desires Quotes

“I desired more...than was within my reach. Who blames me? Many call me discontented. I couldn’t help it: the restlessness is in my nature; it agitated me to pain sometimes.”

“For we pay a price for everything we get or take in this world; and although ambitions are well worth having, they are not to be cheaply won, but exact their dues of work and self-denial, anxiety and discouragement.”

“Oh, it’s delightful to have ambitions. I’m so glad I have such a lot. And there never seems to be any end to them-- that’s the best of it. Just as soon as you attain to one ambition you see another one glittering higher up still. It does make life so interesting.”

“Stars, hide your fires; Let not light see my black and deep desires.”

“It provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance.”

“But a desire to choose the hardest might be a confession of weakness in itself.”

“If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.”

“It’s the hardest thing in the world—to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage.”

“Remember that wherever your heart is, there you will find your treasure.”

“To realize one’s destiny is a person’s only obligation.”

“It’s the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.”

“If you start by promising what you don’t even have yet, you’ll lose your desire to work towards getting it.”

“The best world shakers were the ones who understood the true power of words. They were the ones who could climb the highest. One such word shaker was a small, skinny girl. She was renowned as the best word shaker of her region because she knew how powerless a person could be WITHOUT words. That’s why she could climb higher than anyone else. She had desire. She was hungry for them.”

“She hardly knew at times what it was she feared, and what she hoped for. Whether she feared or desired what had happened or what was going to happen and exactly what she longed for, she could not have said.”

“Chinese parents believe that they know what is best for their children and therefore override all of their children’s own desires and preferences.”

“I learned to recognise the thorough and primitive duality of man; I saw that, of the two natures that contended in the field of my consciousness, even if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both.”

What I wanted more than anything was one silver bell from Santa’s sleigh.

“Oh, how I wish I were tall enough to go on the sea,” said the fir-tree.

“All I wanted was to be loved for myself.”

“I used to want a great many things before, and to be angry that I did not have them. Theoretically, I was satisfied. I flattered myself that I had limited my wants. But I was subject to irritation; I used to have morbid sterile hateful fits of hunger, of desire. Now I really am satisfied, because I can’t think of anything better. It’s just as when one has been trying to spell out a book in the twilight, and suddenly the lamp comes in. I had been putting out my eyes over the book of life, and finding nothing to reward me for my pains; but now that I can read it properly I see that it’s a delightful story.”

“This is the Master-ring, the One Ring to rule them all. This is the One Ring that he lost many ages ago, to the great weakening of his power. He greatly desires it — but he must not get it.”

“It is wisdom to recognize necessity, when all other courses have been weighed, though as folly it may appear to those who cling to false hope. Well, let folly be our cloak, a veil before the eyes of the Enemy! For he is very wise, and weighs all things to a nicety in the scales of this malice. But the only measure that he knows is desire, desire for power; and so he judges all hearts. Into his heart the thought will not enter that any will refuse it.”

“So, attend carefully to your posture. Quit drooping and hunching around. Speak your mind. Put your desires forward, as if you had a right to them — at least the same right as others. Walk tall and gaze forthrightly ahead. Dare to be dangerous. Encourage the serotonin to flow plentifully through neural pathways desperate for its calming influence.”

“Empty pockets never held anyone back. Only empty heads and empty hearts can do that.”

Just remember that self-discipline is not self-suppression. Suppression is when you resist and fight against your desires, keeping them as buried and unexpressed as possible.

“for you will always gravitate toward that which you, secretly, most love.”

“Where the willingness is great the difficulties cannot be great.”

“You can satisfy the people, for their object is more righteous than that of the nobles, the latter wishing to oppress, while the former only desire not to be oppressed.”

“Desire is an odd thing. As soon as it’s sated, it transmutes. If we receive golden thread, we desire the golden needle.”

“There was once a young man who wished to gain his Heart’s Desire.”

“Dreams seem to be spurred on not by reason but by desire, not by the head but by the heart, and yet what complicated tricks my reason has played sometimes in dreams, what utterly incomprehensible things happen to it!”

“Money is a guarantee that we may have what we want in the future. Though we need nothing at the moment it insures the possibility of satisfying a new desire when it arises.”

