Desire

If you pray for rain, don't grumble about the mud.
~ William Ward Ayer

. . . all wanted the same kind of different thing.
~ Billy Baldwin, in The New York Times (20 October 1985).

As soon as we are born, if we could but get up, bath, dress, shave, breakfast once for all, if we could 'cut' these monotonous cycles of routine. If the sun rose it would stay up, or once we were alive we were immortal!
~ Wilhelm Nero Pilate (W.N.P.) Barbellion, in The Journal of a Disappointed Man (31 March 1919). April 10, 1915 entry

All I wanted was to be big, to be in show business and to travel . . . and that's what I've been doing all my life.
~ William James "Count" Basie

Abstinence sows sand all over
The ruddy limbs & flaming hair,
But Desire Gratified
Plants fruits of life & beauty there.
~ William Blake, from The Notebook

Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!
~ William Blake, from Jerusalem (1804).

Grown old in Love from Seven till Seven times Seven
I oft have wishd for Hell for Ease from Heaven.
~ William Blake, Satiric Verses and Epigrams. To Venetian Artists

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?
~ William Blake, Songs of Experience (1794). The Tyger

Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.
~ William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790-93). Proverbs of Hell

Then every man of every clime,
That prays in his distress,
Prays to the human form divine,
Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace.
~ William Blake, from Songs of Innocence (1789). The Divine Image

Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.
~ William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790-93). Those who restrain Desire . . .

What is it men in women do require?
The lineaments of Gratified Desire.
What is it women do in men require?
The lineaments of Gratified Desire.
~ William Blake, Gnomic Verses. xvii: Several Questions Answered. 4. The Question Answer'd

What a different world this would be if people would listen to those who know more and not merely try to get something from those who have more.
~ William J.H. Boetcker

I saw two shooting stars last night
I wished on them but they were only satellites
Is it wrong to wish on space hardare?
~ Billy Bragg, in Life's A Riot With Spy Vs Spy (1983 album). A New England

Much as we may wish to make a new beginning, some part of us resists doing so as though we were making the first step toward disaster.
~ William Bridges, Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes (1980).

What loss feels he that wots not what he loses?
~ William Broome

Eden too, even Eden, we
made up. It means we always wanted a place
and never have one -- had to make them up
and stories about them: Troy, Jerusalem,
old world, new world, once found, believed, then
lost.
~ William Bronk, Living Instead (1991). Homecoming

[I] was not only hunting for my liberty, but also hunting for a name.
~ William Wells Brown, Narrative of William W. Brown, A Fugitive Slave. Written By Himself (1847). Chapter XIII

Beauty and Truth, tho' never found, are worthy to be sought.
~ Robert Williams Buchanan, To David in Heaven (c. 1866).

Like the tides on a crescent sea-beach,
When the moon is new and thin,
Into our hearts high yearnings
Come welling and surging in.
~ William Herbert Carruth, Each In His Own Tongue (1908).

Desire is creation, is the magical element in that process. If there were an instrument by which to measure desire, one could foretell achievement.
~ Willa Sibert Cather, The Professor's House (1925). Book I: The Family, Chapter 1

Nothing is far and nothing is near, if one desires. The world is little, people are little, human life is little. There is only one big thing -- desire. And before it, when it is big, all is little.
~ Willa Sibert Cather, The Song of the Lark (1915). Part I: Friends Of Childhood. Chapter XI

The universal human yearning for something permanent, enduring, without shadow of change.
~ Willa Sibert Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927).

A man in earnest finds means, or, if he cannot find, creates them. A vigorous purpose makes much out of little, breathes power into weak instruments, disarms difficulties, and even turns them into assistances. Every condition has means of progress, if we have spirit enough to use them.
~ William Ellery Channing (D.D.), An Introductory Address to the Franklin Lectures, Boston MA (1838). Self Culture

I want to remove my hat, close my eyes,
and feel the sun, warm and intermittent, on my face.
~ Billy Collins, The Art of Drowning (1995). The Biography of a Cloud

O, she is the antidote to desire.
~ William Congreve, Love for Love (1695). Act 4, scene 14

I like much better to do well, then to talk well, choosing to be beloved rather than admired, aspiring to no more height then the comfort of a good conscience, and doing good to some, harm to none.
~ William Cornwallis, from Essays by Sir William Cronwallyes (1610; enlarged edition). Of Essaies and Bookes

Oh! for a closer walk with God,
A calm and heav'nly frame;
A light to shine upon the road
That leads me to the Lamb!
~ William Cowper, from Olney Hymns (1779). Book I: On Select Passages of Scripture. Walking with God

From the first time I saw Sid Caesar be funny I knew that's what I had to do.
~ Billy Crystal, CBS TV "60 Minutes" (29 June 2003). Billy Crystal: Oscars' Favorite Host

We want best efforts guided by theory.
~ W. Edwards Deming

Our desires attract supporting reasons as a magnet the iron fillings.
~ William (W.) MacNeile Dixon

How he longed to be a sinner, this incorrigible saint!
~ William James "Will" Durant (on Nietzsche), The Story of Philosophy: the Lives and Opinions of the Greater Philosophers (1926).

