want Quotes

“They are Man’s . . . And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased.”

“Even a feeble-minded man wants to be like other men.”

“For my greatest skill has been to want but little.”

“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.”

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

“He rises from the throne. “Come, have a seat.” His voice is replete with danger, lush with menace. The flowering branches have sprouted thorns so thickly that petals are barely visible. “This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” he asks. “What you sacrificed everything for. Go on. It’s all yours.”

“The fact is, I think, that my friends really didn’t know. They didn’t know because they didn’t want to know; but they didn’t know. They could have found out, at the time, only if they had wanted to very badly.”

“Why does a man want his children to be better than himself?”

″‘You don’t frighten me,’ said Coraline, although they did frighten her, very much. ‘I want my parents back.‘”

“I wonder how many people don’t get the one they want, but end up with the one they’re supposed to be with.”

“Freedom begins way back. It begins not with doing what you want but with doing what you ought - that is, with discipline.”

“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?”

“Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am.”

“We men are very simple people: if we like what we see, we’re coming over there. If we don’t want anything from you, we’re not coming over there. Period.”

“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.”

“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?”

“Now you’re looking for the secret... but you wont find it, because of course you’re not really looking. You don’t really want to know. You want to be fooled.”

“We promise according to our expectations and we want according to our fears.”

“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.”

“What do we really want from philosophy and religion? Palliatives? Therapy? Comfort? Do we want reassuring fables or an understanding of our actual circumstances? Dismay that the Universe does not conform to our preferences seems childish. You might think that grown-ups would be ashamed to put such thoughts into print. The fashionable way of doing this is not to blame the Universe -- which seems truly pointless -- but rather to blame the means by which we know the Universe, namely science.”

“I don’t want my idea of you. That’s too easy, and it isn’t real. I want you, faults and all. And I want you to want me, faults and all, not any ideas you have about love relationships-love-is not fantasy, it is bricks and mortar.”

“Just once I’d like Daryl to pick me first. ‘Him! I want him! The skinny kid with the glasses and the black shoes! You! Come on!’ But I’ve never been chose with any enthusiasm.”

″‘Son, if you want to, one day you could make a million dollars.‘”

“When he looks in the mirror, he might notice his hair needs a trim. So he’ll probably ask for a pair of nail scissors.”

“And chances are if he asks you for a glass of milk, he’s going to want a cookie to go with it.”

“Then he’ll want to look in a mirror to make sure he doesn’t have a milk mustache.”

″ ‘This must be home,’ he said. ′ I know I’ve always wanted a home!′ ”

“Look! There’s the very bear I’ve always wanted.”

“Mr. Duncan put the magic pebble in an iron safe. Some day they might want to use it, but really, for now, what more could they wish for? They all had all that they wanted.”

″ ‘What a lucky day this is!’ thought Sylvester. ‘From now on I can have everything I want. My father and mother can have anything they want. My relatives, my friends, and anybody at all can have everything anybody wants!’ ”

“Humphrey was looking for his rabbit, Mop. He wanted to go and play but he had to have Mop, otherwise it just wasn’t right.”

“I don’t want to put things away because I’m all puffed up with anger!”

″‘I want to have a dog,’ he told his parents. ‘Sorry,’ they almost said. But first they looked at their house with no brothers and sisters. Then they looked at their street with no children. Then they looked at Henry’s face. Then they looked at each other. ‘Okay,’ they said.”

″‘I want to hug you!’ Henry told his parents. And he did.”

“Power is the ability to get what you want. Power is the ability to be the one making the decisions.”

“I WANTED to sign up for Home Economics 2, because I was pretty good at Home Ec 1. But being good at sewing does not exactly buy you popularity points at school.”

“I want you to save me from- from it all.”

“But nature is too vegetable, too vapid. She has only sublimities and vastitudes and water and leaves. I begin to wish for firelight, privacy, and the limbs of one person.”

″‘For what do you hunger, Lord?’ Moneo ventured. ‘For a humankind which can make truly long-term decisions. Do you know the key to that ability, Moneo?’ ‘You have said it many times, Lord. It is the ability to change your mind.‘”

“Across the board, I just get so scared. But I don’t want to live in a state of trepidation. I want to live in front of you, with you.”

“Why had he wanted to be rich, or to feel rich? Was he an unhappy mouse before? Didn’t he see the King himself often looking sad? Was anyone completely happy?”

“The world changes and we change with it. I am better off in this world. But the world is not better. And I don’t want that.”

″‘Want,’ she told her, in a measured tone, ‘is an interesting word. It means lack. Sometimes if we fill that lack with something else the original want disappears entirely.‘”

“But I have one want which I have never yet been able to satisfy, and the absence of the object of which I now feel as a most severe evil, I have no friend, Margaret: when I am glowing with the enthusiasm of success, there will be none to participate my joy; if I am assailed by disappointment, no one will endeavour to sustain me in dejection.”

“You may deem me romantic, my dear sister, but I bitterly feel the want of a friend.”

“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.”