“Success is getting what you want.. Happiness is wanting what you get.”

“The Buddha said that suffering was caused by desire, we’d learned, and that the cessation of desire meant the cessation of suffering. When you stopped wishing things wouldn’t fall apart, you’d stop suffering when they did. ”

“The shape of my life is, of course, determined by many things; my background and childhood, my mind and its education, my conscience and its pressures, my heart and its desires.”

“But whatsoever is the object of any man’s appetite or desire, that is it which he for his part calleth good; and the object of his hate and aversion, evil; and of his contempt, vile and inconsiderable. For these words of good, evil, and contemptible are ever used with relation to the person that useth them: there being nothing simply and absolutely so; nor any common rule of good and evil to be taken from the nature of the objects themselves.”

“I accepted the assignment because I was in the grip of the Everest mystique. In truth, I wanted to climb the mountain as badly as I’d ever wanted anything in my life.”

“If any two men desire the same thing, which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies; and in the way to their end (which is principally their own conservation, and sometimes their delectation only) endeavour to destroy or subdue one another.”

“Once Everest was determined to be the highest summit on earth, it was only a matter of time before people decided that Everest needed to be climbed.”

“I tried to do as she would wish it. The Lord will pardon me and excuse the conduct of them He sent me.”

“As I stare at it,I can feel little invisible strings, silently tugging me toward it. I have to touch it. I have to wear it. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

“Above all, pay attention to your own hearts with their lusts, for they are ‘deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.’ Set your faces with flint-like resolve since you have all power in heaven and earth on your side.”

“I don’t know if a little music aint about the nicest thing a fellow can have.”

“That which men desire they are said to love, and to hate those things for which they have aversion. So that desire and love are the same thing.”

“When you want to attract something into your life, make sure your actions don’t contradict your desires.. Think about what you have asked for, and make sure that your actions are mirroring what you expect to receive, and that they’re not contradicting what you‘ve asked for. Act as if you are receiving it. Do exactly what you would do if you were receiving it today, and take actions in your life to reflect that powerful expectation. Make room to receive your desires, and as you do, you are sending out that powerful signal of expectation.”

No. No games. He wanted her and didn’t care who knew it. He definitely and absolutely wanted her, longed for her.

“Sometimes the most dangerous thing of all in matters of love was to be granted your heart’s desire.”

“Behind [the elders] was the big and ancient silk-cotton tree which was sacred. Spirits of good children lived in that tree waiting to be born. On ordinary days young women who desired children came to sit under its shade.”

“Henry sang slowly and with great sincerity and conviction... ‘Lord lift me up, and let me stand By faith on Heaven’s tableland A higher plane, that I have found Lord, plant my feet on Higher Ground.’ I sat down, completely stunned. Henry’s voice was filled with desire. I experienced his song as a precious gift.”

“The scriptural picture of heaven is therefore just as symbolical as the picture which our desire, unaided, invents for itself; heaven is not really full of jewelry any more than it is really the beauty of Nature, or a fine piece of music.”

“Just in proportion as the desire grows, our fear lest it should be a mercenary desire will die away and finally be recognized as an absurdity. But probably this will not, for most of us, happen in a day; poetry replaces grammar, gospel replaces law, longing transforms obedience, as gradually as the tide lifts a grounded ship.”

“Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

“If you work hard enough, assert yourself, and use your mind and imagination, you can shape the world to your desires.”

″ If a trans-temporal, transfinite good is our real destiny, then any other good on which our desire fixes must be in some degree fallacious, must bear at best only a symbolical relation to what will truly satisfy.”

“But the question to precede all others, which finally determines the course of our lives is What do I really want? Was it to love what God commands, in the words of the collect, and to desire what He promises? Did I want what I wanted, or did I want what He wanted, no matter what it might cost?”

“Now, if we are made for heaven, the desire for our proper place will be already in us, but not yet attached to the true object, and will even appear as the rival of that object.”

“All Joy reminds. It is never a possession, always a desire for something longer ago or further away or still ‘about to be’.”

“Thou must also take heed of another kind of wandering, for they are idle in their actions, who toil and labour in this life, and have no certain scope to which to direct all their motions, and desires.”