If you wish to be loved, be modest; if you wish to be admired, be proud; if you wish both, combine external modesty with internal pride.
~ William James "Will" Durant

I'd rather have two girls at 21 each than one girl at 42.
~ W.C. Fields

There's not a man in America who at one time or another hasn't had a secret desire to boot a child in the ass.
~ W.C. Fields, Attributed

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife unless she's a beauty.
~ W.C. Fields

If you wish in this world to advance your merits you're bound to enhance; you must stir it and stump it, and blow your own trumpet, or, trust me, you haven't a chance.
~ William Schwenck (W.S.) Gilbert, Ruddigore (1887 opera).

When every blessed thing you hold
Is made of silver, or of gold,
You long for simple pewter.
~ William Schwenck (W.S.) Gilbert

The most desirable mode of education. . . . is that which is careful that all the acquisitions of the pupil shall be preceded and accompanied by desire . . . The boy, like the man, studies because he desires it. He proceeds upon a plan of is own invention, or by which, by adopting, he has made his own. Everything bespeaks independence and inequality.
~ William Godwin, The Enquirer: Reflections on Education, Manners and Literature in a Series of Essays (1797).

Study with desire is real activity; without desire it is but the semblance and mockery of activity.
~ William Godwin, The Enquirer: Reflections on Education, Manners and Literature in a Series of Essays (1797). Of the Communication of Knowledge

I just want to lobby for God.
~ Billy Graham

I wish I'd watched less TV.
~ Billy Graham

The people of the United States want peace. The people of China want peace. The people of the Soviet Union want peace. Why can't we have peace?
~ Billy Graham, (1979).

So have I loitered my life away, reading books, looking at pictures, going to plays, hearing, thinking, writing on what pleased me best. I have wanted only one thing to make me happy; but wanting that, have wanted everything!
~ William Hazlitt, in Winterslow, Essays and Characters Written There (1850). My First Acquaintance with Poets (first published in April, 1823)

We find many things to which the prohibition of them constitutes the only temptation.
~ William Hazlitt, in Winterslow, Essays and Characters Written There (1850). Project for a New Theory of Civil and Criminal Legislation (written in 1828)

I want to make a statement about the indominatability of the human spirit, damn it all. To say something for loneliness and bravery and honor and the simple will, by God, to be a man and to behave as a man, to make a difference to those whose lives his life touches.
~ Will Henry (Henry Wilson Allen) (letter to Dale L. Walker, dtd January 29, 1982), in Roundup magazine (April 2000). 'Dear Soapy' Letters from Will Henry

Most men seem to have two objects in life: one is to become rich and the other is to become richer.
~ (Col.) William C. Hunter, Brass Tacks (1910).

Why, we're going to be rich, and famous, and happy. Wish to be an emperor, father, to begin with; then you can't be henpecked.
~ William Wymark ("W.W.") Jacobs, The Monkey's Paw (1902).

Desire, wish, will, are states of mind which everyone knows, and which no definition can make plainer.
~ William James, The Principles of Psychology (1890). Vol. 2. Chapter XXVI: Will

I now perceive one immense omission in my psychology -- the deepest principle of Human Nature is the craving to be appreciated.
~ William James, in The Letters of William James, vol. 2 (1920). Letter to his class at Radcliffe College (6 April 1896)

If you only care enough for a result, you will almost certainly attain it.
~ William James, Talks to Teachers on Psychology: and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals (March 1899). Memory

What every genuine philosopher (every genuine man, in fact) craves most is praise -- although the philosophers generally call it "recognition"!
~ William James, Letter to Henri Bergson (13 June 1907).

All men love to take what belongs to others; it is a universal desire; only the manner of doing it differs.
~ Captain William Kidd, Quoted in Captain Kidd and the War Against the Pirates (1986).

The main thing is to care. Care very hard, even if it is only a game you are playing.
~ Billie Jean King, Billie Jean (1982).

