internal formation is ignorance, the lack of clear seeing. Ignorance is the raw material out of which the other internal formations are made. Although there are nine internal formations, because "desire" is always listed first, it is often used to represent all the internal formations. — Thich Nhat Hanh

One wants to be loved, in lack thereof admired, in lack thereof feared, in lack thereof loathed and despised. One wants to instill some sort of emotion in people. The soul trembles before emptiness and desires contact at any price. — Hjalmar Soderberg

I reached for her, pushing back the fall of hair-it was heavy and thick and smooth to the touch-and tilted her chin so that the moonlight shone on her wet face.
We married each other that night, there on a bed of fallen pine needles-even today, the scent of pitch-pine stirs me-with Henry's distant flute for a wedding march and the arching white birch boughs for our basilica. At first, she quivered like an aspen, and I was ashamed at my lack of continence, yet I could not let go of her. I felt like Peleus on the beach, clinging to Thetis, only to find that, suddenly, it was she who held me; that same furnace in her nature that had flared up in anger blazed again, in passion. — Geraldine Brooks

embrace the suffering knowing the grieving you experience is about having something you desperately want and lost or having something you never possessed and earnestly desire. That lack you experience is the reality of life. — David W. Earle

True love is a lack of desire to check one's smartphone in another's presence. — Alain De Botton

The trouble with those of us who fail to achieve what we desire, is not that we lack the ability to do so, but that we lack the faith implicit in the "Let Go And Let God" principle, which dictates whatever is necessary for us to reach our goal will indeed occur. We — Bob Proctor

The barrier standing between you and the life you are capable of living is a lack of consistent execution. Effective execution will set you free. It is the path to accomplish the things you desire. — Brian P. Moran

Because here's the thing that's wrong with all of the "How to Be Happy" shit that's been shared eight million times on Facebook in the past few years - here's what nobody realizes about all of this crap: The desire for more positive experience is itself a negative experience. And, paradoxically, the acceptance of one's negative experience is itself a positive experience. This is a total mind-fuck. So I'll give you a minute to unpretzel your brain and maybe read that again: Wanting positive experience is a negative experience; accepting negative experience is a positive experience. It's what the philosopher Alan Watts used to refer to as "the backwards law" - the idea that the more you pursue feeling better all the time, the less satisfied you become, as pursuing something only reinforces the fact that you lack it in the first place. The — Mark Manson

O God, I have tasted Thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need for further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. O God, the Triune God, I want to want Thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made more thirsty still. Show me Thy glory, I pray Thee, so that I may know Thee indeed. Begin in mercy a new work of love within me. Say to my soul, 'Rise up my love, my fair one, and come away.' Then give me grace to rise and follow Thee up from this misty lowland where I have wandered so long. — A.W. Tozer

Desires to which we cling closely can easily prevent us from being what we ought to be and can be; and on the other hand, desires repeatedly mastered for the sake of present duty make us richer.Lack of desire is poverty. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The desire for change is enacted by change, not by a lack of it. When things shift, there is a natural outcry, a desire for a shift back. Sometimes this is a positive reaction, sometimes not. Regardless, once that shift becomes the new normal, that desire to effect dissipates and is eventually forgotten. — Bryce O'Connor

Being bold and adventurous and being sad and cautious seem like opposite personality types. However, these two paths to addiction are actually not mutually exclusive. The third way involves having both kinds of traits, where people alternatively fear and desire novelty and behavior swings from being impulsive and rash to being compulsive, fear driven, and stuck in rigid patterns. This is where some of the contradictions that have long confounded the study of addiction come into play - namely, some aspects seem precisely planned out, while others are obviously related to lack of restraint. My own story spirals around this paradoxical situation: I was driven enough to excel academically and fundamentally scared of change and of other people - yet I was also reckless enough to sell cocaine and shoot heroin. — Maia Szalavitz