“But if it be so that there be no gods, or that they take no care of the world, why should I desire to live in a world void of gods, and of all divine providence?”

“The size of your success is measured by the strength of your desire; the size of your dream; and how you handle disappointment along the way.”

“The two desires struggle within me: the desire to be safe, and the desire to know. I cannot tell which one will win.”

“The irony is that while God doesn’t need us but still wants us, we desperately need God but don’t really want Him most of the time.”

“His life will be better. I could be the one to change that for him. And suddenly that desire, the desire to help him, is even stronger than my selfish desire to keep him close.”

“But I don’t want him. I want someone else. It feels strange to have spent so much time wishing for something, for someone, and then one day, suddenly, to just stop.”

“A mass movement attracts and holds a following not because it can satisfy the desire for self-advancement, but because it can satisfy the passion for self-renunciation.”

“Kids chase the love that eludes them.”

“Gram and Gramps knew that I wanted to see Momma, but that I was afraid to.”

“Heaven’s justice goads them on, that fear Is turn’d into desire.”

“They all talked at once, their voices insistent and contradictory and impatient, making of unreality a possibility, then a probability, then an incontrovertible fact, as people will when their desires become words.”

“I have wanted . . . to commit a murder myself. I recognized this as the desire of the artist to express himself! . . . But—incongruous as it may seem to some—I was restrained and hampered by my innate sense of justice. The innocent must not suffer.”

“August is not the only one consumed by thoughts of Marlena. I lie on my horse blanket at night wanting her so badly I ache. A part of me wishes she would come to me – but not really, because it’s too dangerous. I also can’t go to her, because she’s sharing a bunk in the virgin car with one of the bally broads.”

“Confuse not the necessary expenses with thy desires.”

“Preceding accomplishment must be desire. Thy desires must be strong and definite.”

“But he fell gradually in love and began to speculate wildly on marriage.”

“But all parts of the body must be ready for the other, all atoms must jump in one direction for desire to occur.”

“You have to live through it and love it and move on and be better for it and run as far as you can in the direction of your best and happiest dreams across the bridge that was built by your own desire to heal.”

“Grief eats away its heart for the loss of things which it took pleasure in desiring, because it wants to be like you, from whom nothing can be taken away.”

“Don’t we forgive everything of a lover? We forgive selfishness, desire, guile. As long as we are the motive for it.”

“Our minds sometimes see what our hearts wish were true.”

“Not only did I rediscover every experience of my life, I had to live each unfulfilled desire as well—as though they’d been fulfilled. I saw that what transpires in the mind is just as real as any flesh and blood occurrence

“All my empty dreams suddenly lost their charm and my heart began to throb with a bewildering passion for the wisdom of eternal truth.”

“When you lose your desire for things that do not matter, you will be free.”

“Love sought is good, but given unsought better.”

“Daughter, dismiss thy fears; to thy desire The fates of thine are fix’d, and stand entire.”

“He ought to tell Crowley. No, he didn’t. He wanted to tell Crowley. He ought to tell Heaven.”

“The starting point of all achievement is DESIRE. Keep this constantly in mind. Weak desire brings weak results, just as a small fire makes a small amount of heat.”

“Verily, there is nothing, right or wrong, which belief, plus burning desire, cannot make real.”

“I recognize the desire to surprise your own life. ‘You must change your life,’ as the poet Rilke said.”

“You need to know it’s your actions that will make you a good person, not desire.”

“Each of us harboured the desire to make our own small contribution to the creation of a better world, and saw that, as professionals, the surest means of doing so would be to serve the great gentlemen of our times in whose hands civilization had been entrusted.”

“The desire of God’s heart is immeasurably larger than our imaginations can conjure.”

“The freedom now desired by many is not freedom to do and dare but freedom from care and worry.”

“You told me! I told you!”

“The world you desire can be won. It exists.. it is real.. it is possible.. it’s yours.”

“When they say the heart wants what it wants, they’re talking about the poetic heart—the heart of love songs and soliloquies, the one that can break as if it were just-formed glass. They’re not talking about the real heart, the one that only needs healthy foods and aerobic exercise.”