You should not see the desert simply as some faraway place of little rain. There are many forms of thirst.
~ William Langewiesche, Sahara Unveiled: A Journey Across the Desert

Once you start, the appetite for censorship knows no boundaries.
~ Bill Lockyer

Hunger put us in touch with the gods and fear with the devils.
~ William Markiewicz, Extracts of Existence (1990).

Defeat strips away false values and makes you realize what you really want. It stops you from chasing butterflies and puts you to work digging gold.
~ William Moulten Marston

Nearly all great men -- those who have towered high above their fellows -- have been remarkable above all things else for their enery of will.
~ William Mathews, Getting on in the World; Or, Hints on Success in Life (1872). XIV. The Will and the Way

The worst thing is the day you realize you want to win more than the players do.
~ Gene William Mauch

I've only got an inkling of what I want.
~ W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage (1915).

It's asking a great deal that things should appeal to your reason as well as to your sense of the aesthetic.
~ W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage (1915).

It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one's dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent.
~ W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage (1915).

I've never wanted just part of the package, part of the prize. I want it all!
~ Bill McCartney, From Ashes To Glory (1990). A Personal Relationship

I see nothing wrong with the human trait to desire. In fact, I consider it integral to our success mechanism. Becoming attached to what we desire is what causes the trouble. If you must have it in order to be happy, then you are denying the happiness of the here and now.
~ Peter McWilliams

If you're not actively involved in getting what you want, you don't really want it.
~ Peter McWilliams

Learn to ask for what you want. . . . The worst people can do is not give you what you ask for which is precisely where you were before you asked.
~ Peter McWilliams, You Can't Afford the Luxury of a Negative Thought (1995). Part Two

Just as fear is also excitement, stubbornness is also determination. It's simply a matter of shifting from "won't power" to "will power."
~ Peter McWilliams, Life 101: Everything We Wished We Had Learned about Life in School--but Didn't (August 1994).

My wish is to preserve and strengthen whatever is good; to introduce it where it does not exist; and to destroy whatever is bad.
~ William Molesworth, in Life of the Right Hon. Sir William Molesworth, Bart., M.P., F.R.S. (1901). Chapter III. The London Review (originally, address to the electors of East Cornwall; 1 January 1835)

To wish there should be no God is to wish that things which we love and strive to realize and make permanent, should be only temporary and doomed to frustration and destruction.
~ William Pepperell (W.P.) Montague, Belief Unbound, a Promethean Religion for the Modern World (1930).

I wonder how the heart of man
Has patience to live out its span,
Or wait until its dreams come true.
~ William Vaughn Moody, A Grey Day

And all in all and on the whole: some day I wish to be only a Yes-sayer.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Here the ways of men part: if you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe; if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then inquire.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

I no longer want to walk on worn soles.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

My doctrine is: Live that thou mayest desire to live again, -- that is thy duty, -- for in any case thou wilt live again!
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

The thirst for equality can express itself either as a desire to draw everyone down to one's level, or to raise oneself and everyone else up.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

I desire to gain your Love and Friendship by a kind, Just and Peaceful Life.
~ William Penn

Seek not to be Rich, but Happy. The one lies in Bags, the other in Content: which Wealth can never give.
~ William Penn, Some Fruits of Solitude (1693). Temporal Happiness

I'd like to design something like a city or a museum. I want to do something hands on rather than just play golf which is the sport of the religious right.
~ (William) Brad Pitt

If you feel the urge, don't be afraid to go on a wild goose chase. What do you think wild geese are for anyway?
~ Will Rogers

I don't need music, lobster or wine
Whenever your eyes look into mine;
The things I long for are simple and few:
A cup of coffee, a sandwich--and you!
~ Billy Rose

Why not spend some time determining what is worthwhile for us, and then go after that?
~ William Ross

If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have a paradise in a few years.
~ Bertrand Arthur William Russell

Ah yes, I know my brow is low
And often wished it high.
So that I might with rapture write
An epic of the sky. . . .
~ Robert William Service, Lyrics of a Low Brow (1951). Prelude

Aye, teach me, Lord of Life, I pray,
As I salute the sun,
To bear myself that every day
May be a Golden One.
~ Robert William Service, Ballads of a Bohemian (1921). Book I: Golden Days

I wanted the gold, and I sought it;
I scrabbled and mucked like a slave,
Was it famine or scurvy -- I fought it;
I hurled my youth into a grave.
~ Robert William Service, from The Spell of the Yukon, and Other Verses (1907). The Spell of the Yukon

And keep you in the rear of your affection,
Out of the shot and danger of desire.
~ William Shakespeare, Hamlet. Act I, scene iii

Appetite, a universal wolf.
~ William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida

Can one desire too much of a good thing?
~ William Shakespeare, As You Like It. Act IV, scene i