I know a flower that grows in the valley, none knows it but I. It has purple leaves, and a star in its heart, and its juice is as white as milk. Should'st thou touch with this flower the hard lips of the Queen, she would follow thee all over the world. Out of the bed of the King she would rise, and over the whole world she would follow thee. And it has a price, pretty boy, it has a price. What d'ye lack? What d'ye lack? I can pound a toad in a mortar, and make broth of it, and stir the broth with a dead man's hand. Sprinkle it on thine enemy while he sleeps, and he will turn into a black viper, and his own mother will slay him. With a wheel I can draw the Moon from heaven, and in a crystal I can show thee Death. What d'ye lack? What d'ye lack? Tell me thy desire, and I will give it thee, and thou shalt pay me a price, pretty boy, thou shalt pay me a price. — Oscar Wilde

Most people fail, not because of lack of desire, but, because of lack of commitment. — Vince Lombardi

There's a huge dichotomy between people who grow up with alienation, which, for me, was invaluable, and people who grow up so completely privileged that it breeds this complacency and lack of desire to question or challenge or do anything significant. Those are the types of people who become partners at the corporate law firms. — Glenn Greenwald

The fundamental error of Romanticism is to confuse what we need with what we desire. We all need certain basic things for life's preservation and continuance; we all desire a more perfect life, complete happiness, the fulfilment of our dreams and ... ..

It's human to want what we need, and it's human to desire what we don't need but find desirable. Sickness occurs when we desire what we need and what's desirable with equal intensity, suffering our lack of perfection as if we were suffering for lack of bread. The Romantic malady is to want the moon as if it could actually be obtained. — Fernando Pessoa

Sickness occurs when we desire what we need and what's desirable with equal intensity, suffering our lack of perfection as if we were suffering for lack of bread. — Fernando Pessoa

41 Never exaggerate. It isn't wise to use superlatives. They offend the truth and cast doubt on your judgment. By exaggerating, you squander your praise and reveal a lack of knowledge and taste. Praise awakens curiosity, which begets desire, and later, when the goods seem overpriced, as often happens, expectation feels cheated and avenges itself by running down the praised and the praiser. The prudent show restraint, and would rather fall short than long. True eminences are rare, so temper your esteem. To overvalue something is a form of lying. It can ruin your reputation for good taste, and - even worse - for wisdom. — Baltasar Gracian

With the goodness of God to desire our highest welfare, the wisdom of God to plan it, and the power of God to achieve it, what do we lack? Surely we are the most favored of all creatures. — A.W. Tozer

Because when you kiss your first boy or girl, you don't want to be so caught up in your lack of self-worth that you forget to enjoy the kiss, that you forget that you deserve the pleasure of that moment. You don't want to be so caught up in your lack of self-worth that you become an object of his or her desire, a grateful unworthy slave to his or her attention. — Jamie Le Fay

To expect the other people to spoon-feed you shows the lack of hunger, thirst or drive to push forward the things you desire to accomplish. — Euginia Herlihy

I appear to be embarked on the turbid waters of poetry and scholarship. And a career in poetry and knowledge is as hard to guide as Plato's horses. On the one hand I must range about discovering the fundamentals of knowledge, dipping into science, politics and other arcana, forever seeking an education that is both profound and practical; on the other, I must keep spiritually alive and brilliantly alive, for poetry is, as the moral Milton conceded in practice and precept, a sensuous, passionate, brutal thing. I put in the last adjective because I am modern and angry and puritanical ... The relevance of such schedule to poetry is obvious. I cannot think it a pedantry that a man desiring to speak (or sing) something important should also desire to speak with certainty. Also if he lack scope, such as an acquaintance with science and an acquaintance with other languages, he will be romantic and an anachronism. — Robert Lowell

If we want to experience the glory of God in our lives continually, we will always need to be seekers of His presence. Have we experienced the presence of God in certain places or through particular devotional and worship patterns? Are we expecting always to find our Beloved there? If we are sensing a lack of His presence, it may be that He wants us to seek Him in new ways or with greater intensity. Seeking Him reveals our true desire for His glory. Perhaps He hides Himself simply so that He can take delight in our desire for Him.
Many — Fuchsia T. Pickett

