Overwhelming Desire Quotes & Sayings

He tasted like white wine and pine needles. He tasted like two years of waiting. I wanted to breathe for him, I wanted to swallow him whole. I ached with a sudden, pulsing need, an overwhelming desire I'd never felt before. — Viv Daniels

She rolled her eyes to the ceiling, clearly telling him what she thought about his need to protect his pride.

He leaned down, his face inches from hers, and tapped a finger against her lips, somehow managing to ignore their softness and the overwhelming desire to taste them. "You're going to owe me for this one, I think. — J.M. Stewart

Sorry," [Hamlet] said, rubbing his temples. "I don't know what came over me. All of a sudden I had this overwhelming desire to talk for a very long time without actually doing anything. — Jasper Fforde

Women particularly should concern themselves with peace because men by nature are more foolhardy and headstrong, and their overwhelming desire to avenge themselves prevents them from foreseeing the resulting dangers and terrors of war. But woman by nature is more gentle and circumspect. Therefore, if she has sufficient will and wisdom she can provide the best possible means to pacify man. — Christine De Pizan

Yes, Lord. I want Your patience to invade my desire to fly off the handle." "Yes, Lord. I want Your perspective to keep my emotions in check." "Yes, Lord. I want Your provision so things don't seem so overwhelming." "Yes, Lord. I want Your courage to do what I feel You calling me to do." "Yes, Lord. I want and need more of You in every moment. — Lysa TerKeurst

... how overwhelming the feelings of love and terror, the desperate desire to protect. How much stronger would those feelings be if it were her own child? Perhaps too strong to bear. — Kate Atkinson

She was tortured with desire to see him again, a nostalgia, a necessity to see him again, to make sure it was not all a mistake, that she was not deluding herself, that she really felt this strange and overwhelming sensation on his account, this knowledge of him in her essence, this powerful apprehension of him. 'Am I really singled out for him in some way, is there really some pale gold, arctic light that envelopes only us two?' she asked herself. And she could not believe it, she remained in a muse, scarcely conscious of what was going on around. — D.H. Lawrence

Very few persons, comparatively, know how to Desire with sufficient intensity. They do not know what it is to feel and manifest that intense, eager, longing, craving, insistent, demanding, ravenous Desire which is akin to the persistent, insistent, ardent, overwhelming desire of the drowning man for a breath of air; of the shipwrecked or desert-lost man for a drink of water; of the famished man for bread and meat. — Robert Collier

How are you feeling?" Charlie asked, adding a small bottle of V-8 juice to the bedside table.
"Like I just sat through an entire Justin Bieber concert."
"Headache and nausea?
"And an overwhelming desire to die. — Tammy Blackwell

We instinctively feel an overwhelming desire to take sides: organic or conventional, fair or free trade, "pure" or genetically engineered food, wild or farm-raised fish. Like most things in life, though, the sensible answer lies somewhere between the extremes, somewhere in that dull but respectable placed called the pragmatic center. To be a centrist when it comes to food is, unfortunately, to be a radical. — James McWilliams

Mile's fingers pressed into the small of my back. "Basorexia," he mumbled.
"Gesundheit."
He laughed. "It's an overwhelming desire to kiss."
"I thought you weren't good at figuring out what you felt."
"I'm probably using the word in the wrong context. But I'm pretty sure that's what this is. — Francesca Zappia

Life, from beginning to end, is fear. Yes, it is pain, yes, it is desire, but more than anything it is fear; a certain amount rational, an enormous amount irrational. All political cruelties stem from that overwhelming fear. To push back the threatening forces, to offer primitive sacrifices, to give up some in the hope that others will be savedthat is the power struggle. That is the outsidedness of the poor, the feeble, the infantile. That is the outsidedness of Jews. That is the outsidedness of blacks. That is the outsidedness of women. — Vivian Gornick

What I remember most clearly is how it felt. I'd just finished painting a red fire engine-like the one I often walked past near my grandparents' house. Suddenly the teachers, whose names I've long forgotten, closed in on my desk. They seemed unusually impressed, and my still dripping fire engine was immediately and ceremoniously pinned up. I don't know what they might have said, but their unexpected attention and having something I'd made given a place of honor on the wall created an overwhelming and totally unfamiliar sense of pride inside me. I loved that feeling, and I wanted to feel it again and again. That desire, I suppose, was the beginning of my career.
I have no idea where my fire engine painting ended up, but I never forgot the basic layout. Several decades later, it served as the inspiration for this sketch for an illustration in a book called Why the chicken crossed the Road. — David Macaulay