Give me my robe, put on my crown; I have
Immortal longings in me.
~ William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra. Act V, scene ii

He that wants money, means, and content, is without three good friends.
~ William Shakespeare, As You Like It. Act III, scene ii

He wants nothing of a god but eternity and a heaven to throne in.
~ William Shakespeare, Coriolanus

He was a man
Of an unbounded stomach.
~ William Shakespeare, King Henry VIII. Act IV, scene ii

Hereafter in a better world than this,
I shall desire more love and knowledge of you.
~ William Shakespeare, As You Like It. Act I, scene ii

I do desire we may be better strangers.
~ William Shakespeare, As You Like It. Act III, scene ii

I do not ask you much:
I beg cold comfort.
~ William Shakespeare, King John

I had rather have a fool to make me merry than experience to make me sad.
~ William Shakespeare, As You Like It. Act IV, scene i

I have more care to stay than will to go.
~ William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

I have not that alacrity of spirit,
Nor cheer of mind, that I was wont to have.
~ William Shakespeare, King Richard III

I must go seek some dew-drops here,
And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear.
~ William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream

I would my father look'd but with my eyes.
~ William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream. Act I, scene i

I wish you all the joy of the worm.
~ William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra

Is it not strange that desire should so many years outlive performance?
~ William Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part II. Act II, scene iv

It is my study to seem despiteful and ungentle to you.
~ William Shakespeare, As You Like It

Men prize the thing ungained more than it is.
~ William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida

My blessings go with thee.
~ William Shakespeare, King John. Act III, scene iii

Now bid me run,
And I will strive with things impossible.
~ William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar. Act II, scene i

O, had I but followed the arts!
~ William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night. Act I, scene iii

See, how she leans her cheek upon her hand!
O that I were a glove upon that hand,
That I might touch that cheek!
~ William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet. Act II, scene ii

Tempt not a desperate man.
~ William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet. Act V, scene iii

The best wishes that can be forged in your thoughts be servants to you!
~ William Shakespeare, All's Well that Ends Well

Thou art a votary to fond desire.
~ William Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Act I, scene i

Thy wish was father, Harry, to that thought.
~ William Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part II

When you do dance, I wish you
A wave o' the sea, that you might ever do
Nothing but that.
~ William Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale. Act I, scene ii

Your heart's desires be with you!
~ William Shakespeare, As You Like It. Act I, scene ii

Above all, I would like to be remembered as a man who was selfless, who strove and worried so that others could share the glory, and who built up a family of people who could hold their heads up high and say, 'We're Liverpool'.
~ Bill Shankly

The desire of love, Joy:
The desire of life, Peace:
The desire of the soul, Heaven:
The desire of God . . . a flame-white secret forever.
~ William Sharp (as Fiona MacLeod), From the Hills of Dream, Threnodies Songs and Later Poems (1901). Closing Doors. Desire

The gray silence, the gray waves, the gray wastes of the sea.
~ William Sharp (as Fiona MacLeod), From the Hills of Dream, Threnodies Songs and Later Poems (1901). Through The Ivory Gate. Longing

I wanted to sniff those flowers, and fly!
~ William Shatner

Anybody with a little guts and the desire to apply himself can make it, he can make anything he wants to make of himself.
~ William Lee (Willie) "The Shoe" Shoemaker

I desire perfection. I desire being the best that I can possibly be. I don't wanna take time to eat, I don't wanna take time to sleep, I wanna let the other guy be eatin' and sleepin' while I'm working and while I'm trying to achieve my best earthly perfection.
~ Will Smith, The Associated Press (27 December 2001). Will Smith Says Filming was "Grueling"

Which of us has not felt in his heart a half-warmed fish?
~ Reverand William A. Spooner (i.e., a spoonerism for "half-formed wish")

Next time what I'd do is look at
the earth before saying anything. I'd stop
just before going into a house
and be an emperor for a minute
and listen better to the wind
or to the air being still.
~ William Stafford, Next Time

No matter how carefully you plan your goals, they will never be more than pipe dreams unless you pursue them with gusto.
~ William (W.) Clement Stone

You, too, can determine what you want. You can decide on your major objectives, targets, aims, and destination.
~ William (W.) Clement Stone

But the gray and the cold are haunted
By a beauty akin to pain, --
By a sense of a something wanted,
That never will come again.
~ William Wetmore Story, in Yale Book of American Verse (1912). In the Rain

Give me the old enthusiasms back,
Give me the ardent longings that I lack, --
The glorious dreams that fooled me in my youth,
The sweet mirage that lured me on its track. . . .
~ William Wetmore Story, Girolamo, Detto il Fiorentino