A lack of desire is something I've never experienced. I'd have to be on my deathbed before I stopped wanting
no, never mind, I was on my deathbed in the not-too-distant past, and even then I had the devil's own itch for my wife. -Sebastian, Lord St. Vincent — Lisa Kleypas

Why didn't you come sooner?
I offered them no excuses that day, but I did know that there were reasons. Reasons that, when we hear God's call, when we feel that gentle (or not so gentle) urging of God's Spirit for us to make a bold step, take a risk, serve others, save a life, commit - we so often hold back.
It's because we don't feel empowered.
We don't feel qualified.
We think we lack the courage, the strength, the wisdom, the money, the experience, the education, the organization, the backing.
We feel like Moses...
Not me, God. I'm afraid. Weak. Poor. Stupid.
Unqualified.
Daunted....
It has never been my desire to be daunted, to be afraid, to be unable to respond to God's call. — Christine Caine

There has been significant debate in the scientific community about whether desire is a symptom of a system infected with amor deliria nervosa, or a pre-condition of the disease itself.
It is unanimously agreed, however, that love and desire enjoy a symbiotic relationship, meaning that one cannnot exist without the other. Desire is enemy to ncontentment; desire is illness, a feverish brain. Who can be considereed healthy who wants? The very word want suggests a lack, an impoverishment, and that is what desire is: an impoverishment of the brain, a flaw, a mistake. Fortunately, that can now be corrected.
- From The Roots and Repercussions of Amor Deliria Nervosa on Cognitive Functioning, 4th edition, by Dr. Phillip Berryman — Lauren Oliver

Although there appears to be a deep desire to approach dating, marriage, and sex in a way that pleases God, there nevertheless seems to be a profound lack of wisdom and practical know-how. There is a sizable gap between our understanding of the gospel and our knowledge of the Scriptures on one hand and our application of that knowledge on the other. The sheer amount of confusion, heartbreak, and fear that I have witnessed at The Village Church in regard to romantic relationships and sex provides my primary motivation for writing this book. — Matt Chandler

What I think we as the church lack, though, is a place to talk about how things really are right now. In our desire to be an inspiration to one another we often veil what is true, because what is true is not always inspirational. It's not easy to watch or personally experience a marriage on the verge of divorce, or a child battling cancer, or a betrayal of the worst kind, or dreams lost in the dust, or overwhelming feelings of despair or emptiness. But these things are real. And hurting believers whose lives are in tatters need real help. If we were able to put aside our need for approval long enough to be authentic, then, surely, we would be living as the church. — Sheila Walsh

They come
different and the same
with each it is different and the same
with each the absence of love is different
with each the absence of love is the same — Samuel Beckett

No one's approval is enough to make up for a lack of self-love, which is really a lack of self-awareness.
When we feel a desire to be loved, it isn't other people's love we need. It's our own relationship with love that we're longing for, our own awareness of being interconnected with others, our own sense of the magic of our own interwoven existence.
To seek the fulfillment of this desire in others' approval is a losing battle. It will never be enough. No one can compliment you enough to supplement for the acceptance that you need from your own self, in each moment. Acceptance for your struggles and your talents. Acceptance for your humanity. Celebration of that humanity.
Love is an inside job. — Vironika Tugaleva

Thus the perception of the infinite is somehow prior in me to the perception of the finite, that is, my perception of God is prior to my perception of myself. For how would I understand that I doubt and that I desire, that is, that I lack something and that I am not wholly perfect, unless there were some idea in me of a more perfect being, by comparison with which I might recognize my defects? — Rene Descartes

Desire, a function central to all human experience, is the desire for nothing nameable. And at the same time this desire lies at the origin of every variety of animation. If being were only what it is, there wouldn't even be room to talk about it. Being comes into existence as an exact function of this lack. — Jacques Lacan

To gain your heart's desire you have to lose some part of your old life, your old self. To do that you have to have courage; without it, you can't make the leap. And if you don't make the leap you have only three choices: You can hate yourself for not taking the chance, you can hate the person from whom you've sacrificed your happiness, or you can hate the one who offered you happiness, and blame them for your lack of courage, convince yourself it wasn't real. — Laurell K. Hamilton