“The fruit of labours, in the lives to come, Is threefold for all men,--Desirable, And Undesirable, and mixed of both; But no fruit is at all where no work was.”

“Who cares what you want? The only thing that matters is what is good for you. Your mother and I only care about what is good for you. You go to school, you become a doctor, you be successful. Then you never have to work in a store like this. Then you have money and respect, and all the things you want will come. You find a nice girl and have children and you have the American Dream. Why would you throw your future away for temporary things that you only want right now?”

“In Eugene Sue, she studied descriptions of furnishings; she read Balzac and George Sand, seeking in them the imagined satisfaction of her own desires.”

“She ruled in beauty o’er this heart of mine, A noble lady in a humble home, And now her time for heavenly bliss has come, ’Tis I am mortal proved, and she divine. The soul that all its blessings must resign, And love whose light no more on earth finds room Might rend the rocks with pity for their doom, Yet none their sorrows can in words enshrine; They weep within my heart; no ears they find Save mine alone, and I am crushed with care, And naught remains to me save mournful breath. Assuredly but dust and shade we are; Assuredly desire is mad and blind; Assuredly its hope but ends in death.”

“The rage rises again, and I don’t even want to control it. But what can I do about it? What can I do to avenge my brother, or even try to save the others?”

“Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale Her infinite variety. Other women cloy The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry Where most she satisfies. ”

“Being listened to and heard is one of the greatest desires of the human heart. And those who learn to listen are the most loved and respected.”

“Who wants to want according to a little table?”

“People who are afflicted by sickness or poverty or love or thirst or any other unsatisfied desires are prone to anger and easily roused.”

“I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that country and to help others to do the same.”

“The Christian says, ‘Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex.”

“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud.

“They who know truth in truth, and untruth in untruth, arrive at truth, and follow true desires.”

“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud.”

“My own corruption is violent, tumultuous, enticing, and entangling. As it conceives sin, it wars within me and against me.”

“A U.S. of modern A. where the State is not a team or a code, but a sort of sloppy intersection of desires and fears, where the only public consensus a boy must surrender to is the acknowledged primacy of straight-line pursuing this flat and short-sighted idea of personal happiness.”

“You can’t have anything, you can’t have anything at all. Because desire just cheats you. It’s like a sunbeam skipping here and there about a room. It stops and gilds some inconsequential object, and we poor fools try to grasp it--but when we do the sunbeam moves on to something else, and you’ve got the inconsequential part, but the glitter that made you want it is gone--”

“How I feel is that if I wanted anything I’d take it. That’s what I’ve always thought all my life. But it happens that I want you, and so I just haven’t room for any other desires.”

“You see, gentlemen, reason is an excellent thing, there’s no disputing that, but reason is nothing but reason and satisfies only the rational side of man’s nature, while will is a manifestation of the whole life, that is, of the whole human life including reason and all the impulses. ”

“You know, I can feel the fear that you carry around and I wish there was... something I could do to help you let go of it because if you could, I don’t think you’d feel so alone anymore.”

“The desire to seem clever often keeps us from being so.”

“I hardly knew Hannah Baker. I mean, I wanted to. I wanted to know her more than I had the chance. […] [W]e never had the chance to get closer. And not once did I take her for granted. Not once.”

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.”

“If you don’t get what you want, you suffer; if you get what you don’t want, you suffer; even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can’t hold on to it forever.”

“Only by managing my thinking and shifting my thoughts from desire to deeds would I be able to bring about positive change. I needed to go from wanting to doing.”

“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”

“There are a great many things that I wish to do, and don’t get to.”

“We need hope as much as we need bread and...”

We think we have many desires, but in fact we have only one. What is it?” “To live,” said Camilla. “To live forever,” said Bunny, chin cupped in palm.”

“Desire is both imitative (we like what others like) and competitive (we want to take away from others what they have). As children, we wanted to monopolize the attention of a parent, to draw it away from other siblings. This sense of rivalry... makes people compete for the attention.”

“To eliminate the agitation and disappointment of desire, we need but awaken to the fact that we have everything we want and need right now.”

“A person whose desires and impulses are his own- are the expression of his own nature, as it has been developed and modified by his own culture- is said to have character.”