Hate me an hour, and then turn round
And love me truly, just one minute.
~ William Wetmore Story, in Yale Book of American Verse (1912). Snowdrop

And organized society seeks also to regulate the conflict and competition inevitable between its members in the pursuit of their wishes. The desire to have wealth, for example, or any other socially sanctioned wish, may not be accomplished at the expense of another member of the society, -- by murder, theft, lying, swindling, blackmail, etc.
~ William Isaac "W.I." Thomas, The Unadjusted Girl with cases and standpoint for behavior analysis (1923). Chapter 2: The Regulation of the Wishes

Keep your feet on the ground, but let your heart soar as high as it will. Refuse to be average.
~ Aiden Wilson (A.W.) Tozer

If you would be interesting, be interested, if you would be pleased, be pleasing, if you would be loved, be lovable, if you would be helped, be helpful.
~ William Arthur Ward

In the Eden for which we long, the wyzzard kings dance in their magic circles, and the Light flows out from them like waves of joy, and it shines, immortal as we are, from the Eden all around us, the Paradise only the Great Lie makes us too blind to see.
~ William John Watkins, The Wyzzard Kings of Wailes (2001).

The thirst to know and understand,
A large and liberal discontent;
These are the goods in life's rich hand,
The things that are more excellent.
~ William Watson, Things That Are More Excellent

If the world were extremely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world, and a desire to enjoy the world. That makes it hard to plan the day.
~ William Allen White

Shoot a few scenes out of focus. I want to win the foreign film award.
~ Billy Wilder (to a cameraman), Attributed

I wish I could have known earlier that you have all the time you'll need right up to the day you die.
~ William Wiley

It's not who jumps the highest -- it's who wants it the most.
~ Buck Williams

I was wishing I could pull some molecules out of the air and make me a weapon and just wipe out every white person near, because I thought they had shot Dr. King at that time.
~ Hosea Williams (on the murder of Martin Luther King Jr., recalled during a 1993 AP interview), The Associated Press (16 November 2000). Civil Rights Leader Dies

Be thou my Guardian and my Guide.
~ Isaac Williams, Title of hymn (1842)

What can be beyond love? I want to get there.
~ Joy Williams, State of Grace (1973).

I'm currently in the mode of looking for Mrs. Williams, not Mrs. Right Now. . . .
~ Robbie Williams, The Daily Mirror (20 February 2003). Robbie: I'm Looking For A Wife

And if there is one thing I long for above all else, it's that the years to come may see Christianity in this country able again to capture the imagination of our culture, to draw the strongest energies of our thinking and feeling into the exploration of what our creeds put before us.
~ Dr. Rowan Williams (remarks at a news conference to announce his nomination to the See of Canterbury), Press release from the Office of the Archbishop of Canterbury (23 July 2002). A statement by Dr Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Wales and Bishop of Monmouth

I also pray that your suffering, caused by gang violence, will soon come to an end as more gang members wake up and stop hurting themselves and others. . . . I vow to spend the rest of my life working toward solutions.
~ Stanley Tookie Williams, in Institute for the Prevention of Youth Violence "Tookie's Corner" (tookie.com) (13 April 1997). The Apology

All my life I have been haunted by the obsession that to desire a thing or to love a thing intensely is to place yourself in a vulnerable position, to be a possible, if not a probable, loser of what you most want.
~ Thomas Lanier ("Tennessee") Williams, Sweet Bird of Youth (1959). Forward

I don't want realism. . . . I'll tell you what I want. Magic! Yes, yes, magic!
~ Thomas Lanier ("Tennessee") Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire (1947).

I just wanted it and felt maybe it's my turn.
~ Venus Williams

Guide me, O Thou great Redeemer,
Pilgrim through this barren land.
I am weak, but Thou art mighty;
Hold me with Thy powerful hand.
Bread of heaven, bread of heaven,
Feed me till I want no more;
Feed me till I want no more.
~ William Williams of Pant-y-celyn, Arglwydd, arwain trwy'r anialwch (translated as "Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah"; 1745).

All such dresses are forbidden which incite irregular desires.
~ (Bishop) Thomas Wilson, in Maxims of Piety and of Christianity (first published in 1781).

I have certainly known more men destroyed by the desire to have a wife and child and to keep them in comfort than I have seen destroyed by drink and harlots.
~ William Butler Yeats

Would that the world were mine to give it you,
And not its quiet hearths alone, but even
All that bewilderment of light and freedom.
If you would have it.
~ William Butler Yeats, The Land of Heart's Desire (1894).