The greater the sense of powerlessness and the greater lack of authentic will, the more grows either submission or an obsessional desire for satisfaction of one's whims and the insistence on arbitrariness. — Erich Fromm

Be aware of the big difference between inspired action and activity. Activity comes from the brain-mind and is rooted in disbelief and lack of faith - you are taking action to "make" your desire happen. Inspired action is allowing the law to work through you and to move you.
Activity feels hard. Inspired action feels wonderful. — Rhonda Byrne

the bureaucracy has arrogated the right to define certain states of mind as 'diseased.' A lack of desire to spend money becomes a symptom of disease that requires expensive medication. Which medication then destroys the libido, in other words destroys the appetite for the one pleasure in life that's free, which means the person has to spend even more money on compensatory pleasures. The very definition of mental 'health' is the ability to participate in the consumer economy. When you buy into therapy, you're buying into buying. — Jonathan Franzen

I know, but he must have felt it that way, that evil was an emptiness, a lack of something, not a presence.'
He turned his head fast and looked at me. 'That's what desire is, isn't it? The lack of something. — Siri Hustvedt

It is clear that something is seriously lacking in the way we humans are going about things. But what is it that we lack? The fundamental problem, I believe, is that at every level we are giving too much attention to the external, material aspects of life while neglecting moral ethics and inner values. By inner values, I mean the qualities that we all appreciate in others, and toward which we all have a natural instinct, bequeathed by our biological nature as animals that survive and thrive only in an environment of concern, affection, and warm-heartedness-or in a single word, compassion. The essence of compassion is a desire to alleviate the suffering of others and to promote their well-being. This is the spiritual principle from which all other positive inner value emerge. — Dalai Lama XIV

Female knowledge of objectification usually stops at a necessary but superficial understanding: beauty is rewarded and lack of beauty is punished. The punishments are understood as personal misfortune; they are not seem as systematic, institutional, or historical. Women do not understand that they are also punished through sexual use for being beautiful; and women do not understand the lengths to which men go to protect themselves and their society from contamination by ugly women who do not induce a lustful desire to punish, violate, or destroy, though men manage to punish, violate, or destroy these women anyway. — Andrea Dworkin

Purity is innocence, the innocence of lack of self. Desire is innocent unless it's connected with self. — Frederick Lenz

Keeping people in a constant state of lack, in perpetual desire, strengthens the marketplace economy. — Bell Hooks

Man's pursuit of physical desires and earthly possessions is an indication of his lack of conviction that the purpose of his existence is the attainment of spirituality. — Abraham J. Twerski

My theory is that humans aren't really bad; we all do bad things, but being bad is not our natural state. You're acting out of fear, lack of understanding, compassion, but essentially communication. Human beings are made of love, an overwhelming desire to love. When we communicate, we exist in our natural state. — Seal

Life that did not yearn toward life was in fair way toward ceasing. — Jack London

It was presumptuous for one man to forgive another. That was the duty of God. For men to pretend such mercy was an idle pride and a lack of respect. He did not desire any such mercy for himself. — Mario Puzo

Privilege is not in and of itself bad; what matters is what we do with privilege. I want to live in a world where all women have access to education, and all women can earn PhD's, if they so desire. Privilege does not have to be negative, but we have to share our resources and take direction about how to use our privilege in ways that empower those who lack it. — Bell Hooks

But the flames did die down, perhaps from lack, perhaps from excess of fuel. Little by little, love was quenched by absence, and longing smothered by routine; and that fiery glow which tinged her pale sky scarlet grew more clouded, then gradually faded away. Her benumbed consciousness even led her to mistake aversion toward her husband for desire for her loved, the searing touch of hatred for the rekindling of love; but, as the storm still raged on and her passion burnt itself to ashes, no help came and no sun rose, the darkness of night closed in on every side, and she was left to drift in a bitter icy void.
So the bad days of Tostes began again. She believed herself much more unhappy, now, because she had experienced sorrow, and knew for certain that ti would ever end. — Gustave Flaubert