I wrote poetry in a secretive way, I think, a secret from myself, I mean. I wrote it because it gave me great pleasure to do so and because it relieved the ever-building pressure of the demanding world around me. It's always served me as a way of appraising, and controlling overwhelming experiences. But this need, and desire, was always in conflict with my need to "survive." — Philip Schultz

The American people are not uniquely, but characteristically the most spontaneously generous in the world and you're seeing that all over this country in Web sites of charitable organizations that are crashing because of the overwhelming desire on the part of ordinary people to help out. — Richard Norton Smith

A desire to kneel down sometimes pulses through my body, or rather it is as if my body has been meant and made for the act of kneeling. Sometimes, in moments of deep gratitude, kneeling down becomes an overwhelming urge, head deeply bowed, hands before my face. — Etty Hillesum

The desire from those abroad to join our ranks is overwhelming. Tens of millions have applied for the limited amount of diversity visas available every year, illustrating the demand and need to maintain this vital path to American citizenship. — Cedric Richmond

But what's true about comedians is that we've all got a huge hole in our personality. In a room of 3,000 people, we're the one person facing in the opposite direction - yet we have this overwhelming desire to be liked. — Jimmy Carr

This overwhelming desire to be close to you directly conflicts with my intense fear of people. — Joseph Gordon-Levitt

He'd never encountered beauty of such magnitude and intensity. It was not allure, but grace, like the sight of land to a shipwrecked man. And he, who hadn't been on a capsized vessel since he was six - and that had only been an overturned canoe - suddenly felt as if he'd been adrift in the open ocean his entire life.
Someone spoke to him. He couldn't make out a single word.
There was something elemental to her beauty, like a mile-high thunderhead, a gathering avalanche, or a Bengal tiger prowling the darkness of the jungle. A phenomenon of inherent danger and overwhelming perfection.
He felt a sharp, sweet ache in his chest: His life would never again be complete without her. But he felt no fear, only excitement, wonder, and desire.
Christian's thoughts upon seeing Venetia for the first time (Beguiling the Beauty, Fitzhugh Trilogy 1, by Sherry Thomas) — Sherry Thomas

Ibrahim feels an overwhelming desire for her, for the soft of her body, the warmth of it. This urge silences the other voice in his mind, the one that asks insistently, and seeks, and seeks. — Parnaz Foroutan

How did, all of a sudden, my middling desire to spend quality time in another's company become overwhelming? — Rodney Ross

The Northern press, as a whole, did not discourage these claims; a portion of it always magnified rebel success and belittled ours, while another portion, most sincerely earnest in their desire for the preservation of the Union and the overwhelming success of the Federal armies, would nevertheless generally express dissatisfaction with whatever victories were gained because they — Ulysses S. Grant

The spiritual desire for poetry can be overwhelming, so much do I need it to experience and name my own perilous depths and vast spaces, my own well-being. — Edward Hirsch

I want you, Anastasia," he murmurs. "I love and I hate, and I love arguing with you. It's very new. I need to know that we're okay. It's the only way I know how."
"My feelings for you haven't changed," I whisper.
His proximity is overwhelming, exhilarating. The familiar pull is there, all my synapses goading me toward him, my inner goddess at her most libidinous. Staring at the patch of hair in the V of his shirt, I bite my lip, helpless, driven by desire - I want to taste him there.
He's so close, but he doesn't touch me. His heat is warming my skin.
"I'm not going to touch you until you say yes," he says softly. "But right now, after a really shitty morning, I want to bury myself in you and just forget everything but us. — E.L. James

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

Don't be discouraged at seemingly overwhelming odds in your desire to live and to help others live God's commandments. At times it may seem like David trying to fight Goliath. But remember, David did win. — David B. Haight

The man with a cross no longer controls his destiny; he lost control when he picked up his cross. That cross immediately became to him an all-absorbing interest, an overwhelming interference. No matter what he may desire to do, there is but one thing he can do; that is, move on toward the place of crucifixion. — Aiden Wilson Tozer

Suddenly I've got an overwhelming desire to surround myself with the aura of classical and Romantic art. — Sylvester Stallone