“Yet, desires and and impulses are as much a part of a perfect human being, as beliefs and restraints;”

“I had a dream about you. We couldn’t decide on a sunrise. You wanted a tan, I only cared about the view. Then World War III fulfilled both our desires.”

“Brody is the toy that all the other kids want to own, so obviously Selah wants to be the one to lock him down. He’s a fill-in-the-blank... it could be a purse, a car, a trip, a new pair of shoes. She’s constantly in pursuit of shiny things, and well, he is very shiny.”

“Love. Where does it come from? Who lit this flame in us? No war can put it out, conquer it. I was a prisoner. You set me free. ”

“It is not because men’s desires are strong that they act ill; it is because their consciences are weak.”

“By identifying with our desires and taking them too seriously, we not only increase our susceptibility to disappointment, we actually create a climate inhospitable to the free and easy fulfillment of those desires.”

“The desire to see and the desire to ratify what one has seen are desires at odds with one another, if only because they proceed from separate places in the imagination.”

“[I]t is rather the case that we desire something because we believe it to be good than that we believe a thing to be good because we desire it. It is the thought that starts things off.”

“No ego can last for long without the need for more. Therefore, wanting keeps the ego alive much more than having. The ego wants to want more than it wants to have. And so the shallow satisfaction of having is always replaced by more wanting.”

″ I say to you that we do not seek the struggle.”

“It is not good to want a thing too much. It sometimes drives the luck away. You must want it just enough . . . ”

“If we are taken over by craving, no matter who or what is before us, all we can see is how it might satisfy our needs. This kind of thirst contracts our body and mind into a profound trance.”

“If you know who you are, make the changes you must in order to learn and grow, and then give everything you’ve got to your dreams, you can achieve anything your heart desires.”

“The very desire to find shortcuts makes you eminently unsuited for any kind of mastery.”

All movement is a sign of thirst. Most speaking really says “I am hungry to know you.” Every desire of your body is holy; Every desire of your body is holy. Dear one, Why wait until you are dying To discover that divine Truth?”

“I wouldn’t let her talk to me, but as I talked I would want her to reach out a soft white hand and stroke my head and say, “Poor think! Oh, you poor, poor thing!”

“The vast desire and capacity a woman has for intimate relationships tells us of God’s vast desire and capacity for intimate relationships.”

“The central movement of the mind is the desire for unrestricted liberty and (...) this movement is invariably accompanied by its opposite, a dread of the consequences of liberty.”

“When we delight ourselves in the Lord, He gives us the desires of our heart. When we commit our ways to the Lord and trust in Him, He brings our desires to pass as we pray about them (Psalm 37:4-5).”

“Alec glanced down proudly at the hard muscles in his arms. Uncle Ralph had taught him how to ride- the one thing in the world he had always wanted to do.”

“Marc wanted to go to sleep. Really, he did. But he couldn’t. He just couldn’t sleep. ”

″‘I must fly’ said the man”

“My greatest weakness has always been my desire for love. It is a yawning chasm within me, and the more that I reach for it, the more easily I am tricked.”

“I had a constant craving, a yearning, to improve and be the best. I never needed external forces to motivate me.”

“An All-American is an ordinary person with an extraordinary desire to excel. You don’t get to the top of the mountain by just dreaming. It’s nice to dream. But it’s the work ethic and pride that makes you get to that mountain top and that level of success.”

“To have someone out there who understands you, who desires you, who sees you as a better version of yourself, is the most astonishing gift.”

“finally, someone had put into words the thing that had been screaming in me since I was first told that my failure to submit to AA was really my ego run amok. Finally, what I read was: It makes sense that a woman might entirely refuse a program that asked her to give up something she’s not only never had, but was finally just grasping: a sense of self, a voice, a sense of her own desires, freedom in a world not made for her.”

“our obsessive desire to make and have and do and say and go and get—six of the seven most common verbs in English—may ultimately steal away our ability to be, the most common verb in English.”

“We believe that we can change the things around us in accordance with our desires—we believe it because otherwise we can see no favourable outcome. We do not think of the outcome which generally comes to pass and is also favourable: we do not succeed in changing things in accordance with our desires, but gradually our desires change. The situation that we hoped to change because it was intolerable becomes unimportant to us. We have failed to surmount the obstacle, as we were absolutely determined to do, but life has taken us round it, led us beyond it, and then if we turn round to gaze into the distance of the past, we can barely see it, so imperceptible has it become.”