Lend finished texting someone and slipped his phone into his back pocket, then stood up. I'd never paid much attention to guys' jeans before (not for lack of desire, but rather lack of opportunity in the Center), but in the past few months I'd come to realize that most guys' jeans are really, truly horrendous. Too baggy, too tight, too low, etc. It's like guys don't realize that they can look great in a good pair of jeans. Shockingly enough girls, too, enjoy a well-framed butt.
Another area Lend was perfect in. His jeans choice, I mean. Well, his butt, too.
I smiled and stared at his face, watching his two profiles - the glamour one, which fit snugly over his real one. He looked down and caught me staring.
"Evie?"
"You, my dear boyfriend, are kind of beautiful, you know that?"
"That's what all the old ladies tell me before pinching my cheek."
"Which cheek?" I reached out and goosed him. He jumped and swatted my hand away, laughing. — Kiersten White

Sometimes what we lack is the thrill of anticipation or the delay of gratification. We enjoy things far more when we've really desired them but had to wait for them. The real value is found in our self control and patience, which allows us to delay gratification and build anticipation. Letting desire build is an abstract way to achieve balance and moderation in your life... Moderation just may be the answer to boredom - go figure! -- pg 145-146 — Cristin Frank

A chronic lack of pleasure, of any enjoyable, rewarding or stimulating experiences, produces a slow, gradual, day-by-day erosion of man's emotional vitality, which he may ignore or repress, but which is recorded by the relentless computer of his subconscious mechanism that registers an ebbing flow, then a trickle, then a few last drops of fuel
until the day when his inner motor stops and he wonders desperately why he has no desire to go on, unable to find any definable cause of his hopeless, chronic sense of exhaustion. — Ayn Rand

Lack of spiritual desire should grieve us and lead us to lament its absence, to seek earnestly for its bestowal, so that our praying, henceforth, should be an expression of the soul's sincere desire. — E. M. Bounds

Anger is rooted in our lack of understanding of ourselves and of the causes, deep-seated as well as immediate, that brought about this unpleasant state of affairs. Anger is also rooted in desire, pride, agitation, and suspicion. The primary roots of our anger are in ourselves. Our environment and other people are only secondary. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Anyone still attempting to argue that Ebonics is a problem for black students or that it is somehow connected to a lack of intelligence or lack of desire to achieve is about as useful as a Betamax video cassette player, and it's time for those folks to be retired, be they teachers, administrators, or community leaders, so the rest of us can try to do some real work in the service of equal access for black students and all students. (15) — Adam J. Banks

Design is all about desire, but strangely this desire seems almost subject-less today, or at least lack-less; that is, design seems to advance a new kind of narcissism, one that is all image and no interiority - an apotheosis of the subject that is also its disappearance. Poor little rich man: he is 'precluded from all fuure living and striving, developing and desiring' in the neo-Art Nouveau world of total design and Internet plenitude. — Hal Foster

The easiest definition is this: an addiction is something we can't stop doing. Among its symptoms are lethargy, a lack of ability to focus, a tremendous desire to maintain routine in our daily life, the inability to complete cycles of action, a lack of new experiences and emotional responses, and the persistent feeling that one day is the same as the next and the next. — Ellen Hopkins

And so give your uncommon readers a chance to join you in the solidarity of pain and love and the vision of human possibility. But isn't it enough? For lack of the full heart's desire, won't it serve? — Wallace Stegner

Desire had its exaggerated and dramatic pleasures, but he was bored by the endless scenes and recantations. Love was simply the same steady heartbeat hour after hour. It bored him with its lack of event. — Robert Goolrick

One of the greatest foes of the Christian is religious complacency.. Orthodox Christianity has fallen to its present low estate from lack of spiritual desire. Among the many who profess the Christian faith, scarcely one in a thousand reveals any passionate thirst for God. — Aiden Wilson Tozer

For too long, musicians have been the greatest enemy of music. Their lack of desire to proselytize is a kind of betrayal. — Charles Hazlewood