Every fundamentalism focuses on end times, and Armageddon is, in a sense, a rhetorical trope, an emphatic and overwhelming conclusion, meant to wrap up and make tidy the mistaken wanderings of history. For a fundamentalist the end is one of the forms desire takes, a passion no different from lust or avarice, intense with longing and the need for fulfillment and relief. It's like they're horny for apocalypse. They get off on denouements, which partly explains why Hell House never amounted to much more than a series of murderous conclusions. It focused only on that part of a story where life finds itself fated. Inside every act a judgement was coiled. Real people with their ragged and uncertain lives, their stumbling desires, their bleak or blessed futures, would only break into the narrative, complicating the story, dragging it on endlessly. — Charles D'Ambrosio

I wanted so badly to believe, but the fear felt as great and overwhelming as the desire. — Rachel Cohn

Tom Pellegrini suppresses an almost overwhelming desire to see this woman dragged into a police wagon and bounced over every pothole between here and headquarters. — David Simon

The thing that I'm always left with is this overwhelming desire for people to be rooted and the only way that they feel rooted is through another person. — John R. Allen

Love. It was love and lust and desire and passion. He'd never felt all those things at the same time before, and the combination was overwhelming. — Marie Force

She had an overwhelming desire to tell him, like the most banal of women. Don't let me go, hold me tight, make me your plaything, your slave, be strong! But they were words she could not say.
The only thing she said when he released her from his embrace was, "You don't know how happy I am to be with you." That was the most her reserved nature allowed her to express. — Milan Kundera

I choose you," he said very softly, "Max."
Then his hard, rough hand tenderly cuppoed my chin, and suddenly his mouth was on mine, and every synapse in my brain shorted out.
We had kissed a couple of times before, but this was different. This time, I squelched my immediate, overwhelming desire to run away screaming. I closed my eyes and put my arms around him despite my fear. Then somehow we slid sideways so we were lying in the cool sand. I was holding him fiercely, and he was kissing me fiercely, and it was ... just so, so intensely good. Once I got past my usual, gut-wrenching terror, there was a long, sweet slide into mindlessness, when all I felt was Fang, and all I heard was his breathing, and all I could think was "Oh, God, I want to do this all the time. — James Patterson

the desire is overwhelming. Why? Because there is availability without accountability. — Edward T. Welch

It didn't matter that Daniel had already seen her at her absolute, tear-streaked, bedraggled worst. She still had an overwhelming desire to be pretty for him. Which made her resent herself. — Frankie Rose

The acquisition of knowledge always involves the revelation of ignorance - almost is the revelation of ignorance. Our knowledge of the world instructs us first of all that the world is greater than our knowledge of it. To those who rejoice in the abundance and intricacy in Creation, this is a source of joy, as it is to those who rejoice in freedom ...
To those would-be solvers of "the human problem," who hope for knowledge equal to (capable of controlling) the world, it is a source of unremitting defeat and bewilderment. The evidence is overwhelming that knowledge does not solve "the human problem." Indeed, the evidence overwhelmingly suggests - with Genesis - that knowledge is the problem. Or perhaps we should say instead that all our problems tend to gather under two questions about knowledge: Having the ability and desire to know, how and what should we learn? And, having learned, how and for what should we use what we know? (pg. 183, People, Land, and Community) — Wendell Berry

Proficiency in art is a contract with your self and the empowerment of your self. Not all of us demand or even desire proficiency, but for those who do it's necessary to temper the influence of groups. And while some artists think history is bunk, the historical evidence is overwhelming: "In my isolation I grow stronger." — Paul Gauguin

Duke, almost the only human characteristic Mike seems to possess is an overwhelming desire to be liked. — Robert A. Heinlein

Is it possible that evil is never total, that its victory, no matter how overwhelming, is never absolute?
Consider this fallen man. He sought without remorse to shatter the mind of a fellow human being; and exploited, to do so, an entirely blameless woman, at least partly owing to his own impossible and voyeuristic desire for her. Yet this same man has risked death, with scarcely any hesitation, in a foolhardy rescue attempt. — Salman Rushdie

To be with God is really to be involved in some enormous, overwhelming desire, and joy, and power which you cannot control, which controls you. — James A. Baldwin

I've come to believe that part of lovesickness comes from this conflict between control and desire. In love we have no control. Our hearts and minds are tormented, teased, enticed and delighted by the overwhelming strength of emotions that make us try to forget the real world. — Lisa See

Your fiery spirit excites me, Keirah, like nothing I have ever felt before. Yet I have the overwhelming desire to put you over my knee when you don't do as you are told. — Madison Thorne Grey