“Did you know you can take your bus anywhere you want to go? Say yes three times with me. Yes, yes, yes. You can take it to the movies, the beach or the North Pole. Just say where you want to go and believe that it will be so. Because every journey and ride begins with a desire to go somewhere and do something and if you have a desire then you also have the power to make it happen.”

“The universe responds when you really pursue your heart’s desire.”

“You better commence to tremble when the Lord, He gives you your heart’s desire.”

“Over generations, love of the maji turned into fear. Fear turned into hate. Hate transformed into violence, a desire to wipe the maji away.”

“And what was there evil in their desires, in their hunger? That man should walk upright in the land where they were born, and be free to use the fruits of the earth, what was there evil in it? . . . They were afraid because they were so few. And such fear could not be cast out, but by love.”

“Understanding the world too well, you see too many options and become as indecisive as Hamlet. No matter how far we progress, we remain part animal, and it is the animal in us that fires our strategies, gives them life, animates us to fight. Without the desire to fight, without a capacity for the violence war churns up, we cannot deal with danger. The prudent Odysseus types are comfortable with both sides of their nature. They plan ahead as best they can, see far and wide, but when it comes time to move ahead, they move. Knowing how to control your emotions means not repressing them completely but using them to their best effect.”

“The vast desire and capacity a woman has for intimate relationships tells us of God’s vast desire and capacity for intimate relationships. In fact, this may be The most important thing we ever learn about God--the He yearns for relationship with us. “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God” (John 17:3). The whole story of the Bible is a love story between God and His people. He yearns for us. He cares. He has a tender heart.”

“Once you understand what people really want, you can’t hate them anymore. You can fear them, but you can’t hate them, because you can always find the same desires in your own heart.”

“He feared his father’s anger more than anything else. But his desire to enter the shed was so great it drove his fear into the back of his mind, where it gnawed on him like a mouse in a wall.”

“I lost the society and friendship of your brave father, whom I now desire more than my life once again to look upon.”

“Mrs. Price was busy at the stove. Her immediate and overriding desire was to get the meal cooked and served so that she could sit down for at least a quarter of an hour.”

“Because this is closed circle, you understand? Horst is right on the money about that. No one is going to buy this painting. Impossible to sell. But-black market, barter currency? Can be traded back and forth forever! Valuable, portable. Hotel rooms- going back and forth. Drugs, arms, girls, cash- whatever you life.”

“It’s hard for me sometimes that we aren’t together. I never know where the lines are. I want to cross them all the time. ”

“Magic is desire made real.”

“The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.

You filled me with a wild desire to know everything about life.

“and desire for good exists, though it’s in a childish form, and honesty you may find, although there are crowds of brigands.”

He soon felt that the realization of his desires gave him no more than a grain of sand out of the mountain of happiness he had expected. It showed him the mistake men make in picturing to themselves happiness as the realization of their desires. For a time after joining his life to hers, and putting on civilian dress, he had felt all the delight of freedom in general of which he had known nothing before, and of freedom in his love,—and he was content, but not for long. He was soon aware that there was springing up in his heart a desire for desires—ennui. Without conscious intention he began to clutch at every passing caprice, taking it for a desire and an object.

“I, too, do not desire and am not able to speak openly... in the presence of others... of certain matters of the greatest gravity.

“He wants to make you a present of ten thousand roubles and he desires to see you once in my presence.”

“If you consent, neither you nor any other human being shall ever see us again; I will go to the vast wilds of South America. My food is not that of man; I do not destroy the lamb and the kid to glut my appetite; acorns and berries afford me sufficient nourishment. My companion will be of the same nature as myself and will be content with the same fare. We shall make our bed of dried leaves; the sun will shine on us as on man and will ripen our food. The picture I present to you is peaceful and human, and you must feel that you could deny it only in the wantonness of power and cruelty. Pitiless as you have been towards me, I now see compassion in your eyes; let me seize the favourable moment and persuade you to promise what I so ardently desire.”