Within the context of the clubs, and perhaps the sex business as a whole, the issue of race becomes very complicated because you can't force someone to pay for something - or someone - that they don't want, whether their desire - or lack thereof - is motivated by racism or not. — Craig Seymour

Empathy with someone else's pain or lack and a desire to help need to be balanced with a deeper realization of the eternal nature of all life and the illusion of all pain. Then let your peace flow into whatever you do, and you will be working on the levels of effect and cause simultaneously. — Eckhart Tolle

In his lifetime, that small fishing village had turned into the seventh largest port in the world, an eight-million-strong city; women had gotten the right to divorce, of which his wife took full advantage; and his son's living standard was so much higher than his, his so much higher than his own parents, that he couldn't understand the boy's constant desire for more, more, more. Despite a total lack of education from the state, Lao Song, unlike some of his classmates, was not entirely stunted; instead, he sought out the rebellious track of "growing his own mind," as he called it, teaching himself whatever he could through rudimentary means. Despite being in China's "Lost Generation," Song had somehow found himself. — Megan Rich

(1) the commitment to ending the war successfully at the earliest possible moment; (2) the need to justify the effort and expense of building the atomic bombs; (3) the hope of achieving diplomatic gains in the growing rivalry with the Soviet Union; (4) the lack of incentives not to use atomic weapons; and (5) hatred of the Japanese and a desire for vengeance. — J. Samuel Walker

There is a power under your control that is greater than poverty, greater than the lack of education, greater than all your fears and superstitions combined. It is the power to take possession of your own mind and direct it to whatever ends you may desire. — Andrew Carnegie

A BURNING DESIRE TO BE, AND TO DO is the starting point from which the dreamer must take off. Dreams are not born of indifference, laziness, or lack of ambition. — Napoleon Hill

I want deliberately to encourage this mighty longing after God. The lack of it has brought us to our present low estate. The stiff and wooden quality about our religious lives is a result of our lack of holy desire. Complacency is a deadly foe of all spiritual growth. Acute desire must be present or there will be no manifestation of Christ to His people. He waits to be wanted. Too bad that with many of us He waits so long, so very long, in vain. — A.W. Tozer

These students of mine, like the rest of their generation, were different from mine in one fundamental aspect. My generation complained of a loss, the void in our lives that was created when our past was stolen from us, making us exile in our own country. Yet we had a past to compare with the present; we had memories and images of what had been taken away. But my girls spoke constantly of stolen kisses, films they had never seen and the wind they had never felt on their skin. This generation had no past. Their memory was of a half-articulated desire, something they had never had. It was this lack, their sense of longing for the ordinary, taken-for-granted aspects of life, that gave their words a certain luminous quality akin to poetry. — Azar Nafisi

Not even a book on prosperity can prosper you, when what is expected of you is given, your time won't be wasted. — Michael Bassey Johnson

Of course it is impossible, or at any rate very difficult, properly to study anything whatever without the aid of printed books. But if you desire to understand the deeper depths of bridge or of boat-sailing you would not be deterred by your lack of interest in literature from reading the best books on bridge or boat-sailing. We must, therefore, distinguish between literature, and books treating of subjects not literary. — Arnold Bennett

I say this with care, but I wonder if a fierce, insistent desire for a miracle - even a physical healing - sometimes betrays a lack of faith rather than an abundance of it. When yearning for a miraculous resolution to a problem, do we make our loyalty to God contingent on whether he reveals himself yet again in the seen world? — Philip Yancey

Everyone stumbles through it all the same; the main difference lies not in the lack of dysfunction but in the desire to be dishonest about it. Every family has problems, but only some let you see them. The rest just keep their chaos behind closed doors and out of conversation. — Kevin Breel

Don't waste time. Avoid the company of wasteful people who lack the desire to achieve. Become assertive and action-oriented. — Archibald Marwizi

Lack of desire is the greatest riches. — Seneca The Younger

Why do we wear out so quickly, when the elements of which we are composed are indestructible? What is it that wears out? Not that of which we are made, that is certain. We wither and fade away, we perish, because the desire to live is extinguished. And why does this most potent flame die out? For lack of faith. From the time we are born we are told that we are mortal. From the time we are able to understand words we are taught that we must kill in order to survive. In season and out we are reminded that, no matter how intelligently, reasonably or wisely we live, we shall become sick and die. We are inoculated with the idea of death almost from birth. Is it any wonder that we die? — Henry Miller