In my younger days I struggled constantly with an overwhelming but pure love affair - my only one, and I would have struggled with it longer had not premature death, bitter but salutary for me, extinguished the cooling flames. I certainly wish I could say that I have always been entirely free from desires of the flesh, but I would be lying if I did. — Petrarch

You don't need attention to write. All you need is passion for your work and an overwhelming desire to tell a story you genuinely care about. Readers can sense your sincerity and it separates you from pretenders. — Sefi Atta

I thought she hated you," Devin said with a frown, tilting his head to the side as he studied Jodi. "That's the only way she knows how to express her overwhelming desire for me," he said, moving — R.L. Mathewson

Then dreams burst like bubbles in the wind. But change takes time.When people fall in love and lose the overwhelming desire for it to last a lifetime,they think something is wrong with them.Only now,when every other marriage ends in divorce,have people begun to understand that falling in love seldom grows into love,and that not even love can free a person from loneliness.And that sexual enjoyment does not make life meaningful. — Marianne Fredriksson

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

God created us with an overwhelming desire to soar. Our desire to develop and use every ounce of potential He's placed in us is not egotistical. He designed us to be tremendously productive and "to mount up with wings like eagles," realistically dreaming of what He can do with our potential. — Carol Kent

maybe god created us because his own awareness of beauty and truth was so overwhelming that he couldn't keep it to himself any longer, like an artist who bubbles over with desire to communicate to someone else. but god isn't limited to smaller forms like we are.

if he desired at all to create it must be so intensely beautiful as to surpass human imagination. they say that everything was made for his glory, and this has often been presented as a sterile or an unsympathetic thing. but when you have found beauty or created it, you desire to share it with someone else, and maybe he created us to be admirers of this intricacy as well.

and the beauty would somehow be only a token of knowing him. — Benjamin DeVries

I've had that kind of experience myself: I'm looking at a map and I see someplace that makes me think, 'I absolutely have to go to this place, no matter what'. And most of the time, for some reason, the place is far away and hard to get to. I feel this overwhelming desire to know what kind of scenery the place has, or what people are doing there. It's like measles - you can't show other people exactly where the passion comes from. It's curiosity in the purest sense. An inexplicable inspiration. — Haruki Murakami

Halt regarded him. He loved Horace like a younger brother. Even like a second son, after Will. He admired his skill with a sword and his courage in battle. But sometimes, just sometimes, he felt an overwhelming desire to ram the young warrior's head against a convenient tree.
"You have no sense of drama or symbolism, do you?" he asked.
"Huh?" replied Horace, not quite understanding. Halt looked around for a convenient tree. Luckily for Horace, there were none in sight. — John Flanagan

Scotland is my country, the nation that shaped me, that taught me my values. A nation whose achievements inspired and inspire me, a community whose failings drive me - drive my overwhelming desire to fight for social justice and equality. — Johann Lamont

... he was the most popular kid in school, and I was not. I sensed something in myself that made me feel disconnected from the cliques inhabited by my classmates. I knew if I put myself out there more, I could probably have just as wide a social circle as anyone else. But the overwhelming desire to be included and liked that operated the motors of most kids just wasn't in me. I was content to sit back and let the world come to me; if it did, great, and if not, well, that was okay too. — T.M. Goeglein

Even still, there's more to this complex girl, and the physical craving I feel for her is merely an index to the rest of it. I know her patience, her kindness, her inherent desire to leave the world a better place than she found it. I've felt her forgiveness, her strength, and her ability to see something good in anyone. The whole of her is overwhelming, and the fact that I may have found her only to lose her scares the hell out of me. — Tammara Webber

People are more likely to fall intensely in love when they are anxious and their self-esteem is lowest.... Feeling inadequate, unhappy, and empty are virtual prerequisites for falling and staying desperately in love; at least temporarily, the ecstasy of desire seems to cure everything that ails you. There is a connection between aversive states of mind -- loneliness, shame, even grief and horror -- and a propensity to feel overwhelming passion; this is one reason why romances blossom in times of war or natural disasters, as well as during the private disasters of our everyday lives. — Jeanne Safer

To me writing was not a career but a necessity. And so it remains, though I am now, technically, a professional writer. The strength of this inborn desire to write has always baffled me. It is understandable that the really gifted should feel an overwhelming urge to use their gift; but a strong urge with only a slight gift seems almost a genetic mistake. — Dervla Murphy