As far as I understand it, and it's impossible not to understand it, you yourself, at the beginning and then again, very eloquently - albeit too theoretically - have been developing a picture of a Russia covered with an endless network of knots. For their part, each of the active groups, by proselytizing and branching out ad infinitum, has the task, through systematic denunciatory propaganda of constantly undermining the authority of the local authorities, creating confusion in the villages, fostering cynicism, scandals and an utter lack of belief in anything at all, a burning desire for something better, and finally, using fires as a measure that appeals primarily to the common people, to throw the country, at a designated moment, if necessary, even into a state of despair. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

However, she wouldn't be the first person to mistrust her nearest and dearest yet confide in the first stranger who comes along: a strange but true quirk of behaviour, whose root is easily traced to the human heart. Some people perhaps have nothing left to gain from those they live with; having revealed the emptiness of their souls, they secretly feel themselves to be judged with deserved severity; however, as they have a powerful craving for the flattery they need but lack, or a burning desire to appear to possess qualities they do not have, they hope to take by surprise the heart and esteem of those who are strangers to them, at the risk of one day falling from grace. — Honore De Balzac

For a French person, lack of desire in someone is really seen as a defect. — Marilyn Yalom

Xxx it is not lack of wit or intellect that shallow men crave, it is lack of personality; they desire a woman who will exist only as a shadow to themselves, because this gives them the illusion that they have some importance, that they are more than cattle. Personality is what distinguishes us from each other, what makes each man and woman unique, and to submerge one's personality is to make one's self interchangeable, like a mass-produced commodity; xxx — Steven Brust

What we will criticize 'modern' eroticism for is its lack of genuine sensuality, a sensuality which implies beauty or charm, passion or modesty, power over the object of desire, and fulfilment. — Henri Lefebvre

I realised that in refusing to take a vow man was drawn into temptation, and that to be bound by a vow was like a passage from libertinism to a real monogamous marriage. "I believe in effort, I do not want to bind myself with vows," is the mentality of weakness and betrays a subtle desire for the thing to be avoided. Or where can be the difficulty in making a final decision? I vow to flee from the serpent which I know will bite me, I do not simply make an effort to flee from him. I know that mere effort may mean certain death. Mere effort means ignorance of the certain fact that the serpent is bound to kill me. The fact, therefore, that I could rest content with an effort only, means that I have not yet clearly realised the necessity of definite action. "But supposing my views are changed in the future, how can I bind myself by a vow?" Such a doubt often deters us. But that doubt also betrays a lack of clear perception that a particular thing must be renounced. — Mahatma Gandhi

To what or whom does Lizzie Harris direct the imperative title of her startling first book, Stop Wanting? To the reader, the narrator, to desire itself, or to lack? This is a work of complexly, ambiguously layered narratives and identities. The opening poem asserts I want to say what happened / but am suspicious of stories. These lines become an ars poetica for the whole of this painful and exceptional collection in which the unspeakable is stubbornly confronted by a searing eloquence. This is a commanding debut. — Lynn Emanuel

This was to say, however, that she did not long, at times, for some even greater variation, that she did not pass through those abnormal hours in which one thirsts for something different from what one has, when those people who, through lack of energy or imagination, are unable to generate any motive power in themselves, cry out, as the clock strikes or the postman knocks, in their eagerness for news (even if it be bad news), for some emotion (even that of grief); when the heartstrings, which prosperity has silenced, like a harp laid by, yearn to be plucked and sounded again by some hand, even a brutal hand, even if it shall break them; when the will, which has with such difficulty brought itself to subdue to its impulse, to renounce its right to abandon itself to its own uncontrolled desires, and consequent sufferings, would fain cast its guiding reins into the hands of circumstances, coercive and, it may be, cruel. — Marcel Proust

You will lose not because of your abilities but because of your lack of desire to participate. — Debasish Mridha

Love and desire enjoy a symbiotic relationship, meaning that one cannot exist without the other. Desire is an enemy to contentment; desire is illness, a feverish brain. Who can be considered healthy who wants? The very word want suggests a lack, an impoverishment, and that is what desire is: an impoverishment of the brain, a flaw, a mistake. — Lauren Oliver

The burdens of taxation, the lack of due representation, and the desire for freedom were unquestionably integral ingredients in the accumulation of grievances that drove many colonials to take up arms against the king.22 Yet religious issues also played their part, not least in intensifying a sense of injustice over the privileged status of the Church of England in the British colonies.23 — Alister E. McGrath

The majority of the high schools and the public schools in N.Y.C. don't even have band programs. Hip-hop in a lot of ways is an outgrowth of a lack of instruments and a desire to play music, so we can't really fault the kids for that. — Wynton Marsalis

The problem is that the media rarely discusses the real reasons behind why women leave their jobs. We hear a lot about the desire to be closer to the children, the love of crafting and gardening, and making food from scratch. But reasons like lack of maternity leave, lack of affordable day care, lack of job training, and unhappiness with the 24/7 work culture-well, those aren't getting very much airtime. — Emily Matchar

I'm saying the structure and f the entire culture is flawed, chip said. I'm saying the bureaucracy has arrogated the right to define certain states of mind as 'diseased.' A lack of desire to spend money becomes a symptom of disease that requires expensive medication. Which medication then destroys the libido, in other words destroys the appetite for the one pleasure in life that's free, which means the person has to spend more money on compensatory pleasures. The very definition of mental health is the ability to participate in the consumer economy. When you buy into therapy, you're buying into buying. And I'm saying that I personally am losing the battle with a commercialized, medicalized, totalitarian, modernity right this instant. — Jonathan Franzen

That which compels us to create a substitute for ourselves is not the external lack of objects, but our incapacity to lovingly include a thing outside of ourselves — C. G. Jung

Collateral learning in the way of formation of enduring attitudes, of likes and dislikes, may be and often is much more important than the spelling lesson or lesson in geography or history that is learned. For these attitudes are fundamentally what count in the future. The most important attitude that can be formed is that of desire to go on learning. If impetus in this direction is weakened instead of being intensified, something much more than mere lack of preparation takes place. The pupil is actually robbed of native capacities which otherwise would enable him [sic] to cope with the circumstances that he meets in the course of his life. We often see persons who have had little schooling and in whose case the absence of set schooling proves to be a positive asset. They have at least retained their native common sense and power of judgement, and its exercise in the actual conditions of living has given them the precious gift of ability to learn from the experiences they have. — John Dewey

If you were to fault yourself in one of three areas, which would it be: (1) the inability to prioritize; (2) the inability or desire to organize around those priorities; or (3) the lack of discipline to execute around them? ... Most people say their main fault is a lack of discipline. On deeper thought, I believe that is not the case. The basic problem is that their priorities have not become deeply planted in their hearts and minds. They haven't really internalized Habit 2 [Begin with the end in mind]. — Stephen Covey

Serious reading is hardly a social activity and every halfway serious reader is perpetually subject to a form of coitus interruptus. Family members or friends who lack the desire, the courage, or the opportunity to burst in on you when there's some indication that you could be sexually entwined will seldom hesitate to interject themselves between you and a page, even though the act of reading is often as intimate and intense as a full-fledged carnal embrace. You must take steps to ensure your privacy. — Tom Robbins

An amorous night is to approach a state of perfection that only two lovers can reach; you see this requires--no it demands, implores the deepest reverence, trust, insatiable desire, and mad lust for her. To worship her by abolishing the weakness of fear, the fear of betrayal, infidelity, the lack of reciprocation and bequeathing the body and soul to her, to worship her, to yearn and gain her unfettered permission to her body and soul, to accept the primal desires the animal needs that dwell inside, yet to have passion, tender love-making and violent sex all in the same night, as one--approaching this perfection is approaching heaven on earth. — Jack Serv